Horizon Wars!!!

Yes, Osprey's new "skirmish+" scale Sci Fi rules have finally proved to be the justification for all of the mad mini-mechs and stuff you will have seen creeping, scuttling and hovering onto this website in recent months with no real purpose.

As classic wargamers, the first on-table test of the rules involved bespoke terrain, and far too many figures and pieces to be sensible - but hey, what's a tentacle between friends eh?

This 1-page match report features hordes of pictures, legions of inappropriate video clips, some rules hints and a little bit of a glowing review at the end (and a glowing nuclear reactor in the middle too).

It also features snippets of back-story embedded throughout the report - something not really previously necessary in historical gaming reports!

See how the battle-bots do in the first of what may well be several more outings for the SF wonderkids in Horizon Wars, The Beginning

Post Industrial Decay & Fruit Based Drinks – Madaxeman.com plays ADLG at The 2016 Worlds

“The Worlds” – not the one in Derby, but the global historical multi-ruleset gaming tournament that traces its’ lineage back over a decade and which now was occurring up in its’ most glamorous location ever – Charleroi in Belgium.

This year an intrepid team of Central Londoners made the hazardous journey into post-Brexit Europe by trains, planes and automobiles to take on the world in the biggest and most multi-national competition at this year’s event – L’Art de la Guerre, featuring almost 50 players drawn from France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the USA (and us...).

In 6 lavishly (or should that be laddishly?) illustrated match reports you can be astounded by the local architecture, amazed by the quality of painting of the opposition’s troops, puzzled by the near-complete absence of success for the 15mm Condotta army list that did do well in their previous 25mm outing at Devizes, and enlightened by the usual flurry of ADLG hints, rules explanations and insights.

With over 10,000 words, and opponents ranging from as far afield as Han China to as close as a Condotta civil war, these 6 perfectly formed match reports make compelling and convincing reading for anyone considering ADLG, especially those looking for evidence that a game with around 35 DBx bases per side has enough variety in list composition, tactics and general play style to offer repeated playability.

At the end of each report Hannibal is quite rude about my tactics (as usual), a few of the speech bubbles have swearing in them as well (which always goes down well on Frothers), and there is even multimedia accompaniment in the form of a post-event Madaxeman.com Podcast for you to download and listen to whilst painting your next army!

Read on to see how the Condotta did in teeny tiny 15mm scale playing The Worlds Most Popular Competition-grade Ancients Ruleset - ADLG at The Worlds 2016.

The Sassanids are Coming!

For what might well be the first time in almost a decade I've just ordered myself a whole "new" 15mm Ancients army - Sassanid Persian - for ADLG.

To be honest I thought for a short while about just getting some Levy Spearmen, as I have plenty of "Arab" cavalry who could do service as Clibanarii at a pinch, as well as generic Light Horse and Light Infantry, and even some elephants who could be re-crewed easily enough... but a combination of really, really wanting some figures in those a-historical lightbulb hats, and the fact you can cook up an ADLG army in far fewer figures than it takes for FoG made me decide that now was the time to add one of the few truly distinctive armies to the collection. Having said that, I'll be recycling my Greek/Makedonian Cataphracts, or possible the Tibetans ones and also some of the other LF with javelins from other armies. Why go too crazy...?

The shopping list I was working to was based on being able to copy the lists currently in the ADLG Wiki (plus a bit more), which came out as about 8 bases of Clibanarii, 3 Elephants, 4 bases of Levy (going with 7 figures to a base so they can be 2 ranks of spears or 1 of Mob),  a couple of bases each of LH with Bows and Javelins and 3 Generals. So, a whole new army in about 20 bases!

After a bit of searching I have decided to go with 3 main manufacturers:

• Legio Heroica for most of the Clibanarii, Generals, and some LH and LF
• Irregular Miniatures for the Levy, the LH with Javelins and some different Generals
• Donnington, for the Elephants

I did also toy with the idea of Lurkio and Eureka as well but that would have involved splitting the order into too many small chunks - and also there is a finite amount I'm prepared to pay for Levy Spearmen figures, which Eureka, nice as they are, somewhat exceeded!

The orders are now all in, and hopefully the figures will be back and ready for priming in early October (after Derby when I pick up the Elephants from Donnington).

Painting progress will be reported here...