Total War : Empire - Out Very Soon!

The new 18th Century Total War PC game is out in less than a week - and I'm excited! The review in PC gamer gave it 94%!!! There are several demo videos available for Empire: Total War (UK Edition) here. Amazon are offering it for under £28 in the UK or $46.99 for the US version with free delivery via those links.

Five of the FoG army lists books are now fully added to the FoG Wiki. That's history, figure recommendations, external links, and sometimes army lists and tactical advice for every army in the RoR, IF, SoA, LT and D&F books. They will keep being added to - maybe you can add something yourself?

Wargamers Calendar

You can now add a self-updating UK Event Calendar to your own Wargame Website or Blog by linking to the one on this site. Its dead easy, and adds some useful and constantly refreshed content to any website. click this link to get your own version on your site or blog.

Madaxeman.com has a Blog!

Well, to be honest it's had one for a while, but I've just tidied it up and I'm quite proud of it. The Blog is accessible here and whilst it looks different, it is in fact a standard "Blogger" blog so if you have your own Blog you can link to it through all the many very, very clever Blogger widgets.

The Blog is a technical fix to help me feed news onto this site, and everything that appears on the Blog also appears here as well so no need to bookmark anything twice - but it does have an archive of "news" items, some other sorting options, the chance for you to leave comments and some more toys as well.

If Blogger is your thing, it's worth a look...

Complete Painted Armies on Sale

I'm gradually adding to the eBay listings pages on this site, and the latest page has a listing of complete painted armies for sale. If you ever want to quickly check what's on sale on ebay, but can't be bothered with the hassle of logging in and searching, my eBay listings pages are idea for you - see the full set of them on the right!

Baueda's range now added to the Photo Directory

All of Baueda's "new" (ex 50-Paces) Viking range, and their Emeshi, Flaming Pigs and Ottoman Incendiary Javelinmen now appear in the photo directory on this site.

Match Reports from Burton 2009

Meet The Spartans as they meet Persians, Dominate Romans, Selukids and Graeco Bactrians in 4 full action match reports - with added Hannibal and Leonidas as well!

Naismith & Roundway 15mm Ancients Suppliers

I've added these two brands (both manufactured by Navwar) to the 15mm Ancients Suppliers lists so you can rate them. There are some photos of Roundway Swiss now in the Photo directory too.

User-guide to Medieval Irish

The FoG Wiki has had a great guide to the Medieval Irish added by one of the Wiki users. Take a look - maybe it'll inspire you to have a try at adding something yourself to the Wiki? Nearly 400 Wiki pages are being viewed every day, so any contribution will help other gamers!

Basing Figures - The Movie

I've created a short YouTube movie on how I base my figures - its available by clicking this link. I will dig out some more links to basing guides and add them to this page soon - if you know any such sites please email me with their url's.

Snowed In?

With much of the UK snowed in, many gamers may well be bored and at home this week. Luckily I've compiled a list of good timewasting things to do on Madaxeman.com. Follow this link for a list of ways to pass the time instead of painting figures!

Wolves From The Sea - 10 Days To Go!

The Vikings are Coming!!

It's almost February, which means its only a few days before the Wolves from the Sea: The Dark Ages FoG lists are published. Follow this link to Amazon.co.uk and place a postage-free advance order with Amazon.co.uk ! Or for US Orders click here.

(Two Dragons Viking figures)

Match Reports from Usk 2009

Hamanids of Alleppo in 900 AP FoG doubles action in a Decline and Fall themed competition. An attempted Arab Swarm army goes wild in South Wales...read all about it here.

Voting Buttons for Manufacturers

I've added in voting buttons for all the 15mm manufacturers on my listings page - so you can now rate each manufacturer, and see how other people rate them as well. Please vote!

Isarus have a sale too

They are offering 15% off all list prices for all miniatures ranges, until 29th January 2009.

2009 Events Calendar

The Wiki now includes a full 2009 Events Calendar, listing Wargaming and Gaming Competitions, Trade Shows & Conventions as well as re-enactments, major air shows and military vehicle events. The Calendar is here. If you have an event, you can add it in yourself - instantly!

New Auction Listing Pages

Ths site now hosts eBay UK auction listings for Terrain, flock and basing material, D6 (for when the dice gods desert you) and 20mm Ancients Figures. Grab yourself a Credit Crunch bargain!

Old Glory January sale as well..

Old Glory US have a sale until the end of January offering 30% off for orders of $101-$399 and 40% off for orders of $400 or more. Their website can also be reached via the 15mm Ancient Suppliers Index on this site.

Osprey's "Jagdflieger- Luftwaffe Fighter 39-45"

Over Christmas my interest in all things "WW2" meant I received a copy of the new Osprey book "Jagdfleiger : Luftwaffe Fighter Pilot 1939-35" which turned out to be surprisingly interesting - so I thought I'd review it here (Click the title of this link for a full review if you are looking at this from www.madaxeman.com).

The book is a standard Osprey-sized tome, 64 pages with black & white photos on nearly every page and a number of full colour plates as well, but unlike many older Osprey books, it's much much more than just some fairly lightweight historical background text designed only to wrap around the pretty colour pictures.

The book covers all aspects of a Luftwaffe fighter pilot's life. This starts at their recruitment, and covers life on base, how "kills" were awarded, dogfighting and bomber interception tactics and how the esprit-du-corps of the Luftwaffe was maintained through the punishing final stages of the war when flying against astounding odds.

Reading it I found myself increasingly drawn into the myriad of interesting details and first-hand accounts of day-to-day stories that unfolded from the exceptionally well written text - in many ways it reminded me of the style of authors like Max Hastings who can add journalistic flourishes to historical record to bring it to life.

Tales of how a rare deserting pilot was disappointed not be then allowed to join the RAF share space with evocative black and white images of newly decorated pilots - followed by footnotes showing how they were killed in action only months later. In each case these details are neatly woven into the text, illustrating the dry facts in a way which succeeds time and time again throughout the book - and any book that can achieve making Luftwaffe mechanics diets sound interesting must be doing something right.

The colour pictures - still the mainstay of any Osprey book - are mostly in the style of detailed "uniform painting-guides" useful to the modeller (of Luftwaffe crew... which must surely mean those with an attention to detail far beyond the call of duty!) to a couple of "artistic" combat sequences which add both literal and metaphorical colour to the book.

But for once the colour plates are outshone by the many highly evocative black and white photos mixing detailed aircraft & unit insignia identification shots with pictures of young men (some with faces showing an age beyond their years) displaying the same emotions we have all seen in photos of RAF or USAF fliers from the same era.

So, a surprisingly absorbing and interesting book that hooked me from the off - and on a subject that I had little previous interest in, but which I found thoroughly fascinating. Highly recommended to anyone wishing to get a feel for an aspect of WW2 which is often overlooked.

LKM/Friekorps January Sale

Looks like LKM/QRF have a January sale as well - 10% off everything from 11-25 January. They too have figures on view in the Ancients Directory. Search the "Manufacturer" field for "LKM" to see more.

More manufacturers represented

AB Miniatures Sassanids and Splintered Light Romano British now added to the Ancients Photo Gallery. Don't forget to rate these figures when you access the Gallery!

Museum Miniatures are having a sale

Looks like everything is 25% off until (I think) the middle or end of January. I've had good service from them in the past, and their Arab-ish Ghilman cavalry mix well with Outpost and Khurasan - see this link - and a lot of their dismounted medieval knights are cool as well. Worth a look?

As Featured in Miniature Wargames

The Antietam game in 10mm played in August is in January's Miniature Wargames magazine. Fame at last!

December 25th - Keen Gamers Online !

On Christmas Day this site recorded 105 visitors, accessing separate 716 pages. 49.52% found the site after searching for phrases including "arab imperial field of glory ", "1/144 scale ww2 infantry" and "fog parthian army 15mm". Slitherine and The Miniatures Page provided most referrals. The FoG Wiki was the most popular section.

MY Miniatures & Bears Den added to the supplier directory

MY are a UK Manufacturer selling Macedonians, Bactrians, Persians, Indians, Genereic Arabs, Gladiators/Slave Revolt, WOTR/Medievals, C16 Spanish, Arthurian British, Saxons, Celts, Vikings, Lombards, Persians, Villanovan & Etruscan Italians and some Biblical ranges. Bears Den have one range - Warring States Chinese

Camelot Games

Now added to the 15mm manuacturers directory, as well as an Italian distributor for the Miniature Wars ranges. Camelot sell several ranges including Polybian/ MRR Romans, Huns, Vikings & Rus, Crusader Knights & Arabs, and CXIII medievals

Merry Christmas

Madaxeman.com and Festive Nasty Hannibal wish everyone a Happy Christmas & New Year. As a Christmas treat you can send this image as an eCard to all your friends - just click the link, register for the 15mm photo gallery and e-mail away (by clicking the envelope icon in the top right corner of each image page!

Osprey War Elephants

I've just picked up a copy of Osprey's much discussed book on War Elephants, so thought I'd do a quick review here.

The book is the standard Osprey-format paperback, 48 pages cover-to-cover and written by Konstantin Nossov with illustrations by Peter Dennis. Unlike older Ospreys, this book has colour photos or illustrations on virtually every double page spread.

The book is divided into sections covering different armies use of elephants, namely Indian, Alexandrian, Phyrrus, Carthage, Roman, South East Asia and "Elsewhere" (China and Persia), then an overview of types of elephant and their types of use.

Many of the illustrations and photos come from - unsurprisingly - India - where use of elephants has been well documented in art and on record, especially from the relatively recent Moghul and similar eras.

The use of elephants in Classical warfare is covered in as much depth as posible, especially where important recorded battles used elephants - but inevitably there are gaps in the historical record which the book wisely leaves open rather than assertively plumping for one or other possible historical interpretation.

Many of the key classical battles are covered in some depth with lengthy quotes from historical sources, and in particular the history of Indian war elephants gets a very in depth coverage, looking at armour, tactics, equipment and usage - and there is still no definitive statement on whether Carthaginian Elephants had towers!

Getting the balance right between in-depth and superficial coverage of the whole global historical record of elephant warfare in a 48-page booklet is always going to be a tough ask, especially when the historical record itself can often be quite thin or patchy, and so this book leaves you with a slight feeling that it "should" be better - but maybe it's impossible for it to be so.

At the end of the day we all already know that Elephants are big old beasts which frighten horses, skittle over unprepared infantry formations and knock down castle doors. They are scary for your enemies if they charge them, and even more scary if they panic and rout back through your own army.

This book says all of this, it has some great illustrations (especially of Indian/Moghul era elephants) and it also provides enough detail on some of the Classical era battles as well. Will it tell you anything astounding you didn't know - probably not, but thats maybe more of an issue with the subject matter rather than the book.

Buy the book here:

Warmodelling/Fantassin 15mm Ancients Photos

..now in the Ancients gallery, with a review, size comparison shots vs Essex, Old Glory, Xyston and Corvus Belli.

FoG Tactical Tips Guide & WIKI

In a collaboration with MikeK, the FoG Tactical Tips Guide now appears on this site in WIKI format - so you can edit it and share your own FoG experiences with other gamers.