Madaxeman's Wargames Blog

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

Dipping into Early Medieval Cavalry

 Another tidy-up project to be completed recently has been to dip (using the fantastic, non-smelly Biostrip 2.0 - which you can buy on Amazon UK using that affiliate link) and repaint some rather tatty Mirliton  (mostly) medieval lancers which I've had since winning them at a competition in Rome and then taking them to a competition Greece some 300 years ago. 

With the ability to print off waterslide transfers to supplement my rather basic shield design painting skills now a firm part of my repertoire, re-doing these cavalry will hopefully allow me to think about retiring some rather chunky 3D printed Early Medieval lancers that were one of my earliest 3D print purchasing experiments as well.

First posted on 17 April 2026 | 9:11 pm

Forged in Battle Palmyrans - on printed horses!

 A trawl through the bits box recently unearthed a large number of riderless horses, and an almost-equal number of horseless riders... so what else to do other than cobble together some Frankenstein-like mixups of stuff I had clearly decided not to bother painting at some point in the past! 

Leading the way were these 6 FiB riders, which a bit of detective work revealed were from their Palmyran range. 

To be honest they are so generic that they went into my "Roman" drawer, and may appear as Romans, Palmyrans, Byzantines or anything else with a uniform look and a javelin in hand. 

In my current spirit of trying different painting techniques I've also done some very unsubtle "highlighting" on the blue cloaks to try and give them a "works at tabletop distances but looks weird close up" style...  and I think I've certainly nailed at least 50% of that target with these guys! 

First posted on 10 April 2026 | 9:00 pm