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.

Rome vs Phyrrus Battle Reports - from every angle!

As we all know, in the real world the winner is the one who writes the history after the event, but in the world of wargaming it's simply the gamer with the fastest-published blog site who usually gets to spin their side of the story.

Well... that has always been true... up until now..

That's because, in a brand new innovative international experimental virtual online collaboration (apologies if this is now starting to sound like a tiresome Zoom conference you've had to endure at work...) both  Madaxeman.com and the fabulous Phil on Ancients Blog have gotten together to roll some Tabletop Simulator dice in a textbook Classical battle featuring Phyrrus vs Rome... and both generals have created mirror-image battle reports of the same game!

The Madaxeman Video Report is on YouTube on The Madaxeman Channel 

Phil's blogger-format report is online on his Blog 

Then... in a ridiculously recursive and self-absorbed development both of us discuss the game in a totally separate video where we compare both written (or recorded) match reports.

Yes, your chance to watch and read about the same battle, played between the same two people, in THREE vaguely different formats - what more could a wargamer want to help get themselves through the latest iteration of Lockdown?!  

Video walkthrough : Vikings vs Carolingians on TTS for L' Art de la Guerre

My second video walk-through of a 200 point game of L'Art de la Guerre played on Tabletop Simulator has just gone live on the Madaxeman.com YouTube channel, this time featuring the Carolingians of Charlemagne vs one of their main historical foes, the Vikings.

The video includes some snippets of "real-figures" eye candy and also a brief demonstration (at the start - you don't need to watch the whole thing!) of how you can very easily customize existing units in TTS.