The 10th in the 2021 "UK Lockdown III" mini-series rolls into town with a rather lite painting week in which we are all rather distracted by the announcement of ADLG v4 coming out in the next few weeks. Meanwhile the hussar-wing-glue debacle rolls on, an accidental company-level purchase of WW2 Artizan Designs paratroops somehow seems to happen without conscious human intervention, the Perry Twins make another £20 from us all with those black-undercoated medieval horsemen, Pitshanger Lane gets a...
Mar 26, 2021•1 hr 37 min•Ep. 73
In this weeks cavalcade of conversation the team assemble and then kick off with an immediate foray into the best tools to use to bend the legs on cavalry riders together. A surprisingly lengthy chat about whether Ivory is a better colour for painting things white than actual white then diverts into the age-old question about deck white being better or worse than deck tan, rounding off with whether black-grey is a better black than, erm, black? Atlatl pronunciation debates occupy us all briefly,...
Mar 18, 2021•2 hr 1 min•Ep. 72
The latest in Madaxeman.com's regular L'Art de la Guerre Army List Building Podcast series focuses on another matched pair of historical foes - this time the Bulgars and the Byzantines. The Bulgars were both enemies and allies of Byzantium in the near-ceaseless wars and feuds which swept across the Balkans in the period from roughly 600-1100AD. In this Army List Building Podcast we look at both the Bulgar and the Nikeforian Byzantine army lists, and myself, Dave and Richard put forward three ver...
Mar 16, 2021•1 hr 33 min•Ep. 71
In this week's 70th episode (and the 8th week of 2021's Lockdown) the team manages to hang on for almost two very solid hours indeed of chat, banter and lead-based quasi-entertainment without anyone storming off set at all (although to be fair we have no official weatherman on the team). Making a fast start with an electrifying discussion on how best to wire an shock-giving glow-in-the-dark rat wheel we move seamlessly onto a segment about the fraught subject of mast erection glue strategies in ...
Mar 12, 2021•1 hr 51 min•Ep. 70
This week we hit the not-quite-70 mark with a whole slew of actual proper wargaming podcast-type content, including a discussion about how to cheat when painting tartan, Danish infantry coat colours, whether hobbits featured in the ACW, as well as a first look at the new O Group rules, a quick flirt with how to make money selling rats on eBay, what basing might look like in ADLG v4, the merits of waterslide vs LBMS transfers, and a chat about how big Victrix horses (and specifically their arses)...
Mar 05, 2021•1 hr 57 min•Ep. 69
In this week's episode the full team contemplate the possibility of having to actually meet each other again in the real world as the route out of lockdown is revealed to a skeptical British public. All of the regular features return (or more precisely "both") with Dave this week taking the lead on ISITYAA with his unhinged rant about just how much mispronunciation is wrecking his wargaming life. We also visit the drive-through and order a skeleton-bone mocha from Starbucks, the American Civil W...
Feb 26, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Ep. 68
A dichotomy of a week this time as the by-now standard issue 7-pack of contributors accidentally engage in what in retrospect feels suspiciously like a sensible, nuanced and (sort of) well informed discussion about the merits and drawbacks of properly proportioned wargames figures, most notably 28mm Perry plastics and Mirliton 15mm metals during their reviews of the last weeks paint-table antics. That high point is quickly left behind though, with a delve into the prevalence of camels in early m...
Feb 19, 2021•1 hr 56 min•Ep. 67
This weeks L'Art de la Guerre List Building Podcast is another episode in our "unloved matched pairs" sequence, featuring the Later Crusaders of Richard the Lionheart, and the Ayyubid army of his erstwhile opponent Saladin. These two very different lists bring some astoundingly chalk and cheese-like capabillities to the tabletop. The headlong aggression of the Crusading knights in the Later Crusader list is tempered by the solidity of their stoic spear and crossbow-armed infantry, while the forc...
Feb 16, 2021•1 hr 43 min•Ep. 66
Not one, but two whole brand new features slide onto the wet pallette of natter this week as the team extend their normal discursive discussion of painting and online shopping in a pair of new directions. Padding out the timeline more than most features is a sometimes insightful but often meandering chat in which we all discuss how the concept of morale has evolved during our wargaming lifetimes from it's literal beginnings to its mostly abstracted present expression. A whole new theme tune also...
Feb 12, 2021•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 65
The Ancients Britons together with the Caledonians, Scots, Irish and Picts are armies that many wargamers will keep a special place for close to their hearts, but also which they will keep an equally special place for securely tucked away in the storage drawer as a result of their often underwhelming reputation on the tabletop. In this Army List Building Podcast the regular team try and pick the juicy bits out of these two L'Art de la Guerre army lists 98 & 99, and in the process manage to c...
Feb 09, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 64
With all seven particiants now itching to "jab and go" (or, possibly just "itching"), the third Lockdown sees the Lockdown Podcast series lumber into Episode 63 territory as the complete suite of contributors yet again step up to the painting microphones. This week's range of eclectic topics cover the full gamut of land, sea and air (but without air) as we discuss whether anyone has actually played Cruel Seas more than once, decide if Victrix' Shermans might not actually be "too good", take grea...
Feb 05, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 63
A classic "matched pair" of armies in this week's L'Art de la Guerre List Building Podcast from Madaxeman.com as I'm joined by regular guests Richard & Dave to run the rule over these two famous medieval behemoths. Will it be massed longbowmen who come out on top, or will the flower of French Chivalry (and Joan d'Arc) catch the list-makers eye as we delve deep into how to make these armies into not only Crecy-winners but proper world-beaters as well. There are 7 different lists going under t...
Feb 03, 2021•1 hr 40 min•Ep. 62
In this weeks snow-tinged smorgasbord of wargaming and painting chitchat the team wrap up warm in their eskimo boots to cover topics as diverse as painting horses, working out the best rules mechanics for simulating uncontested airport construction on Indian Ocean Islands, toss out a rare wargaming-related namecheck for Canadian songstress Shania Twain, take in some single file wargaming with Osprey's latest title "Deep Jungle B-Road Warfare 1939-45", stage a vaguely useful segment on painting W...
Jan 29, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 61
With UK Lockdown III in full effect, and seemingly due to continue well into March (at best), the Lockdown Podcast team are reassembled in a sequel that no-one was clamouring for. Fear not however - in the 6 weeks since December 11th (when the last Lockdown Pod was published) the intrepid 7 have gained absolutely nothing in terms of insight, polish, erudition or knowledge worth sharing, and so this landmark 60th episode of the Madaxeman Podcast carries on pretty much exactly where the last one l...
Jan 22, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Ep. 60
The first Byzantine (or perhaps the last "Roman") list in ADLG's roster of armies is one which covers some of the Empires greatest victories, and which spans the career of one of their greatest generals, Belisarius. But despite that historic success the Justinians are often overlooked, especially when set against other, later Byzantine lists which can be stuffed with many more interesting wargamer-friendly exotic troop types! This video podcast seeks to redress that balance a little, digging int...
Jan 16, 2021•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 59
Featuring highly on anyone's "first army to collect" shopping list, the Camillan and Republican Roman armies always seem to flatter to deceive. The legendary Legions provide a powerful core to the army, but the relative paucity of support troops and the seemingly unavoidable need to go infantry-first in any design can make these challenging lists to construct and play with succesfully. This ADLG listbuilding podcast helps you face that challenge head-on as I'm joined again by Dave Saunders &...
Jan 12, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Ep. 58
Despite being very much the textbook Classical era warrior, Hoplites often suffer from being the baseline 'man with sharp stick' troop-type who's battlefield capabilities underpin a vast array of far more interestingly-armed and equipped infantrymen in the troop-type taxonomy of ADLG, and indeed in many other previous rulesets as well. This ADLG Listbuilding Podcast seeks to pan for gold amongst the broken pottery shards of Greek military history, and in so doing possibly tease out a few differe...
Jan 06, 2021•1 hr 34 min•Ep. 57
Pulling together a Classical Indian army list for L'Art de la Guerre is often seen as a rather formulaic exercise, with a widely held view that there is only one real way of cobbling together, deploying and using the army. This Madaxeman List Building Podcast, with regular contributors Dave & Richard, looks into whether it is possible to blow that set of cliches wide open, helping you pull together a number of different, interesting Indian lists, and discussing how to use them to play proact...
Dec 29, 2020•41 min•Ep. 56
Having snuck in a bonus army-themed podcast last week our half-hearted festivities are now brought to you as Episode 55. in possibly the least festive "Wargaming Christmas Special" ever committed to a digital recording medium. This week the intrepid band of coughing witterers open a suitably disappointing set of conversational presents from under the podcast tree. The surprise packages include The (literal) Army of Cheese, whether running machines with ashtrays were ever a thing (outside of that...
Dec 11, 2020•1 hr 57 min•Season 1Ep. 55
In this special one-off Podcast episode I'm joined by Dave Saunders and Richard Case to chew over one of the classic Successor armies - the Seleucids. In the pod we chat a bit about the history of the Seleucid dynasty, why they seemed to end up with quite such a good collection of toys in their armies, and then consider as many as 8 different options for putting the list together. Unfortunately we did have some recording issues with this one, so the sound is a bit spotty in places and it also en...
Dec 06, 2020•56 min•Season 1Ep. 54
As the festive vaccination season looms large in the minds of wargamers around the world, the podcast team are back with all of the usual painting, gaming and Gallic techno-driven military themed obscure general knowledge to fill your early December weekends and evenings as well as another honest to goodness actual discussion about a topic which seems to be on everyone's Christmas list, why are wargamers more obsessed with the price of a figure than the quality? There's also a quick diversion in...
Dec 04, 2020•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 53
With the UK gripped in a weird interim world of pseudo-lockdown the entire team reconvene again this week to chat through the usual mix of painting and gaming, before running riot with a freewheeling exploration of the different basing techniques they all deploy to try and make their figures look better than they really are from "wargaming distances".* As well as enticing talk of flocking and slathering on gritty emulsions there is a potentially dangerous liason with the entire concept of Assyri...
Nov 27, 2020•1 hr 59 min•Season 1Ep. 52
In this week's podcast the full team trot out again onto the pitch for a wholesome kickabout that starts with a rapid application of nail varnish, moves seamlessly onto (in possibly the closest we've ever come to a proper review) the merits of small plastic tanks, floats a long ball out to the right wing under somewhere between 2 and 3 bars of pressure, crosses it back into the middle to yell "Margaret!" in a note-perfect tabletop recreation of the Pirate Memory Game, nod it into the 6 yard box ...
Nov 20, 2020•2 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 51
With the half-century now achieved the regular team opt to celebrate this milestone by completely forgetting to plan anything different at all to the usual chat about what they have painted, what they might be thinking of painting, and dad-dancing along on Zoom to Andy's quiz music. This week the topics covered include a far deeper delve into the world of miniature trowels than many independent observers thought possible, contemporary fashion trends in Wurttemburger collars and cuffs, the use of...
Nov 13, 2020•1 hr 39 min•Season 1Ep. 50
With a proper Lockdown sweeping the UK, the Madaxeman team return after a 2-week boiler-related hiatus with a typically rambling episode combining painting chat, Andy's Quiz and a barely in-depth look at the history behind the Late Imperial Roman army, and which are the best manufacturers to choose when cooking one up on the tabletop. In between these vitally important topics we also cover the ethics of using an elephant brush on a horses' ass, how to wargame the long-awaited Schwarzenegger-Dred...
Nov 06, 2020•1 hr 46 min•Ep. 49
Inbetween the all important haberdashery and specialist scissor purchasing news this week the full team manage to sneak in another unstructured ramble to try and answer your key questions of the day, including whether Not the Nine O'clock News comedy sketches are still relevant, the ins and outs of International Fighting online, how Tier 3 Socially Distanced Competitions work in an age of free tea, why everyone is going to be going Aechemenid-mad in the new year, do Monster Munch baps count as a...
Oct 23, 2020•1 hr 30 min•Ep. 48
OK, perhaps that's a smidge overdramatic, but with the shutters coming down on social gaming across the UK right now it seems like the right time to toss another podcast into the ether for your indoor painting-accompaniment over the coming week. This episode sees all 7 regular contributors Zooming in, with an increasingly un-rare unplanned guest appearance from Mrs Andy yet again stealing the show early doors. As well as a gallop through everyone's painting achievements, we attempt to dip a disc...
Oct 16, 2020•1 hr 29 min•Season 2Ep. 47
This 20th, epic (aka "extra long") episode marks the final chapter in the first series of Weekly Lockdown Podcasts, with the full crew eventually assembling to take a standardly discursive tour around the usual array of wargaming topics - but with a twist! The regular "What did you paint last week" morphs seamlessly into "You've painted how much in the last 20 weeks !!??" , Teaching Timmy About Napoleonics goes all Abba and hits the giddy heights of the most coveted piece of terrain in wargames ...
Aug 07, 2020•2 hr 21 min•Season 1Ep. 46
19 weeks in and things are getting even more weird in the virtual Madaxeman Lockdown studio, as the regular team of 7 expands with a couple of pithy, succinct and historically accurate contributions from Mrs Andy in this weeks rambling episode. Mixed in amongst the usual melange of gaming- and painting-themed content the happy podcastonaughts today ponder whether it is fair to say that nude badgers are indeed living the dream, whether any 8th century axe-makers would have considered advertising ...
Jul 31, 2020•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 45
As Lockdown gently unwinds across the UK, the full team are assembled again for a seven-hander episode that reaches the parts other gaming podcast cannot reach, gives them a good old scratch and then eats whatever is under it's fingernails for good measure. In this week's episode consideration is given to how to choose the best filling for an LBMS transfer sandwich, we ask the vital question "wet palettes - vital painting tools, or just margerine tubs with pretentions?", the contentious subject ...
Jul 24, 2020•2 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 44
