Showing posts with label battle report. Show all posts
Showing posts with label battle report. Show all posts

14 Mar 2024

Beachhead 2024: The Seleukids ride forth!

 In a vain attempt to avoid repeatedly misspelling "Seleucid" I've just created a set of 5 video battle reports from the recent Beachhead competition in Bournemouth earlier this year. 

These feature a mostly-Victrix 28mm Seleusid army taking on the Indians, Camillan Romans, Galatians, Dacians and finally the Early Imperial Romans in 5 pretty brutal and full-impact battle play-through videos.

At this event neither me nor any of my opponents seemed keen to muck about, so the end result is a lot of closeups of 28mm troops in push-and-shove close quarters combat - what's not to like eh?!


You can see the first video by following this link - the others all follow on in sequence.



 

28 Feb 2024

Plymouth 2024 : The Battle Reports

 In these four all-new YouTube battle reports a brand spanking new Alexandrian Macedonian army in glorious 28mm takes to the field for the very first time, following possibly the most extensive period of pre-game trailing of their assembly and paint schemes ever seen on this relentlessly self-promoting website. 


Alexander and his band of merry Victrix men take on an array of opponents from across the world, with the Warring States Chinese, Syracusans, Lysimachids and finally Ptolemy all squaring off against the tarmac-laying Irish navvy and his crew in these 4 widescreen battle-reporting videos. 


All of the videos can be viewed on a single page on this website, or can be watched in fullscreen glory in HD on YouTube, allowing you to admire the front of figures that other people have painted far better than I have painted the backs of mine ! 


And, lets face it, where else will you get to see Archimedes Death Lazers in action, interspersed with animated Cornish pasties all arrayed on a 28mm wargames table this week?




13 Feb 2024

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 !





1 Jan 2024

It's New Year.. but he's still Spartacus..!

With the dawn of 2024 still fresh, it's time to wheel out an army that I picked up way back in 2019 (pre pandemic!), and only got around to painting at the start of last year - and which first took to the tabletop at the very end of 2023, at the 3rd Devonian Classic competition in always-sunny Brixham.


Yes, this is Spartacus! is now appearing on your small (ish) screen in full polychrom cinematic glory (OK, they are almost all painted in Contrasts..) in 5 battle reports where the Slave Revolt struggles for freedom against the oppressive hegemonoies of the Greek City States (twice), the overweening imperialist ambitions of Alexander The Great, the Eastern Empire of the Comfy Kushans, and the Francophonic stylings of the Gauls. 


There is oodles of  additional irrelevant content shoehorned into these 5 reports, including some dubious "facts" about Spartacus' links to Torbay,and some very strange AI-generated images of poorly armed kitchen workers and gardeners leading the charge against oppression


There is also loads of commentary and analysis from all of the usual suspects, including of course the final word in critique from Hannibal, and an array of non-sequitur captions which occasionally veer into philosophical musings on whether rodent-scat-based segregation criteria are good for military discipline and morale. 


Go on, let this happy chap brighten up your hangover this New Year's Day with his tales of derring-do and liberation from oppression and servitide achieved through the aggressive deployment of kitchen equipment in a hitherto unforseen combat context in these 5 Madaxeman battle reports! 


    

1 Dec 2023

The Huns - One Steppe forwards, two Steppes back ?

Three Hun-tastic battle reports from the Southern League Round 4 at Entoyment last weekend now posted, which see the Huns take on a variety of other Steppe-based nomads in some swirling and dramatic horse archery-rich encounters

You know the drill by now - nonsensical captions, vaguely related videos, commentary from Nasty Hannibal..

This time around you'll also no doubt be delighted to hear that I've also managed to sneak in a lot of references to saddle-fermented cheese, horseback flatulence and even to conjure up some AI-generated images that tie in with these historically dubious themes as well. 

Reports now online at https://www.madaxeman.com/reports/Southern_League_Bournemouth_2023_1.php

15 Nov 2023

Charlemagne in a Shed: The Carolingians at Warfare 2023

In a near-miraculously quick turnaround I've now conjured up all 5 battle reports from last weekend's Warfare 15mm L'Art de la Guerre competition, featuring the on-table debut of a post-lockdown-painted Carolingian army under the command of the one and only Charlemagne himself.

The reports all feature a wildly aggressive approach to gameplay, hurling lancer-armed almost-Knightly Caballeri against pretty much anything that stands in their path and sitting back to watch the results unfold in the usual full-contact cinemascope fashion.

The reports as usual come complete with army lists, commentary from Hannibal, random speech bubbles which bear little if any relationships to the action going on at the time, dreadful cod-French, and some tenuously connected music videos too (including one from Christoper Lee - yes, that one!).


You can also see some close-ups of the Baueda and Forged in Battle figures themselves, and find links to all of the army lists of my 5 gracious opponents too.


Read on to see how Charlemagne's campaign of conquest ended up !   


 

28 Oct 2023

Anglo-Irish Sardine Fiesta!

Once again the team based highlight of the global ADLG year comes around, with yet another trip to the tile-clad temperate oasis of sardines and port, Lisbon ! 

After a stunning bout of mid table mediocrity last year, the same 4-person Anglo-Irish team had been reassembled for another go at joining in the 100-strong contingent of ADLG players from around the world all congregating in Lisbon's Military Museum on the banks of the Mighty Tagus for the second September in a row - although this time we had shuffled the pack a little and all 4 of us had swapped themes around.

This saw me occupy the Dark Ages & Early Feudal slot, allowing me to use Feudal Anglo-Irish, featuring a load of figures that had't really been put on table before, but most importantly was the only Anglo-Irish list available! 

Read on to find out how this eclectic collection of Norman feudal knights, javelin-throwing Irish Kerns, English colonist yeomen with spears and longbows, Ostmen descended from Viking stock, and an allied contingent of axe-weilding Irish warriers fared in all 5 games from Lisbon 2023

You will find all the usual nonsense, as well as unique post-match commentary from Hannibal and the Anglo Irish Commander, who turns out to have been a rather strange hybrid of the very Irish Father Jack (from Father Ted) and the very English Jeeves (of PG Wodehouse fame). 



15 Sept 2023

Smoke me a Sporran, the Ottomans are heading North to Scotland !

 Finally, after many years of dithering, I at last was now about to add yet another country to the roster of places where I've played ADLG (a list including England, Ireland, Wales, France, Greece, USA, Portugal, Italy, Germany and Spain..) - in the shape of Scotland!

Yes, an epic drive to the West Coast border town of Irvine, famous for being the site of Scotland's 12th century military capital and, at the time of David I, Robert II and Robert III, being one of the earliest capitals of Scotland.

But all of that military history was about to be wiped from the slate by the advent of the first edition of the long-running Sighian Dubh event to take place outside of the suburban combat zones of Glasgow, and also the on-table debut of a long since painted Ottoman Turkish army as well!

The event was themed for Late armies - post 1066, which inevitably would mean a lot of heavy metal. I disregarded this entirely and picked an Ottoman force on the basis that I had painted the core of them a while ago and then added some of the scraps of Clive's collection of many Ottoman armies to round my handful of Legio Heroica purchases and Old Glory hand-me-downs up to a complete force, and because they also looked really pretty.


Read on for the usual heady mix of garbled nonsense, inappropriate Scottish-themed GIFs and videos, vaguely witty captions attached to pictures of little soldiers in action, and yet more cutting post battle analysis from Medieval Hannibal ! 


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 Jul 2023

And now for something a smidge different : The Battle of Trebbia

 This website is unashamedly a bit competition-gaming orientated (no sh-- Sherlock!) but occasionally I do play other sorts of games, and with Dan H from the US putting out a series of Punic Wars scenarios on the ADLG Facebook group using pretty standard sized armies, the opportunity to do a club-night refight using some little-seen classic Roman figures was too good to miss out on.

Just to prove it happened as much as anything else, I also brought along my camera and took a load of photos to cook up a battle report as well.

The battle features a Roman army with lacklustre leadership and questionable morale against Hannibal, who has the advantage of choosing his ground, laying an ambush, and having a full head of thick luxurious hair (resulting in a post-match analysis from him delivered in the style of a Pulp Fiction era Samuel L Jackson).

In this game I commanded the inexperienced, wet and tired Roman legions in a game where setup was entirely pre-scripted and the first turn saw both sides pictched straight into battle - meaning I was hoping from the off that the martial skills of the Legions would help me change history and confound Hannibals cunning plan!

Read on for the report 


5 Jun 2023

The Gauls at Roll Call - 5 new ADLG match reports

 Having wheeled out (see what I did there..?) the Assyrians in a 25mm period at last year's Roll Call tournament, this time around I had resolved to dive into the somewhat deeper and more murky 15mm pool to give yet another rarely-seen army a proper outing post-Covid.

The theme was a somewhat intriguing "Roman Pond" - armies who might have been able to go paddling in the Med in the timeline encompassed by any of the Roman Republic or Empire armies in the ADLG book, which cut off most of the Cataphract-heavy options from a more traditional Roman themed period, making players armychoices rather different (aka altering the "meta") as a result too. 

With that in mind, and a wish to continue to test some of the less fancied armies and new v4 rules, I settled eventually on the often overlooked but in theory quite popular Gauls.

The outcome was the following 5 extremely verbose battle reports full of the usual nonsense of speech bubbles, laboured metaphors, hyperbollix language and out of place references to local foodstuffs - but this time with post-game analysis from Asterix & Obelix (as well as Hannibal)!  

Pull up a baguette, put a pot of Magic Potion on the stove and get ready to read all 5 of these Gallic Battle Reports at your leisure !

14 Apr 2023

The Normandy Landings : Battle Reports and More from France

Yes, two sets of battle reports in a single week as the CLWC team take another international excursion, this time to storm the beaches of Normandy and visit Bayeux, Le Havre, several seaside gun positions, Pegasus Bridge, Rouen and Dieppe whilst also finding time to fit in a bit of Norman-themed ADLG competition action too!

We also manage to undertake numerous bouts of eating, drinking, discussing former Fulham players of the last decade, and indulge in many other regionally appropriate activities as well, all of which are recorded in loving gallic detail in these 5 battle and 2 tourism reports.

To top it all off there is even a rare in-the-field podcast episode in which a team of 3 (me, Dave from the Podcast and Mike) record our progress throughout the long weekend in glorious Normadie!

Sound quality is a little sketchy in some parts of the podcast, mainly on account of the fact a number of the individual segments were recorded on my phone in (or outside) various bars and restaurants in the Normandy heartland.

The battle reports and tourism photos from this trip can all be found on the Madaxeman website and there is also a YouTube video version of this podcast which also includes all of the photos too. 


5 Apr 2023

Assyrian Beachhead! 5 Video Battle Reports

Back at the start (or maybe even just before) of Lockdown I'd painted up a 28mm Assyrian army, and used it with some success at Roll Call as well - however for Beachhead 2023, in a Biblical & Early Classical period I had initially hoped to field a 15mm Hittite army rebuilt from some of the last knockings and scraps of Clive's Stash. 

Odd numbers in both 15mm and 25mm periods put paid to that idea, leaving the Hittites in the drawer and me floating across into 25mm to even up numbers using pretty much that same Assyrian army that had done quite well in 2022. 

The army list I used this time was however a little different to the one that I had used at Roll Call 2022, as I was expecting to have to deal with more shooting from my opponents as a consequence of the more biblical-orientated theme - but in essence it was still pretty much the same. 

I also wanted to use more of my Heavy Infantry units, or which only 2 of the 4 had made it onto the  table - these 25mm Newline Designs figures are great, but they are kinda wasted if they only ever get to go on parade in the Really Useful Box Barracks!

Asssrians on YouTube

To find out how this revised force actually did you now have 5 consecutive video battle reports to watch either on YouTube, or on the Madaxeman Website followed by a video showing all of the Assyrian figures in my collection.

15 Mar 2023

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

7 Mar 2023

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


20 Feb 2023

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.
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