Pirates!

My Pirate (well, Buccaneer) army is gradually taking shape - keep up with the progress on my Madaxeman.com facebook page, as I add photos to a gallery of "work in progress" Pirates...

Britcon 2013

Full details are now on the BHGS Website for Britcon 2013, and for those of you who want to to just go ahead and book your place you can do here:

I'm on the organising team and we've listened to feedback from last year's survey where many players told us how unwelcome Britcon's two late night games can sometimes be, and so for 2013 there will be an option to drop Friday or Saturday night's game and just play 5 games in the larger gaming periods. This also means that each of the "traditional" 6-game main periods will now be decided by counting player's best 5 scores over the weekend.

What Else To Look Out For in 2013?

• New Periods - including a 10+ game "Epic Saga" competition for the runaway success that is the Saga ruleset, as well as the debut's of two further 28mm rulesets, "War and Conquest" (supported by the author, Rob Broom) and WW2 skirmish game "Bolt Action" (supported by Warlord Games - TBC)
• Prices Frozen - we know there is a recession out there, so through careful negotiation with the venue there will be no increase in entry fees in 2013.
• Accommodation still optional - we've also negotiated some great rates at UMIST for a variety of standards of rooms, starting as low as £33.50 for Bed and Breakfast - all still in stumbling distance of the venue and bar as usual.

15mm Napoleonic Auction pages

Following up on the Supplier Directory I've now added two sets of pages with listings from "live" eBay Auctions of 15mm Napoleonic troops - covering the UK and US versions of eBay.

Both sets of pages cover all the Napoleonic troops currently listed, as well as separate pages for the "Big 5" of France, Britain, Austria, Russia and Prussia.

The UK pages can be reached through this link, and the US pages are online here.

Looking for 15mm Napoleonics?

I've just finished pulling together a new Manufacturers Directory, covering the Napoleonic period, and the completed page in all its glory is now up and running on this website via this link.

So, if you are looking for 15mm Napoleonic wargaming figures to use for FoG:N, Lasalle, Shako, Piquet, To the Sound of the Guns, Grand Armee, Volley and Bayonet, Empires and Eagles, General de Brigade, L'Empereur, Napoleonic Principles of War, Black Powder or any other Napoleonic ruleset you've come to the right place, as my new 15mm Napoleonic Manufacturers Directory page has information about all of the ranges carried by ALL the 15mm Napoleonic suppliers.

Each manufacturers individual listing has details of the nationalities they make, taken from the list of nations explicitly mentioned on their websites - these include: French, British, Prussian, Russian, Austrian, Spanish, Polish (including Grand Duchy of Warsaw), Bavarian, other minor German states (Saxony & Rhine Confederation, Wurttenburg, Hannovarian, Hessian, Saxon, etc) Italian/Neapolitan, Dutch/Belgian, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, and Turks. Many also have generic equipment and dead and wounded ranges too.

For each supplier there is also an indication of whether they are making "15mm" 15mm figures or "18mm" 15mm figures, how they package and sell the figures (singles, packs of 8 etc), details on how you can order from them and a link to their site.

There is also a set of new Auction Pages pulling live auction listings from UK eBay for 15mm French, British, Prussian, Russian and Austrian troops if you don't want to paint your own!

I'm not personally an expert on Napoleonic gaming or indeed the figures so I had some assistance from some of our club members who are - but if there are oddities in the way I have classified and categorized each manufacturers range, please let me know and I can correct them and update the page.

The page is live and online here

Who's been visiting Madaxeman.com?

Not sure if this is of interest to anyone other than me, but just as an experiment here are some extracts from the Google Analytics traffic reports for this website over the past month (7th Jan-6th Feb).

All of the images are clickable, and get big enough to actually see once you click them...

This shows the mix of different browsers Google has detected - unsurprisingly IE is still top, which means that a good percentage of visitors to the site don't see curved corners on the coloured comments boxes that litter the match reports that you would see in a proper compliant browser like Chrome! Quite a few mobile devices being used to view the site too though...

Here are the stats for operating system - again Windows wins (Wargamers are geeks, so we don't buy as many Mac's...?) , but a good sprinkling of mobile devices as well

Where is everybody from? Well, UK, USA and then Australia... Italy and NZ get in there too. All classic Wargaming countries.. 

What's the first page everyone lands on? The main front page (index.php) is not so closely followed by the FoGAM wiki - probably because the Wiki picks up a lot of hits from Google searches, as will the Ambush Alley and 15mm Ancients supplier listing pages. The two match reports have both had direct links posted on various forums over the past month, hence their high placing in this month's figures.

The "Bounce rate" in the last column indicates times when only one page is clicked before the visitor leaves the site. This stat always hovers around 40% or more, which isn't actually that bad for a content site apparently, and there are various technical Google-related reasons why it is at this level - google it if you are that interested! 

These are the most popular pages over the past month - no surprise that the front page (index.php) is - as usual - top of the list, but the 15mm Ancient, 15mm Renaissance and Modern 20mm Suppliers indexes all rank very highly (take note if your are a manufacturer!), and the AM Wiki is still incredibly popular too. The FoG Index is a bit of a hangover from before the Wiki was set up, but it generates a lot of traffic from Google searches so I have left it on the site as a sort of gateway that appears to be easy to find. 

The Godendag match report hasn't yet had enough time to make it into the top 10, but the earlier report from Oxford has been there for three weeks so is at No.6 in this ranking, and near the bottom is one of the many pages to list eBay auctions - which is great, as eBay pays me a small commission for any sales that get made after people click through to eBay from something they see on this site. 

This shows screen resolution - again some stats about mobile devices creep in at the end.

Finally, this shows sites that provide a direct link to Madaxeman.com. The two variants of the Blogger site are both the Madaxeman.com Blogger page - which looks exactly like the main site but is in the Blogger network, which many people use for their Wargaming news. 

TMP and Slitherine are the two big traffic sources - again mostly from match reports and other content I post up there, but occasionally when someone else posts a link to Madaxeman.com without me suggesting it  (which is really great - when it happens!).

Not sure if this is interesting or not really, but feel free to leave a comment on either the Madaxeman.com Facebook page, or the Blogger site to ask any questions or suggest anything I'm missing.  

Field of Glory Renaissance Battle Reports From Godendag 2013

After only 2 weeks it's four more match reports !

The C17 Louis XIV French take to the field in four Field of Glory Renaissance Battle Reports From Godendag 2013

See how Louis' boys take on the Austrians, Swedes, Ottomans and Anglo-Dutch in 4 epic battles with some of the wildest swings of fortune ever recorded on this site !

Click here for the reports 

LEGO The Hobbit 79002: Attack of the Wargs: Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games

Lego Minifigures for LoTR wargaming anyone...?

Lego seem to be on a roll and are releasing ever-more wargaming-friendly sets of figures right now - apparently you can even buy  Urak-Hai army packs - ideal for use with GW's  War of the Ring ruleset I guess?

But the big question must be, Is this the ultimate end-point of the "Will plastic miniatures ever replace metal?" debate?

The wee Jocks come up a little short

Just finished the last game in the round-robin phase of our Club 650 points FoGR competition, and despite a heroic attempt my 1639 Scots Royalist army fell just short of qualifying for the knockout stages of the competition even after recording a rather tasty 67 points (in BHGS money) over 4 games, with a rather uneven mix of scores of the order of 19-25-1-22.

This chunky score placed me 3rd, behind two other players both tied on 70 (one of whom I lost to 1-24, and one of whom I beat 22-3 in the last game, when needing a 24-1 to overhaul him... shame about the 3 generals killed in combat or it could have been even closer!

The choice of army for each player was done on a sort of reverse seeding, so the more experienced players got "worse" armies - however what we seem to have proved so far is that in a tightly themed ECW period, a cool army is generally no match for experience !

The lists I used in this 5'x3' table 650 point competition are now on the FoGR Wiki

Museum Miniatures 2013 January Sale

Just got an email reminding me that Museum Miniatures 2013 Sale is on at the moment, with 25% off all figures and ready made armies. That makes infantry and cavalry only £1.88 per pack..

I used some of their chaps in a recent Battle Report as Hungarians - they are the knighty-looking blokes on horses in the two photos below. Nice figures!

A lot of the Museum stuff features in the Ancients Photo Gallery too on this site.

I suspect that the Museum sale ends in a couple of days if you are interested...

Lurkio added to the Renaissance Manufacturers Directory

Somewhat belatedly late, I've now added Lurkio to the Renaissance Suppliers Directory. They have a newly-released Nine Years War range suitable for all of the main nations, specifically Bavarians and Anglo-Dutch, and also Inca, Canari and Mapuche ranges from the Americas. Sold in FoG battle groups, "single bases" (i.e. according to DBx basing conventions) and some army pack sizes these are very nice little figures.

They'll also be appearing in one of the upcoming match reports from Godendag 2013 on this site!

Field of Glory Renaissance Battle Reports From Southern League Oxford 2013 - Game 1

In a blistering 10 day turnaround, three full and multimedia-rich Field of Glory Renaissance Battle Reports From round 1 of the Southern League in Oxford have appeared online already!

Marvel as the Hungarians get a bellyful of Ottomans, Mamluks and a very tasty Hungarian Civil War in this 3-game one-day competition with pre-set terrain.

See how an all mounted army performs in these three reports

More Scots..

This time to give some extra short-range firepower to the Scots, it's Peter Pig's rather dinky little Frame Guns that get an unveiling

 These also feature at least one Essex artillery crewman (the chap in the hat on the left of shot)

 A very by-now traditional Armypainter Dark Tone has brought them up very well. I also used brush-on Testors Dullcote as I didn't fancy getting a spray can out for so few figures.

I've done one gun in brass, and one in a more iron type metal - I suspect the real things were leather but metal looks a bit more, well, gun-like.

Will this be the year for Tankfest?

The power of Twitter has sent me a notification about Tankfest 2013, at the Tank Museum in Bovingddon. Despite having been to Aberdeen and Kubinka, I've never been down to Bovvy to see the UK museum... but this does look very tempting!

Anyone got any recommendations about this as a day out?

Those Scottish Cavalry are done...

As promised to my Facebook subscribers just after Christmas, I've been finishing off a dozen or so Peter Pig Scottish Cavalry to go with the infantry I finished back in November - and very pleased with them I am too.

This is the full unit - I bought two packs of 4, plus the command pack which only has three models in it, so I added an extra infantryman (who I think is from Essex) to round out the set.

The actual cavalrymen come in two poses, looking left and right

 These were all undercoated in white, and finished in Army painter Dark Tone to match the Scottish Infantry regiments I did earlier

 Unlike the infantry I also painted the straps on the back of each figure - the straps on the infantry were a bit thin and cast in a lower relief than these, and also I did the infantry in a bit of a rush to be honest.

 This chap in the middle is one of the officers and Generals pack (Pack 40 from the Regimente of Foote range "Scots Gens (3)")

 The pack also seems to have a chap in full armour - lucky devil really for the Scots of that era - unless he snuck in from another pack on my very messy painting table without me noticing...

Here is the final General, with a bit of a Puritan haircut and an Essex figure (I suspect from a Jacobite Rebellion range, but who's counting..?) to round them out.

The more of these figures I paint, the more I like them. The temptation to buy a whole army of them is growing stronger....

Reports from Warfare 2012

The Early Danes field more Cuirassiers than you can safely shake a stick at, and take to the field after a hearty fry-up (appropriately enough) in Warfare 2012 - a themed FoG:R competition - and take on Transylvanians, Swedes, Jin Chinese and some Austrians

The reports features two full-fat deep fried reports, one half-fat and a final lite version using only bacon flavourings instead of real bacon. 

You will also have the opportunity to order a range of tasty bacon-flavoured snacks from eBay to consume whilst reading.

Donnington Scots Pikemen in 15mm

Another Warfare purchase was 8 Donnington Scots Pikemen to go with my existing Minifigs Scots musketeers - Minifigs sometimes being a bit variable, and with no pictures on the website I saw these chaps who looked similar and so picked up a set.

Keeping Scotland thoroughly Protestant ...

Some basic tartan patterns using my Tartan guide from another post

Simple but relatively effective

The command figures are generic ECW ones 

And here they are with the Minifigs musketeers - marginally taller, but close enough for wargaming purposes - the style is pretty similar which is almost more important

The interest in painting up Scots is not only for our club competition, I've discovered a lot about them from this book I've been reading recently on the whole Civil War(s), which I'm thoroughly enjoying.

Happy Christmas - it's The Three Musketeers !

On a day when everyone gets presents they don't really want and then tries to slope off to think about what stuff they might buy online that they would have actually preferred to get instead of those socks, this post is intended as a timely reminder that whilst there are some figures you "actually" need, some you just, well, "need" even though you don't really have an army list drawn up to use them in, and some that you kinda think "well, I could probably find a use for them and they are quite nice, so as long as no-one notices....", there is a whole, separate class of figures that fall into an entirely separate "lets throw reason out of the window, I just GOTTA have some of those!" category.

And the latest contenders for the Gold Medal in this regard are very definitely the figures in Blue Moon Manufacturing's new Three Musketeers range.

In the French army from the early part of the Thirty Year's War, Field of Glory: Renaissance
allows you to field the Kings Musketeers as part of a tooled up (well, Superior grade) Light Foot unit armed with muskets. So, everyone wants 4 bases of them huh?

The Blue Moon figures however come in packs of 10 - 5 mounted and 5 foote. So, whilst somewhere in Madaxeman Towers a unit of 5 mounted and one pedestrian are being painted, some spare Testudo infantry were quickly pressed into service to add to 4 of the Cardinal's Guard to create the almost-useless unit of 4 bases of Superior LF Musketeers

The Testudo figures - here in the slightly blurred foreground - are a smidge
taller than the Blue Moon chaps, and also styled rather differently to the fairly cartoonish but eminently lovable Blue Moon - but its a very  good match at wargaming distances

Where the Blue Moon guys excel however is in their deployment of quite phenomenal Depardieu-esque moustaches ... (Testudo on the right here)

I actually bought the Cardinal's Guard set in preference to the actual Musketeers set as I thought they looked a lot more like the Hollywood impression of the Musketeers. (Testudo on the left)

"Have at you Sir!"   (Testudo on the right - although you'e probably picked up the style now..)

They truly are very loveable figures - and in the spirit of Hollywood-ization, my choice of uniform design for this unit was inspired by a classic Hollywood version of the tale of The Three Musketeers!

Blue Moon stuff is also available from Old Glory UK in the UK. 

Go on, you know you want some....