Anglo-Irish Sardine Fiesta!

Once again the team based highlight of the global ADLG year comes around, with yet another trip to the tile-clad temperate oasis of sardines and port, Lisbon ! 

After a stunning bout of mid table mediocrity last year, the same 4-person Anglo-Irish team had been reassembled for another go at joining in the 100-strong contingent of ADLG players from around the world all congregating in Lisbon's Military Museum on the banks of the Mighty Tagus for the second September in a row - although this time we had shuffled the pack a little and all 4 of us had swapped themes around.

This saw me occupy the Dark Ages & Early Feudal slot, allowing me to use Feudal Anglo-Irish, featuring a load of figures that had't really been put on table before, but most importantly was the only Anglo-Irish list available! 

Read on to find out how this eclectic collection of Norman feudal knights, javelin-throwing Irish Kerns, English colonist yeomen with spears and longbows, Ostmen descended from Viking stock, and an allied contingent of axe-weilding Irish warriers fared in all 5 games from Lisbon 2023

You will find all the usual nonsense, as well as unique post-match commentary from Hannibal and the Anglo Irish Commander, who turns out to have been a rather strange hybrid of the very Irish Father Jack (from Father Ted) and the very English Jeeves (of PG Wodehouse fame). 

Roman Army Museum & the Vindolanda Fort

 The final tranche of photos from the epic trip to (and from) the Sighian Dubh competition in Irvine are now up and posted on this website, and feature a run-through of some of the key Hadrians Wall-adjacent history sites in the north of England

In plain english that means the Roman Army History Museum, and the nearby Vindolanda archeological site and museum on the northern border of the Roman Empire.

All of the photos we took are online on my website here , but hhere is a small smattering of them as well to give you a taster of the site.

You've already seen the "How big is that ballista" photos, so now is a chance to immerse yourself in the rest of Rome's northern border's history !

Painting 28mm Successors from Victrix: The Light Troops

I've finally managed to get some of the 28mm Victrix Successors I previewed in a half-painted state a few weeks ago finished, and into the light box for some professional-grade (ahem) photos. 

The context to this is that I'm building my first ever Successor/Alexandrian 28mm army, and so with a huge range of troops to choose from in Successor armies I didn't want to do my usual "try and make and spray the whole army in one go" thing, but instead break the task down into manageable chunks that I could stay motivated to complete - hence deciding to start with the "light" troops

That ended up meaning that my first (OK second - I have completed and taken photos of some test bases before now) batch of figures for this army ended up being Light Infantry, Javelinmen, Peltasts and a couple of bases of Galatian crazy heavy infantry (because, well, they are really cool figures.)

And, the results are now in, with this smattering of photos plus a whole lot more on the website :

The Successor painting page on the website has all of these and more, as well as some commentary on how I approached painting them in a "Contrast-plus" style.

RAF Cosford Museum: The Photos

The drive from London up to Irvine for the recent ADLG event was way too long to attempt in a singel day, so Dave from the Podcast and I headed out on Thursday evening after work, stopping just north of Birmingham (in Ironbridge) overnight to break up the journey.

Ironbridge is also - rather conveniently - very close indeed to RAF Cosford, the Midlands branch of the RAF Museum, and a place I'd long had on my to-visit military museums list.

So, after a hearty breakfast it was time to hit the halls for some aircraft (and Cold War AFV) action, the full results of which are now all online in the RAF Cosford section of my Museums Gallery pages. 

Here's a brief taster of some of the highlights:

The near legendary TSR-2, the great "what if" of British post war military aviation 

This Ju88 "defected" to England during WW2

The museum is the only one in the world with all 3 V-bombers on display

Yes, there are some tanks too...

Best way to display a Lightning - going straight up!

If you thought your wargames cupboard was disorganised....

This is actually an Airfix plastic kit in 1:1 scale from the BBC Richard May series!

 The museum website can be found here