More Almughavars

 Having test-done some Lurkio Almughavars a while back, the "test" painting clearly worked as I managed to drum up enough enthusiasm to tackle the full 70+ figures who had been waiting patiently in the "undercoated" box for quite some time. 

The last lot got their photos taken outside, but for this batch the Lightbox got rolled out - so here they all are:

The Lurkio packs contained a couple more than the 72 figures that were supposed to be there, allowing me to make up 11 bases fo infantry and these 4 bases of Light Foot javelinmen.

These guys got some serious love from the box of random tufts !

Knowing they will be used in a 3-command army at some point I took the decision to mostly go with  a variety of monocolour paint schemes to allow units to be easily allocated to different comnmands, but also mixed up the hues, tints and trouser colours to still leave them vaguely "irregular" looking.

The painting was again a mix of Speedpaints, Contrasts and some of the new Warpainter 6-part "Triads" from the Fanatic ranges. 

Reds and Blues as well as Greens. 

And some "Mustardy Yellows" as well. 

Almost all of the shields have a "Barcelona FC" Catalan-esque palette 

There are a few mixed up units who can be added to either the Reds or the Blues to tweak numbers more flexibly. 

I was even sufficiently inspired to repurpose a couple of units of "generic" Essex medieval cavalry as Catalans, rather clumsily cutting down their lances to turn them into javelins and adding some "Catalan" paint schemes too. 

Here's the guys being painted as well - just to show I did actually do it myself..

Just need to find an excuse to get them on the table now !

The Northern Crusades - with added Tanks!

 Earlier this year (OK, June) I headed up to Helsinki to take part in a "Northern Crusades" ADLG competition.

Admittedly the competition aspect was somewhat secondary to just grabbding the chance to go to somewhere new in the far north in Summertime, so as to find out how late it would stay light, and exactly how expensive a pint actually would be in a place like Finland.

Even so, I did manage to squeeze in some gaming, using (of course) a Feudal Scandinavian army in a medieval-themed 5-game event. 

And now, with the magic of YouTube, here are all 5 battle reports from the games I played in the event, taking on 2 Later Byzantines (nope, no idea how they fit in a "Northern Crusades" theme either..), the Hungarians (erm..), some Medieval Germans (yep, that probably works) and the Teutonic Knights (back of the net!).

All of the videos are also on YouTube in a playlist you can save and watch in fullscreen (if you so wish).

I then took advantage of having a Monday evening return flight to pop up the road to the Parola Armour Museum, one of the more unusual tank museums in the world, to see a load of really unusual Finno-Russian WW2 and post war kit they have tucked away in a forest near to a lake (OK, that's most of Finland to be fair).

 So, in a "metal-on-metal" kind of synergistic development, there is also a video of all of the photos I took at Parola which you can also access either at the end of the battle report page, or directly on  my YouTube Channel too. 

The Khurasanians go to Spain !

 In these 6 all new, all singing and flamenco-dancing battle reports you can thrill, gasp, gag and feel mildy queasy all at the same time as you read the epic tale of how a 15mm Khurasanian army fared as it took to the stage at an international ADLG event held in sunny Spain back in April of this year.

As usual there are plenty of nonsensical historical "facts" (ahem) about the armies in play, a smattering of vaguely related videos, and loads of pictures of 15mm toy soldiers verbally harassing both me, and one another.

This time however the Khursanian army is commanded by none other than Frank Zappa alter-ego Sheikh Yabouti, leading to some rather hippie-esque post match analysis, including almost enough 1970's references to make up for the near-total lack of self-reflection and self-awareness of his own role in his many downfalls. 

Nasty Medieval Hannibal also has his say as a counterpoint to the Sheikh's nonsense - and as usual he lands far more punches than he pulls. 

In a brand new, international-reader-friendly initiative I have (OK, AI has..) managed to translate all 6 of the reports into the languages of my opponents (3 into Spanish, 1 into German, 1 into Portuguese and 1 into....Australian!) 

So, pop a shrimp on the barbie, pull up a chair, slice yourself a chorizo, break open the Hob-nobs and pop a tinned sardine on top as you prepare to read through all 6 (or 7, if you also read the Australian one) Madaxeman battle reports! 

• Game 1 Khurasanian vs Ghaznavid    (also in Spanish)
• Game 2 Khurasanian vs Ottoman Empire     (also in German)
• Game 3 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire    (also in Portuguese)
• Game 4 Khurasanian vs Wars of the Roses   (also in Spanish)
• Game 5 Khurasanian vs Mongol Empire   (also in Spanish)
• Game 6 Khurasanian vs French Ordonnance  (and also in Australian)

(Over the next few days and weeks I will also be publishing some Spanish Military Tourism videos, using photos taken during our trip to Madrid and the surrounding towns, so look out for that as well) 

The Persians are Coming!

Last month my mostly-Legio Heroica 15mm Sassanid Persian army fought its way out of the Bisley storage cabinet* for the first time in almost 8 years (!!) to conduct a 5-battle campaign against a number of fairly historical foes at the Roll Call competition in Cranfield.

All of the many highs (and lows) of this sequence of military misadventures have now been painstakingly captured and lovingly crafted into a semi-coherent wordy and verbose narrative for your delight and delectation, and are even now available on Madaxeman.com.

These include three battles against the Sassanids arch-enemies the Byzantines, as well as a Sassanid Civil War and a somewhat time travelling faceoff against the might of the Fatimid Caliphate.

You'll see Elephants, Camels, fierce hill tribesmen and well-drilled Roman-style cavalry whirling across a number of tabletops, all with the added bonus of all of the in-stream historical videos, dreadful puns, partially-relevant animated GIFs, and vague attempts to explain the rules of the game that you may by now have come to love and dread in equal measure. 

There are - of course - also a great many photos in which you can see what the soldiers are saying and thinking on the tabletop, blatantly false and self-congratulatory summaries of the battle from the Great Shah, and all topped off with the usual bitingly acerbic analysis from Hannibal himself.

So, pour yourself a cup of Iranian tea and get ready to dunk into the un-digestive-able narrative that is 5 all new Sassanid Persian battle reports on Madaxeman.com!  

(* That link to eBay is an Affiliate Link. If you buy something after following it I get a small commission from eBay)

Grab a Toblerone and head to Farnborough!

 Yes, after a somewhat lengthy delay the 5 battle reports from the L'Art de la Guerre competition at Warfare 2024 have finally made it to these pages, allowing you to see the Swiss army in all its glory!

In a series of 5 consecutive High Medieval battles the Gnome of Zurich leads his cheese-eating, cowbell-donging merry band of men with (long pointy) sticks into action against the Scottish Schiltrons, the Reconquering Medieval Spanish, the pecunious mercenary Free Companies, the even more monetarily-focused Condottieri, and finally the highly efficient Medieval Germans.

  

In each battle the highly complex and over-engineered Swiss plan unfolds in full Alpine Cinemascope, accompanied by ferocious yodelling and a faint whiff of burnt fondue

All battles come complete with speech bubbles, bizarre captions, and a series of FACTS to educate you about the lesser-known aspects of the Swiss Pikemen of the Medieval era! 

  

Pull up a Toblerone, log out of your secret bank account and take aim at the apple-on-the-head delights of these 5 full Madaxeman battle reports featuring a 15mm medieval Swiss army in all its technicolour glory! 

28mm Velites

 I've got a Foundry early Roman army in the lead pile at the moment, but in the interests of getting rid of some left over sprues of the mostly-Victrix Hellenistics I decided to repurpose some of the Victrix skirmishers as Velites - as after all, it's just some dudes with a javelin in a skirt, right? 

And here they are - the vanguard of a 28mm Roman army! 

I have a suspicion these shields are from some Dark Age viking types that have languished in the plastic bits box for a while. They may stay transfer-free as well.

The white tuunics are a base coat of white, then Warlord Holy White, then normal paint white  highlights 

I picked a variety of heads, some bear headed, some with generic Hellenistic/Roman heads

With a few more bases of Light Infantry I already have, this should be enough of a screen for the  armoured Legions of Rome!

Bring & Buy .. & Rebase and refurb!

At the recent Attack! show in Devizes I sort of accidentally managed to buy a 15mm Feudal/Medieval Russian army scaled for L'Art de la Guerre.

It was a bring and buy purchase, and I thought it looked close enough to my own painting style to be compatible with my other Eastern European armies, and also that it looked like it was great value - something I immediately rushed off to tell Jason, who I'd travelled to the show with.. only to find that it was one he'd put on the Bring & Buy himself! 

So, with a transaction which could have taken place in the boot of my car managing also to financially support the DDWG club fund, I now owned a Medieval/Feudal Russian army from Essex minis that only needed a bit of rebasing, a few dabs of paint and the addition of some paper banners to become quite an impressive complement to my existing  Hungarians.

And here they are:

Commanders on 40mm round bases

Heavy Cavalry 

Spearmen

"Guard" cavalry - the elite of the army

Follower cavalry - less well armoured than the others

Light Horse javelins or lancers - these will also appear as Serbian Hussars in other armies I think? 

Steppe horse archers

Russian army infantry bowmen

Axemen (foresters)

The cheering peasants who follow the army

Lesser armoured Medium cavalry.

The flags mostly come from Martins Vexillia site plus some from Alex Flags site

I'm dead chuffed with them, however you’d perhaps be surprised at how little I’ve done to them. 

The main visual differences are adding a few flags, and repainting the spears and bows in a much paler) Vallejo Ochre Brown 70.865, then adding a little black line to delineate the metal and wooden parts of the spears, plus the rebasing.

For some reason (that I don’t quite understand), making the spears and bows really stand out with a pale colour makes a big difference - the spears stand out against what are generally darker figures, and the effect of making them "ping" that results is wildly disproportionate to the fairly limited effort involved.

I've already gone back and done this to a good few of my own armies that originally had dark or dull brown “wood” colours for spears and in every case the visual impact is far more than it feels like it should be.