::Madaxeman's Wargaming Site::

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This page has all the latest content from Madaxeman.com. You can also here. You can use the Links button in the menu above to navigate the full site, however some of the most popular pages are listed here

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15mm Ancients Manufacturer Directory, with pictures, or without: full details of each manufacturer, interactive voting in a quality rating system.

Full 15mm Renaissance Manufacturers listing: details of ranges, links to sites, ordering info and a chance to vote on which you think is best.

15mm Napoleonic Suppliers Directory: Buy enough troops to become the new Napoleon!

28mm Renaissance Suppliers Directory: From the end of Medieval warfare to the WSS, in big boys toys scale

Malifaux on Madaxeman.com: Painting, game reports, auction listings.

Hannibal thinks you'll like this page too:

1/300th Modern Helicopters : from Germany, America and Russia, all painted, and with rotor discs

(A classic random link from Madaxeman.com)

Museums and Shows - tanks, aircraft and military vehicles from museums around the globe.

A 20mm Modern Figure Manufacturers listing: ranges carried, site links, and online rating system.

10mm ACW Manufacturers Directory: Links to their sites and an online rating system as well.

The ADLG Index & Wiki - Match reports, painting guides, tactical tips and army lists for ADLG.

The FoG Ancients Wiki - Figure advice, Tactical tips, History, Book recommendations and army lists for every FoG army under V1

The FoG Renaissance Wiki - just like the Ancients wiki, but more, well, modern.

28mm ECW Figures - lots of pictures of Warlord Games and other 28mm figures, all done with ArmyPainter Quickshade;

1/300th Moderns for Cold War Commander - dozens of tank and AFVs, with a painting and basing guides

10mm WW2 - Massive Web Resource for 10mm WW2 tanks & figures including a 1000+ picture directory covering every manufacturer. Also loads of pic's of real tanks from military museums.

(These are "affiliate links". If you buy something after clicking on them I get a small kickback from Amazon)

New On Madaxeman.com

5 Jul 2020 at 10:30am

More War & Empire Sassanid Cataphracts

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Painted up at pretty much the same time as the Carolingians are three more units of War & Empire / Forged in Battle Sassanids Cataphracts.

I'd already got 3 units worth, which isn't quite enough for a proper Sassanid army (you kinda need 4 at least I think) so rather than stick with using Roman-style ones, when I saw a pack on eBay for a tenner for 12 mounted figures I dived in and doubled the force.

These chaps have a lot of variety in the pack, and handily come with 13 riders, one of whom is a standard bearer and one an officer/General type with a mace so you can choose whether to have a standard-bearing officer in one of the units or not.

They paint up super-easily, with simple cloaks and just enough variety to keep them interesting.

You can also comfortably get 4 on a 40mm wide base by staggering them slightly front and back

I chose to give just a few of them cloth (or cloth-covered) armour, the rest are in full metal again to get a smidge more colour into the block. What's not to like, especially for just a tenner post-free ?!

1 Jul 2020 at 6:44pm

Baueda Carolingians in 15mm

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Another altrusitic purchase to fund Martin at Vexillia's passion for Warrington Town FC, these 4 units of Carolingian mounted archers are from Baueda.

The ADLG Carolingian list only has 2 units of them, but with 4 figures in a pack and 3 to a base I kinda thought why not just but the extra pack and get 4 units in case...erm.... well, you know how it goes !

They are jolly little fellows, very much "true" 15mm with just two poses in the pack (Code: CRL5) and come with separate horse and rider.

In the metal the figures are a little underwhelming, and look somewhat oddly proportioned but the detail is - like with most Baueda figures - really clearly defined and takes a wash extremely well.

They also have a really great "likability" factor (as saying "they are cute" doesn't really sound right for mail-clad medieval warriors on horseback) and I must admit the thought of extending this to a whole army rather than just morphing some of my genric Dark Age horsemen for the rest of the figures is now quite tempting.

The Bauea site says that "These Frankish horse archers are based on the capitularies' insistance that each armoured horsemen should own a bow and on contemporary artistic depictions. Their training, experience, weapons, armour and equipment are the same as the other caballarii, but with the addition of a bow."

They are now in the 15mm photo gallery on Madaxeman.com

28 Jun 2020 at 7:58pm

The return of the Malifaux Painting Mojo

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In a world of lockdown painting in which I'd already done a 28mm Ancients army (the Assyrians), a 10mm French Napoleonic army and also a 15mm Medieval Hungarian, I suddenly found myself in need of some additional variety

This was not because the other three were in any way similar topics, or uniforms - it was more about trying to paint individual figures rather than painting up and finishing a full army, with a 'full army' on table mass effect.

Prompted in the Lockdown Podcast to remember that I did have some Malifaux figures on the painting pile (although rather hidden in a cupboard) I dug them out and was pleasantly surprised to remember that there were more than I thought - I had forgotten buying Envy, from the Crossroads Seven, from eBay to add to the box-completing extras for the new Kaeris crew, Sparks (my first Gremlin) to go with Mei Feng and finally Neil Henry just to do some old fashioned beating

There are loads of pictures on the website, but here are a few tasters:

26 Jun 2020 at 5:22pm

The Lockdown Specials - Part 14

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The Lockdown Specials - Part 14 is now out as we reach 99 days into the UK Lockdown and our tsunami of mixed-quality painting continues to roll on and on across seven different desks spread far and wide across the Southern half of England, and yet again this is your chance to share that experience in full stereophonic audio quality.

In this week's episode there is a vague attempt made to answer the questions posed in this exact same block of text last week but which last week's podcast failed to even mention, the many questions that the subject of badgers always throws up are debated in probably the most thorough way ever seen on any wargaming-specific podcast, the Later Ottoman army gets picked apart in both it's Serbian and non-Serbian incarnations, and Andy's Quiz returns yet again.

Other topics given a 99-day airing include what the best paint schemes are for burger bars, whether Napoleon ever got irritated with the Austrians always suing for peace after he beat them, which blue is best for painting denim, what is the correct way to pronounce your own name in a Swiss bowling alley, is there a way out of existential Janissary angst, what's the correct payment-in-kind for a 3 hour truck ride across Alabama, just how big is Steve from LBMS' house, and whether Ancient British baggage now needs to include an underground bypass for your own personal 15mm A303.

25 Jun 2020 at 11:47pm

A kinda, sorta, virtual match report ...

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Before you ask, I am slowly working through the match reports from March this year from Cold Wars. Unfortunately the lighting in the venue on the first day was rather poor so the pictures are taking a while to fix up which has been slowing me down - but in the meantime I have managed to record a game of ADLG online played with Tabletop Simulator software, and cobble it together into a sort of video match report.

I've sped up the game and posted it online in this video on the Madaxeman Youtube Channel so you don't have to sit through the whole thing - the end result is compressed into a smidge over 10 minutes. I also then dubbed in my own commentary on what I was hoping to achieve, and what actually happened.

The battle featured me using Alexanders army (rather rustily it must be said) vs an Achaemenid Persian force commanded from Barcelona. Somewhat irritatingly the software I was using to record the game had a setting which stopped the recording at the 2-hour mark, just short of the (really exciting!) last couple of bounds, but you still get most of the whole game in around 10 minutes.

Tabletop Simulator is a "physics engine" (so, no rules, just moveable pieces) that you can buy in Steam. The armies and tables are (sort of) downloadable content that you can get in the Steam Workshop from Helveticus and Massimo, and then use to build and import an army list and tabletop into the game.

21 Jun 2020 at 4:20pm

Podcats #12 and #13

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If you're already a subscriber via iTunes, Podbean, RSS, or on Spotify or (now) Youtube you'll know tha there have now been 13 episodes of the Lockdown Podcast series, but if you just read the front page of Madaxeman.com (and never glance at the sidebar) you may accidentally have missed the news that episodes #12 and #13 are already out there in the wild.

At the moment the Podcast is consistently drawing something like 150 listeners per week, which is kinda staggering, so why not give it a go and listen in as background banter for your weekend of lockdown painting.

17 Jun 2020 at 3:25pm

Ottoman-Balcan Yaya in 15mm

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The Ottoman-Balcan Yaya from Baueda are some of the oddest figures out there, armed with un;it incendiary javelins - so with the imminent closure of Vexillia I of course needed to help Martin out by buying a packet of them from him to help fund his retirement!

.I made these up as a 6-figure Spear unit and a 2-figure LF javelinmen unit. You can still get them from Baueda directly if you so wish.

15 Jun 2020 at 5:47pm

Hungarian infantry & Archers

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Having finished the Hungarian cavalry (and some of the foot) a week or so ago, the rest of the army pack has crept to the top of the painting pile.

These are the two types of spearmen, as well as some bowmen:

This is EMED41 Hungarian 1300-1450: Heavy Spearmen. They have a squared-off shield that is slightly V-shaped in profile, making it very easy to print off a rectangular image and use it as a shield design. I based these in a defensive block as a visual counterpoint to the other spear figures.

These are EMED40 Hungarian 1300-1450: Heavy Spearman, with an odd-looking notch out of the bottom corner of the shield. This meant picking a design where that bit of the shield could be missing!

All of these are printed out on normal paper, glued on with PVA, cut down to size with a new scalpel blade (very important when trimming these as otherwise the paper can fray), gloss varnished then matt varnished.

Here's the two formations next to each other

And all three units of the 'bastion' deployed spearmen

EMED42 Hungarian 1300-1450: Archers - rather an eclectic mix of figures in this pack, and I ended up painting the padded jackets in brown with sandy stripes to give an impression of the banded padding.