Madaxeman.com Updates

Xyston Takabara

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 6 Jul 2026 11:00:00 GMT

Earlier this summer I accidentally ordered some Persian Takabara infantry from Xyston, as part of a valiant effort to get value for money out of the postage costs of buying one piece of 15mm artillery from them (which you may have already seen ...).

This first photo shows their backs, as that is where most of the arty stuff is visible, as I did them with a base coat of GW Contrast, and then added double-spots with Army Painter fanatic colours - which didn't run into the Contrasts, much to my relief.

These are great little figures, and even better with LBMS transfers on their shields - although with 4 different sizes and shapes of shields and transfers, each of which is only slightly different, matching them up is a little tricky!

Because the transfers might not always go on the right shields, its really important with these I found to blend in the edges of the transfers with paint - which I have done with all of the ones here.

It proved a perfect excuse to get my Wet Pallette out again to do the blending, and a good self-justification for buying some of the ArmyPainter 6-part "triads" as well to blend an exact match for the LBMS transfers too.

These guys are especially good IMO, with a base of Mantis Warrior Green with Pure Red and Daemonic Yellow dots.

You may notice that a couple of the archers here are wearing Early Persian ceremonial dress - and are in fact Museum Z-sculpt figures, as it turned out I needed 12 archers to give each base 2 "support" shooters as well as the 4 spear/axe/sword armed troopers.

Anyways, I am really pleased with how they came out - there are some more photos of them in the Photo Gallery on this site.

Ostrogoths in Milton Keynes : Battle Reports from Campaign 2026

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 1 Jul 2026 11:00:00 GMT

This year I returned to Campaign for the first time in a while, as part of one of the CLWC teams of three players in the traditionally tightly themed event. The pool I was in was themed for the Wars of Atilla, with Huns, Patrician Romans, Gepids, Arabs and Ostrogoths as the only options.

Having already used Patricians, and Huns, and Gepids, and deciding that the Arab army in this time period was a bit rubbish, the Ostrogoths ended up being the default choice - rather irritatingly as I had recently sold my Sarmatian/Gothic cavalry on eBay prior to replacing them with some as-yet unpainted FiB figures!

That meant my Ostrogoths did look a tad Gallo-German, but they were close enough so that's how they rolled into Milton Keynes ready for battle.

All 5 battle reports are now published in video format. To try and be a bit different I took a lot of the photos from a "helicopter view", trying to take a shot after each player's turn.

The general idea was to show more of the broad brush strategy of how the battles developed, but of course with a lot of Impetuous Cavalry Lancers on each side the amount of tactican finesse on display was often somewhat limited in practice!

Anyways, the reports are now posted on this website on a single page where you can view them in sequence, or in a YouTube playlist.

Random Legionaries

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 11:26:00 GMT

No-one is quite sure how their bits box becomes a home for so many random figures, almost none of which you can ever remember buying - and mine is no exception.

But every now and then my efforts to try out new styles of painting, and new paints collides with the contents of the bits box and I have a got at cobbling together a little unit of vaguely similar figures to see if I can make the old lead into something worthwhile.

This time it's a very eclectic set of Imperial Roman figures that I noticed had somehow managed to get up close to double figures, allowing me to make up a full base of ADLG Legionaries.

My "EIR" Legions are all Old Glory figures, with LBMS transfers so these are very much a quick and dirty extra unit who look rather unlike the rest of them - maybe Praetorians, or maybe Penal Legion, take your pick!

The "test" aspects of them are that the lorica segmentata is done in Enchanted Steel from ArmyPainter onto a white base coat.

I have no idea where the guy standing at the back is from - he was the shonky-est casting of the lot, so I sort of hid him at the back.

All of the leather is ArmyPainter Speedpaint Hardened Leather

The figures throwing pilums are I believe Donnington EIR legionaries, with one Auxilia in the middle so you can't really see his oval scutum shield.

I suspect the chap standing up holding his shield in the front row may be a Corvus Belli figure - how I came to own him I don't know as I don't have any more like him at all.

The standard bearer may well be a Chariot Miniatures figures, as he looks a bit skinny - but he is nicely detailed.

All the red is Armypainted Blood Red Speedpaint, and the super-simple shield design is kinda rubbish this close up, but from tabletop distances looks acceptable enough.

When or if they will ever make it on table is anyone's guess - but at least the bits box is a little lighter now!

Kneeling camels

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:54:00 GMT

This may well be getting pretty deep into "want but don't need" territory, but the combination of Museum's January sale, and having seen that there are at least a couple of Ancient armies (Moors and Early Arabs) who can have troops defending behind a line of tethered camels inevitably meant I was compelled to buy some of Museums kneeling camels earlier this year - and here they now are.

There isn't a great deal to say about them really, other than that they are done in GW Contrast Paints, with Darkoath Flesh and Aggaros Dunes being the two main colours used.

Here are some Legio Heroica and Esssex Arab warriors defending behind them.

Anyways, if I were riding a horse, this would put me off charging these guys for sure!

Artillery!

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 17:04:00 GMT

After having a challenging experience at the Dorset Dodderers against an army with a Heavy Artillery unit in it, I decided to bite the bullet (or "large stone" I guess?) and pick up a proper Roman/Greek stone thrower unit to add to my collection.

This also meant having an opportunity to use some more of Donnington's excellent Roman artillery crew - great little characterful figures that I have already utillized for the "artillery on carts" (which appear in the ADLG rulebook on page 137) - but the question then became where to source the engine itself?

In the end, after some debate with the CLWC massif I plumped for Xyston's Heavy Stone Thrower - which comes with some Greek-looking crew, giving me the dilemma of potentially wasting some figures (Yoiks!!!).

The solution to this issue was...magnets, or more specifically, some very thin magnets I'd had kicking around for ages, most probably bought to hold the turrets on resin-cast tanks (before hard plastic kits totally replaced them in the wargamers pantheon.. before being replaced by 3D prints in turn..).

This allowed me to base up two sets of crew, and repurpose the artillery piece itself to be used by either.

Add in a small ballista that I found kicking around in the bits box (in 15mm scale - not the full size one I saw at Vindolana) and suddenly I have two sets of interchangeable Heavy and Light artillery.

Here's the rather over-crewed Light Ballista version of the Roman artillery base.

And the same tiny engine with Xyston Greek crew. The chap holding up a stone missile must be rather dissappointed...

Here you can see the magnets embedded in the two bases, and the corresponding magnet glued to the bottom of the large engine.

This Xyston piece is incredibly crisply cast.

The Greek crew are simply painted with my current go-to "white" technique of Army Painter "speedpaint" Holy White with a top layer of Army Painter Matt White semi-drybrushed on top, leaving the shading that the Holy White generates visible in places.

The metal elements are Enchanted Steel, again from Army Painter, and the engine itself is ArmyPainter Hardened Leather speedpaint on a white undercoat.

Same engine, different crew from Donnington.

Ready to ping !

Dorset Dodderers: The Match Reports

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 8 Jun 2026 17:04:00 GMT

Creaking and groaning into life in the deepest bowels of Dorset, the inaugural Dodderers competition instantly doubled the UK (World..?) roster of midweek L'Art de la Guerre competitions for the more refined and mature (aka "already retired" or "working at best part-time and keen to stop even that as soon as they can") gamers.

Themed for a post-Roman era, and taking place in Entoyment's spiffing new gaming centre at the arse-end of an industrial estate on the Poole half-ring road*, this was a great opportunity for me to wheel out some of the countless hordes of 15mm Byzantine figures I've been painting over the last year or so.

With five very entertaining games having been played over the "midweek two-day thing that feels like a weekend but isn't", some brand new figures getting on table, the huge benefit of a gaming space with excellent lighting, and the awareness that many of my more recent battle reports have been arguably a tad rushed, the end result is an old-school epic of military incompetence, surreal in-game figurine based banter, a rare appearance from the "Meso American Personalities with the letter Z in their names" Top Trumps set, some suitably acerbic analysis from Nasty Hannibal and (in this case, with the Justinian Byzantines on table), pompous and self-aggrandizing reportage from Byzanto-Canadian popster/general Justinian Bieber.

In Game 1 you will see the Justinians attempt to tempt the Zapotecs down from their Mexican mountain redoubt, whilst also learning from a couple of the tribal warriors the convoluted (but all true) story of how the Zapotec nation came by their Z-tastic name.

In Game 2, a Justinian Civil War breaks out while I scratch around furiously to try and identify a second famous Canadian "Justin", and then shoehorn that detail somehow into the already tortuous narrative arc of the battle.

In Game 3 the Justinians take a trip through time to engage in another Civil War against their near-descendants, the Thematic Byzantines, who, like the Zapotecs, appear less interested in fighting the battle and more eager to debate the origins of the appelation "Thematic" as the action continues around them.

In Game 4 it's time to get down to the YMCA and take on Harry "In The Navy" and his Arab Conquest army in a game characterised by some decidedly David Lynchian Dunes and a potentially nostril-expanding giant minaret.

Finally in Game 5 the Justinians take on one of the all time classics, Classical Indian, and try their best to conjure up a way to defeat a wall of elephants without having time to buy and paint up even more FiB figures to provide a full range of dismounts for the Justinian elephant-phobic cavalry.

All 5 reports are presented in full traditional text and image mode, meaning you'll have to actually read them rather than watch them, and they are all online now ready to go.

* Poole is right on the coast, so it's kinda hard to have a full ring road as some of it would then be in the sea..

Rubbery Barbarian Slingers

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Wed, 3 Jun 2026 17:09:09 GMT

At Devizes last year I picked up some Warlord Games resin barbarian skirmishers from the bargain bucket on their stand.

I'm not even sure if these figures are still in their catalogue, as the bright future that was supposed to be "Warlord Resin" (aka rebadged Siocast) never really took off due to, well, Siocast resin turning out to not be some form of magic new material, not being particularly cheap, seemingly reliant on one company in Spain for machinery and raw materials, and often covered in flash..

.. but hey ho, these guys actually seemed pretty nice sculpts, and I also picked them up for a bargain price - and here is how some of them have turned out.

The chap on the far left who has just released his sling seems to be ideally suited to this resin material, as the resin is rubbery but tough - I can imagine a metal casting of this "opened up" sling being so long it might be hard to cast, and prone to stress breakages as it bent.

They are all on 60x30 bases for ADLG in 28mm.

They've all been done quickly and simply with GW Contrasts, and Vallejo flesh to pick out the muscles (OK, sort of..) on the bare arms and highlight their faces.

I really like some of the facial expressions the sculpts have captured here

And this guy, poking a finger at whoever he's about to hurl a slingshot at, is super!

More fragile Camels

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Thu, 28 May 2026 17:49:00 GMT

I've already posted loads of photos of the Red Copper Camels that Harry @Mightllittlemen on Instagram printed for me a while ago, but here are some more, just a bit further away..

These were printed at 90% of the "recommended" 15mm nominal scale - I made sure to glue the "threes" of them all together at the rump or neck as well to generate more stability and robustness on each base. The bases all have a layer of metal in them too for extra weight.

As I'd already spent ages doing the last batch with a layered painting style I decided to bash these ones out a little quicker, as I suspect they will be my second-string camels (is that a thing?) that only get used when I try to put an all-camel force on table.

Irritatingly they seem to have come out pretty much the same as the ones I slaved over for hours - perhaps its my eyesight, or just the 90% thing means they are that bit further away so you can't easily see where I've been careless with the paint !

At 90% they did become even more fragile, and one particular design seemed to struggle to correctly print its forelegs - you'll see in the photos some of the camels have large bits of vegetation in front of them, which is covering the missing legs and also the metal pin I had to drill into their underbellys to get them to stand up.

Here they are next to the 100% boys.

This angle looks like it shows quite a noticable difference, but some of that may be a visual trick due to the tall spear on the larger print.

Mixed together here they seem fine to use as a mass.

It's a Ballista!

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Fri, 22 May 2026 17:18:00 GMT

At Warfare last year I lent my now-venerable 28mm Patrician Roman army to someone to use in the ADLG competition.

The paint job is a little darker than I'd probably do today (aka its slathered in ArmyPainter Soft Tone to within an inch of it's life, and so looks like it's been on campaign in Germania without a Legionary Laundry Cart in sight for a whole winter season) however seeing it on table again made me somewhat nostalgic for the days when it was pretty much my only 28mm army - so I've decided to give it a bit of love and attention.

That currently means a slow stepwise addition of some fairly generic "Gothic/Frankish" infantry from the super-cheap Wargames Atlantic "Generic Hairy Blokes" set (some of whom have already appeared here), and also this rather spiffy "EIR" era bolt shooter from Warlord Games.

I'm aware that some of the Warlord Imperial Romans can look a little on the small side compared to the more recent Victrix sets, and even the GB Late Romans who make up much of my army's legionaries - but this bolt shooter will, if it ever gets used, stand on it's own so the size comparison won't matter at all.

I am also aware that the lorica segmenta armour is wildly anachronistic for a "Patrician" era Very Late Roman army, but again, this looks so cool that I can live with that any day of the week!

The whole set is hard plastic, with just the two crewmen.

For a piece that will rarely be used I decided to do a simple Contrasts paint job, with the ArmyPainter Leather being used on the wooden parts of the bolt shooter itself as well as the belts and petruges of the legionaries.

The armour and steel arms of the bolt shooter are done in my new go-to of Enchanted Steel, again an ArmyPainter paint (thanks Will Morriss for suggesting it to me!).

The chap with the bandaged head is especially cool - the "dried bloodstain" on the front of his head bandage is down to accidental drift of the Dark Oath Flesh GW paint I used as a base layer on all of the flesh on the figures - it came out better than I could have done deliberately, so I'll happily take that and run with it too!

The artillery are now ready and waiting to ping some barbarian leaders at unfeasible distances!

Burton Doubles - 4 ADLG Battle Reports

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Fri, 15 May 2026 11:29:00 GMT

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.

Victrix Spanish - 28mm Roman-era warriors

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 11 May 2026 10:49:00 GMT

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!

In my continuing attempts to try as many painting styles as possible, I initially painted these with a matt white undercoat, and then applied Army Painter Holy White to the, erm, "white" ones, GW Aggaros Dunes to the "yellow" ones and did the "red" ones in Army Painter Blood Red.

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 "experiment" bit of this process came as I opted to use AK paint pens to do most of the block colouring - the "white" ones using AK RCM034 Flat White, the "yellow" ones using AK RCM012 Wood Base and the "red" ones with AK RCM003 Signal Red.

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 !

We're back.. and we have News!

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Tue, 5 May 2026 20:06:13 GMT

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Mon, 4 May 2026 19:00:32 GMT

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.

There was also a bit of pike action too.

We also visited the Korean National Museum, where it seems that most of the stuff is pottery-related, with the War Museum being where the cool wargaming-relevant bits are (of course).

However there were a few unusual pieces - this Silla-era armour being a highlight:

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.

Finally, in the ICN airport Duty Free area on our way home, a few more reenactors in costume.

I'd actually been to the Korean Military Museum a few years ago - the photos from that trip can also be seen here

The 100YW English go down South, hunting pasties.

noreply@blogger.com (www.madaxeman.com) — Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:17:06 GMT

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

Game 2 - vs the Navarrese

Game 3 vs the Medieval Spanish

Game 4 vs The Swiss Again

You can also see the reports on a single page on my website here:

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!