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

1 Oct 2016

Post Industrial Decay & Fruit Based Drinks – Madaxeman.com plays ADLG at The 2016 Worlds

“The Worlds” – not the one in Derby, but the global historical multi-ruleset gaming tournament that traces its’ lineage back over a decade and which now was occurring up in its’ most glamorous location ever – Charleroi in Belgium.


This year an intrepid team of Central Londoners made the hazardous journey into post-Brexit Europe by trains, planes and automobiles to take on the world in the biggest and most multi-national competition at this year’s event – L’Art de la Guerre, featuring almost 50 players drawn from France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the USA (and us...).

In 6 lavishly (or should that be laddishly?) illustrated match reports you can be astounded by the local architecture, amazed by the quality of painting of the opposition’s troops, puzzled by the near-complete absence of success for the 15mm Condotta army list that did do well in their previous 25mm outing at Devizes, and enlightened by the usual flurry of ADLG hints, rules explanations and insights.


With over 10,000 words, and opponents ranging from as far afield as Han China to as close as a Condotta civil war, these 6 perfectly formed match reports make compelling and convincing reading for anyone considering ADLG, especially those looking for evidence that a game with around 35 DBx bases per side has enough variety in list composition, tactics and general play style to offer repeated playability.

At the end of each report Hannibal is quite rude about my tactics (as usual), a few of the speech bubbles have swearing in them as well (which always goes down well on Frothers), and there is even multimedia accompaniment in the form of a post-event Madaxeman.com Podcast for you to download and listen to whilst painting your next army!


Read on to see how the Condotta did in teeny tiny 15mm scale playing The Worlds Most Popular Competition-grade Ancients Ruleset - ADLG at The Worlds 2016.

6 Sept 2016

A West Country Monster! 25mm ADLG from Devizes

With the purchase and painting of far too many Perry 25/8mm medieval figures having been successfully concluded in less than a year - racing ahead of many other odds and sods on my painting table in the process - the time came to let the rabbit see the carrot and head down to the glorious West of England to take part in a hastily arranged but still over-subscribed 25mm ADLG competition at Devizes Attack! 2016.


The Perry figures were duly packed into the box and the car, and soon the 6x4 table was graced with the first ever Madaxeman.com 25mm ADLG competition army - an "all the toys" Condottieri affair.


The results were a visual feast as the 60mm x 60mm multiple-rank basing format (or 60mm x 40mm for some stuff) of L'Art de la Guerre appeared to work really well in giving a sensible balance between having enough moving pieces on table (around 20-odd), with enough figure density (2-4 ranks for everyone) but still leaving space for a degree of maneuver which prevented the games descending into the sort of head-on table-edge-to-table-edge slow motion crash that has bedevilled unit-based 25mm games in the past.


Glory at the eye candy, be mildly entertained by the usual crap captions and inane post-match analysis, and educate yourself with a host of rules hints, tips and explanations for the Most Popular Ancients Competition Ruleset In the World Right Now.... in full-on plastico-vision Big Toys widescreen !!

19 Aug 2016

Saumur - Taking bows and arrows to a tank fight...

As L'Art de la Guerre continues it's inexorable advance in popularity right across the world (it's set to be the biggest competition at the upcoming "The Worlds" in Belgium later this month, with almost 50% more players, drawn from more countries than any other ruleset on offer there), the opportunity to take part in an overseas holiday competition was inevitably going to come around sooner rather than later - and where better do do so than the home of the rules, France, and an event held in one of the most amazing wargaming spaces imaginable - the French Tank Museum in Saumur in the stunning Loire Valley.


I had chosen to take an Early Achaemenid Persian army, mainly on the rationale that I had a lot of Sparabara figures that hadn't seen light of day in years as well as some new cavalry from Xyston (very nice) and Forged in Battle (not quite as impressive). The competition mandated an allied contingent too, which for the Persians was an armoured hoplite Greek command.


After a "fantastique" drive down to Saumur (after getting around the brain-bender of crossing the channel and going into Europe the day after the Brexit vote..) the competition est arrive, giving me 5 games in which to see if my ADLG knowledge and skills stood up to the test of playing against French experts, in French.


The end result was plenty of good learning experiences as various French players gave my army some stiff lessons about new and different ways to play (yes, barbarian armies are more than viable in ADLG!), and the even more surprising appearance of the use of "tactics" and "maneuver" by my forces as we battled to hang on in there and not get crushed underfoot

See for yourself how the Persians did in these "incroyable" 5 fully-featured battle reports ...

1 Jul 2016

Gordon Bennett, it's El Sid! 5 more ADLG Reports

ADLG has reinvigorated a whole host of previously little-seen armies and figures, and next up on the rehabilitation trail are some Two Dragons Normans (and dubiously Viking-esque Almughavar morphs) who take part as a Feudal Spanish army in 5 games of 300 point large-army L'Art de la Guerre 15mm action at the 2016 BHGS Challenge.

Marvel at how these brave Norman-esque warriors emerge blinking into the light after so many years with flocked (rather than more modern grass tufted) bases.


Thrill as they double-base themselves to form ADLG units.


Gasp in horror as they still appear to have learnt nothing about tactics and planning despite their years of free time in which to study the classic military manuals.


And chortle with smutty delight as El Sid James provides the General's Commentary in all 5 match reports

18 May 2016

Roll Call 2016 - Taking a Pontic punt at ADLG

As ADLG makes it's way onto the big boys table of UK competitions with a 16-player field for 15mm ADLG at Roll Call 2016, discover how Mithradates of Pontus manages to almost (but not quite) control his many and varied disparate troop types in 5 games against all possible flavours of Romans.



Yes, it's 5 brand new Match Reports, complete with rules hints and explanations for what might well be the worlds most popular Ancients competition ruleset right now, L'Art de la Guerre.


27 Apr 2016

The Covenanter's make it to the Kings Capital!

In three fleetingly (thankfully?) brief battle reports, enlivened by some tremendous 15mm eye candy and the usual videos, the Scots Covenanter's  appear in FoGR and take on three Royalist armies in a one-day competition with pre-set terrain.


See how the forces of anti-papery did in these highly accurate historical rematches, including far more Poor quality troops than have been seen on a Renaissance battlefield for quite some time.

25 Mar 2016

Burton Doubles 2016 - the Multimedia Extravaganza!

Burton, a classic and historic venue ... the ideal setting for a video and audio online multi-platform interactive assault on common sense and common decency as Madaxeman.com launches a PODCAST... and a VIDEO PODCAST to supplement the match reports!!


See (and hear) how the Triumverate Roman & Jewish army fared against the Romano-British & Patricians, 3K Chinese & Hsiung Nu, Armenians & Romans and Parthians (Elemayan) & Hatrenes in 4 separate fully detailed ADLG match reports!


Or, you can just read the damned things on the web just like in the olden days ...

8 Mar 2016

Hairy Beasts in Deepest Bristol ...

Gertfaux, on the industrial outskirts of Bristol at Bristol Independent Gaming has seen my first ever Malifaux tournament just one year ago... and now I was back with Marcus, the King of the Jungle for a second year of Malifaux.


See how Marcus and the Beasts do against all comers in 4 short but sweet(corn) battle reports followed by Steampunk Hannibal in the analysis chair...

29 Feb 2016

Save the Wales! Battle reports from Godendag 2016

All the way from Godendag 2016 comes 4 brand new L'Art de la Guerre in-depth reports, with the usual photos, the slightly less usual battle maps and the unfortunately verbose many thousands of words.

This is the first ever ADLG Doubles competition in history, and sees a combined Condotta and French heavy metal army go toe to toe against a range of proper medieval opponents.


Will it be a wonderful fusion of French & Italian cooking? ...or will it leave a bad taste in your mouth..?  Read on to find out more....!

5 Jan 2016

Rebels & Rioters - a short Malifaux report

A three-game event at Dark Sphere, with all of the supposedly good players off at the Nationals in (un-flooded) York saw me yet again take the only faction I owned, Arcanists, out of the box and onto the table.



Much time has now passed since these games took place, and added to that the difficulty of taking sufficient photos during a game to make a proper narrative without wasting too much time means that the following report may owe much more to creative analysis of the pictures rather than what really happened…

17 Dec 2015

The Great British Bacon-Off

We're back to FoGR and some more Renaissance action as the Early Danish Army sizzles its way in several extremely bold, and a number of even rasher (see what I did there?) battles at Warfare 2015.


The army attempts to contest the leaderboard and emulate last years victory with a series of unfashionable Reiter units and some well-stuffed pikemen. Is the bacon worth the slicing - time for you to decide in these 4 battle reports

4 Dec 2015

ADLG in London - 3 Reports with Hannibal in command

The inaugural Central London ADLG 1-dayer saw Hannibal commanding the Carthaginians in 3 games of L'Art de la Guerre, against the forces of India, Rome and Macedonia.


See how Hannibal fared in three fully-photographed match reports, including the usual mix of rules hints and explanations, dubious captions and withering post-game analysis from Monty Hannibal, Pirate Hannibal and Viking Hannibal

7 Nov 2015

Welcome to Croydon

In yet another impressive addition to my globetrotting gaming career, Croydon is added to the roll call of infamy in a 4-round fixed master Malifaux tournament.


Being in too much of a hurry to try and play the game to manage to remember to take a full set of photos, there are nevertheless some vaguely amusing captions here, and the beginnings of some analysis as well. A first for everything...


See how the Spider Man did in the reports

25 Jul 2015

L'Art de la Guerre - 5 games, and some serious thoughts about the UK Ancients scene

Back in June I took part in the 2nd L'Art de la Guerre "proper" competition at the BHGS Challenge in Oxford, using a Feudal German army in a Feudal themed period event. I've ended up writing in this preamble something of an essay on ADLG and the UK competition scene, but the reports are still here if you want to skip it !

The German army was pretty simple, reducing my opportunities to mess things up by trying to execute any sort of over complicated plan, and the end result was fairly successful as well - as you can see in these 5 match reports, complete with rules hints and the usual captions and expert analysis from Hannibal.


The Essay starts here... 

This was my first serious session of ADLG, battle-testing the rules in a proper competition setting and I'm delighted to report that - probably unsurprisingly given their long pedigree in France - they emerged pretty much fully unscathed, with the QR sheet barely needed by the end of the weekend.

The other good news was that by the middle of the event I was starting to "play the game" (and enjoy it) rather than "playing the rules" - a quick leaning curve towards enjoying shoving ancients figures around once again.



The reason is probably because at the end of the day ADLG is mechanically extremely similar to DBx games, with pip dice and opposed combat rolls as the core mechanics, and so those familiar tactical problems about finding you have an over complex plan and too few pips to execute it, or that you have suffered a 6-1 combat result that has knocked a hole in you line and you need to shore it up quickly (or that the opposite has happened, and you need to work out how to exploit it!).

With the low base combat factors in ADLG it did initially feel that the role (or roll) of the dice was playing a bigger part in the outcome of the game that I was used to, but a bit of number crunching to reality-check this, and more importantly getting comfortable enough with the rules and mechanics so that I could start to concentrate on the proper tactical decisions and doing things to try and beat my opponent in the actual games rather than being 100% focused on the rules themselves was a hurdle that once I had crossed it, I was totally comfortable with. Playing at 300 points also helped a lot too as a couple of poorly timed 1-6 results make much less of a dent in a 34 unit army than a 22 unit one!



Ultimately ADLG is a well put together fun game, which has the huge advantages of being also fully battle-tested, competition-ready ruleset that is now being extremely widely played in France, Spain, and the US, making the possibility of proper international competitions once again something which I can look forward to attending.

It's also still a "new" set in the UK, so everyone playing is still on the bottom of the same learning curve and can test out new armies and tactics to try and find ways to use those long-ignored figures and units (looks longingly at large Avar army that got painted just as I lost the will to live with FoGAM..), and it also has a viable "short-form" game at 200 points as well as the FoGAM/DBx equivalent "long form" game at 300, so ADLG all in all should really be bang on trend for what people seem to be looking for in a game today.

Will it end up being so - I hope so, but that still needs some more takeup. My experience of the the UK Ancients scene has been to be part of it at an incredibly fortunate, or even spoilt maybe, period of time over the past 20 or so years, and to have benefited from being part of a community that embraced what was at the time a radical and wildly innovative, yet very simple (mechanically) modern ruleset in the shape of DBM, which came bursting onto the scene after several decades of rather tired, iterative updates 1st-through-7th sets (and derivatives thereof).

DBM however, because of it's success, became "played-out" for a lot (but not all) of the community, with most all jumping on the bandwagon of FoGAM - more I suspect on the basis that it allowed the community to stay together, socialising, drinking and pushing toy soldiers around together, but with a different set of intellectual challenges to underpin it after the challenges and puzzles inherent in DBM had all been all but overcome.

But, in the shift away from DBM, neither FoGAM (nor DBMM) ever seemed to quite capture the mass imagination of the community in the same way as the WRG to DBM transition did, and neither has proved to be the sweep-all-in-its-path behemoth that DBM was, nor have they developed the longevity, nor the enduring multi-national international appeal that DBM did in it's heyday either.  

Looking back, I'm not sure this is the "fault" of either ruleset - it may just be a historical accident that we all happened to be shoving pikemen and legionaries around when the first "modern" ruleset - that focused on command and control, not kit, that graded troops by their effect rather than their weapons, and which understood that simplicity of design was absolutely something worth sacrificing whole mountains of details in the pursuit of when it came to game design and philosophy.

My sense is that the UK scene is still, maybe subconsciously, waiting for another WRG-DBM transition Eureka! moment, when a radical new ruleset that tears up the past with a raft of game-changing innovations will once again be able to have a bloody good go at uniting the world wide community of Ancients gamers ... and until that time comes, every ruleset that doesn't fill those enormous boots will be judged, and rejected in favour of marking time with the familiarity of the status quo.

The underlying problem however, I suspect, is that we have already had the our Eureka! moment we will ever see - unlike the late 90's there are now just too many games in too many other periods where almost all possible innovations have already been released into he wild - and so that elusive new "innovative" system for Ancients that everyone is subconsciously waiting for has already become familiar.

Is ADLG that mythical system?

Emphatically not - it has huge nods to DBx, huge nods to FoG in its mechanics and design, and to be fair it makes no real claim to be innovative either. It has it's quirks, most notably that it is arguably a little more dice-dependent than FoGAM or DBx - but this is no accident, it's something that has been deliberately designed-in, and as long as you embrace it, it simply serves to add flavour, memorable moments and narrative colour to the ebb and flow of the game ... and most importantly of all, it helps prevent what is after all just a highly abstracted game played with toy soldiers being taken too seriously

Irrespective of what ADLG might lack in Eureka! innovations, it most certainly is an already-bomb-proof system that allows almost all types and flavours of armies to be played competitively. It uses slightly fewer figures than FoGAM or DBX, doesn't (really) need re-basing and most importantly it is already widely played in Europe, and is picking up steam in the US amongst the same crowd who used to be such keen participants in international DBM events.



If the UK Ancients crowd all could somehow get together, forget the trench-warfare of FoGAM vs DBMM, and take a collective decision that it would be better for all concerned to move en-mass to ADLG, in much the same was as seemed to happen with WRG-FoGAM, and then (almost) with DBM-FoGAM (and DBM-DBMM) then that international community that used to be such a cool thing to be a part of would suddenly be back, and the whole UK scene would be rolling dice, drinking beer and learning a brand new ruleset together once again.

The only two differences would be that this time, ADLG already has had almost all of the kinks beaten out of it by the French circuit so won't need near-term revisions, and that - for the first time - ADLG s a set that "hasn't been been invented here".

Only time will tell if these prove to be insurmountable obstacles....

OK, enough of the (unplanned) essay, and on with the reports! 

30 May 2015

The English Civil War - 3 FoGR Match Reports

The plain-as-bread Parliamentarian army take on three opponents in a 1-day competition in the heart of the Kings Country - Oxford.


See how Renaissance Hannibal and Oliver Cromwell square up in the post-match reviews, and scratch your head as to how many Youtube videos that do not feature members of the Sealed Knot can be shoehorned into the three reports of some of the most vanilla armies every to take the field.


And, potatoes on bases... Say no more!

19 Apr 2015

Spring Showdown - Malifaux match reports

4 more almost incomprehensible Malifaux battle reports, with a big pink flying baby with a bad case of piles, hot chicks in leather with big swords, re-animating snipers in a childs playroom and a cast of thousands of mechanical spiders all creating confusion in deepest Essex.



The only thing you will probably recognise and understand is the crushing incompetence, the bitter taste of defeat and the withering analysis from Steampunk Hannibal


1 Mar 2015

New Rules, Same Incompetence? Romans take to the field under ADLG

The Legions of Roman take part in what is probably the first ever UK event for ancients ruleset L'Art de la Guerre. They play Indians, Middle Romans and Palmyrans in three tightly themed standard sized games in one day.



The rules are translated from French, but did the Romans find it was all Greek to them ?



Find out for yourself in a series of 3 reports with lots of rules-learning tips in there too

6 Feb 2015

Mei the force be with you - Malifaux Battle Report

In the 2nd ever Malifaux report on this site, Evil Steampunk-magic-using Marxist Drug-runner Mei Feng takes on a man on a horse and his big fat Edward Scissorhands best friend in a strange urban cowboy landscape as two players struggle again to get to grips with what the hell they are up to ..


There is kung-fu, there are dogs and eagles, there is a Sikh with a machine gun and there is a lawyer (sending guns and money..?).


Who knows what it all means - but as long as everything gets set on fire, it will surely all be good in the end!

25 Jan 2015

The Danes at Warfare 2014 - top table action!

The last event of 2014, and the Early Danes get yet another outing at FoGR down by the banks of the Thames in sunny (cold and dark) Reading.


In four thrilling match reports they take on everyone in the world, from the Indians to the English, all whilst doing their very best to shoehorn references to bacon and Carlsberg into the narrative at every opportunity....and end up doing surprisingly well !


Lots of pictures, some barely-relevant YouTube videos and some very odd things to buy from Amazon as well all grace the reports - so, grab yourself some pancakes and maple syrup, pull up a chair and dig in!

7 Dec 2014

A Double Dose of Piracy!

One of the most inept yet strangely effective armies in my inventory makes a return in a 500AP FoGR Doubles competition, as the Pirates sail into view yet again.

Marvel at the depth plumbed by the puns, shake in fear at the assault of poor jokes and fall asleep counting the number of times the men say "arrr!" as the Pirates engage in 4 games of hand to hand fighting and general bloodthirsty carnage in which the lowest percentage of casualties suffered by any of the combatants in any game hovers around the 45% mark....

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