Battle Reports and Tourism from Nancy, 2026

In a veritable cornucopia of French-themed, hastily-published content I've somehow managed to throw stuff at the wall and discover that some of it has stuck following the Team CLWC trip to the Nancy ADLG event held only last weekend - and it is already posted on this website! 

That currently includes:

• A 4-hander military tourism video of our road trip to and from Nancy, featuring:

• Reims Cathedral, 
• Fort de La Pompelle, 
• The Worlds Largest Pikelhaube Collection, 
• Hackenburg Maginot Line Fortress (and narrow gauge train), 
• Nancy, 
• Verdun, 
• An abandoned and destroyed village, 
• Vimy Ridge, 
• ..and one of Frances top abandoned underground rocket-firing Nazi Megastructures, La Coupole!

There are also 5 Video Battle reports featuring the Feudal English army in totally impetuous action against: 

• The Estonians 
• The Feudal French
• The Kingdom of Sicily
• The Feudal Scots
• The Feudal English (a Civil War!)

There is a vague possibility that there may even be additional traditional-format text-based batreps in multiple languages to come, but that may depend on how effective various free AI platforms are at transcription (or how effective I am at generating instructions for them..). 

Having said that, Le Emperor, my erstwhile Franco-Scottish opponent from game 4, has already published his own report of the game as well.

Enjoy! 

The Byzantines Sing the Theme Tune in Kegworth!

 Last week (yoiks!) the now-annual Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge ADLG event took place in the now-legendary wargaming venue of Kegworth, with almost 40 players convening on a fine Tuesday morning to partake in 2 days of ADLG, one evening of team curry, and either 1 or 2 nights of real ale at a local hostelry. 

Having set the theme myself, it surprisingly turned out to be one which could acommodate some of the 15mm Byzantine figures I've been painting over the last year - this time as part of a Thematic army in the year 874 AD. 

As things turned out, one player's adverse reaction to the curry (or the beer..?) meant we ended up on odd numbers for day 2 of the event, and so I picked up the bye and played just the three games on Tuesday - but that did mean I was able to get these three, rather unsubtle battle reports out and into the wild in record time.

So, as usual, goggle at the poor military skills on display, boggle at the utterances of the poor troops forced to undertake my poorly thought out orders, and listen in slack-jawed amazement and horror at a Cockney Pub Knees-Up style song about the introduction of the Thematic System into the Byzantine military as the ever-chirpy Byzantine Commander not only writes the army's Theme Tune, he sings it as well !!

There is also the usual post-match analysis from Hannibal, and some glowing reviews of Mark "G." Fry's double-handed tomes covering the Medieval Khmer military machine. 

All three reports are now posted on Madaxeman

 

Camels in Devizes!

 The annual pilgrimage to Devizes (or, as it has been in recent years, the annual pilgrimage to stay somewhere nearish to Devizes because a load of middle aged ravers reliving their Ibiza youth book up all the hotels nearer town) came around again this past July like a well-buttered West Country scone repeating on you even before the remains of the jam has attracted a wasp.

Having fairly recently painted up a load of 3D printed camels, I had decided that this event was as good an opportunity as it comes to get them on table as the core element of a Christian Nubian army - but in the process creating the very real challenge of how to make such an army actually interesting to play, and to play against.

You too can now re-live the 5 games which were fought by thissomewhat self-hamstrung army list in the town that is the spiritual and literal home of WRG over one hot sunny weekend by following the 5 full-text battle reports through all of their painful punnery and chirpy in-picture comments.

After each report there (of course) follows a robust dose of post-match analysis from both the Christian Nubian commander (seen below), and Nasty Hannibal himself. 

As an added bonus, this report includes links to a load of photos of the Army Air Corps Museum at Middle Wallop, and a brand new music video of the viral musical hit "The Beja Camel Song".

Beja think your camels are hot like mine !! 

Ostrogoths in Milton Keynes : Battle Reports from Campaign 2026

 This year I returned to Campaign for the first time in a while, as part of one of the CLWC teams of three players in the traditionally tightly themed event. The pool I was in was themed for the Wars of Atilla, with Huns, Patrician Romans, Gepids, Arabs and Ostrogoths as the only options.

Having already used Patricians, and Huns, and Gepids, and deciding that the Arab army in this time period was a bit rubbish, the Ostrogoths ended up being the default choice - rather irritatingly as I had recently sold my Sarmatian/Gothic cavalry on eBay prior to replacing them with some as-yet unpainted FiB figures!

That meant my Ostrogoths did look a tad Gallo-German, but they were close enough so that's how they rolled into Milton Keynes ready for battle.

All 5 battle reports are now published in video format. To try and be a bit different I took a lot of the photos from a "helicopter view", trying to take a shot after each player's turn. 

The general idea was to show more of the broad brush strategy of how the battles developed, but of course with a lot of Impetuous Cavalry Lancers on each side the amount of tactican finesse on display was often somewhat limited in practice!

Anyways, the reports are now posted on this website on a single page where you can view them in sequence, or in a YouTube playlist.  

Dorset Dodderers: The Match Reports

 Creaking and groaning into life in the deepest bowels of Dorset, the inaugural Dodderers competition instantly doubled the UK (World..?) roster of midweek L'Art de la Guerre competitions for the more refined and mature (aka "already retired" or "working at best part-time and keen to stop even that as soon as they can") gamers.

Themed for a post-Roman era, and taking place in Entoyment's spiffing new gaming centre at the arse-end of an industrial estate on the Poole half-ring road*,  this was a great opportunity for me to wheel out some of the countless hordes of 15mm Byzantine figures I've been painting over the last year or so.  

With five very entertaining games having been played over the "midweek two-day thing that feels like a weekend but isn't", some brand new figures getting on table, the huge benefit of a gaming space with excellent lighting, and the awareness that many of my more recent battle reports have been arguably a tad rushed, the end result is an old-school epic of military incompetence, surreal in-game figurine based banter, a rare appearance from the "Meso American Personalities with the letter Z in their names" Top Trumps set, some suitably acerbic analysis from Nasty Hannibal and (in this case, with the Justinian Byzantines on table), pompous and self-aggrandizing reportage from Byzanto-Canadian popster/general Justinian Bieber.

In Game 1 you will see the Justinians attempt to tempt the Zapotecs down from their Mexican mountain redoubt, whilst also learning from a couple of the tribal warriors the convoluted (but all true) story of how the Zapotec nation came by their Z-tastic name.

 

In Game 2, a Justinian Civil War breaks out while I scratch around furiously to try and identify a second famous Canadian "Justin", and then shoehorn that detail somehow into the already tortuous narrative arc of the battle.  

In Game 3 the Justinians take a trip through time to engage in another Civil War against their near-descendants, the Thematic Byzantines, who, like the Zapotecs, appear less interested in fighting the battle and more eager to debate the origins of the appelation "Thematic" as the action continues around them. 

In Game 4 it's time to get down to the YMCA and take on Harry "In The Navy" and his Arab Conquest army in a game characterised by some decidedly David Lynchian Dunes and a potentially nostril-expanding giant minaret.  

Finally in Game 5 the Justinians take on one of the all time classics, Classical Indian, and try their best to conjure up a way to defeat a wall of elephants without having time to buy and paint up even more FiB figures to provide a full range of dismounts for the Justinian elephant-phobic cavalry.  
 

All 5 reports are presented in full traditional text and image mode, meaning you'll have to actually read them rather than watch them, and they are all online now ready to go.  

* Poole is right on the coast, so it's kinda hard to have a full ring road as some of it would then be in the sea..

Burton Doubles - 4 ADLG Battle Reports

Returning to the Burton Doubles in the Land of Beer after a few years away:

Having missed Burton for a few editions, a theme which gave me an opportunity to wheel out my newly painted Nikephorian Byzantines plus the refurbishment of the Premier Inn across the road from the venue was all the impetus Adam and I needed to decide to yet again get the beers in and make a trip up to the Midlands in the unseasonal spring sunshine earlier this year.

The 4 battle reports of the games where the Nikephorians faced Abbasids, Justinian Byzantines, Silla Koreans and another Nikephorian army are now all available in video format as part of a YouTube Playlist, or individually on this website.

The 100YW English go down South, hunting pasties.

 This year's PAW was themed around 1345: Europe after the Bastards.  1345 was the year of Sir Baldwin Bastard’s death – the year the Bastard family lost their principal seat at Efford, a suburb of Plymouth, so it had local relevance too!

I took the opportunity to use some Perry plastic longbowmen and foot knights in a 100YW army, even though the figures I had were really from the WotR ranges, so rather too late for proper 100YW. 

Either way, the army had no mounted units, and a lot of shooting firepower - and you can now see how it did in these 4, rather belated video battle reports from PAW 2026.

Game 1 - vs The Swiss

Game 2 - vs the Navarrese

Game 3 vs the Medieval Spanish

Game 4 vs The Swiss Again

You can also see the reports on a single page on my website here:

I Sea Peoples...

 Back in the mists of time a strange unknowable group landed on the shores of a far away land, ready and eager for war... 

..but enough of the players at the last edition of the Devonian Classic ADLG event in Brixham, Devon - instead it's now long overdue for me to share some photos and super-abridged battle reports of how my Sea Peoples army did in their 4 battles on the shores of Torbay back at the beginning of last December!  

The reports are pretty sketchy I'm afraid, partly as I didn't take many photos, but mainly as a load of real-world stuff happened right after the event finished which prevented me from cracking on with the reports whilst they were still reasonably fresh in my memory.

But anyways, there are some decent photos of Biblical-era troops in battle for you to have a gander at, as well as the army list for my partially-successful Sea Peoples Horde as well, so certainly worth sharing anyways in this post that appears on my website now. 

The Sea Peoples' Leader can Sea You Now ! 

 

 

Finally.. The Warfare 2025 Battle Reports

 Way back in the mists of time, a sort-of newly-minted Numidian army took to the tabletop to try and perform acceptably in a "Late Roman" period in the 15mm ADLG competition at Warfare 2025. 

The main aim was to get on table these 3D printed Numidian horsemen who were sadly printed in a resin which made them too brittle to ever take abroad (where they'd need to be held in place in a tin by  a layer of foam on top of the figures - which would have broken their javelins).

It was also to use these War & Empire Numidian Imitation Legionaries - again recently painted - and give my venerable and now sadly OOP Numidian Elephants a run out too. 

I ended up being the only player to take Numidians - a very good or a very bad sign usually - and faced 3 Late Roman armies, the Ancient Brits and the Bosporans over the course of the weekend. 

All 5 batreps are now ready and fully posted, which in a rare doubling-up of effort include both the traditional text & photo versions and also YouTube summaries of the games you can watch after wading through my turgid prose and cheesy speech bubbles in each of the standard reports.

If you just want to dive into the video, you can follow the action in the 6 videos in the Warfare 2025 Playlist on my YouTube Channel as well - the 6th video is a run-through of how I constructued the army list I used. 

  

Assyrian Attack!

 With the same lightning-fast speed as an Assyrian chariot racing across the Mespotamian plain, 4 fully-featured, text-based old school battle reports from the recent Attack! competition in Devizes have now made it to this website!

The 4-battle campaign sees my 28mm Assyrian army taking on:

• the Indians of Donesh Mukhu, 
• the hat-obsessed Hittites, 
• my army's own futuristic 3D printed ancestors the Sargonid Assyrians, and.. 
• in another Assyrian Civil War, the Queen Semiramis-inspired "disguised camel" madness of another Assyrian army commanded by King Dickaleth-Hashdod (Cunning Vizier of the Nineveh Left Hook).

As has become all too usual, all reports feature possibly untrue historical facts, poor quality humour, deeply inappropriate comments from the participating soldiers themselves, and extensive post-match analysis from both the Assyrian Commander and Nasty Hannibal. 

So, put on the kettle, open a packet of biscuits, roll out the carpet, pop on your favourite hat and get ready to be mind-boggled by the Tales of Ancient Assyria at War in The West Country!