Showing posts with label Byzantine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Byzantine. Show all posts

14 Aug 2023

The Fatimid Empire extends to ... Winnersh!

 Back in the mists of time (OK, June..) a mighty Fatmid army took part in the 1-day Southern League ADLG event on the outskirts of reading. 

Or, more accurately, Winnersh..


The theme was The Normans and their Enemies, and having already fielded a Norman army earlier this year in, erm, Normandy I opted to take another never-before-seen force out of the lockdown painting locker and put the little-fancied Fatimids on table for the very first time.


This allowed me to field a number of new-ish units all painted during Lockdown - foremost of which were the possibly spurious Al-Sariyah Pikemen, together with some Medium Infantry Arab Clubmen as part of a rather mixed bag of  one of the lesser-seen Arab armies. 


The event saw the Fatimids taking on a range of thematic opponents, including the Konstantinian Byzantines, North African Arabs and finally the Kingdom of Sicily


2 Feb 2021

It's A Battle Report !

OK, it's a video of a battle played online on Tabletop Simulator... but in this world of global gaming Lockdown I'm afraid this may be as good as it gets for a while longer!

So, for those of you missing the clatter of dice on cloth-covered chipboard here is a game of L'Art de la Guerre played on Tabletop Simulator between two very different Justinian Byzantine armies, both previously featured in the Madaxeman Justinian Byzantine List Building Podcast.

Thankfully (as anyone who's actually watched any tabletop wargame before will know) the gameplay has been speeded up significantly such that the whole battle plays out in only about 20 minutes of onscreen time. 

As well as all the action (hah!) the video also features a running commentary provided by me and Dave (the players) in which we attempt to explain what is happening, and to provide our respective hastily constructed post-hoc justifications for what we thought we were trying to achieve at the time.

Finally, to round things off there's a short discussion of the lists being used and a mercifully brief post-match chat as well where we deconstruct all of the "tactics" and gameplay.

You can watch the original podcast in which these two lists were put forward on the Madaxeman YouTube channel where you can also watch this video on YouTube as well as embedded here on the Madaxeman website / Blogger site.  


You can also replay the game yourself, as the two armies have been set up on a virtual tabletop as a Steam Workshop Item for Tabletop Simulator.

23 Jul 2018

Dogs of War 2018 - Game 5

It's now the end of the epic movie series, with Game 5 from Dogs of War 2018. 

In this episode the Nikephorians take on a massive Arab Conquest army.


Will this be a great sequel, or is there a Jar-Jar Binks lurking in the background? 

Watch the video to see how there two armies get on!

22 Jul 2018

Dogs of War 2018 Game 4

The 4th Dogs of War video walkthrough has now been posted, in which the Nikephorians attempt to take on the Ghaznavid Empire in its most elephant-packed incarnation.


Rather than watch a tiny embedded version here, you are much better flipping over to fullscreen or viewing it in YouTube directly 

19 Jul 2018

Dogs of War 2018 Game 3 Video Podcast

It's Game 3 of this 5-part video podcast series from the recent Dogs of War event in Bristol.

This time the Nikephorian Byzantines take on a Hindu Indian army in full cinematic action



Lists for the Indians also included.

16 Jul 2018

Dogs of War 2018 Game 2

And, in quick succession, here's the video of the second game in which the small but imperfectly formed Byzantines attempt a double envelopment against the Southern Dynasties Chinese

15 Jul 2018

Dogs of War 2018 - Video walk-through of round 1


Here's an experimental "new format" battle report from the recent Dogs of War ADLG event held in Bristol, with a video walk-through of top-down photos of the game.



It's not going to replace the usual pile of old guff and poor quality puns by any means, but always good to have a bit of variety every now and then!

The next 4 reports will follow ...

13 May 2018

Nikephorian 15mm Cavalry Conversion

Inspired by the rather lovely Nikephorian armies which were on display in Patras, and realising that I have far too many early-ish Byzantine cavalry to ever use in one army I was recently inspired to convert some of them to later Nikephorian Byzantines.

Or, to be more accurate, I;
  • sliced off the Essex Thematic (?) Byzantine Cavalrymen's small round shields with a scalpel, 
  • replaced the too-thin, too-bendy Essex lancers with cheap sewing pins bought from eBay while I was at it
  • cadged some kite and heater shields from a clubmate and glued them onto the now-sliced-off bits on the figures bodies.
After a bit of a go at painting overly-complicated shield patterns copied badly from other websites later, here you go - 6 units of Nikephorian Byzantine Lance & Bow armed Heavy Cavalry ready for the table!


The unit with the General in the centre has brass rod for its spears - I then realised that they are clearly just too thick for these chaps though, so I did the rest with cut-off sewing pins .








They won't win any awards, but not too shabby for a bit of recycling methinks.

On a similar basis, I also re-painted the shields on some almost-never-used Skoutatoi and glued the bases together to make ADLG units. Here's the slightly less impressive result.



The Icon standard is just downloaded off a Google search for Byzantine Icons, printed out and stuck on.



Maybe an army to use at Cry Havoc later this summer? 

7 Jan 2018

Festive (ish) painting...

In the absence of any competitions to report on over the festive period, I've managed to fit in a little painting and photographing (is that a word?) time.

If you follow Madaxeman.com on Facebook you may well already have seen some of this rather unusual mix of stuff, but if not - here you go!


 Malifaux's Union Steamfitter - one of three in the pack, the other two of which I sold as I can't see myself using more than one in any single crew. J



She joins my MS&U-themed set of models, which is why I have used a WW2 Battlefront Russian tank star to symbolise her support for the international proletariat in their quest to avoid oppression at the hands of evil undead magic using fascists.  And painting a Billy Bragg T-shirt on a 32mm figure was beyond me.


 A Dawn Serpent - after all, who doesn't need a flying japanese-inspired dragon that is on fire and spreads poison in their lives?


This is a "wave 1" Malifaux model so has been out for several years. It's been on my "buy if it is cheap enough on eBay" list for the same length of time, and finally one came up at a sensible price.


The January 2018 errata has literally just yesterday reduced the in-game cost of the model, making it even better value on-table. Many of these you can see online have been "floated" by attaching the model to terrain on the base, but I wanted to try for a "it's just floating anyway" look, so I pinned it with a think black-painted piece of brass wire by the tail and half-hid it with grass tufts.


 Kandara - another must-have cool new henchperson for the already overpowered Sandeep.


Painting her was something of an exercise in doing single-model painting over a number of days, rather than my more usual "only seen in a unit at tabletop distances" style.


The on-fire hair seems to have been worth the effort though.

On the ancients front it's been more about refurbishing and rounding out some armies.


These are some genric Essex Miniatures arab foot who have been based and painted as Medium Swordsmen/Spearmen/Javelinmen for L'Art de le Guerre


This is my first use of the Armypainter acrylic washes in a squeezy bottle - previously I have always used the big tins of varnish-based tint, which do tend to dry up and so I'l always reluctant to use them for small batch work. The squeeze paint bottle sized washes can also be easily diluted - these are a done with a diluted version of the soft tone.


I also refurbished another old Essex Ghaznavid elephant


Not as bright as the first one, but I tried to use different colours.



And finally, a very lazy "rearrange the riders" bit of work on some Essex Byzantine cavalry to get a mix of Bow and Lance armed figures on the same base.


I'm planning on putting all of the ADLG Byzantine armies on table at some point this year, so you will see plenty of these guys online.

11 May 2017

28mm Lombards in action

The much-trailed Gothic/Germanic/Viking/Barbarian army that has been on the painting table for the last year got a near-full outing tonight against some old-school Hinchcliffe Byzantines.

Playing 25mm L'Art de la Guerre, my 200AP Lombard list was:

  • 5 Elite & 1 Ordinary Impetuous HC, Competent General 
  • 6 Saxon Impetuous HF Swordsmen, 4 LF Bw, 1 Slavic MF Swordsman, Brilliant General
  • 4 Bowmen & 4 Slav MF Swordsmen, Ordinary General

25 Units

Here are the guys in action...


 Heavy Foot advance in the centre (a part-unfinished general with no flag urging them on...)


Bowmen and Swordsmen in action


The Shieldwall advances


Spare bowmen slide into the centre - semi-fictional Pictish crossbowman figure on one of the bases


Slave hiding in a Plantation


It's a casualty!


The Heavy Foot struggle to hold back the enemy mounted force - red markers = 3 hits


But while they do, the rest of the Saxons close in on the exposed Skoutatoi


The Slavs look set to overrun the Byzantine bowmen too


Old School Hinchliffe Kavalllaroi with impressive banner skills


Everything is engaged on a broad front - the Lombard cavalry are being eroded, but the Lombard foot is deep into the soft infantry underbelly of the smaller Byzantine force


Not much shooting taking place now - everyone is in combat!


The last Byzantine archer unit falls - an inaugural victory for the Lombards!

6 Nov 2016

ADLG in Estella, Navarre - What's it to you !?!

Buono Estente!  An intrepid team of Central London ADLG players continue our pre-Brexit World Tour by taking ourselves off to Estella in Northern Spain, the gateway to La Rioja, and also home to the wines of Navarre (which are of course just as good if not even a little better than those of Rioja, especially if you are playing ADLG with the good gamers of Navarre, like we were).


In the resulting 5 ADLG match reports and gastronomic and touristic reviews, as well as the accompanying immediately-post-event episode of the Madaxeman.com Podcast (this episode entitled Dear Catastrophe Tapas Waitress) you can see how a classic DBx army, the Patrician Romans, fares in ADLG.


This was a deliberate attempt to create a wall of barbarians and overwhelm the enemy by sheer hairyness after this tactic, impossible to do well in most other rulesets, had caused me so much trouble when I had encountered it in several previous events.


The Patrician list that emerged was far from Reigate Standard in all senses of the word, but did they manage to "tapas" into a vein of success in these 5 L'Art de la Guerre battles in Spain, or was their "tinto" spilt and were then instead left like so many huevos rotos on the floor by the pride of Navarre?


Read on to find out more ....

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