Sunday, May 21, 2017

Paint Table Sunday and goodbye to TMP




I have managed a bit of painting this weekend and my first company of Perry plastic Confederates are at the varnishing stage.  I need to make sure the varnish is OK. first, though! Since I started these, Eric the Shed has painted hundreds of fantastic looking Napoleonic British, though.   I wish I could paint faster.  These ACW figures were supposed to be an experiment in quick, wargames standard painting but it has not been a success!




Anyway, I have started on the second company of nine figures.  I have 18 companies of nine to do altogether!  I am managing to focus quite well, though, by alternating with the North West Frontier and these are the last nine figures I need for my initial The Men Who Would be Kings British force.  I based some more Perry Afghans last week too and my Perry mountain gun arrived too.




Today I hoped to get quite a bit of painting done as it was nice and bright.  The Old Bat, however, started grumbling about the front lawn needing a cut, though.  I refused to do that and told her that gardening was her job.  Then I had to do the supermarket shopping (with added vegetarian nonsense as Charlotte has returned from Edinburgh) and this involved two hours at two different supermarkets this morning (because the two of them are so fussy about which particular food has to come from which supermarket).  




Then, after a quick mozzarella and prosciutto sandwich with the start of today's Giro d'Italia stage, I had to take a load of garden rubbish to the dump and there was a huge queue. The Old Bat loves the new shop at the dump where, instead of taking rubbish out the house, you give good money to the French for someone else's rubbish. Today she reserved a garden umbrella stand.  Except we don't have a garden umbrella so now she is bidding for one on eBay.  This will now destroy any chance of us having a nice summer.  It looks like I may have to go back to Botswana between now and the end of August, which is annoying as I have to fit it around my week's holiday in Cowes but can't control when I go as that is up to the President of Botswana.  




This week, after thinking about it for some time, I have decided that I am finished with The Miniatures Page.  This week the editor posted this as a topic:

While I'm in a pensive mood (grin) what's with the small but vocal minority of British wargamers who resent sharing their hobby with anyone else? They sneer at wargamers from other places and their contemptible views. They act as if the hobby belongs to a single country. I've never seen this from any other nationality. Australians, French, Germans, Canadians, Americans? Happy to share. This applies to TMP, in that I get a steady line of criticism that TMP is 'not British' or 'anti-British' or 'should use GMT' or just somehow unacceptable because we're not headquartered in the U.K. If you're from the U.K.: Do you see British wargamers who are like this? How common are they? What causes this?

I was so incensed about this I did actually post a reply (above) and found myself unexpectedly supported by John Treadaway (I only discovered this from the poisonous Frothers, when someone pointed it out to me).  It seems to me that dissing (to use an American term) British wargamers, who make up the second largest national group on TMP is akin to budget jewellery boss Gerald Ratner saying his products were 'crap'.  British wargamers reacted with polite incredulity but that didn't stop the increasingly wayward owner/editor of the site deleting people's accounts (some two dozen have been terminated).  I won't go into the peculiar personality traits displayed by the editor but I have now removed TMP from my bookmarks bar and replaced it with the Lead Adventure Forum.  I already feel more relaxed.




I didn't, in the end, buy in to The Drowned Earth Kickstarter, despite some really lovely miniatures and instead will concentrate my energies on the imminent Lucid Eye Savage Core rules by Steve Saleh, to support his miniatures line.  This will give me all the jungly fun I need, without the need to spend a fortune on SF buildings, and it seems that forces will be quite small too (less than ten) a side.  The rules are imminent, it seems.  




I now have a big shoe box full of potential jungle scenery and all I have to do is work out how to attach it to the CDs I am going to use as scenic bases.  I like the CDs as they are thin and avoid the 'big step' look of MDF or hardboard.  I still haven't bought a hot glue gun yet (I try to avoid going into B&Q as it makes me feel uncomfortable) , although at least the Old Bat knows how to use one.




I didn't buy Crooked Dice's female minions at Salute but now they have previewed something even more desirable - female cultists,  These will work with my In Her Majesty's Name cultists, provided I paint some Victorian style laces on their boots!




Having discovered that my cable package includes Eurosport (I had no idea) I have been enjoying the Giro d'Italia and with it some appropriate food and wine.  It's actually quite difficult to get a good selection of Italian wine in supermarkets these days but I have matched regional wine with many of the stages.  I need to plan for the Tour de France in advance.  With Eurosport I will be able to watch the Vuelta too, although that will be tricky to match food and wine as I am boycotting Spanish produce.  I did write a piece on one of my favourite Spanish  recipes during last year's race but didn't quite finish it, so I will hold it over until August.




Italian music today. too. with Charles Dutoit's excellent recording of Resphigi's Pines of Rome, Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals.  All very nostalgic of the long periods I spent in Rome in the late eighties and early nineties, where I lived in either the Excelsior Hotel (as featured in the film La Dolce Vita) or the Grand Hotel (designed by César Ritz in typical restrained style).  The opening piece of the CD is I Pini di Villa Borghese.  The Borghese Gardens were a short walk up the Via Veneto from the Excelsior and contain the Borghese Gallery which is full of the work of my favourite sculptor, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.  I used to spend a lot of time in the Borghese Gardens (there was a big gym underneath it which my gym in London was a reciprocal member of) and I used to go running there when I was training for the 1987 London Marathon.


A very thin and fit Legatus, photographed by an Italian princess in 1986


I knew several lovely Italian princesses at the time and one of them was a Borghese, who I first met when I sat next to her at a dinner party, where the host served spring onions (which appeared to be something of a novelty to the Italians) as a starter.  She picked one up, looked at me and crunched the head off.  "I like strong things!" she growled.  Splendid girl.  She was a direct descendant of the man who was married to Paulina Borghese, Napoleon's sister.

The fourth piece of the Pines of Rome is I Pini della via Appia Antica and on my longer weekend runs I used to run out of Rome along the old part of the Via Appia Antica, which still has its Roman stone surface.  This piece is a depiction of the marching of a ghostly Roman legion, so is excellent for painting Romans to!  I haven't started my Victrix EIR figures yet, as I know if I start them I will get distracted from the ones I should be doing.  I might take them to Cowes.


Nude (1873)


Today's wallpaper is also Italian and is a painting by Vito d'Ancona (1825-1894) who specialised in portraits and landscapes.  He also fought as a volunteer in Garibaldi's army in 1848.

27 comments:

  1. The latest TMP meltdown has been both entertaining and very sad/annoying to watch...I find I spend less and less time on what was once a very useful site. Lead Adventure is a much more civilised place.

    I think my painting is about as slow as yours...I'm still working my 54mm NWF figures which I bought a year ago!

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  2. Fully agree with comments on Trump err I mean TMP, just done the same thing myself, and LAF is a much better forum too a true gamers haven :)

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    1. It seems to be. I suspect Kim Jon Un's cabinet meetings would be more pleasant than TMP.

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    2. I recall a time when I couldn't imagine the hobby without TMP.
      Only after I stepped out did I realise how toxic the place had become.
      I felt that the Tabletop scene was undergoing its own anachronistic "Gamergate".

      The selected quote
      "wargamers who resent sharing their hobby with anyone else? They sneer at wargamers from other places and their contemptible views. They act as if the hobby belongs to a single country."
      is incredibly ironic when you consider the way a group of 6 or 7 that I've nicknamed "Team America" behave on the Ultramodern boards and elsewhere.

      Good luck to us all in finding better places to enjoy our hobby.

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  3. I've also removed TMP from my bookmarks as a result of this. I did just take a look as I didn't recall having seen your post - it seems that it's been completely deleted along with John Treadaway's supporting reply, as though they never existed.

    Good progress on the painting - we all do it at our own pace :)

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    1. Armintrout has sent me a private message but I am not even going to bother to read it! Your comment about painting speed cheered me up!

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    2. I was mistaken - your post and John T's supporting comment were in a different thread to the ones I thought they'd be in. The text of the comments has been deleted but not the fact that there were comments.

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  4. Two supermarket runs on a Sunday, you poor devil! I dipped my toe in the Drowned Earth Kickstarter, but only to pick up a couple of their dinosaur models, but I do like the sound of the Savage Core rules, thank you for the heads up.

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    1. Yes those dinosaurs are nice but I hope to be able to buy them later. It's not as if I am short of dinosaurs!

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  5. I don't share the opinion of tmp, rather I see this sort of behavior on forums in general. There is always a clique who feed off each other by picking on others. And there are various strategies to increase interest, and traffic to the website. Controversy is good for ad revenue. Sadly though, it does end up chasing away a few members.
    As for the anti British attitude?
    I think that the UK giants of wargaming set a high bar for others to emulate. Educated, erudite and thoughtful books, articles and beautiful figures and terrain have influenced the hobby from its modern start. So instead of trying to emulate or striking out on their own, a few like to tear down others in order to make themselves seem that much taller. Just like forum behavior, really.

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  6. Entertaining as ever Legatus... never really bought in to TMP so I remain unscathed, but what with this, and the shenanigans over on John Ray's Forum, one wonders if the North Korean's have slipped something into their favourite beverage... I have to ask though, why are you boycotting Spanish produce???

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    1. For subscribers to his book "A Military Gentlemen".. apparently he went in to meltdown as well a few weeks ago - night of the long knives ensured...

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    2. I am boycotting Spanish produce over their opportunistic sniping over Gibraltar. The man down the road is from Gibraltar and is a nice chap, whereas I have never met a nice Spaniard and working a lot in South America, Spanish firms are, how shall I put it politely? - ethically challenged. They are also the fifth biggest drugs cheats in sport. Basically, if there is an honourable and correct way to behave, in many areas of life, the Spanish ignore it completely.

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  7. I have tried to find the post on TMP re British hegemony and failed. The site is old fashioned and not user friendly, I do pop on now and again but find that not much moves within my sphere of interests. In all my years of wargaming I have never heard such tosh from any wargamer on this side of the pond.

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  8. I found those threads, and the Editor's reaction to his readers/members reactions, completely bizarre. Instead of defusing the situation, there appears to be simply an unending pouring of oil. I've certainly never had anything other than help and politeness from American gamers, who are very important to me given the periods I do; so I'd hope that is reciprocated to them from British gamers. But as Doug and Steve say, this sort of thing is inevitable on forums nowadays, no matter what subject or interest group the forum is aimed at.

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    1. I suspect so many posts were deleted he may have deleted the whole thread (too late)

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  9. I'm afraid I've been recently banned from TMP after positing a reply to the current "debate" and pointing out it's rather silly and exactly the wrong thing the owner should be encouraging to try and revive a dying forum. He's actually banning advertisers also - I am more than a little concerned this Trump stuff is contagious....

    Perhaps this is a badge of honor but I'm done with that dingy corner of the internet. On the the LAF!

    When I'm next over to the UK - lets plan on going to a B&Q so I can acquaint you with the wonders therein - of course we'll need to arrive in a Ford Pick Up truck, complete with gun rack in the back - for our umbrellas, of course. To complete the "American Experience" we'll go with a F-450 truck and you can choose the mud-flaps: either a silhouette of a reclining lady or Yosemite Sam.

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    1. Do we need to have country music playing as well?

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    2. No the trip to B&Q is only lesson one. Country Music is introduced during lesson two. It's really for your own safety - studies have found that adding in country music during the first lesson can overwhelm most trainees and result in tragic outcomes such as attempting to build a moonshine still without proper training (that's lesson 7) or the wearing of black socks and wing tips with your new Carhart Overalls.

      Rest assured, as a professional "redneck whisperer" I'll will see to your proper assimilation. Now go back to the mirror and continue practicing the proper grammatical patterns for the uses of the the phrase "Yee-Haw" in polite society.

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  10. Another ex TMP er whose status is now ZZZZZZZZZ, there is so much vibrancy and creativity in the blogosphere that it just seems a better space for me to spend my screen time.

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    1. Exactly. I find that blogs and Facebook groups cover everything I want to know.

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  11. I've been deaded from TMP for the same offence, a mild point that this spat seemed to be trolling. The former Reactionary...

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    1. Yes, I used the word trolling, which the esteemed editor does not seem to like. Possibly because he looks like...

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