Madaxeman's Wargames Blog

Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 3

The third tranche of FiB cavalry now hits the screens, with some actual lance and bow armed riders this time to pad out the non-bow-armed "lance-and-bow" cavalry from earlier this week! 

These are a mix of two packs - WE-BT07 Middle Byzantine (Thematic) - Prokousatores (Lance & Bow Armed) for the lancers, and archers drawn from WE-BE04 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Bow and WE-BE05 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Hyperkerastai (Bow).

First posted on 7 March 2025 | 9:12 am

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Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 2

This is the second tranche of new FiB Byzantine cavalry, following on from the set I posted last week. 

This handful of figures are a mix of sword-armed officers plucked at random from various packs, with the lancers being from the pack WE-BT07 Middle Byzantine Thematic Prokousatores which are listed as being "Lance & Bow Armed" on the FiB website. 

These lance-armed figures however don't actually seem to have bows!

With this mix of figures I envisage using these either as two distinctive units (with no actual "shooting"  bowmen) or as commanders for mixed bow/lance armed units equipped with the same sized shields.

First posted on 3 March 2025 | 1:00 pm

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The Fleet Air Arm Museum - a Video Tour

On the way down to Brixham for the Devonian Classic last Deceember we popped into the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton and took a bundle of photos. 

Now, less than a mere three months later, I've combined them all into a couple of YouTube videos, one with me wittering along to attempt to describe the photos, and one that thankfully just has music as a soundtrack.

Video With Commentary:

First posted on 27 February 2025 | 3:00 pm

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Forged in Battle Byzantine Cavalry - Part 1

With my rather tired and aged Essex Byzantine cavalry having been succesfully eBay'ed in the middle of last year I had been in the market for some new spiffy Byzantine cavalry for some time, and so at the Warfare show in November I picked up a load of packs of Forged in Battle Byzantines of various types. 

My aim was to create a set of cavalry which would cover the "lance and bow" options for most of the huge span of Byzantine history, adding to the two dozen horsemen from the FiB ranges that I already had painted up some time before (Early Byantine lancers painted last year, and some even earlier Late Roman lancers painted in 2023), and the 18 refurbished/reshielded "kite shield" cavalry for the Middle and Late period which had survived my Essex cull as well.

This would mean taking a few liberties with shield sizes and the like, but my theory is always that the armour and equipment of these sorts of guys would not quite be as regimented or consistent as some of us may like to think, so using stuff slightly out of period is not really that bad as long as the vibe is correct.  

I also fired up this new 10" Puluz LED Light Box, which I ordered off of eBay after my old cheap one collapsed!

It seems really good so far, much more robust than my old one, and so if you fancy one yourself and order via this link eBay will even pay me a few pennies in commission - which I guess is better that all this nonsense going behind a paywall!

This combination of new figures and new photographic kit has delivered up a large number of sets of photos, which I'll endeavour to post up over the next couple of weeks when I get a chance.

To start with, here are some cavalry made up mostly from Forged in Battle's WE-BE02 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Boukellarioi Heavy Cavalry set, with a few archer figures mixed in from WE-BE04 Early Byzantine (Justinian) - Kavallarioi Bow.

These have mostly been done in Contrast paints, with a mix of GW and Warlord Games flavours on display. 

First posted on 25 February 2025 | 8:51 pm

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A rare bit of Malifaux

I'm currently  playing Malifaux every couple of weeks at Bad Moon Cafe in London, and whilst I've done pretty well in resisting the urge to buy some of the "new" models which Wyrd Games have brought out in the last couple of years there are just a handful which I felt I really did need to pick up.

The most expensive purchase has been the Arcanist "Starter" set of Harrison Frodsham, Harris J-5 and the two super-schemers, The Gearlings. 

As you can see these all have a really cool Steampunk aesthetic, which makes them interesting to paint and fits in with the "not historicals" itch-scratching that keeps me picking away at Malifaux from time to time.  
This is Frodsham and Harris J-5. When I bought the set these two felt like they might be the make-weights in this box set, as they are quite expensive in game terms and I didn't really have a feel for how effective they could be in-game compared to models I already owned and was familiar with using. 

First posted on 24 February 2025 | 11:23 am

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The Roman Road Heads Down South

2025's PAW competition in deepest Devon (aka The South West's 2nd biggest Festival of ADLG & Pastys) provided me the opportunity to put the recently painted 28mm Triumverate / post Marian Reform Roman army on table in a Roman-themed event. 

This would see as many of the figures I've been painting and trailling on my blog in the past few months being shoehorned into a single army list, with maximum inclusivity trumping potential effectiveness by some margin!

The end result is these four 28mm video battle reports from PAW in Plymouth which you can watch in a YouTube playlist, or embedded on a single page on madaxeman.com.

The embedded video page also has a post-event summary from Nasty Hannibal.

First posted on 21 February 2025 | 10:56 am

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