Madaxeman.com Updates

SU 25 Frogfoot in 6mm from Pendraken

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 22 Apr 2026 20:31:00 GMT

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.

Like a lot of my recent painting, I approached this as a bit of an experiment to try and create an effect I'd struggled with in the past - this time to have the etched outlines of the panels on the aircraft visible.

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.

Dipping into Early Medieval Cavalry

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 20:11:00 GMT

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.

Add in some self-printed flags (with the edges all painted of course!) and I am now the owner of some rather bolt and positive-looking, Spanish/Italian-esque Medium Knights, all with admittedly rather eclectic and random heraldry (but who's counting eh?)

Forged in Battle Palmyrans - on printed horses!

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:00:00 GMT

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!

The two horses nearest the camera in this shot are almost certainly Essex "generic" types, but the front 4 are all from the 3D Breed Numidians I painted up a while back, where my eBay purchase contained more horses than riders.

These are some of the nicest horses I think I've seen in 15mm, but they are a tad brittle - so hopefully they can take the weight of the metal Forged in Battle riders!

Rear Supporting Romans

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sat, 4 Apr 2026 19:42:00 GMT

Even though I've been playing ADLG for ages now, I still have, well, "legions" of figures based up for earlier rulesets that are probably never going to see light of day under the ADLG army lists.

Some of my favourite "Roman" figures are the Late/Early Imperial Roman Archers from Donnington's originals ranges - their Imperial Roman archers paint up really nicely, and were much more prevalent in both DBM and FoG armies where units of 8-12 figures flitted across the tabletop, or indeed individual "psiloi" bases acted as rear support in integrated units with legionaries or auxilia.

In ADLG the numbers of Roman skirmishers is much smaller (ish..) in that you get 0-4 units in most Imperial Roman armies, each of which is a single "psiloi" base of two figures... and so there ends up being are a lot of 'spare' ex-FoG and DBM light infantry archers kicking around the streets of Rome looking for gainful employment .. which brings us to Rear Support.

In ADLG the concept of Rear Support also exists, but is generally represented either by having different units of infantry with archers in their second rank (ie having a duplicate legion, some with integral archers on each base, some without... and I may be mad, but I'm not that mad..), or more often than not, by having some marker-bases to show which units have "Rear support" in any given list.

So, after far too long I've finally bitten the bullet and rebased some of these archers to become Rear Support markers.

They are based in pairs on 20x20 to give a decent enough sized marker to e noticable, but to also obviously not be a "base" of Light Infantry.

Some of them are also new figures that I bought recently - yes, despite having planty of spares I decided that I simply had to have some more of the "eastern" ones, seen here at the front.

That's partly as they look really cool, and partly so they can be rear support for my Byzantines as well.

And here they are in action, supporting some Donnington Auxilia and some Old Glory Legionaries

You can find the archers in Donningtons catalogue here.

I Sea Peoples...

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Fri, 27 Mar 2026 19:13:00 GMT

Back in the mists of time a strange unknowable group landed on the shores of a far away land, ready and eager for war...

..but enough of the players at the last edition of the Devonian Classic ADLG event in Brixham, Devon - instead it's now long overdue for me to share some photos and super-abridged battle reports of how my Sea Peoples army did in their 4 battles on the shores of Torbay back at the beginning of last December!

The reports are pretty sketchy I'm afraid, partly as I didn't take many photos, but mainly as a load of real-world stuff happened right after the event finished which prevented me from cracking on with the reports whilst they were still reasonably fresh in my memory.

But anyways, there are some decent photos of Biblical-era troops in battle for you to have a gander at, as well as the army list for my partially-successful Sea Peoples Horde as well, so certainly worth sharing anyways in this post that appears on my website now.

The Sea Peoples' Leader can Sea You Now !

Red Copper Camels Part 3 - How big are they again..?

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:42:00 GMT

The Red Copper 3D printed camels were printed out for me by "In the Navy" Harry at "100%" in the "15mm" scale format they are supplied in - but they do look a tad on the large side, and he has also done some at 90% for me too which are still on the painting table.

I've therefore taken a few shots of them stood next to other 15mm camels I own so you can see whether they look "too big" or not.

In all of these shots there is a caveat that the Red Copper ones are based on MDF + magnabase + a steel base, which I did to give them extra heft and weight.

The other camels will be on either MDF + magnabase, or sometimes even cardboard + magnabase, so will be a smidge lower due to having thinner bases.

Forged in Battle Camelphracts + Red Copper Camelry @ 100% of the 15mm print size

Red Copper and the (venerable) Essex Successor baggage guarding camelry.

This is quite a difference - in height, but also stylistically too.

Red Copper and the newish Museum Baggage Guard camels from their Z range.

Height wise the difference is not too much, but the width and overall style of the figures is very different - but viewed from a tabletop commander's standpoint, perhaps not so obvious really.

Red Copper Camels Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 11:00:00 GMT

The main body of Red Copper camels are these chaps - 3 to a base, hard-charging Arab camelry

As you will see I was even bold enough to try and do some chequered headdresses - although they are not actually "checks", they are just a cross pattern that looks checked at tabletop distances.

As before, the main clothing of the riders is layered duns and creams - Burnt Turf/Barren Dune, Paratrooper Tan/Common Khaki, Urban Buff/Pale Sand, Ivory/White and my trusty Holy White Speedpaint topped off with standard white.

These guys are also glued together into lumps of 3 on each base for extra resilience and integrity, to stop them breaking off at the ankles. It's more visible from the back here, but still hard to spot unless yo uknow you are looking for it

With no obvious Commander in the range I opted for the "He's the one with the blue flowers on his base" approach if one is needed.

The spears are very, very brittle, but fortunatelymost are cast (designed? printed?) very close to the bodies of the riders so its only the sticky-upppy bits that tend to break off (if you so much as look at them in the wrong way)

I have an inkling that my almost-unavoidable desire to use blue as the dominant "non tan" colour comes from the cover of the 1970's edition of Frank Herbert's Dune.

Because of the complexity of the figures, and my ill-informed decision to adopt a multi-later layering paint style on these models they took absolutely ages to finish, and seemed to be a long way from being done for 99% of that time - but in the end, now the epic painting quest is behind me, I'm actually very pleased with the end result.

Red Copper Camels

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sat, 7 Mar 2026 09:00:00 GMT

In my occasional dabbling with 3D printed figures, I've had something of a mixed bag results-wise so far.

There have been the "upscaled too far - but still cute" Etruscans, the "fairly fugly" medieval Knights and the "great but too brittle" Numidians.

Next up on this route march to the future are some Red Copper Arab camels - replacing some very old, and very grim Lancashire Games Mahdist camelry that I've had far, far too long.

These Red Copper figures are really exceptional designs, with a huge amount of detail - the sheer amount of which only really becomes fully apparent when you start to try and paint them and begin to find extra straps, layers, details and bolt-on weaponry that you'd not really spotted in the unpainted prints.

That did mean that my decision to go for a "layering" approach with the paint for the riders (with the camels themselves being done with GW Contrasts) ended up being rather more of a labour of love than I intended - some of these camels have at least 24 different paints applied to them !

Anyways, first up are some Light Camels and Generals, 2 to a base:

I've gone for a fairly muted palette on the robes of the riders, with whites and duns but then adding a splash of colour with the banners, sashes and headgear - and of course the rugs on which the riders all sit.

If you look closely here you will see that every base has the pair of camels connected at some point - or not to put too fine a point on it I made sure to glue their buts together.

This was to make them more resilient, as the camels do have long, spindly legs and the risk of them snapping off seemed that it would be significant - gluing each pair of models together creates one "thing" with 8 legs not 4, in a fairly wide and stable stance that won't bend (and snap) when you pick it up carelessly and squeeze the two individual camels together in the process.

There's about half a dozen poses in the set - no obvious "Commanders" as such, but more than enough to generate variety.

All of the bases are MDF and magnabase with an added layer of steel base sandwiched between the two - this gives them a bit of extra heft which isn't just me being old school, it makes them easier to pick up as they are that little bit heavier, and actually weigh about as much as you expect.

I'll drop some more photos of the main bunch of camels in a few days.

15mm Avar / Sarmatian cavalry being sold on eBay

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 12:28:00 GMT

I'm selling 41 nicely painted and presented Khurasan Miniatures 15mm Avar cavalry armed with a mix of bows and lances, with 4 more Light Horse archers (which I think are Minifigs?) too.

They are listed on eBay with Global Shipping enabled too so you can buy them from anywhere in the world and eBay will ship them to you.

They are all painted, and based up on DBx-standard 40x30mm bases with magnabase on all of them for safe storage in any metal tin or toolbox.

These 41 figures would allow you to make up the DBA army III/13a Avars 553-557AD & 642-826AD, or II/26 Sciracae, Iazyges & Later Rhoxolani Sarmatian 310-375BC , or form the core of a very handy ADLG or DBM army / allied contingent - I think you could also use them as Goths, Huns or any sort of Steppe Nomad types and no-one would blink an eye.

They are based up with a mix of 2, 1 or zero "barded" horses on each base allowing you to easily differentiate between different grades of cavalry in your army list even without even needing to set off down the "different coloured flowered grass tufts" route.

Looking more closely I think a couple of spears have broken off in the many years since I bought and painted these - which isn't too bad out of 37 lancers who've seen reasonable tabletop usage, and I'm sure you can reasily replace them of just hide the pair of guilty geezers in this mass of hard-charging lancers anyway.

These are being sold to make space in my Bisley cabinets as part of my grudging "one-in-one-out" resolution to try and keep a lid on the number of figures that I actually own.

EBay Link is https://ebay.us/m/tZ1aG6

15mm Arab Light Horsemen

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 13:31:00 GMT

My 15mm Arab armies have been chugging along for many years, making do with some Lancashire Games Light Horse Javelinmen from their Sudan / Mahdist range.

They have done sterling service but are not the best figures out there, and also suffer from rather spindly spears and swords, so I have finally decided to replace them with some Forged in Battle Arab cavalry.

These are pretty straightforward figures, typical FiB which take contrast paints very well - especially on the horses - and have robust metal spears (aka arguably a bit too thick but they are very unlikely to break in action)

The pack of 12 (old sizes pre Dec 2025!) had a mix of 6 short spears, 3 commanders and 5 long spear riders plus 12 horses. These are the short spear guys.

And these are the "lancers" with a commander figure too.

I've done most of them with a simple paint job, using contrast paints on the horses, ArmyPainter Leather Speedpaint on the reins (as I find it both works and sort of self-blacklines too).

The white is a white base coat, a layer of Army Painter Holy White, and then normal white paint that leaves bits ofthe Holy White (aka grey wash) visible in places underneath that are folds in the cloth.

All in all an upgrade on my old horsemen, and a simple but effective set of figures for tabletop use.

A test base of 28mm Frankish foot

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 19:24:00 GMT

Having lent my 28mm Patrician Roman army to someone to use at last year's Warfare ADLG event, actually seeing this venerable army on table gave me a pang of nostalgia for what was one of my very first 28mm ancients armies (OK, of my "second wind" of buying and painting 28mm figures anyway).

Having painted up lots more stuff since then I'd sort of convinced myself that these guys were just, well, not all that nice, and a little too overindulged on the "soft tone Army Painter wash" front to make them look overly battle-worn.

The reality on the Farnborough tabletop however was much brighter and nicer than I remembered, with the notable exception of the always-shoehorned-in "gothic" foot I used as Foederate infantry.

These guys were actually Dark Ages Scots from Old Glory - nice enough figures, and perfectly fine playing at being Vikings, Saxons or a lot of other hairy barbarians - but always a bit of a stretch when used as Frankish axemen in a Late Roman army.

With Wargames Atlantic releasing a new "they could be anything" box of Romano-Barbarian warriors around that time I immediately resolved to buy a set and try and paint up some properly "Frankish" infantry to go with my Romans, but using a slightly brighter colour palette (OK, not so much ink wash) to give them a bit more ping.

And these are the results:

The front rank are all Wargames Atlantic figures from their Dark Ages Army Builder set, painted with "Breton" stripey tunics and given a random range of shields and weapons - mostly axes to make them Franks.

All of the stripes have been done with the classic "fat dark line, thinner lighther line" technique using paints from the newish Army Painter Fanatic 6-part triad ranges.

The guys at the back are an odd bunch - picked up from a Warlord stand at a show, they were a blister of "Warlord Resin" figures which I think are mostly from an "SPQR: Dacia & Sarmatia - Dacian Tribesmen with javelins" set, which came with a few slingers as well.

These resin figures came with open hands making it a simple job for me to add in some axes from the Wargames Atlantic sprue (and the bits box) to make them into "Franks"

The shield patterns are also a mix - the "Roman" one is a LBMS transfer on a Gripping Beast plastic shield, whereas the others are waterslide transfers from Battle Flag, which don't quite fit on the Wargames Atlantic round shields but are close enough that with a bit of blending of paint colours and some layers of varnish to seal them in they just about work better than me trying to paint them myself.

Here's a "YouTube Shorts" video of them rotating slowly on a turntable.

All in all I'm pretty happy with them, and I will be painting up a few more bases to ake up a decent sized block of Frankish infantry to fight alongside my long-neglected Late Romans in the coming months.

Looking more specifically at the Wargames Atlantic figures, they are, if truth be told, perhaps a smidge on the bland side when it comes to variety of dynamic poses - and there isn't a huge amount of deeply cut detail on them either. As such, using "proper" layered painting techniques like I did on these ones is very much the way to go I think (rather than relying on washes and Speedpaints).

But, at £30 for 48 perfectly servicable figures, honestly, what's not to like - especially if they can be padded out with some random bits-box purchases from the discount bin at a show too!

Finally.. The Warfare 2025 Battle Reports

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sun, 8 Feb 2026 20:18:00 GMT

Way back in the mists of time, a sort-of newly-minted Numidian army took to the tabletop to try and perform acceptably in a "Late Roman" period in the 15mm ADLG competition at Warfare 2025.

The main aim was to get on table these 3D printed Numidian horsemen who were sadly printed in a resin which made them too brittle to ever take abroad (where they'd need to be held in place in a tin by a layer of foam on top of the figures - which would have broken their javelins).

It was also to use these War & Empire Numidian Imitation Legionaries - again recently painted - and give my venerable and now sadly OOP Numidian Elephants a run out too.

I ended up being the only player to take Numidians - a very good or a very bad sign usually - and faced 3 Late Roman armies, the Ancient Brits and the Bosporans over the course of the weekend.

All 5 batreps are now ready and fully posted, which in a rare doubling-up of effort include both the traditional text & photo versions and also YouTube summaries of the games you can watch after wading through my turgid prose and cheesy speech bubbles in each of the standard reports.

If you just want to dive into the video, you can follow the action in the 6 videos in the Warfare 2025 Playlist on my YouTube Channel as well - the 6th video is a run-through of how I constructued the army list I used.

Oxford One-dayer 2026 - The Lists

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:20:00 GMT

In a possibly unwelcome return to podcast and video-podding, you can now listen to and also watch 6 CLWC players chunter on about their army lists from the recent one-dayer ADLG competition held in Oxford.

The event was themed for Islam’s Eastward Expansion (637 to 751), and so the lists discussed include:

130 Arab Conquest (Dave)
140 Central Asian Turkish (Tim)
179 Hindu Indian (Dave, Richard)
171 Tang Chinese (Gordon, Andy)

The lists are all posted on the ADLG Wiki (which you can visit using the links for each army name above), and there is also a return for Andy's Quiz !

The podcast is available on YouTube with video of us chatting away, and on Podbean in audio only format.

Who Played What - the 2025 Edition

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sat, 20 Dec 2025 14:07:00 GMT

Put down the egg-nog, step away from the mince pie, hold fire on the jingle bells and brace yourself for another vaguely interesting edition of my regular end of year update on competition attendances across a number of widely played Ancients mass-battle rulesets in the UK.

As usual I'll start with (repeating) the ground rules and caveats.

The only thing these numbers measure is attendances at UK “competition” events held during 2025 for which results (or runners and riders) have been published online that I've been able to find and make sense of.

Every ruleset in this list is very good at doing this with most also producing their own annual rankings as an additional reference point to double-check the data. The odd player might be missed (or included) at an individual event, especially where nicknames have been used or if someone dropped out part way through the weekend, but other than that unless any events have somehow been publicised, organised, played and concluded during 2025 without leaving an online footprint of any kind on any of the mainstream forums used by the players of the rulesets concerned (I mean, really...?) it’s a fair bet that every competition that has happened should have been included.

Whilst some players appear in the stats twice because they played two rulesets over the course of the past year this is discounted for the analysis as numbers are too low to impact the main trends. And it's too much work to de-dupe them by name as well !

The final thing to bear in mind is that for most of the rulesets in this analysis the total number of players falls between 30-70, so a car not starting, or the designated driver's daughter getting married on the weekend that 4 clubmates would otherwise have done their “once a year” competition will generate a 5-10% swing in overall player numbers for almost all of these 7 rulesets - so please don't read too much into any single digit, single year variation.

Instead it’s the bigger trends and swings that count, capturing moments in time and adding them together to form a broad-brush picture over the longer term - which is why I have similar stats from the end of 2024, 2023, 2022, 2019, 2018, and 2017.

So with those qualifications out of the way, onto the 2025 data.

Total Player Numbers

(UK based players / UK+Overseas players):

ADLG 174 / 191 (2024: 172/184) (L'Art de la Guerre)
DBA 74 / 75 (2024: 64/64) (De Bellis Antiquarius)
MeG 60 / 65 (2024: 77/82) (Mortem et Gloriam)
DBMM 54 / 68 (2024: 57/71) (De Bellis Magister Militum)
TTS! 51 / 51 (2024: 47/47) (To The Strongest!)
DBM 41 / 41 (2024: 37/38) (De Bellis Militarium)
FoGAM 36 /38 (2024: 41/41) (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

No change at the top as ADLG continues its stranglehold on the popularity rankings, with a total attendee count that is not too far short of matching that of the next three sets combined.

DBA continued its inexorable rise of recent years, leapfrogging MeG into 2nd place as DBA's 17% increase in UK players this year was counterpunched by a 22% decline in UK MeGGers across the same period. DBMM remains marooned in mid table yet again this year. although its continued strong overseas showing means it achieved a bigger pool of UK tournament attendees than MeG's even thought it has fewer UK-based players. TTS! also makes another year of small incremental gains to nail down 5th place.

At the other end of the scale the two "free" sets, FoG and DBM, have swapped places with one new player plus a few returnees to the DBM circuit seeing it bounce back up to 41 again, overhauling a FoG player pool that lost a handful of players and saw no new players at all pick up competitive FoG in 2025.

In aggregate these was an almost inconsequential fall in the total number of UK-based players, with 491 last year compared to 504 in 2024 (and 496 in 2023). This rises to 528 including overseas entrants, compared to 538 in 2024.

Total number of entries made

ADLG 696 (2024: 729)
MEG 274 (309)
DBA 244 (241)
DBMM 204 (226)
FOG 199 (240)
TTS 142 (159)
DBM 139 (164)

These figures count the total number of entries across all competitions for each set, and are therefore indicative of a number of factors - average attendance, number of events held - and also reflect to a degree the number of active players on each circuit. As such, some of the rulesets figures in this table show quite marked year on year variances, this year mainly negative.

DBA was the only set to see an increase in participation this year, with FoG, MeG, DBMM, TTS! and DBM all seeing overall attendances fall by 10% or more.

TTS!, MeG, DBM, ADLG and DBMM all lost a few, often fairly small local events from their regular circuits, driving some of these declines, with TTS! taking the worst attendance hit with their 3 "lost" events including the only 2 events previously held in the South West region, and a London-based Doubles competition that attracted a lot of "unique" players last year.

FoG was something of an outlier, as it maintained an unchanged circuit of 12 events whilst experiencing lower attendances almost all across the board, as only 2 of the 12 regular competitions on the 2025 UK FoG circuit managed to maintain last year's turnout levels.

New to Each Circuit this year

DBA 28 / (2024: 17)
ADLG 25 / (20)
TTS! 13 / (19)
MeG 5 / (16)
DBM 1 / (3)
DBMM 2 / (3)
FoGAM - / (2)

A huge year for DBA, streaking to the top of the leaderboard with an astonishing 28 new players joining the UK circuit in 2025 - even more impressive when you consider that 11 of the 25 "new" ADLG players were overseas-based visitors to these shores compared to only 1 DBA player packing that tiny army in their hand baggage and heading here.

Aside from DBA and ADLG, the new-player count for all of the other rulesets fell year on year, and ADLG also shows a small y-o-y decline (of 1) if only UK-based players are considered. FoG's inability to attract any new players in 2025 I believe marks the first time this has happened for any ruleset since I started collating these stats back in 2017.

Ruleset-specific commentary

ADLG (L'Art de la Guerre)

ADLG remained the most widely played Ancients competition ruleset across the UK in 2025 with 32 events held compared to 36 in 2024. Taking the Covid-affected years out of the equation ADLG has now been competitively played by 170-200 UK-based players every year since 2019.

69 players (36% of the total pool) played in only 1 event this year, with a further 19 only appearing twice to put an aggregate total of 46% of the UK ADLG circuit in the "casual competitor" category this year. This is lower than most other sets, but is also 1% higher than 2024, accounted for by the increased number of overseas visitors seen in 2025.

16 players accounted for 25% of all of the 696 competition entries made in 2025 (1 more player than last year), with 43 players (also up from 39 in 2024) making up half of the aggregate annual field, meaing that the UK ADLG circuit became marginally more diverse in terms of potential opponents than it was in 2024.

The 32 events held included some competitions some taking place in parallel (in different scales) at the same venue, and with date clashes as well the most events anyone could theoretically have entered in 2024 was 26. Only three players managed to make it to even half of this total, again helping ADLG to deliver potentially the most diverse mix of potential opponents of any ruleset - although someone would still have to drive the 657 miles from Plymouth to Elgin to be sure of experiencing the full benefit of that mathematically-derived diversity!

8 of the 32 ADLG competitions were held in the 25mm/28mm scale, the rest being 15mm events. The 28mm events attracted 48 different players and 118 total entries. Were these 8 larger scale tournaments to be treated as a circuit in their own right, 28mm ADLG would have seen more players, but less entries than both FoG and DBM

Four competitions this year drew in 40 or more competitors playing ADLG, each of these running parallel events in both scales with Warfare hitting an impressive 58 across 15mm & 28mm this past November - meaning this one event exceeded the full-year UK-wide pools of players for 3 of the 6 other sets.

DBMM

The size of the DBMM player universe across all UK events remains pretty much flat this year, although still continuing the slight downward trajectory seen since the Covid hiatus.

Overseas players make up a bigger proportion of UK DBMM pool than for any other set, at almost 20% of the total player numbers - with no "overseas" player attending more than 2 events it seems unlikely that any of the players listed as "international" on the DBMM.org rankings site are in fact now UK based.

Of the 16 DBMM events to take place 9 failed to reach double figures of attendees (although three of these were pools at events where 6mm and 15mm ran in parallel). 2025 was also a year where overall participation fell noticably, with the 204 entries across the year dropping almost 10% from the 226 recorded in 2024 - following on from the previous 10%+ fall (from 263 to 226) seen between 2023-2024

6 players made up 25% of all entries, with 15 different players forming half of the aggregate field. 25 players (37%) only entered one tournament, and 37 (54%) only entered one or two events this year, although this stat is of course skewed by the large number of overseas players. This pattern is essentially unchanged from previous years

DBA

DBA has really picked up the pace in the last few years, and that storming run continued in 2025 with 75 players making up the biggest DBA circuit since I started looking at competition results back in 2016.

DBA always seems to be able to draw in new players, and 2025 has been no exception with 25 new faces appearing on the circuit for the first time (including 1 US visitor). 28 players (37% of the pool) entered only 1 event during the year, with over half of the UK's DBA players (44 players, 59%) only entering 1 or 2 competitions this year.

With all bar one of the DBA events in the calendar being one-day affairs, the logistics of "how far will I travel to play in a one-day event (and then drive home)?" is probably behind some of this particular stat's relatively high score for the UK DBA community as other circuits which run mostly with 2-day events might expect more of their attendees to stay overnight.

6 players made up 25% of all entries, with 14 making up half of the aggregate field across the year. One player nearly completed a full sweep, attending 13 out of 14 possible events across the year - not bad for an 85 year old (or so I'm told)!

TTS! (To The Strongest!)

TTS! had a curates egg of a year, with a decline in the number of events but a slight increase in player numbers as some competitions which popped up in 2024 did not return in 2025.

The 9 events held this year averaged just over 16 participants each, with the Worlds topping the list with 32. No-one (quite) managed to attend all 9, but two players only missed out once with 8 appearances each. The 5 most active players contributing 25% of the overall entries and 13 contributing more than half that annual total.

17 players (33%) only entered one event, with 30 (60%) only entering one or two, meaning that the 5 most enthusiastic players between them appeared almost as many times as the "lest enthusiastic" 30.

MeG (Mortem et Gloriam)

MeG experienced a notable drop in top-line numbers in 2025 as the loss of a couple of events from the circuit, a reduction in the numbers of "new" players and lower overall attendances at the majority of events in the calendar held across 2025 delivered a player count of 65/60 (International/UK-only) - down around 20% year on year, and almost a third down from the 2022 peak where 89 players, 78 of which were UK based, appeared at a UK MeG event.

19 players entered only one event this year, 11 of who's appearance was at one of two different events taking place in different locations on the same weekend in May! A further 10 only attended 2 events, meaning that these "occasional" players now make up the minority of the MeG circuit - a notable change from recent years where significant numbers of (usually) new, but often short-lived circuit participants had seen this group make up as much as 59% of the UK player pool

At the other end of the scale the keenest 4 MeG players on the circuit managed between them make more appearances than the least-active 32 combined, with 7 players making 1 in 4 of all aggregate entries this year, and 14 players chipping in with over 50% of entries across the entire calendar.

All of MeG's events are now held in 15mm, with the 28mm MAGNA format not featuring on the circuit in 2025. The event circuit is also strongly centred around Midlands, with 44% of the total attendance across the year being seen at the 6 events held in just two venues in Daventry and Derby.

FOGAM (Field of Glory Ancient & Medieval)

2025 has see the recent limited growth in the UK FoGAM circuit come to a grinding halt, with a few non-returnees and no new players seeing FoG slip below DBM to be the least widely played ruleset in this survey.

Attendances across 10 of the 12 events held this year all fell, with just Godendag and the FiB Team event managing to hold steady. The FiB Teams event again weighed in with the biggest attendance of the year, with 29 of the 36 UK based players taking part, followed by Warfare with 22.

The UK calendar again saw 12 events taking place, and while no-one this year managed a full sweep of attendance, 3 players did turn up at 11/12 of the possible tournaments.

Just 5 players made up more than 1/4 of all entries to the UK FoG circuit, with 11 players making up 50% of the aggregate field across the year. 16 players (down from 21 last year) attended at least half of the available events.

8 players only attended 1 event (21%), with 11 (29%) attending 1 or 2, the lowest percentage of "casual" participation of any ruleset in this year's survey.

DBM

Numbers for DBM again barely moved year on year, with 41 players making an appearance in 2025 compared to 38 the year before - as always, unsurprising for a circuit strongly centered around a smallish handful of clubs. The total number of entries did however fall to 139 compared to 164 in 2024 and 166 across 2023.

Underlining that gradual tailing off, 12 DBM players only attended one event this year (up from just 7 last year), with 18 (up from 13 in 2024) only making it to two of a slightly reduced calendar of 9 events (10 in 2025). The busiest 6 players made up just over 25% of the total entry, with 12 people contributing half of the aggregate field across the year.

No-one managed a clean sweep by appearing at every single event in the year, with 14 managing to grasp at least half of the opportunities to play competitive DBM during 2025.

The Conclusion (FWIW!)

In summary as 2025 draws to a close these 7 popular Ancients rulesets have continued to see around 500 UK-based players taking part in at least one UK Ancients competition in the last 12 months. That total remains down by around 75 on the 2019 pre-Covid peak, but in line or better than most other pre-Covid years.

(Aggregated player count by year, omitting 2020 & 2021 due to Covid impact)

This year has seen most sets lose (often smaller, one day) events from their calendars, and this may have resulted in overall attendance numbers trending downward for some sets, although not to a significant extent in most cases. DBA's surge in player numbers is the notable exception, with the oldest ruleset in this sample still clearly going strong even now!

(Individual ruleset player count by year, omitting 2020 & 2021 due to Covid impact)

The closest set to making it into this analysis is still GB's Swordpoint, but with only a handful of events and round 21 players it is still some way behind even FoG in terms of popularity.

With nothing else new really coming along to make a mark on the Ancients competition scene in the best part of a decade either, perhaps next year I can just do a straight cut-and-paste!

(If there's anything I've missed that you are better sighted on than me, please don't hesitate to get in touch with the data and I'll do my best to add it back into the stats and update this post)

Never say never again...

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Fri, 21 Nov 2025 12:11:00 GMT

Yes, I crumbled and did another ship for Black Seas.

This is a French First Rate, giving me a pair of French 1st Rates to match up aganst the British 1st Rate I have already got from Warlord, and the slightly wonkily-assembled HMS Victory from Ali Express.

As these Warlord kits have metal masts they do need some extra rigging to stop them from bending - so this one has some additional diagonal ropes added compared to the "standard" Warlord fitout in the rulebook, which go from the tops of the masts to the sides of the ship.

I also went detail-crazy and added a Tricolor to the bow mascot to make it very French.

There is probably too much "mid blue" here, but again in the interests of making this very French I thought it was justified.

And now this leaves me with a fair number of ships...

Kegworth Codgers - the Battle Reports

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Tue, 28 Oct 2025 11:43:00 GMT

This year's Kegworth Codgers event was themed for the years in which Kegworth Church was (broadly speaking) built, namely 1200-1299, with a mix of Christian and non-Christian armies who would have clashed in Europe and the Middle East being permitted.

With mostly "Christian" armies entered, I opted to balance the books a little with a Berber army, also fitting in 2 Almughavars which were newly painted.

This meant I ended up with a list who's key attributes were a solid core of spearmen, with a more punchy Almughavars + Javelinmen block to take on terrain and elephants (of which it turned out there were none), a wing command with Medium Cavalry Javelin Elite and some supporting foot, and a third command of 3 Impetuous Medium Knights in reserve to find a suitable gap to aim for and punch through - in theory!

So, with a trip up the M1 achieved, and a decent few pints on the Monday evening before this midweek extravaganza began, The 2025 Kegworth Codgers Competition was soon playing host to the Berbers.

The reports from all 5 games are now available in video format, either on YouTube or on this website.

Byzantine Cavalry - the never ending army!

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sun, 26 Oct 2025 19:16:00 GMT

I now seem to be almost there with collecting countless legions of Byzantine Cavalry to allow me to make up almost all of the Byzantine lists in ADLG - this time it's some "kite shielded" very late ones which I think of as being Nikephorian types, but which Forged in Battle seem to have decided are Thematics.

The product code on their website for these chaps is a bit of a mix of WE-BT03 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Kavallarioi EHC bow which provides the archers and horses, and some lance-armed riders from the pack of WE-BT02 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Kavallarioi EHC (which look to be exactly the same riders as those in WE-BT04).

Mixing the two packs gives me cavalry units with both bows and lances, which matches their capabilities in the ADLG army lists.

Kite shields began appearing in Byzantine art and military texts around the mid-10th to mid-12th centuries, placing them very much in the Nikephorian period, and its those which give these chaps their distinctive look.

These are again using the LBMS shield transfers from Forged in Battle, which have also appeared on some of the Skoutatoi I painted up some time ago.

Everything here is done with a white base coat, using GW Contrast paints for the brown and black horses, and Army Painter Speedpaint Holy White for the greys as well as a "2nd undercoat" for the one white horse too.

I may use these as "medium" cavalry, and so I used Army Painter Hardened Leather Speedpaint on the shoulder and body armour that looks like it could be designed to be leather, although there is still quite a lot of gunmetal - in this case Enchanted Steel Army Painter Speedpaint, which I am becoming a bit of a convert to as it doesn't need a base coat of black to work (unlike my more traditional drybrushed gunmetal approach).

The cavalrymen have base-specific colours on their tunics - this allows me in theory to mix them up across different commands and tell them apart, without being too intrusive or jarring.

I am still somewhat puzzled by this shield transfer - it looks like it's missing a shield boss or something, but it is a specific transfer for this range and the shields don't have bosses, so perhaps its just a design that I don't quite understand!

The Army Painter Speedpaint Hardened Leather really pings when seen from the back - I also used it for the horses straps and reins, as it self-blacklines really effectively for minimal effort.

Numidian "Imitation Legionaries"

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Tue, 21 Oct 2025 17:07:00 GMT

I've been accidentally collecting a Numidian army for many years now, with the most recent addition being some 3D printed cavalry who entered the collection earlier this year.

With a possible opportunity to use the army in a competition at Warfare 2025, I recently decided that I really did need to add some "imitation legionaries" to the mix to make the army a little more viable - and with Forged in Battle being easy to buy in quantity, and compatible with the rest of my FiB infantry in the army it was their Numidian heavy infantry who got bought.

These troops were recruited and fielded in the later Punic Wars period, when the Numidians began to adopt Roman military formations and equipment, such as a pilum and shield, and even trained under Roman instructors - or sons of Gladiators if you believe the 2nd installment of Ridley Scott's opus!

Either way, troops who were trained to fight in a more resilient close-combat style that imitated Roman tactics and capabilities sounded like a good complement to the Numidians' traditional light cavalry and skirmishing types, and here they all are:

Buying two packs of infantry and basing many of them 7 to a base allowed me to eke out 7 units from the nominally 2x24 FiB blisters, due to the presence of a couple of extra figures.

As they are not-quite Romans, I wanted to paint them in a non-Roman (ie "not red") palette, so I went with a white undercoat, with Yanden Yellow GW Contrast as the main colour for their tunics.

The straps were left white, and then done with Army Painter Leather Speedpaint, which I find gives an interesting colour texture, but more importantly pretty much self-blacklines (or "brown-lines"?) on these deeply sculpted FiB figures.

The 2 blisters had a set each of trumpeter, officer and standard bearer, which you can see at the front of this block of all 7 units.

For shields I wanted to be a bit Roman, but still retain a tribal feel that would match my existing Numidian skirmisher types, all of whom have brown hide-like shields. The compromise I settled on was to paint the shields in a dusty brown (a bit of a mix of various browns) and then add either "tribal" patterns or a knock-off "Roman-style" laurel wreath in a random selection, suggesting that whilst these were still tribal warriors, some of them had made at least a passing effort to impersonate the "Romans " their commanders aspired them to become.

The laurel wreath is pretty effective IMO, and even better, remarkably easy to do as its a series of green blobs and half-moons, each half-moon then having a second layer in a lighter shade of green added on top for contrast.

The Yanden Yellow works really well on these figures too, almost uniform but also very "in the desert"

Here's an officer unit close up - showing how I failed to clean off the static grass before photographing them!

There are more Numidian figures on this blog / website you can see here:

Numidan Light Horse in 15mm
28mm Infantry
28mm cavalry
15mm Numidian Infantry - Traditional Skirmishers
More 15mm Infantry
Numidians in the Photo Gallery

28mm Scythed Beastie!

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:33:00 GMT

"Would you prefer your Scythed Chariot to be a little less noticable Sir? "

"No thanks. It's a bit rubbish in practice, but it does still really scare the sh-t out of my enemies - so I absolutely don't want them to fail to spot it on the battlefield.. "

Yes, that nonsensical, frequently damp-squid-like tabletop staple the Scythed Chariot gets added to my 28mm Hellenistic Successor armies in the shape of a Newline Designs bargain priced Scythed Chariot model.

It's absolutely insane to think that this is being sold for just £10.50, especially when you consider that a Xyston 15mm model of a Scythed Chariot is currently going for £7.50, with the 15mm Essex version at £7.95 !

As you can see here, I accidentally made the cab with the floor upside down (I think...?) so the driver is standing a bit lower than he should be.

A least it might keep him safer for a little longer than normal...

Here it is in its traditonal role, running down some Foundry Republican Roman Legionaries.

Bosh!

The Bosses - and the Baggage

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 17:53:00 GMT

Rounding out this expansive run-through of the Tlaxcalan army I finished last month is the 3 Commande rbases, and the ritual sacrifice that is the baggage camp.

These figures are from the command pack, with a couple of extras tucked in as well to bulk out the retinue of the main leader

The big boss is on a 40mm round, with 30mm rounds for the lesser commanders.

The camp, on an 80x40 base, has as its highlight a... tiki bar-style lighter picked up in Walgreens in Key West many moons ago, and kept for exactly this purpose !

The eyes light up in a fiery hue when the top of the statue is pressed.

OK, so Polynesian tiki statues are not exactly Meso-American but hey, did I mention that the eyes light up?

The sacrificing guys are 3D prints, for which I must thank Harry, and the baggage carriers are F15's figures from Dave from the Podcast, as he had some spares left over.

All in all it does a pretty good job IMO.

The boss will see you now...

The Suits are here to see you now !

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 8 Oct 2025 15:03:00 GMT

Mad as you like, and twice as dangerous, the Suit Wearers are the Military Orders of the Tlaxcalan army.

All of these figures are kind of dressed in the same suit - a bit like a crocodile onsie if I'm honest - but with a lot of bright contrast paints and drybrushing to pick out highlights I'm pretty pleased to have made them look as varied as they do.

Doing red "lips" aorund each suits "mouth" was a bit of a faff, but very much worth it IMO.

There were just enough back banners in the army pack to add one to each unit of 6 men.

Warriors in brightly dyes PJs' - who'dve thought it eh?

Top Tier Nikephorians

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 6 Oct 2025 18:35:00 GMT

In what may possibly be the final Byzantine Cavalry installment, here are the "Elite" Nikephorian (and perhaps a little later too) mixed bow/lance cavalry all from Forged in Battle.

As with the previous set, these are a mix of archer figures from one pack, and lance armed guys from another, both in the "Thematic" range.

Being half-armoured marks them out on the tabletop as being either "Elite", or "Heavy cavalry" - or indeed perhaps both.

The colours are the same as for the previous set, although on this picture you can also see some of the bow cases, which are - for no scientific or historical reason - GWs Contrast Akhelion Green, which pools nicely to give a real depth of colour to help pick out the small details of bowcases on these figures.

I had 8 remaining LBMS kite shield transfers when I did this set, which looked idea - but having cut them all out and stuck them on I suddenly noticed that the trumpeter with the Commander had a hidden shield slung on his back - which meant that this set of 8 was in fact a set of 9 !

Mustering all my bravery, a new paint brush, and secure in the knowledge that a shield on the back of a cavalryman would only ever really be seen by me (and from a distance of a couple of feet at best), I attempted to create a "trompe l'oeil" impression of the LBMS design for the vacant shield.

This close up it's clearly not the same, but in all honesty I'm pretty dammed prooud of even being able to get this close - and at tabletop distances with my eyesight its as close to perfect as you can hope for!

The Cortez-inspired Mercenaries

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sat, 4 Oct 2025 14:55:00 GMT

The Texcalans famously allied with Cortez and the Conquistadores (or perhaps "not" famously, as I suspect many folks believe that Cortez and a couple of dozen men beat the Aztecs on their own?).

In that alliance of Aztec-hating contingents were the Totomac levies and Chinantec levies, both of whom I have made by picking out some distinctive figures and conjured up a unit of each with little or no basis in historical reality - but at least they are colourful and can be easily distinguished from the other Tlaxcallan troops!

I decided to use these chaps as Totomac Levies, as they were so different to the orun of the mill Tlaxcallan warriors that I didn't feel they would mix in all that well anyway.

They have very exuberant head dresses, and I gave them all similar frilly-edged shields from the set that came with all of my purchase from Fighting 15s

There is more than a sniff of the Xenomorph about them in a weird way, but at least they are obviously different to the regular warriors.

These guys will play as Chinantec Medium Spearmen - they are all armed with spears, and I gave them a simple almost-plain blue shield as well.

Given all the other options in the army, they may be a little-used option - or I may even get two bases of Chinantec "pikemen" at a later stage if I can find any suitable figures to use.

With all of them in red (or pink) romper suits they are very much a distinctive unit.

Tlaxcalan Skirmishers

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:48:00 GMT

Every army needs some hapless peasants to screen the main body of warriors, and lurk around in the bushes taking nasty little pot shots at any enemy troops unwary enough to venture too close - and the Taxcallans are no exception with both slingers and archers in the roster.

These slingers are pretty basic troops, and could easily come from the Biblical ranges from the same designer - which is not to disparage them in any way, as they are great, animated little figures.

The musculature really takes contrast paints very well - the two layers of Darkoath Flesh work very well indeed on them IMO

I made the skirmisher bowmen out of the non-headdress-wearing bowmen in the pack from F15's, on the assumption that the massed formations of bowmen would be better dressed than the skirmishers.

There are only 2 poses of these, but adding the odd shield in as well gives a bit more variety.

Brightly coloured (parrot?) feathers for the arrow fletchings adds a splash of extra colour too.

Otomi Warriors

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sat, 27 Sep 2025 13:13:00 GMT

The Otomi are mercenaries, which in ADLG terms are hard-charging Impetuous swordsmen.

The Fighting 15s ranges have limited poses in their "Otomi" bag so I added in a random scattering of chaps with obsidian-edged dangerous looking weaponry to make them a bit more fearsome.

These are more erratically coloured than my main set of guys, who have a lot more red on their limited items of clothing. These chaps are still mostly red, but with some exceptions.

For the obsidian I used a GW Contrast paint, Akhelian Blue, which is a translucent green/blue/purple colour that I thought was pretty distinctive and could be Obsidian-ish.

At some point I may go back to thee guys and see if I can gloss varnish the "obsidian" bits of the edges of their weapons to give them a bit more shine (after I have already matt varnished the lot after finishing painting).