Medieval Hungarians - an army from Essex !

After finishing the 10mm French and the 28mm Assyrians, the next Lockdown project has been a 15mm Essex Ready Made Medieval Hungarian army. 

It was sold as a FoGAM army, but with a bit of a squint has more than enough troops to give me all the options and more for both a Feudal and Medieval Hungarian ADLG list. 

With extra time in Lockdown I also took this as an opportunity to take more time than I usually do in painting the army, and especially to try and do the horses properly, in a process which is fully explained on the website (and is very simple). 

I also experimented with a new, higher resolution printer we now have at home, and found a load of images for shields on the web, printed them out onto normal paper and glued them onto the shields of the figures to make them a lot better than I could ever hope to paint.

I also upcycled some old figures and added new shield graphics to them as well. In the absence of LBMS transfers for this army it seemed to go OK. I've posted the WiP and lots of photos of the finished figures on a couple of pages on Madaxeman.com, including a link to download a PDF of some of the shield graphics I used

There's still a few more spearmen to come, but the bulk of the army is now online.

Lockdown Podcast #11

In another surprisingly lengthy podcast the full team celebrate being back together with a conversation that covers all bases, as well as a few associated basing materials.   

Topics addressed in almost painstaking detail include;

• whether ink is just watered down paint with a better PR, 
• if starting a new period by painting the terrain before the figures is a crime against nature, 
• whether if ArmyPainter is good enough for goblins does that mean it's also good enough for the legions of Rome, 
• how long can anyone talk about an army who's uniforms are all white, 
• definitive proof that Eddy Izzard is actually talented at that comedy malarkey, 
• is the choice to paint horses or riders first the wargamers equivalent of the age-old "clotted cream / jam" debate, 
• how invading Egypt might be the ideal way to take a war to the British, 

...and - of course, a timely reminder of the poetic genius of Eric Morcecambe. 

There is also a discussion about that perennial under-achieving arab army, the Fatimid Egyptians in ADLG, another set of questions in Andy's Quiz, and the second triumphant week of Teaching Timmy about Napoleon.

As usual the Podcast is published on Podbean, and is syndicated to all of your favourite Podcast platforms 

Lockdown Podcast #10

With a frightening lurch into double figures (or a proper round dozen if paintbrushes and glue are your thing) the Lockdown team from Madaxeman.com are back yet again with the weekly soundtrack to a weekend of painting and avoiding household chores. 

As usual the podcast is available on Podbean, iTunes, Spotify and YouTube as well as other platforms where you find your pods.

Hot topics for tepid discussion this week include whether the best yellow paint is in fact Plague Brown, the Tau of Fire Hydrant Numerology, whether there was an aftermarket for refitting Egyptian chariots with go faster stripes and pumping stereos, how posh would a Samurai leader need to be in order to qualify for a self flushing toilet, whether Sisyphus would have been daft enough to start painting 28 bases of horses and how many arms per man do you need to make Fireforge's box of Mongol infantry.

The regular feature on ADLG List Building this week covers the Nikephorian Byzantines (in all its various modes of spelling), Andy's Quiz of course returns to help us all disco-down into the weekend, we talk in more depth about playing actual games on Tabletop Simulator, and a new feature is born in the shape (and theme tune) of Teaching Timmy About Napoleon, an idiot's guide to the Napoleonic Wars

Giving Bataille Empire a Go in The Garden

Having spent ages in Lockdown painting my 10mm Napoleonic French army, I have been keen to give the Bataille Empire rules a bit of a go. 

The rules have a beginners scenario, with two smallish equal forces attacking each other across simple terrain which is intended to give players a chance to learn the basics of movement and combat before moving onto bigger games and adding the all-important "orders" layer to the game - so this was what I attempted to do one sunny weekend afternoon last week.

The game was set up on a standard ADLG 80-120 mat, and I used 30mm MU move distances using some sticks I'd made from 30mm electrical spacers.

All in all I'm pleased to report that the mechanics flowed pretty clearly and allowed me to push lead around without too much head-scratching, to roll some dice and generate some outcomes.

This was my very first time shoving Napoleonic lead around at all, so I mostly learnt that there is more to this lark than Ancients with more complicated uniforms - it's certainly a very different feel, with different mechanics built on the same fundamental D6-based engine as ADLG. All in all an encouraging start and proof that my 10mm painting frenzy has not been wasted. 

The full photogenic rules walk-through is now online 

Lockdown Podcast #9

As the landmark of a double-figure number of Lockdown Podcast Episodes rapidly approaches, and with almost 1,400 Podcast downloads in the last month under our belts the 9th Lockdown Podcast is now out on Podbean, iTunes, Spotify and (soon) the Madaxeman Youtube Channel. 

This week the team of intrepid wannabe gamers and by-now-obsessive painters luxuriate yet again in the riches of a combined painting queue that stretches all the way from the pyramids of Ancient Egypt to the tower stacks of Mega City One.

In the fleeting moments of the podcast that take place before we reach Andy's Quiz Music a wide variety of debates take place - the best board games for feuding siblings, using the type of garden feature which would raise eyebrows in a parliamentary expenses committee for tabletop terrain, genetic similarities between Vikings and Saxons, whether treatments for 10mm addiction could be made available on the NHS, how to sneak lead through domestic customs inspections, and in a newly trimmed version of the ADLG list discussion we all take a vote on who we think would win in a Jurchen Ch'in-Jurchen Ch'in face-off (hint - the Song Chinese always come off worst...).

There's also a whole load of discussion about how Tabletop Simulator (available on Steam) might actually be the solution we all didn't realise we were looking for to get some (virtual) lead on a (virtual) table in the near future - all of which gets crammed in before Andy's Quiz. 

(I promise I'll have some actual picture-led painting and gaming stuff out this weekend as well!)