Madaxeman's Wargames Blog

Burton Doubles - 4 ADLG Battle Reports

Returning to the Burton Doubles in the Land of Beer after a few years away:

Having missed Burton for a few editions, a theme which gave me an opportunity to wheel out my newly painted Nikephorian Byzantines plus the refurbishment of the Premier Inn across the road from the venue was all the impetus Adam and I needed to decide to yet again get the beers in and make a trip up to the Midlands in the unseasonal spring sunshine earlier this year.

The 4 battle reports of the games where the Nikephorians faced Abbasids, Justinian Byzantines, Silla Koreans and another Nikephorian army are now all available in video format as part of a YouTube Playlist, or individually on this website.

First posted on 15 May 2026 | 12:29 pm

Victrix Spanish - 28mm Roman-era warriors

The Republican Roman army I built a couple of years ago using mostly Foundry legionaries has always been whingeing away in its Really Useful Box asking me to get it some more interesting and colourful subject, mercenary and allied troops.. 

..and, amazingly, a few sprues of Victrix Spanish warriors somehow found their way into my eBay basket and voila, the Romans have some Iberian mercenaries!

I then painted over most of these "contrast" base coats with block colours, leaving the folds in the tunics as the lowlights - the contrast all bleed slightly into the top layers (not as much as the ArmyPainter first generation of these paints did though!) which also helps soften the distinction between shading and block colours.

The pens have a "felt tip" nib that is fairly broad even though it comes to a point, so they actually worked quite well on these figures as the nib is way too big to go into the creases of the tunics, leaving the darker underlights (?) pretty much intact whilst skimming over the topmost layers.

The white in particular needed a few coats and run-overs with the pen to get decent coverage, with the yellow having more opacity but still needing a couple of goes. 

Annoyingly I managed somehow to break one of the spears, and also one of the swords when I was taking them outside to spray varnish (both in the back row). These have - as is usual with Victrix - very thin spears, and there will be casualties, such that I'm not even sure I will repair these two as it's very hard to see unless I point it out!  

The pens are sadly not sharp enough to do the patterns on the tunics, so those had to be done with a regular brush and paint - I managed to do the "darker narrow inner, lighter wider outer" type of stripes on some of the tunics, and got two narrow stripes on others.

They (of course) have LBMS transfers, which I found fitted really well for these figures. I painted the edges of the shields with ArmyPainter Enchanted Steel and/or Fanatic Bronze before applying the transfers, with the Enchanted Steel in particular being very flow-ey (..?) so it just runs nicely into the edges of the embossed edges and bosses to save on the need for all that much blacklining and infilling later on after the transfers are on. 

You can just about see a bit of proper blacklining on some of these shields, but as I've said before, these  transfers seem to fit absolutely perfectly on this set.

I now have 3 bases of swordsmen/javelineers to fight alongside my Roman Legions. 

Frankly I'm astonished how good these look - even if I say so myself! 

There are also a couple of javelin armed skirmishers, as the sprues I had seemed to make up 20 figures somehow - seems like an odd number, but hey! 

 

No LBMS transfers for these shields on the sheet though ! 

Here they are next to my Foundry "Classic Legionaries" 

They are a bit taller, but nothing to worry about at all on the tabletop. 

And here is a Nauk Nauk animation of the guys in action !

First posted on 11 May 2026 | 11:49 am

We're back.. and we have News!

 A midweek, mid afternoon podcast assembly stagger even deeper into 2026 with an astonishing 2nd podcast of the Spring to tempt your earlobes in this time where knee-deep pollen is coating the UK in a Vallejo-challenging yellow blanket.

There is discussion of what's been on the painting table for us all, the pro's and con's of stripping a bunch of angry  Scotsmen, what is white paint called when it's not white and comes from a pen, is "decent food" at a gaming centre an oxymoron, and whether there is an equivalent to the Merlin app to allow us all to decipher which wargamer is which, simply from the sound of their distant whingeing about bad dice.

Andy's Quiz also returns with a Knopfler-esque "Dire Straits" themed episode - but, fresh from the Barcelona "it's more than a rumour" mill, Grandpa Dave brings us news direct from El Kreator himself that a v5 of ADLG has now reached slightly beyond "vague thought on some future to-do list" to now stand at the "twinkle in El Kreator's eye" stage.. 

..which of course prompts us all to have a good old chunter about what things (as well as folding in the FAQ - of course..) we might look for in the next, still quite-some-way-off edition of L'Art de la Guerre.

What do you think of that..! 

Access the Podcast here on Podbean, or through your usual podcast provider

First posted on 5 May 2026 | 9:06 pm

A few bits of Korean stuff, in 1:1 scale

 A recent holiday saw me passing through Seoul for a few days, where I was fortunate enough to stumble across some "ancient & medieval" Korean stuff along the way - and here it is 

(If you are reading this on the front page of my site, you'll need to click through to the article on the Blogger site using that link to see the videos)! 

This was a demo of Korean swordsmanship (and spearmanship?) take at the top of Namsan Mountain. During the Joseon Dynasty, Namsan was considered a sacred shamanistic site, but is now a lovely scenic park with the Seoul Tower standing atop the central hill.

For the uniform painters out there, this also looked - from a distance - like a good bit of battle planning, however on closer inspection it's actually a manual for organising a royal wedding procession! 

Slightly weirdly there is also this genuine Greek helmet. 

 

The story is that it was awarded to a Korean runner at the first modern-era Athens Olympics, when Korea was under the control of Japan, meaning that the chap was running under a Japanese flag at the time. 

Eventually, after many trials and tribulations, and many years later, he did end up with the "helmet prize" in his hands - which is now seen as a momentous moment in forming the modern Korean national psyche. 

First posted on 4 May 2026 | 8:00 pm

The 100YW English go down South, hunting pasties.

 This year's PAW was themed around 1345: Europe after the Bastards.  1345 was the year of Sir Baldwin Bastard’s death – the year the Bastard family lost their principal seat at Efford, a suburb of Plymouth, so it had local relevance too!

I took the opportunity to use some Perry plastic longbowmen and foot knights in a 100YW army, even though the figures I had were really from the WotR ranges, so rather too late for proper 100YW. 

Either way, the army had no mounted units, and a lot of shooting firepower - and you can now see how it did in these 4, rather belated video battle reports from PAW 2026.

Game 1 - vs The Swiss

First posted on 26 April 2026 | 8:17 pm

SU 25 Frogfoot in 6mm from Pendraken

 The strange combination of having played a bit of team Yankee in 1/300th scale lately, and also needing to get a Pendraken order for MDF bases over their postage threshold saw me picking up a SU25 Frogfoot model in 1/300th scale from their "Raiden" aircraft range. 

 

Amazingly this seems to have worked, with a base coat of Army Painter Fanatic Barren Dune followed by a wash of Army Painter Dark Tone, and then a sort-of drybrush / "picking out the details" combination approach to turn the whole thing sandy coloured whilst leaving the wash to pick out the excellent and sharp detail on this little model.

I then used a couple of WW2 German tank cammo Vallejo colours to conjure up the rest of the 4-tone cammo scheme for the jet, and found some tiny stickers in the bits box to add the red stars.

 

The diamond on the tail fin is just made up - I had a set of Desert Rats transfers in the bits box, so it's actually a WW2 British tank identification marking turned through 45 degrees, which I think looks OK (unless I tell you what it actually is..!). 

 

 A simple but effective paint job on a small but very nice model. 

First posted on 22 April 2026 | 9:31 pm