My second game at Medieval Mayhem at Roll Call this year was against Matt’s Almoravid Berbers. This was a beautifully painted army consisting of a unit of Black Guard veteran cavalry, a unit of Mercenary Knights, some Shieldwall (including more veteran Black Guard types) and then lots of light horse with javelins. As the Berbers won the scouting, you’ll see from the montage, below, that my Knights faced off against his cavalry and infantry, with my foot deployed slightly to the right and mainly facing the light horse. Methinks I might get outflanked on the right! Both sides opened the game wi ..read more

I almost didn’t go to Salute this year - last year’s dismal 50th anniversary show really put me off - but, in the end I decided to make the trek to Excel one more time…and was really glad that I did so. Salute this year was a really buzzing event. When I arrived at around noon, the show was packed with people, and it stayed that way for much longer than last year. Then, by 2pm, the place was almost deserted: this year it didn’t start emptying out until at least three. Yes the hall was still dark, and the floor unforgiving, but, as I said, the show had a real buzz to it: something that has been ..read more

My first game at this year’s Medieval Madness competition at Roll Call was against a very testing opponent: Dhillon’s Later Swiss with their veteran, extra-deep and, in some cases, fanatical pike blocks! I wasn’t sure what I was going to do against these beasts: stay away from the front and attack the flanks seemed to be the best course of action, but unfortunately the table we were on didn’t have a huge amount of terrain in place to slow the Swiss down. Worse, the Swiss were also mounted infantry, so the game began with his pike blocks already one extra square towards me: Dhillon had outscou ..read more

I can see that the recent Easter weekend had many of you painting hard, so it must be time for the first April update to this year’s 10th Anniversary TFL Painting Challenge. First up this time round is Mr Helliwell, with another large submission of 28mm WOTR figures: View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Matt Slade is still painting his Classical Indians: here’s a couple of generals on elephants and two shots of the rather lovely camp he’s done: View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Next up, Carole continues her quest to work her way through vast amounts of Mantic ..read more

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT NEW EMAIL ADDRESS FOR SUBMISSIONS Due to the fact that I have changed my domain hosting away from Yahoo to Squarespace, I have lost the admin@vislardica.com e-mail address. Silly me for not anticipating this and letting you all know! From now on, can we use vislardica@gmail.com please ..read more

Friend John kindly gave me a couple of those Warlord Epic Scots Covenantor free sprues that came with Wargames Illustrated a few months ago, so it was time to get them painted and onto the table. First up was a large unit of Commanded Shot. I decided to give them a natty pair of red trousers: not very dour but I fancied a change from Hodden Grey. The command figures came from Eureka: a bit taller than the Epic’s, but then you want some big men in charge! As before, the epic slugs painted up very easily and were actually quite fun to do. In fact, it took me so little time to finish this lot th ..read more

A practice game for the forthcoming Medieval Mayhem competition at Roll Call saw my Venetians travelling Abroad to fight Peter’s Timurids. This was the first time I had used the Venetians using the Venice Abroad list rather than the Later Italian Condotteri list, so I was interested to see how they would do. First up, the Venetians were outscouted (a distinct lack of canals on the Steppes!), with the result that the two battle lines ended up as below: both sides overlapping only in the middle of the field. I suspected that Peter planned to lap around my left flank with his cavalry, so quickly ..read more

Nick Bellamy and friends recently played through the A Canadian VC scenario from the IABSM v3 rulebook on a spectacular looking table. Click on the image below to see all ..read more

Those of you who have been following Rob and I’s play through of the Siege of Norchester campaign will know that so far my Parliamentarian have not been doing very well: I’m currently ten victory medals behind overall, so really needed a decent win at Plumleigh Common to put me back on track. In this scenario, the Cavaliers are trying another assault on the Roundhead siege lines, but this time the Parliamentarians are ready for them, resulting in an all out battle. The picture above shows the view from behind the Parliamentarian lines, with Norchester itself being top left. My plan was to adv ..read more

Morning all. Just about time to sneak in another update to the 2024 TFL Painting Challenge before the end of the month…and quite a bumper update it is too. Strating us off today is the stakhanovite Mr Slade, who has sent in not only a legion (pun intended) of 28mm Romans but just about a whole 15mm Ancient Indian army as well: View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize Not far behind in terms of sheer volume is Stumpy, with a large amount of figures based up and ready for the table. Here we have 28mm Napoleonics and t ..read more