The Madaxeman.com Podcast

The Lockdown Specials - Part 10

With a frightening lurch into double figures (or a proper round dozen if paintbrushes and glue are your thing) the Lockdown team from Madaxeman.com are back yet again with the weekly soundtrack to a weekend of painting and avoiding household chores.

Hot topics for tepid discussion this week include whether the best yellow paint is in fact Plague Brown, the Tau of Fire Hydrant Numerology, whether there was an aftermarket for refitting Egyptian chariots with go faster stripes and pumping stereos, how posh would a Samurai leader need to be in order to qualify for a self flushing toilet, whether Sisyphus would have been daft enough to start painting 28 bases of horses and how many arms per man do you need to make Fireforge's box of Mongol infantry.

The regular feature on ADLG List Building this week covers the Nikephorian Byzantines (in all its various modes of spelling), Andy's quiz of course returns to help us all disco-down into the weekend, we talk in more depth about playing actual games on Tabletop Simulator, and a new feature is born in the shape (and theme tune) of Teaching Timmy About Napoleon, an idiot's guide to the Napoleonic Wars

 

 

The Lockdown Specials - Part 9

As the landmark of a double-figure number of Lockdown Podcast Episodes rapidly approaches, and with almost 1,400 Podcast downloads in the last month under our belts the team of intrepid wannabe gamers and by-now-obsessive painters luxuriate yet again in the riches of a combined painting queue that stretches all the way from the pyramids of Ancient Egypt to the tower stacks of Mega City One.

In the fleeting moments of the podcast that take place before we reach Andy's Quiz Music a wide variety of debates take place - the best board games for feuding siblings, using the type of garden feature which would raise eyebrows in a parliamentary expenses committee for tabletop terrain, genetic similarities between Vikings and Saxons, whether treatments for 10mm addiction could be made available on the NHS, how to sneak lead through domestic customs inspections, and in a newly trimmed version of the ADLG list discussion we all take a vote on who we think would win in a Jurchen Ch'in-Jurchen Ch'in face-off (hint - the Song Chinese always come off worst...).

There's also a whole load of discussion about how Tabletop Simulator (available on Steam) might actually be the solution we all didn't realise we were looking for to get some (virtual) lead on a (virtual) table in the near future - all of which gets crammed in before Andy's Quiz. 

 

The Lockdown Specials - Part 8

This week a special guest joins us from the socially isolated South Coast town of Bournemouth in the shape of Adam to bring the number of contributors up to an almost unmaneagable 7 for the first time ever. 

Even with someone who used to do a sensible job as a schoolteacher added to the mix, the wargaming-related conversation still manages to ramble across the mental tabletop in a somewhat erratic fashion, covering important yet strangely rarely discussed topics such as what colour should rigging be on a 1/240th scale 19th Century Ironclad, do Gnomes still have a place in modern warfare, can a camel get a tan if it stands out in the desert too long, is the Austrian army a painters dream or simply a signifier of laziness, if a Grenzer joined the cast of Eastenders would he become a Geezer, is it still legal to resist buying 10mm Napoleonics, and does getting your children to paint Perry plastics fall under the remit of the Modern Day Slavery act?

There is also a phenomenally long discussion on how to assemble and use Hannibals Carthaginian army under ADLG (skip to the 1 hour 25 minute mark when you get to it if you're not interested in ADLG list building), and a new feature on what games we have actually played in the last week.

Oh, and Andy's Quiz returns - cue the music! 

 

The Glue Special, a bonus Podcast from Madaxeman.com

Another special one-off bonus episode addressing the sticky subject of wargaming glues (see what I did there?). In this podcast a team of 7 reasonably unqualified gamers attempt to stretch out what on the surface looks to be a fairly flimsy topic to over half an hour of what turns out to be sometimes useful* chat and banter. 

Consideration is given to the three main types of glue - sticking-shields-on-type-glue, basing glue and plastic modelling glue. 

Even more astonishingly there is some bonus out-take glue-chat at the end - so make sure to listen all the way through!

 

(* Yes, mostly from Tamsin again. Of course)

New Kingdom Egyptian List Building with Richard Case

Another podcast in an occasional series focusing on list-building options for some of the more popular L'Art de la Guerre army lists, this 'pod features contributions from special guest Richard Case.

With almost 300 games played with the NKE in all competitions, this famous army from history racks up a fairly weak success rate of just over 42% (as of May 2020), placing the NKE deep in the lower quartile of competition-effectiveness rankings despite it being one of the 50 most popular armies in use.

In this podcast we discuss the roles and combinations which can help you turn what can often feel like a frustratingly-undergunned army into an effective combined arms force able to go toe to toe against historical opponents. 

The pod includes discussion of a number of specific list makeups, all of which can all be found on the ADLG Wiki on Madaxeman.com

 

 

 

The Painbrush Special, a bonus Podcast from Madaxeman.com

In this special one-off bonus episode released in time for VE Day weekend the regular 6-person crew take a deep and typically discursive dive into the complex world of paintbrush procurement and maintainance, and surprisingly discover that at least some of them* even have valid, educated and informed opinions that are actually worth sharing.

More importantly they all attempt to come to some sort of conclusion to the two key questions of "how much should I spend on a brush, and how many should I own?"

Brush brands discussed and reviewed include : 

• Kolinksy Raphael 
• Windsor & Newton (Series 7)
• Army Painter 
• Cass Art 
• Royal & Langnickel
• The Masters (Brush Soap)
• Broken Toad (Brush Soap)
• Da Vinci Cosmotop 
• Great Art

 

(* That'll be Tamsin then.)

The Lockdown Specials - Part 7

It's another week, and another round of painting-heavy chatter from the podcast team.

This week the topics covered range from a discussion as to whether canned air smells of anything, whether Swiss cheese-hurling Gnomes would have Norman-style nasal guards on their gnome-hats (for combat purposes only), if a cat with a Katana is a credible substitute for a Japanese monk on a tortoise, how airbrushes actually work, horse colours across the known world in the ancient and medieval period, whether Croeseus could have kept the Persian Empire at bay if only he'd known how to cobble together a decent ADLG list, and we try and answer the vexed question of why do Napoleonic Austrian armies take so dammed long to finish given that they should really be 95% done after the first spraying of a white undercoat.

Various bits of this podcast link to things you can see online, including the haul from the Eclectic Painting Weekend, the Lydian ADLG lists, Tamsin's Airbrush Horse Painting on her blog. Andy's Vikings also now appear on the L'Art de la Guerre Facebook Group, but you need to join the group to see them.

If you follow this Podcast also watch out for a special bonus episode later this week in which the usual gang devote a full half-hour to the vexed subject of paintbrushes! 

 

The Lockdown Specials - Part 6

This week the regular crew mark a double-triple podcast milestone (or, more prosaically, this is the 6th Lockdown Podcast) in their ongoing rambling discussion. 

Subjects covered this week in the paint-chat include Chinese Chariotry Umbrellas, whether a reasonably close encounter with a tin of white spray paint counts as "fully painted" when it comes to Austrian Napoleonic infantry, Gnomepoleon's leadership qualities, would Steve McQueen have cleared that fence on a Harley rather than a Triumph, how long the 7 Years War ran for, if double-depth basing has led to the end of monopose units, digital photography techniques for toy soldiers, opportunities for Buddhist monks on tortoises in contemporary tabletop warfare and the vexed question of how many simultaneous painting projects is too many?

There is also a special feature on the Later T'ang Army (ADLG list 169) in which all 6 contributors throw a list on the table for critique and discussion, and the return yet again of Andy's Quiz. 

The T'ang lists we discuss are all published on the ADLG Wiki on the Madaxeman.com website.