The Tibetans go hunting fish and chips

 Just after Warfare last year almost 40 people congregated in the heart of Torbay for the Brixham Classic ADLG competition, including a rarely used Tibetan army under my somewhat ham-fisted control. 

The plethora of cataphracts concerned had been consigned to a Bisley drawer for many years so a chance to bring them blinking and screaming into seaside wintertime daylight was an occasion for celebration, and for these 5 video match reports of how they fared against the Conquistadores, the Goryeo Koreans, the Khushan Empire, Ilkhanid Khanate and finally the Tupi Indians of Brazil  

There are also some slightly disturbingly animated pictures of the losers prizes from the event 

WW2 coastal batteries also make a brief appearance too

But mostly it's about me talking through how the 5 games went for the Tibetans on a series of short YouTube videos

Homeric Poetry in Linear Motion - Warfare 2022

 After freezing our nads off at the Ascot racecourse last year, the 2022 edition of Warfare turned up the heating significantly with a trip to the desert in a Biblical-themed competition at the all-new Farnborough venue. 

That meant the Linear B tactics of an improved and enhanced Mycenean army got to have a run out in five games of L'Art de la Guerre, all laced with dreadful poetry, terribly inappropriate speech-bubble captions, almost no tactics and even a smattering of your best quality American Ska-Punk in a series of reports punningly now known as Homer's The Silly-iad.

Hungary: The Northern Powerhouse ?

Just before it got really, really cold I took a trip Up North to watch Fulham be cruelly denied a valuable away point at the Ethiad by a rather dubious and very late Invincible Magic Robot Boy penalty

But, more wargames-related, that was followed the next day by a chance to take part in the final round of the one-dayNorthern League competition in Britains Coldest Building, the British Legion Hall in Eccles!

This was an open event so I took the Later Hungarians - a lockdown painting project which had yet to see competitive action in it's "Late" form.

The three games in one day saw the Black Army of Matthew Corvinius face off first against the Tuaregs, followed by two very different Medieval Scots armies, and all three games were captured for posterity and uploaded to YouTube with pseudo-tactical commentary on what I thought I was hoping to achieve when I was playing.

See for yourself with these three YouTube videos if the theory worked! 

Elephants Sir! Faarsands of 'em!

 In the margins of the recent SELWG show in Picketts Lock a well-padded BHGS Teams event took place with sets of three players contesting ADLG glory in three well-themed pools - including Maximum Elephants!

This was where I deployed the might of the Delhi Sultanate for the first ever time in an army packed with grenade-throwing skirmishers, top-drawer Mughal Guardsmen, Abyssinian Melee Specialists and of course three full-fat Armoured Elephants.

Read on to see how this hodge-podge of combat capability fared in 5 lavishly illustrated Madaxeman battle reports aginst the Timurids (twice), Alexander The Great, The Seleucids and also an Indian army from an earlier era.

Swoon as the elephants charge forward into the jaws of melee!

Gasp in awe and delight as brightly coloured warriors engage in mortal tabletop combat

Groan at the endless poor puns and irrelevant animations gratuitously stuffed into the narrative!

I even throw in some very old holiday snaps for you as well !

All 5 reports are now on the Madaxeman.com Website

Persians at the Tagus : ADLG in Lisbon

 Lisbon, and the Lusitania Challenge - a 4 person team event held in the Military Museum in Portugal's capital on the banks of the Tagus which I'd last been to all the way back in 2012.

In recent years the Lusitania Challenge has been reinvented and reinvigorated by the adoption of L'Art de la Guerre as its Ancient ruleset of choice, putting the event firmly on the map of the pan-European ADLG event circuit. 

This time around a staggering 24 teams (96 players) had assembled in the gun-infested bowels of the Lisbon Military Museum to do tabletop ancients battle together (and, also, eat sardines from tins as often as possible).

In terms of the actual gaming this was a competition with 4 players in each team, each playing a themed period roughly analogous to the 4 classic DBM Army List Books - and I was in Period 2, Roman & Classical. having decided that this prestigious international event was the ideal opportunity to put on table the wheeled Persian Archery Towers for the first time in competitive action as part of an Achaemenid army.

The general theory of the army was to use a combination of infantry archers (Sparabara and Immortals) together with good quality Satrapal and Guard cavalry on each wing to overwhelm any opponents mounted troops, and use the Archery Towers, some low-grade mercenary spearmen and a small force of mostly light horse in the centre to block and distract the enemy's capital troops and keep them from reinforcing what I hoped would be their by-then heavily embattled wings.

Over the course of 5 games and 2 days the Persians took on the Sassanid Empire, two lots of Early Imperial Romans, an Alexandrian Macedonian army and then ventured Eastwards to fight the Classical Indians, giving a wide range of opposing armies and troop types for the Achaemenid plan to be tested against. 

All 5 battle reports are now available on the Madaxeman website, complete with the usual mix of irrelevant captions, post-game analysis and insults from Hannibal, in-detail reporting of our culinary  and beverage related exploits in and around Lisbon, and links to how I cooked up the wallpaper for the towers and the pavises of the Persian army.

Read the 5 reports and the culinary analysis here 

The Kyivan Rus on the M4 road to Reading

 One of the great beauties about L'Art de la Guerre is the way the shorter game time (about 2.5 hours) means you can fit 3 games into a day. It sounds fairly minor, but a 3-round Swiss Draw tournament is just, well, a lot, lot more "meaty" than a 2-round one would be - but without imposing so many games on you that a poor army design could leave you cursing the protracted pain of facing a series of lengthy drawn out defeats either.

The recent Reading-based 1-dayer ticked all of those boxes with a theme of "the World of the Rus and Vikings" - armies with a connection to either of these peoples, in the form of a historical antipathy or conflict, a mention in the army list notes, or an allied contingent of either of the two. 

I however went full Zelensky on this one, and chose a Rus army with no allies at all, a simple list chosen mainly as it was as close as I could get to using all of the lockdown-rebased Rus spearmen I owned all on table together whilst not totally ignoring the "good" options in the overall design.

That did mean a lot of spearmen - an often-unloved troop type who are nevertheless superb in the right circumstances. And, of course, how could I forget, a chance yet again to deploy the age-old groan-inducing Rus Abbot punchline against three unwary opponents!

All three Bella Emberg-free reports from this event are now online as the Rus take on the Carolingians, the Vikings and the Thematic Byzantine Empire in these fully illustrated and statistic rich reports. 

Italia '22 - The Worlds in Rome

 Yes, competitive international ADLG yet again, this time with a flight rather than a drive (and so a shorter set of reports) as the Khurasanians take another tilt at the World Championships!

See the Persio-Afghani soldiery revel in 6 games of 15mm L'Art de la Guerre, against two sets of Almughavars, a pair of Indians, a Byzantino and the army of Wallander, sorry, Henry V (a lame Kenneth Brannagh joke in case you missed it) with the usual captions, analysis and in-game hints and commentary.

And, of course, being Italy, there are pictures of prosecco instead of beer!

Drive to the Rhine - An ADLG Beer n'Castles German mini break

With ADLG taking vigorous root in Germany's Ancients competition scene, Two Daves and a Madaxeman took a road (and rail) trip across France, Belgium and Germany and on the way ended up in a variety of castles, museums, cathedrals and of course schitzel-serving bierkellers - all of which you can now share in too! 

Sandwiched inbetween two epic travelogues are 5 Madaxeman Match reports as the Palmyran army of the ever-feisty Zenobia takes on Arabs, Byzantines (twice), the Might of Imperial China, and the Xia Xia Nomad Empire in a series of battles

The reports also feature a band new educational component, in the shape of a suite of painstakingly accurate and fully researched German exclamations and a number of entirely plausible German compound words as well. 

To top it all off there is also an accompanying podcast to listen to as well. 

Click through and enjoy the road trip !

Roll Call Reports - in Video Format

 After the success (over 600 views!) of the Beachhead video reports, and also with a rather extensive writeup of the 4-day trip to the Braubach tournament in the pipeline I've decided to put my 5 games at Roll Call out as a video as well.

You can therefore see in rather over-saturated detail the Mighty Assyrians take on some Galatians, Romans, Classical Indians, Warring States Chinese and finally the Seleucid Empire in 5 HD-quality badly-narrated reports which are available now on the Madaxeman YouTube Channel.

 Yes, you can now spend just under an hour waiting for the theme tune to crop up and interrupt my inane ramblings as I try and graft some semblance of tactical nous onto the generally shambolic shufflings of the 28mm army of Assyria (which has also featured heavily on this blog after being painted during lockdown).   

As usual, the army lists are all in the Wiki, and in case you're wondering, the figures are from the excellent but oft-overlooked Newline Designs range, with dismounted generals from Foundry

Burton Doubles - Is it now safe to sit quite that close ?

 The UK L'Art e la Guerre circuit continued its return to full-effect with the 2022 edition of the near-legendary Burton Doubles taking place in the traditional; Town Hall venue in February, and of course a rather haphazarly assembled Khurasanian army was there to partake of all of the glory that the home of British Brewing has to offer.

In these four full-colour match reports you can see Dailami Warriors fighting Viking Huscarls, carpet-wearing elephants taking on the Beja Camel Corps, Arabesque bowmen invading the spicier parts of Southern India and a wall of steel-clad cataphracts slamming into another wall of silk-clad spearmen in 4 epic full-screen battles.

There is of course the usual mix of captions, comments, commentary and analysis from expert pundits Al'Shearer and Hannibal himself, a rather brisk passing mention of some of Burtons more exotic restaurants, and, as an added bonus, a video of wildlife-celebrity Chris Packham's favourite dance-floor filler as well. 

Don't dare ever say we don't give you anything that you could get elsewhere in wargames social media world! 

Roll on and enjoy the Reports!    

(And remember, if anyone asks, tell them that the Al'Shearer Infantry told you to do it .. !)

Beachhead Ahoy!

 Back in the mists of time (OK, last month) a small and sadly somewhat malformed (more of this later...) Burgundian Ordonnance army took to the field in the hospitable surroundings of the Beachhead show in Bournemouth for 5 games of Post Manzikert ADLG.

As well as continuing the tradition of gaming in South Coast resorts this did mean some refurbished figures making their first appearance, and also marked a rather radical departure from the hordes of crap approach of the Peoples Crusade in my last competition appearance, with the Ordonnance barely achieving half as many units as Peter The Hermit's Crusade of Nonsense. 

With about a zillion other events and competitions coming up I ended up taking a different approach with these reports, with more top-down photos and a video format in which I basically natter on over a slideshow of photos, and tryto remember what on earth I was thinking and/or hoping to achieve during the 5 games. 

The resulting reports are about 50 minutes of YouTube video, and include all seven of the lists involved - thats 5 of my opponents, my own list, and finally a minimally-corrected version of my own list after someone pointed out to me that both myself and the list checker had missed something! 

So, fire up the widescreen TV for 50 minutes of minimally informative video entertainment as we take you down to the seaside yet again for Post Manzikert-themed L'Art de la Guerre at Beachhead 2022!

Alicante Ahoy!

Bob Dylan once famously sang " With God On Our Side..."  but he probably wasn't referring to The Peoples Crusade and it's somewhat over-optimistic efforts to secure an unlikely victory by sending a load of inexperienced pasty-faced ill-prepared northern Europeans to the furthermost shores of the Mediterranean.  

But, that description would in fact work perfectly to sum up the latest Madaxeman match reports - as a Early Crusader Peoples Crusade Army sets off for some highly unfeasible combat in the Alicante ADLG competition in a first post-Lockdown overseas trip for the CLWC posse. 

The match reports show the Peoples Crusade - an army made up of mostly poorly armed levies - take on 2 Ghaznavids, Maurice's Byzantines, the Samurai and finally The Vikings in 5 fully religiously inspired and Hermit-endorsed battles. 

There is also plenty of pictures of local feed and drink in various states of consumption, and the usual melange of captions, animations, weird links and strange combat outcomes as a wall of peasantry take on these cinco Dark Age military behemoths 

Peter The Hermit didn't sadly have wifi in his cave, so this is your first ever chance to see an online report of how the Peoples Crusade actually marched, fought and on occasion won as it trampled across Europe on it's way to the Holy Land.

In a new initiative there is also an accompanying Spotify Playlist to go with the reports, ensuring your are listening to suitably religiously inspired music when reading the tale of combat and disaster.

And, in a dubious quality auditory experiment there is also a multi-part podcast that includes several sections which are recorded live from a bar midway through the competition.

 

Its all waiting for you, in all formats. 

If you want to resist, you probably don't really have a prayer - so why not plug in, tune up the hifi and hide away with the army of Peter The Hermit in these latest Match Reports