Cordoba, Granada & Alicante - the CLWC tourism video

 I've cobbled together a short-ish video of the photos from the CLWC trip to Cordoba, Granada and (eventually) Alicante in January 2023, and uploaded them to YouTube.

They cover the Mesquite Mosque/Cathedral in Cordoba, as well as some of the other museums and a decent amount of tapas, a castle we stumbled across on the road between Cordoba & Alicante (that has a working trebuchet!) and then the Alhambra in Granada. 

Combining Cordoba and Granada makes for a great trip - although getting from Granada to Alicante is a bit of a schlep, so if you don't plan on going to play in the ADLG tournament there (that we were all going to that weekend) adding Seville as the third leg instead of Alicante would be much more sensible.

There are also some incidental "on the road" photos too - let's just say that you can find the most surprising things in Spanish motorway service station vending machines !   

The video is online on YouTube here, and can also be watched on this site too:

Alicante 2024: The Battle Reports

 With far too many competitions in quick succession this January/February I'm going to be dropping a number of YouTube video battle reports over the next few weeks - with 6 reports from Alicante hitting the airwaves first!

These 10-15 minute videos see a Mithraditic army taking on the Warring States Chinese, Hittites, Hebrews, Alans, Kushans and Epirote Pyrrhics in the narrated reports which you can either watch on this website or on YouTube.

Pull up a chair, cast your YouTube to the Big Screen and enjoy my flailing attempts to steer this legendarily "lesser than the sum of its parts" army into battle in sunny sunny Espana !

Alicante 2024 : The Army Lists Video Podcast Thing

 Disproving the old adage that the best things in life are worth waiting for, the 100th episode of the Madaxeman Podcast thunders onto the airwaves with an epic, 6-handed special all the way from Spain, as myself, Dave From The Podcast & Aussie Simon are joined by Gordon, Revolutionary Dave and Mark to discuss and digest the lists we all used at the recent Alicante competition. 

This whole podcast is also available on the Madaxman YouTube channel where you can see pictures of the lists, some of the games and troops, as well as our tourism and eating exploits too.

The list covered are : Ancient Britons, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Mithradatics, Warring States Chinese and the countless  hordes of Aztecs, and all of this vague insight is shoehorned in among some tourism discussions, culinary observations, and frightning expose's of the contents of Spanish motorway service station vending machines - plus the first ever advert break to ever feature on a Madaxeman Podcast!

The video version allows you to see not only the lists as we discuss them, some of our holiday snaps, and in a Madaxeman first, little video windows of the people on the podcast actually talking (so you may prefer the audio only version...)

The army lists can all be found in the ADLG Wiki on the Madaxeman Website 

Iberian Airport Lounge List Dump

 As I'm currently sat at Valencia Airport waiting for a flight home, the joys of airport free WiFi have allowed me to bring you 7 all-new ADLG army lists from this weekend, with both my army and those of my 6 opponents already in the Wiki on this site.

Those lists are:

• Mithraditic (mine)
• 3 Kingdoms Chinese 
• Hittite
• Hebrew
• Kushan
• Alan
• Pergamene

FWIW, the Mithraditic army lost to the Hittites and Chinese, and then defeated the remaining four armies in this list. 

Before the competition Team CLWC undertook an epic road trip, taking in Cordoba and Granada before arriving in Alicante on Friday evening. 

With a following wind there will be a podcast with everyone in the car chatting about it, but here's some highlights:

The Last Almughavar

 Nope, it's not a new Spanish-language film to get history buffs excited, it is instead the final unit of Fireforge Games Almughavars which have finally been snipped from the sprue and added to my Medieval Spanish (& Feudal Spanish) armies. 

As with the others (unsurprisingly) these guys went together really easily, although for Almughavar purists you will see that I rather ran out of left arms and had to give a couple of the guys lurking at the back a shield in order to round out the unit.

The big innovation here was to add in a morning star from the Fireforge Crusading Knights box set, thus giving the lead dude a pretty cool and unusual choice of anachronistic weaponry to lead the line with.

I originally did this by gluing on an army from the box of Knights, which meant his right arm was fully mailed while his left was in Barcelona-summertime attire of short sleeves - something I sort of justified to myself on health and safety grounds to do with using a flailing set of spiked balls as a weapon.

After basing the unit though I realised this actually just looked weird, so I snipped the offending mailed arm off at the shoulder (it came off cleanly as this was where the join was located) and then added a new short-sleeved one which had originally been holding a spear.  

The spear I cut off cleanly just above the fist, and then using plastic cement (airfix glue in old money) carefully attached the handle (?) of the morning star, having also snipped that off cleanly just above the mailed fist that was holding it.

This all pretty much worked OK, as airfix glue melds the two bits together making a very strong join - but just to be belt and braces I also had positioned the morning stars such that I could superglue one of them to the top of the owners helmet for that "second point of contact" to make the joint more stable.  

So, here they are ready to go, with the newly upgraded arm in pride of place. 

(I won't mention that there is a chap in the second rank with a fully armoured right arm holding a mace, who I couldn't quite reach after fixing the figures to the base!) 

 

The Taifa Andalusians head to the West Country

With the warmth of Spain now a distant memory, barely a week after going to Alicante with the 15mm Berbers it was time for the 28mm Taifa Andalusian army to try it's luck on Southern shores as I headed to the PAW show in Plymouth for some more ADLG action.

The army featured Almughavars, Knights, Spearmen and all sorts of other odds and ends, most of which you will have seen in the paint queue on this website at some point in the last couple of years.

Over the 4-game weekend they took on the Christian Nubians, the First Crusade and a couple of Sicilian Norman armies as well, all of which has been documented in 4 separate 10-15 minute videos in which I attempt to explain what I thought I was trying to do!

See how the forces of the Reconquista (and those who perhaps weren't so keen on that idea too) fared in these 4 reports from PAW

Alicante! The Berbers Try To Conquer Spain Again

In the dark and cold month of January an intrepid band of Central Londoners set off very early one morning to head to Heathrow, and then onto the sunshine of Southern Spain to take part in the annual Akra Leuka ADLG tournament in Alicante. 

Of course, going all that way just to play toy soldiers would have been daft, so the trip had long since developed a frightening degree of mission-creep by adding in a couple of nights in Valencia, a visit to a mountaintop castle, much Iberian gastronomy and quite a few different types of alcoholic refreshment.

But, at the heart of it remained one of the biggest ADLG gatherings of the year, with 68 players drawn from all over Europe coming together for a marathon 6-game competition themed where every army list had to be led by one of its greatest historical generals ("Strategists" in L'Art de la Guerre terminology).

After much consideration I had ended up plumping for the Berbers, mainly as they had successfully invaded Spain (and most definitely not because I thought they were a "good" army under ADLG). 

The event itself then saw this somewhat scratch Berber host taking on the Ghaznavids, Timurids (twice), Byzantines, Feudal English and also the Ottoman Empire, and all of us taking on some extra pounds no doubt in the tapas bars and restaurants of Southern Spain too. 

With 6 games, a lot of tourism, a range of opponents from across the continent and an account on ChatGPT I've ended up absolutely throwing the kitchen sink at the whole "writing up the match reports" thing this time around, including video analysis, stats and odds charts, randomly generated Berber oaths, somewhat spurious pen-pictures of the Great Generals involved in the fighting, AI-generated poetry and army list analysis as well as the usual terrible jokes, irrelevant captions and other badly written nonsense you are probably already well used to. 

So, put the kettle on and brew yourself up a Sangria as now is your chance (as long as you are sitting comfortably..) to share that epic experience in the Battle & Tourism Reports from Alicante 2023. 

The Idlers of March : a new podcast episode lands!

After a lengthy hiatus (since November last year!!) the Madaxeman Podcast is back with a new daffodil-sprouting episode recorded earlier this week at the very start of March 2023. 

Despite the absence of any badger-related content, we do manage to cover shopping expeditions (online and in real life), take a diversion into discussing the merits of Siocast/Warlord Resin/"I Can't believe It's Not Called Airfix" plastic figures, get into a bit of Spartacan slap-chop via an azimuth spray disaster, go all Judge Dredd, barely mention cricket nets, explain to Adam what he's been missing all this time as a sidebar to the great "Amos vs Drummer - Who's The Expanse's Greatest Ever Character (and why it's obviously Drummer)" debate, talk about castles in Spain and why the second most successful Berber invasion of the Iberian Peninsula landed in Valencia instead of Alicante, have a peek at Andy's trophy haul and (eventually) learn how he ended up out of pocket after accidentally buying his own birthday presents from his wife.

There's also a return for Andy's Quiz, with a brand new Two Ronnies-style twist this week as we accidentally give you the answers to the questions from the episode before last.

The pod can be listened to on Podbean, or by searching for The Madaxeman Podcast on any of your usual podcast providers' platforms

3 Video Reports of the Celtiberians at Oxford

 At the end of 2021 a Lockdown-painted Ancient Spanish army had mixed (OK, hardly any) success at the Brixham Classic, so a year and a bit later I attempted to rehabilitate them in a different incarnation for the Oxford round of the Southern League One day ADLG Tournament circuit. 

This time they were playing in a theme of armies valid in the reign of Mithradates of Pontus, a 15mm period

The army I used in Brixham had relied on Sertorius and his Roman turncoat legions, but this one was a more traditional crazy warband version with Heavy Infantry Celtiberians (a part played by these guys pictured below) and an ally of Lusitanians for rough terrain.

The cavalry contingent in this version was however purely nominal, relying on the punch of the infantry to carry the day, Even so, the Burning Cart of DOOOOM made a welcome reappearance anyway.

At the event the Celtiberian Spanish were drawn against Mithradates himself, the Ptolemies of Egypt and finally the Chinese steppe nomads of the Xiong Nu, all of which are covered in 3 mercifully short video reports in which I attempt to talk you through what exactly went right, and what also went wrong with this somewhat flawed plan!

You can watch the reports on my website, or on the Madaxeman YouTube Channel - each one is about 15 minutes long.

Valencia Military Museum

 On our recent club expedition to an ADLG competition in Alicante we managed to spend a couple of days (and nights) in Valencia, including a trip to it's surprisingly good Military (aka Army) Museum.

I've now uploaded all of the photos from that trip to a Gallery in the Museums section of this website, which you can access here 

There is also a YouTube video of the photos posted on my YouTube Channel 

Random bits and pieces

 With 2 full armies in the paint queue, I finally got around to tidying up some of the odds and sods that had been cluttering my paint table for, well, in some cases, many years!

The ends results are eclectic, and not all done in Contrast Paints either (to make a nice change!) 

First up, some dynamic falling knights from Donnington's 100YW range, based up as exuberant hit markers 

Next, and the main batch, some 28mm metal knight figures of unknown (ie unpainted on a Bring & Buy) origin.  

I've used waterslide transfer paper and my home printer to make the symbols for the heraldry so that's why they look so precise - my painting hasn't suddenly improved !

Irritatingly a bit of ink wash seems to have congealed on this guy's shield.

They are done up as Spanish Knights, with Castile and Leon heraldry 

And a few other cities and statelets too

I really like these figures - they came with separate hands to mix and match weaponry

One unit is in non-Spanish colours

I've had this guy hanging around for ages, but drilled out his hand and added a Valencian flag 

More weirdly, these are some sort of random armoured horsemen on what I am pretty sure are old Essex Han Chinese chariot horses, painted up as African Kingdoms mounted warriors or cataphracts

The padding really helps create a bright and unusual looking unit. 

I did also add some cotton as  horse-hair style pennants to differentiate the Elite from the Average ones. 

More random stuff to come soon!

Alicante Ahoy!

Bob Dylan once famously sang " With God On Our Side..."  but he probably wasn't referring to The Peoples Crusade and it's somewhat over-optimistic efforts to secure an unlikely victory by sending a load of inexperienced pasty-faced ill-prepared northern Europeans to the furthermost shores of the Mediterranean.  

But, that description would in fact work perfectly to sum up the latest Madaxeman match reports - as a Early Crusader Peoples Crusade Army sets off for some highly unfeasible combat in the Alicante ADLG competition in a first post-Lockdown overseas trip for the CLWC posse. 

The match reports show the Peoples Crusade - an army made up of mostly poorly armed levies - take on 2 Ghaznavids, Maurice's Byzantines, the Samurai and finally The Vikings in 5 fully religiously inspired and Hermit-endorsed battles. 

There is also plenty of pictures of local feed and drink in various states of consumption, and the usual melange of captions, animations, weird links and strange combat outcomes as a wall of peasantry take on these cinco Dark Age military behemoths 

Peter The Hermit didn't sadly have wifi in his cave, so this is your first ever chance to see an online report of how the Peoples Crusade actually marched, fought and on occasion won as it trampled across Europe on it's way to the Holy Land.

In a new initiative there is also an accompanying Spotify Playlist to go with the reports, ensuring your are listening to suitably religiously inspired music when reading the tale of combat and disaster.

And, in a dubious quality auditory experiment there is also a multi-part podcast that includes several sections which are recorded live from a bar midway through the competition.

 

Its all waiting for you, in all formats. 

If you want to resist, you probably don't really have a prayer - so why not plug in, tune up the hifi and hide away with the army of Peter The Hermit in these latest Match Reports