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! 

ADLG Renaissance: The Basics

 I've finally gotten round to recording a few ADLG-R videos with Simon LeRay-Meyer, in which we look to work through the basics of the system with a particular focus on explaining the differences to ADLG Ancients.

They are now all posted on YouTube and also here on my website 

The main areas covered are to do with how double-width bases for infantry formations in the Renaissance version actually work. 

This is all pretty simple once you get your head around how they work but can trip up someone who is familiar with ADLG Ancients if you are not mindful of what and why they are deemed necessary in Renaissance ADLG

The videos are a bit of an experiment using my webcam and recorded very simply on Zoom, so the quality isn't exactly top notch - but hopefully we manage to be chatty and engaging enough to carry you through that, and in so doing manage to get across the key ways in which these double units actually work and operate on the battlefield.

Here's hoping you make it at least half way through ! 

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!

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.

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.

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

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! 

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

Hungary vs Spain in Medieval Tabletop Simulator action

 Another Tabletop Simulator battle report, this time in full HD with a 200 point L'Art de la Guerre matchup featuring List 238 Medieval Hungarian vs List 228 Medieval Spanish is now on my YouTube channel. 

The gameplay has been speeded up around 8-fold to allow the whole battle to be watched in just over 20 minutes, and includes a running commentary describing the action from the Hungarian sides' point of view. 

There are also photos of the 15mm Essex Miniatures Hungarian army I painted during lockdown, and a review of both army lists being used as well. 

Dogs of War 2018 Game 2

And, in quick succession, here's the video of the second game in which the small but imperfectly formed Byzantines attempt a double envelopment against the Southern Dynasties Chinese

How to use the Wiki - a video walkthrough

YouTube now features a short walk-through video of how to add an army list to the Wiki's (AM or R) on this site.

Presented by regular Madaxeman.com TV host Philip, it takes you through all of the steps needed to copy an army list from the MS-Excel army list builder software and drop it into the Wiki.

Once you've watched this short video you will be all tooled up to become a regular Wiki contributor!

Videos on YouTube

Just added a couple of helicopter videos onto YouTube. How low can an Apache fly ? This low maybe?  What about a Chinook or a Blackhawk?

Romans vs Parthians on YouTube

If you are really lazy (and like Bob Dylan) you can try the Rome vs Parthia battle on YouTube