Black Ops

Just back from a couple of games of Osprey's new-ish Black Ops modern skirmish rules... and I'm pleased to report that they appear to work !

They are set in the same era as Force on Force, but are a lot more beer & pretzels, whilst still maintaining a bit of tactical depth and that real pace that is needed to make a modern skirmish game feel "real"

Here are photos from our games using mostly Elheim modern US figures.

The squad ready themselves to move out

A cautious advance past a stalled technical

Taking cover behind the HUMMVEE whilst the news crew interview a pedestrian

Peering over a concrete barrier

Possibly not the safest place to hide....

Move first, form, a firing line and open up...

Taking cover behind a storage tank

USMC advance cautiously along the street

Matchbox-scale Toyota acts as cover

 The LAW hit the LPG cannister, so we made up a quick rule to allow me to use this flame thing!

Black Ops is available on Amazon.co.uk and also Amazon.com for not that much really.

6mm Neo-NATO and Neo -Soviet SF forces

Having done some wargamer-scale "dabbling" in 1/300th Moderns for a while now (erm... 3 whole large armies and a lot of eBay fishing...) I'd been strangely drawn to the idea of supplementing the increasingly futuristic looking tanks and rather indistinct infantry with some SF Mechs and Walkers.

This new habit started with an unusually restrained initial outing at Warfare 2014 where I picked up a handful of Mechs and Walkers from Ground Zero Games. But then... I caved in and did some online shopping...

Now, 2 years later, it's all gone SF mad!

There are now two full pages and loads of photos of this stuff being painted and fully finished for you to browse on this website.

Of course, I have no rules yet but with Salute! coming up I think I will be investing in Horizon Wars (the new Osprey set), and possibly probably FWC as well.

28mm Perry Medievals painted and based for ADLG

A rash yet planned purchase of Medieval stuff at Warfare last year finally makes it onto this site in its  painted glory, ready for a 25mm ADLG competition that hasn't even been scheduled to take place yet.

See how the plastic figures shape up in a line of longbows and a crescent of crossbows...

Burton Doubles 2016 - the Multimedia Extravaganza!

Burton, a classic and historic venue ... the ideal setting for a video and audio online multi-platform interactive assault on common sense and common decency as Madaxeman.com launches a PODCAST... and a VIDEO PODCAST to supplement the match reports!!

See (and hear) how the Triumverate Roman & Jewish army fared against the Romano-British & Patricians, 3K Chinese & Hsiung Nu, Armenians & Romans and Parthians (Elemayan) & Hatrenes in 4 separate fully detailed ADLG match reports!

Or, you can just read the damned things on the web just like in the olden days ...

El Kraken added to the 28mm manufacturers directory

Spanish company and authors of the Tercio rules, El Kraken (gotta love the name...) have been added to the 28mm Renaissance manufacturers directory whilst I fight with myself not to invest in their kickstarter on the basis that I already have far too many 28mm TYW troops...

They also very kindly sent me a copy of their Tercio rules some months ago, but unfortunately life has gotten in the way of me even getting around to reading them - so one day you might find a review on this site too!

L'Art de la Guerre Index Page now set up

With an ever-increasing amount of L'Art de la Guerre content now appearing on this and other sites, I've set up an ADLG Index page on Madaxeman.com to pull together all of the L'Art de la Guerre content into one place.

This page has all of the links to battle reports, ADLG resources across the web, places where you can buy the rules and also links to the ADLG Wiki which is slowly growing on this site as well.

Internationally these rules are now well embedded in the competition community across France, Belgium, Spain The USA and have a growing following in the UK and Italy, with some dabbling elsewhere such as Australia and Greece. As of today it's therefore entirely possible that ADLG is the most widely played Ancients competition ruleset in the world right now, with (as of 12/3/16) 276 players in the International Rankings as having played this year, plus another 70-odd who have played at events in the UK

The link for this page now forms part of the main site menu in the site header too.

Enjoy!

Hairy Beasts in Deepest Bristol ...

Gertfaux, on the industrial outskirts of Bristol at Bristol Independent Gaming has seen my first ever Malifaux tournament just one year ago... and now I was back with Marcus, the King of the Jungle for a second year of Malifaux.

See how Marcus and the Beasts do against all comers in 4 short but sweet(corn) battle reports followed by Steampunk Hannibal in the analysis chair...

Save the Wales! Battle reports from Godendag 2016

All the way from Godendag 2016 comes 4 brand new L'Art de la Guerre in-depth reports, with the usual photos, the slightly less usual battle maps and the unfortunately verbose many thousands of words.

This is the first ever ADLG Doubles competition in history, and sees a combined Condotta and French heavy metal army go toe to toe against a range of proper medieval opponents.

Will it be a wonderful fusion of French & Italian cooking? ...or will it leave a bad taste in your mouth..?  Read on to find out more....!

Naismith & Roundway under new ownership

It appears that one of the classic "true 15mm" manufacturers is now under new ownership, with Naismith / Roundway being bought from Navwar and now running independently - and with a proper web ordering facility too!

Whilst I'll no doubt miss the sporadic trip to a particularly unlikely and grimy part of NE London every few years, its good to see these extensive ranges back in full 21st Century distribution.

I've updated the Renaissance, Ancients and Napoleonic listings accordingly.

Painting Snowstorm

He's a big hairy Wendigo, trapped next to a Silent One.. and is sort of pivotal in many Rasputina crews, so me, like many others, have been waiting for this fella to come out in plastic for quite some time. 

This is a walk-through of the challenges of assembling the model, and how I chose to paint him up.

Gentlemen, take your baggage....

In possibly one of the least inspiring posts on this site in quite some time, I have photographed some newly rebased Ancients baggage elements which have been re-done to better suit the L'Art de la Guerre rules.

Click and be both amazed and enthralled in equal measure ...

Rebels & Rioters - a short Malifaux report

A three-game event at Dark Sphere, with all of the supposedly good players off at the Nationals in (un-flooded) York saw me yet again take the only faction I owned, Arcanists, out of the box and onto the table.

Much time has now passed since these games took place, and added to that the difficulty of taking sufficient photos during a game to make a proper narrative without wasting too much time means that the following report may owe much more to creative analysis of the pictures rather than what really happened…

Malifaux - the final Arcanist Crew, Colette and the Showgirls!

The 7th, and final, Arcanist crew has been released in plastic, and I've now painted it up. This involved a bit of innovative basing (for me), some cute use of mini magnets and a lot of flesh coloured paint as Colette and the Showgirls take to the stage for the first time!  

See how they were painted, assembled and based in this painting walkthrough 

The Great British Bacon-Off

We're back to FoGR and some more Renaissance action as the Early Danish Army sizzles its way in several extremely bold, and a number of even rasher (see what I did there?) battles at Warfare 2015.

The army attempts to contest the leaderboard and emulate last years victory with a series of unfashionable Reiter units and some well-stuffed pikemen. Is the bacon worth the slicing - time for you to decide in these 4 battle reports

ADLG in London - 3 Reports with Hannibal in command

The inaugural Central London ADLG 1-dayer saw Hannibal commanding the Carthaginians in 3 games of L'Art de la Guerre, against the forces of India, Rome and Macedonia.

See how Hannibal fared in three fully-photographed match reports, including the usual mix of rules hints and explanations, dubious captions and withering post-game analysis from Monty Hannibal, Pirate Hannibal and Viking Hannibal

28mm Perry Longbowmen - with added Stakes!

At Warfare this year I had decided to jump into buying a L'Art de la Guerre army in 28mm, with the typical thought that adding around 5 boxes of multipart plastic self assembly infantry would be an easy way to expand my existing long-unfinished Swiss pikemen into a series of other morphable medieval armies.

That saw a purchase of Perry plastics and then, of course, a spot of the same stuff, largely built and mostly painted but unbased on the bring and buy. So I ended up with twice as much as I needed.

However, it did mean some of them got based up really quickly! I also had the time to play around with making some magnetised stakes, allowing them to be used with or without the stakes.

Instructions on how to do this, more photos, and links to buy the magnets are in this article

Results from Central London inaugural ADLG event now online

This was the first (of hopefully many) 1-day Central London L'Art de la Guerre competitions, covering the Classical period in 15mm, and the results are now online.

With a turnout of 26 players, split fairly evenly between Central London and the Rest of the World (i.e. mostly SELWG) a good time, and a good curry, was had by all. Many people had played less than half a dozen, or in some cases even less games of ADLG, but the rules flowed quickly, and there were very few umpire calls, all of which could be resolved by a quick (but polite) dose of RTFM !!

The range of armies in the competition was unsurprisingly weighted towards the Classical standards, of Alexandrian, Seleucid, Successor and a handful of Romans. All games were played at 200 points, with a 2 & 1/4 hour duration.

Round one featured 13 games and 6 decisive results, after which a fairly solid Swiss pairing (a few SELWG/SELWG and London/London pairings were manually adjusted out in mid table) saw 9 decisive results in the time allowed. Round 3, again pretty close to pure Swiss, saw 7 decisive results out of 13.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, with even people who had only played 1-2 games before (and at least a couple who hadn't entered a competition before either) of picking up the pace and the rules very quickly.

Scoring was done using a marginally simplified version of the French system, with the scoresheet being made available on the BHGS rankings page for download. It's a tad over-complicated, but it does mean that the basic "3 points for a win" mechanic inherent in the French system is maintained without having to add a "goal difference" secondary score, which would make running events through most competition-running software systems rather tricky.

Onwards and upwards for ADLG!

15mm Ancients - ADLG resurrects the painting urge..

Having become increasingly enamoured of ADLG, I finally got around to buying and painting up some proper Carthaginian cavalry and elephants recently, have fudged both types with dubious Greek proxies and morphs for pretty much the best part of, erm, mumble mumble years.

The 200 point format of ADLG means you have an army with just 20-25 elements (around 35-40 bases in old DBX/FoG money, with infantry being 2-bases and cavalry, elephants and psiloi being singles), so adding an odd element here or there to an existing army is a simple way to tart it up a bit.
The pictures of both are now included in the 15mm gallery - sadly Corvus Belli are no longer being produced, but I think that Martin at Vexillia still has a handful of the elephants on sale.

Both will be making an appearance this weekend at a 24-player ADLG event at Central London - how long they will appear for in the battle reports is an entirely different question!.

Welcome to Croydon

In yet another impressive addition to my globetrotting gaming career, Croydon is added to the roll call of infamy in a 4-round fixed master Malifaux tournament.

Being in too much of a hurry to try and play the game to manage to remember to take a full set of photos, there are nevertheless some vaguely amusing captions here, and the beginnings of some analysis as well. A first for everything...

See how the Spider Man did in the reports

28mm FoGR Reports from Derby 2015

Marvel at the size of their pikestaffs, and be amazed at the innovative use of crewmen along with their battalion gunnes as the Catholic TYW Germans attempt to mask their true emissions and bravely soldier on against all comers, real and imaginary, in a series of four fully-loaded 28mm FoGR battle reports from the 2015 Derby Convention

Read the battle reports here!

Random dents in the painting pile

Following on from my "shame myself" post about my rather eclectic lead pile, I've actually gotten off of Facebook, Yahoo Groups and every forum going and started painting some stuff again.

The rather random mix of "done" is presented for you here:

Here are a couple of sadly now discontinued elephants from Corvus Belli. My "Greek and Roman" elephants from Essex had gotten a bit aged and sad, and so when these came up at a fire-sale discount a year or so ago I jumped in to pick some up. Their predecessors may well be on sale in the Bring and Buy at Warfare I suspect...

A simple paint job, dry-brushing over black

I also picked up two Carthaginian elephants without howdahs - having never really had any like this before other than the odd one from Xyston, which is now a Generals element

And now for something totally different - a load of baggage and cargo, for obstacles for Malifaux to make my town look a little more lived-in

This is a mix of bits of barricade and luggage from Andy at Ainsty Castings and others. Some are multi-item castings, but at the back I have glued a few individual boxes together as well.

All of these should be clickable as larger photos