Taking Germans to Germany - whatever next?!

 A few weeks back a brave band of CLWC gamers hopped in a car and headed across Europe to take part in the ADLG German Team Tourament in Braubach, on the banks of the mighty Rhine.

On our journey we encountered many strange sights....

..including a trip to the museum in Mons in Belgium...

...some heavyweight tank action at Bastogne barracks...

..a bfrief history of medieval torture in Trier ...

...which was also the capital of the Western Roman Empire for a while...

..before finally engaging in 5 games of ADLG using a Medieval German army ...

..with what admittedly was mixed success... 

..under the expert leadership of the Kaiser Gnome ...

..before heading home via a rain-soaked, beer-soaked 800 year old 4 month long drinking festival!

For a full set of military tourism, gastronomic and liquid intake excess, musical weirdness, the Gome Kaiser trading insults with Hannibal, and the occasional spot of reportage of 15mm scale Medieval wargaming head on over to the Battle & Tourism reports now ! 

4 Video Battle Reports from Kegworth

I've just posted some video batreps from all 4 of my games at the Kegworth Codgers midweek ADLG competitin held a couple of weeks back. 

You can watch along with these mostly sub-10-minute videos to see the unsubtle Parthians throw cataphracts (and cataphract camels!) into a series of defensively arrayed mostly-Roman armies with varying degrees of success 

The videos include ADLG army lists for all of the forces involved, the results from the event and an announcement about further midweek ADLG competitions.

Devizes 2024 - the Battle Reports !

In a truly surprising development, 4 "traditional format" read-along battle reports are now available for anyone who wishes to follow the varied exploits of a deeply smelly and unwashed Ilkhanid Mongol army in stunning hyper-colour  and (mostly) 28mm plastic, as they take on the Samurai, the Ghaznavids, the Burmese and finally the Mongols of Timur the Lame down in the heart of the West Country at Attack! 2024's ADLG competition.

Thrill as the Armenian-supported Ilkhanids send waves of fragrant dancing cavalry, eager unwashed knights and reluctant yet deeply sweaty spearmen out to fight a variety of almost equally colourful foes, including Mighty Shrew Elephants dressed in patchwork duvets ...

 

..bare-chested Burmese jungle dwelling tribesmen who can wiggle all of their toes independently, and...

.. the "I can't believe it's not Seleucid" Elephant Corps of Tamerland the Great and his horde of partly undead warriors and cannon fodder. 

Yes, this is a possibly welcome (YVMV) return to the old-school of battle report blogging, with rubbish captions, a probably unhealthy focus on the Mongol's poor personal hygenine, ridiculously OTT descriptive sentence structures, and the musings of both the Ilkhanid Khan and (of course) Nasty Hannibal himself  to reconsider all of the action at the end of each game. 

These battle reports are accompanied by the "Melksham, Don't Mind if I do!" edition of the Madaxeman (Video) Podcast.

 

The Anglo-Saxons invade .. Southend!

The first ever Southern League ADLG event to take place in Southend on Sea took plce recently, and was appositely themed around the year of the Battle of Benfleet, in which the Anglo Saxons kicked the Vikings out of Essex - at least temporarily - and so I decided this was an omen worth embracing by taking an Anglo-Saxon army myself! 

The army was made up of a load of 15mm Anglo Saxons/Vikings/generic Dark Age geezers that I'd rebased during lockdown, and a 3-game event where they would be thematically appropriate was ideal, especially as they were not likely to be all that good.

The event being at Southend also gave me an opportunity to inflict multiple references to both Billy Bragg and Danny Dyer on an unsuspecting wargames population and viewership - a gift that keeps on giving throughout the 3 videos in this competition report. 

Having decided that a night out in Southend on Sea was unmissable, there is also some local tourism involved in the reports

Many thanks again to the Southend Wargames Club for hosting us in their fabulous games bunker too!

 (You'll also no doubt be pleased to know that the Essex branch of the McHugh Carpet Empire also get a welcome plug). 

Enjoy the videos! 

It's all Greek To Me!

 Back in February of this year, when the weather was chilly and damp (unlike this balmy almost-May Springtime we're getting in the UK right now...?) I headed off to Athens to take in some local gastronomy, hit a few museums, drink some local beer and wine, attend a Greek Super League football match ... oh, and play a bit of ADLG at a "Crusades" themed event held by the Strategikon Club in Athens too!

The gaming parts of this epic weekend saw a rather unusual Later Crusader army take to the field, based around the army commanded by Richard The Lionheart ("Coeur du Lion") at Arsuf and other rather defensive battles, taking on a variety of Feudal opponents across 5 games over 2 days. 

This saw a wall of well protected Crusader spearmen, supported by crossbows attempt to lure successive opponents either to their doom in a vain and futile charge, or to stunning success as the enemy rode down the quivering Crusader sergeants at lance point!

In all cases the action was epic and brutal, and (of course...) the post-game criticism from Hannibal was even more so! 

In a post-event coda, these reports also feature a video walk-through of the Athens Archeological Museum (with some stunning Mycenean stuff), the Greek Military Museum (from antiquity to the near-present day) and a pop-up museum with relics and remains from the decisive battle of Charonea, where Philip established Macedonian control over the Greek peninsula with his defeat of the other Theban-led City States. 

All of the reports, including the usual captions and nonsense are now posted on Madaxeman.com

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.

 

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?

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 !

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! 

    

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

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 !   

 

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).