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

Black Seas - Rigging Hell!

 OK, maybe it's not all that bad, but the pun needed using anyway so ... I now have a handful of fully-completed ships for Warlord Games Black Seas game, and they are so spiffing that I've popped a load of them in the lightbox and taken some snaps, some of which are previewed here.

There is a whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well on the main website  

If you want to see more there is a whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well.

Ship Ahoy! 

Here's all my Blogger Black Seas content:

• First Steps
• The full how-to guide with tips and tricks
• Third Raters
• Adding a resin-hulled First Rate, and some extra rigging ideas 
• A whole page of these, together with some info on how they were painted and some tips I picked up on how to do the rigging as well.

Donnington Clubmen

 One of the cool new units in v4 of ADLG are the Palestinian Clubmen who appear in a number of the later Roman armies.

With o-one really making figures for them, I had proxied a few Legio Heroica arabs to act as medium Clubmen, to which I have now added some close formation Heavy Infantry using Donnington's Arab MUF10 Sudanese lutatman from their New Era Crusades range

Here are the jolly fellows, together with some more Old School Donnington Auxilia.  

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!

Last week I started doing a little ship ..

 ..and being very, very careful with my typing as well.

Yes, the Black Seas starter set that arrived the Christmas before last (I hope it wasn't before that!) has finally started, with a test build and paint of a Brig.

First impressions are that it's very easy to make (so far..), very light, and is actually TINY! 

I'd been toying with various ideas involving buying foam storage and 9L RUB boxes, but honestly I'm not sure this will merit such investment and space as I can't see even a box full of a few of them justifying the excess foam. Instead I've put a layer of Magnabase on the bottom of the hull so they can be kept on a ferrous surface, as I can't see them shaking off anytime soon.

This model was sprayed white as part of a mass-undercoat session last week, and then done in Contrast Paints, which I thought might do a good job of picking out the woodwork details. 

The paints used were Nazdreg Yellow on the deck, Skeleton Horde on the hull and (I think) Gore-Grunta Fur on the mast. 

With the benefit of hindsight I'll probably swap the Skeleton Horde and Nazdreg Yellow over and do the ships sidewalls with the yellow colour. 

There is no "right" way to do these, but a few skulks around the internet seemed to suggest painting some of the spars black - and it does make the model pop a little more than leaving them natural (or unnatrural given the paint used) wood.

This is where it's ended up - very quick and easy. 

Next up, making more of them... and then ... Rigging! 

Here's all my Black Seas content:

• First Steps
• The full how-to guide with tips and tricks
• Third Raters
• Adding a resin-hulled First Rate, and some extra rigging ideas 

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

A fistful of ... Elephants?

A quick bit of just-finished painting today, in the shape of 3 fully-padded-out armoured elephants.

I believe the two outrider ones are Museum, and the one in the middle looks like a Minifigs casting to me.

The Red and White one is painted in normal paints, with the other two having their barding done in GW Contrast paints (Talassar Blue, Yanden Yellow and Blood Angels Red)

The banners are (of course) printed onto normal inkjet paper, varnished and just glued on.

Armoured elephants are a new troop type in ADLGv4, and rather bizzarrely I seemed to be lacking in owning any - so rescuing these three unpainted versions from Clives stash was a must-do.

Fitting all three into one army is a challenge I need to work on - I think there's an Indian army that can have all three, otherwise its 300 points of Ilkhanids or something! 

I'm very pleased with how they have panned out - lets see how they perform once I get a chance to use them.

Hungary for Warfare ?

 Yes, that deeply punnish headline does indeed herald the release of another fistful of competition battle reports, this time from the massive Warfare ADLG event at the end of last year. 

The five reports feature a newly-minted, lockdown-painted 15mm Essex Hungarian Army in action for the first time in a real competition, taking on a range of opponents from across the entire Eurasian landmass (and associated small offshore islands) in Feudal-themed battle.

There are also Goulash recipe videos, a spot of ATOMICS! when the Hungarians hit the desert of Tuaregistan, more flags than you can wave, erm, a flag at and a whole host of inappropriately captioned pictures of 15mm figures in action on the tabletop. 

 

So, stop fiddling with your Rubik's Cube, put down your Biro and shake the paprika out of your hair (eh ?) and settle back gently into 5 packed pages of Hungarian Warfare in these first Madaxeman.com battle reports to hit the internet airwaves in 2022.

Oh, and along with the usual ascerbic analysis from Hannibal, there's even a bit of Star Trek meme-ery too. Because that is of course the obvious thing to do when looking at the Hungarian army of the late Feudal period. 

Go on... beam yourself up to the Hungarian's debut competition!