Madaxeman's Wargames Blog

The Sarmatian / Alan / Skythian / Gothic Generals

 Here are the spare commander and standard bearer figures from my Sarmatian project 

This should allow me to do any sort of combination of Brilliant/Competent/Ordinary commanders for any 3-command ADLG army.

This chap has somehow ended up with one of the best 15mm faces I've ever done! 

 

It's also allowed me to use up all of the figures I got with this rather epic purchase spree!

First posted on 6 November 2026 | 8:45 pm

The Napoleonic Wars, Redux

No, it's not a yet another "Directors Cut" by Ridley Scott, it's something much less exciting... 

Having recently discovered that the Napoleonic Wars are on the A-Level syllabus this year I decided it was time to do my bit to help out the youth of today, and dive back into the Madaxeman Podcast archives to dig out the early (2020 Lockdown-era) episodes in which we ran the often incoherent feature "Teaching Timmy About Napoleon".

I've now edited all of those segments from 7-8 different podcasts into a single "bonus repeat" podcast, which runs to about 3 hours in length and is spread over 2 separate pods, both of which are now available via my Podbean channel.

Both episodes can be streamed from here. 

The Airfix Farmhouse and Waterloo Battle Set can both still be picked up on eBay - :

here is an affilate link to the UK listings

First posted on 3 November 2026 | 8:54 pm

Battle Reports and Tourism from Nancy, 2026

In a veritable cornucopia of French-themed, hastily-published content I've somehow managed to throw stuff at the wall and discover that some of it has stuck following the Team CLWC trip to the Nancy ADLG event held only last weekend - and it is already posted on this website! 

That currently includes:

• A 4-hander military tourism video of our road trip to and from Nancy, featuring:

• Reims Cathedral, 
• Fort de La Pompelle, 
• The Worlds Largest Pikelhaube Collection, 
• Hackenburg Maginot Line Fortress (and narrow gauge train), 
• Nancy, 
• Verdun, 
• An abandoned and destroyed village, 
• Vimy Ridge, 
• ..and one of Frances top abandoned underground rocket-firing Nazi Megastructures, La Coupole!

• The Estonians 
• The Feudal French
• The Kingdom of Sicily
• The Feudal Scots
• The Feudal English (a Civil War!)

First posted on 30 October 2026 | 6:08 pm

Alan Cavalry

 The FiB Steppe Warrior fest continues with these Alan cavalry, who have shields and short(er) spears.

The patterns are mostly based on Alan symbols - it's not just random you know! 

They've ended up as being quite jolly - originally I was considering just plain shields, but the combination of the high opacity of the newer Fanatic paints and a new brush seems to have allowed me to do some reasonably simple symbols and make them look better by adding lines and circles of dots around and across the shields - so they may get more game time than I was originally thinking!  

First posted on 21 October 2026 | 8:43 pm

The Byzantines Sing the Theme Tune in Kegworth!

 Last week (yoiks!) the now-annual Kegworth Codgers Midweek Challenge ADLG event took place in the now-legendary wargaming venue of Kegworth, with almost 40 players convening on a fine Tuesday morning to partake in 2 days of ADLG, one evening of team curry, and either 1 or 2 nights of real ale at a local hostelry. 

Having set the theme myself, it surprisingly turned out to be one which could acommodate some of the 15mm Byzantine figures I've been painting over the last year - this time as part of a Thematic army in the year 874 AD. 

As things turned out, one player's adverse reaction to the curry (or the beer..?) meant we ended up on odd numbers for day 2 of the event, and so I picked up the bye and played just the three games on Tuesday - but that did mean I was able to get these three, rather unsubtle battle reports out and into the wild in record time.

So, as usual, goggle at the poor military skills on display, boggle at the utterances of the poor troops forced to undertake my poorly thought out orders, and listen in slack-jawed amazement and horror at a Cockney Pub Knees-Up style song about the introduction of the Thematic System into the Byzantine military as the ever-chirpy Byzantine Commander not only writes the army's Theme Tune, he sings it as well !!

There is also the usual post-match analysis from Hannibal, and some glowing reviews of Mark "G." Fry's double-handed tomes covering the Medieval Khmer military machine. 

All three reports are now posted on Madaxeman

First posted on 12 October 2026 | 5:03 pm

Yet more Sarmatian Lancers

 I'm starting to think I may have bought too many of these - my half-hearted justification is to have a mix of figure types so I can field all sorts of combinations of Lancer, Bow-armed, Elite and Average, armoured and unarmoured Sarmatian, Gothic and Steppe nomad cavalry in the same list with different(ish) figures for each.

Anyways, enough of the post-hoc rationalisation, here's some lancers with bowmen sprinkled in as well.

First posted on 10 October 2026 | 3:44 pm