Legatus' Wargames Armies

Playing Favourites - my 300th post

2012-01-24T19:45:00.001Z

Several estimable people, led by the author of the Too Much Lead blog and followed by others, including Steve the Wargamer, Trouble at t'mill and Grimsby Wargaming, have set down their favourites in a number of wargaming related categories. Now, as ever, I have arrived at this much later than everyone else (I always post on The Miniatures Page two weeks after everyone has finished a thread) but it is an excellent way to produce a post without having to have painted any figures (although I did finish two today!) So I will follow the same structure as the others.

I have just noticed that this is my 300th post on this blog. Imagine how many more figures I could have painted if I hadn't written all those posts!

Period

Some of my Steve Saleh sculpted Foundry Romans -painted for Fishbourne. If only this range had been completed!

Oh dear. This is where it all falls down. Given I paint more than I wargame my ongoing "armies" cover everything from prehistoric cavemen to World War 2. I have no idea how many periods or armies I have figures for but I think I did calculate once that I was building over thirty seperate WAB armies at once. Needless to say, I don't have a single completed (if there is such a thing) army. When I first started playing with my unpainted Airfix figures it was Napoleonics but this is an impossible period for a dabbler. What my favourite is now varies from week to week but if I had to get rid of all my other figures and just keep one army to work on it would be... Early Imperial Romans. From my first Airfix figures through to my Warlord plastics it's the Romans that inspire me most. The biggest frustration for me is that I don't think there is a really good range of figures for this period out there. There are loads of EIR Romans but I can't say that I am really happy with any of them, for various reasons. Other than Romans it would be the Colonial period or Dark Ages. Or English Civil War. Or Hoplite Greeks. Or Lord of the Rings (the only fantasy gaming I do). Or...

Scale

One of my Gripping Beast Early Saxons

28mm only now. Fifteen years ago I was painting a lot of 20mm plastic Napoleonics but I was never very happy with them. It was my first visit to Salute and the Gripping Beast stand that gave me my first sight "in the lead" of modern 28mm figures. I literally put all my 20mm figures into a box in the loft the next day. Lots of people use 15mm at Guildford but the anatomy of these is mainly awful and they are too small for me to paint, although I do acknowledge that en masse they can look very good. The problem is I will never have an army en masse so prefer to paint individuals to the best of my (limited) ability.

Rules

Not being a regular player, the easier to understand they are the better for me. I don't play often enough to learn any of the tricks or wrinkles in a set of rules. I remember playing a Zulu wargame at the club using a set of rules that were so complex I totally gave up trying to understand them at all. So I like WAB (although I realise its many limitations) and I don't like DBX or its derivatives. I'm not interested in replicating command and control. I just want to push pretty models about (that reminds me of a story involving a famous supermodel but that is off the point). Probably my favourite rules are The Sword and the Flame. Simple but elegant (rather like the supermodel).

Boardgame

I can't abide board games of any sort these days. When I was small we used to play (but only at Christmas) Monopoly which I only liked as we could stay up late, eat twiglets and drink cider as the game went on for hours. I never played the likes of Risk or, my wife's favourite, Cluedo (too much thinking involved). For a period, when I was about 15, I had a few of the Simulations Publications Inc games (I still have them somewhere) such as Musket and Pike. I didn't have anyone to play against so I had to play the games solo. I remember them being not too bad but one I had (I can't remember which) was very much more complicated than Musket and Pike so I gave up on them. I do remember that as soon as you seperated the little counters they started to fall out of the box every time you touched it. Basically, I am not a gamer!

Figures

I painted a whole box of Uruk Hai!

Although I think Perry Miniatures are the best figure manufacturer when it comes to a combination of range coverage, anatomy and accuracy I don't enjoy painting them that much as they are too fiddly. I will pretty much buy anything Mark Copplestone does and I also really like Crusader Miniatures and Musketeer Miniatures for paintability. I don't have a strong view on plastics one way or the other. Some are disappointing (Gripping Beast Vikings) some are excellent (Perry Ansar). They key thing for me is that I have never painted more than a few plastics from each of the many boxes I have bought. The exception being Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings plastics.

Club

I'm in every picture but, more importantly, so are my figures!

I joined Guildford Wargames club some years ago having found it through The Miniatures Page. Technically I'm not a member any more and haven't been for over a year. I used to go more often but I lost the habit when I was travelling a lot and couldn't commit to a date. I also used to get quite stressed by everyone else knowing the rules really well and so I felt like a beginner every week. There are some very clever people who are members of the club and I started to find it a bit scary! The real reason I didn't go, however, was that I really only like playing with my own figures and as I don't have any completed armies... Still I have been able to join in some bigger games with my Wars of the Roses, Dark Ages and ECW figures. One enjoyable club project I did participate in was a two day exhibition game at Fishbourne Roman Palace in 2005. We interacted with a generally fascinated public and the event even managed to convince my father-in-law that wargaming was a worthwhile activity. We got a positive write up in the local paper too, although I think I annoyed the many long-standing members of the club by being the only one who got name-checked in the article (the result of flirting outrageously with the very pretty reporterette).

Opponents

A very much younger Guy three years ago as we set up a Lord of the Rings game

I always had enjoyable games with Dave, Keith and John at Guildford. The person who recruited me into the club was Mike Lewis of Black Hat Miniatures and he was unfailingly patient with me and gave me my first game there (Darkest Africa - I lost, as usual). My son Guy enjoys the occasional Lord of the Rings game and last time we played Darkest Africa. We are talking about having a go at Saga next.

Inspiration

Film

Well, when I was younger there were three main cinematic inspirations. The first were the endless films about the war in the Pacific that seemed to be on on Saturday afternoons; The Halls of Montezuma springs to mind immediately. These got me recreating these battles outside on our rockery for many happy weeks over the summer holidays. The film The 300 Spartans got me into ancients, even though there were no plastic Greeks in those days! Then I saw Waterloo which got me playing long refights of said battle with my hundreds of unpainted Airfix Napoleonics (all in Charles Grant suggested battalions of 48 figures). Nowadays nearly any military themed film can get me thinking about getting a new range!

Book

Although Terence Wise's Introduction to Battle Gaming (as so nostalgically illustrated on Too Much Lead's entry - mine lost its cover decades ago!) got me playing my first games with proper rules the book that turned me into a painter was The War Game, which was stuffed full of wonderful photographs by former Penthouse director of photography Philip O Stearns of Peter Gilder's Hinchliffe figures on magnificent terrain. The reason I still hanker after doing Agincourt (which is palpably insane) is because of that book. It's also the reason that I have a thing about Thermopylae.

Art

Although I too love Angus McBride's work (and I own one of his original paintings) the first military picture I responded to was Philippoteaux's Charge of the French Cuiassiers at Waterloo which I got as a postcard during a visit to Les Invalides back in the early seventies. I used to get Look & Learn magazine every week too and I loved Ronald Embleton's work for that, especially his Rogers Rangers series. I did bid on one of his paintings of a page from the Wicked Wanda strip (literally) he did for Penthouse last year but gave up when it reached £700. I have seen it advertised at £3,000 since!

Music

I don't think others have put this section in but music is very important to me when I paint. Currently I am painting some Foundry Argonauts and am listening, naturally to Bernard Hermann's soundtrack from Jason and the Argonauts but also Laurence Rosenthal's Clash of the Titans as well. I always try to find appropriate music for the figures I am painting. Oddly, the first music I associate with wargaming is Dvorak's New World symphony which I always used to play when setting up my big Airfix ACW games. It still reminds me of lots of blue and grey figures and the distinctive smell of evergreen twigs which I used to cut off trees in the garden, before sticking them in plasticene, to use as trees on my wargames board.

Internet

I discovered The Miniatures Page quite late on but it must have cost me thousands of pounds in stuff I have bought which I would never have known about otherwise. It is my home page but I don't post very often. It can be annoying, sometimes, but then I find nearly everything can be annoying these days! I can't remember whose site got me blogging (Giles Allison's, probably) but my entry into that was originally designed to focus me on one period. This, of course, has failed totally. I now have around twenty wargames blogs and four more under another identity which focus on my other great interest: naked women. Somehow I don't think I will ever get the 200 followers and 2.5 million visits I have had on one of the latter on any of my wargames sites!

So, thanks to Too Much Lead for an excellent idea. Now I really must try and base a few more Argonauts!

2012 Plans and 2011 Review

2012-01-16T22:14:00.000Z

My Darkest Africa British force: completed last year

As is traditional (and as I haven't managed a post for some time) I will post a quick review of the year and my plans for 2012.

I only managed 144 figures this year, which is four less than last year but most of these (98 figures) were Darkest Africa ones done at the beginning of the year. None of the other contingents reached double figures with Zulus and Normans the most numerous. Frustratingly, I have around 30 figures nearing completion and I might have a chance to do some this weekend. Sunday is my main painting day but latterly they have all be taken up with the childrens' various rowing, shooting, dancing, fencing and Duke of Edinburgh activities. My wife also has a new part time job which has landed me with more domestic stuff on top too.

Darkest Africa was supposed to be my main activity for 2011 and the other area I wanted to progress was the Indian Mutuny. I have painted a lot on a 20 man unit but haven't finished them yet. Given that my painting time is so restricted I think I might do more character pieces for skirmish games this year and at present Argonauts are looking likely, given Foundry's new figures and their forthcoming rules, Tribes of Legend.

The mighty Heracles and his doner kebab

I finished a Foundry Heracles yesterday, the first figure I have completed for some months, and started some more Foundry Argonauts today. Although their armour is wrong for the pre-Trojan War quest for the Golden Fleece I have decided that the Gods have given them armour from the future or, perhaps, designed armour that will later influence Classical Greek styles.

I have bought quite a lot of figures this year, although most have been for armies I am already collecting. I did buy some of the Warlord Thirty Years War Plastics but haven't painted any yet. The Perry plastic Ansar are very nice indeed and actually nicer, I think, than the metals, in some ways.

On the rules front I bought Hail Caesar, Clash of Empires and Saga, all of which look interesting. I am interested in getting the new Warhammer gladiatorial combat set too. I watched the two Spartacus TV series which were, on the whole, very silly but painting gladiators is pretty quick so I will dig a few more of these out.

Figures I like the look of but haven't bought (yet) inlcude the John Jenkins Portuguese conquistadores, the Crusader late Crusaders and the new plastic Teutonic Knights from Italy's Fireforge.

Not too many new periods were started but I did enjoy painting the Copplestone 15mm fantasy figures. With The Hobbit now on the horizon I am tempted to start some new Lord of the Rings characters. I don't have the full Fellowship painted so a Gimli is probably next.

I have now realised that I have far too many unpainted figures and I am starting to offload them on eBay as I am desperate for the space. First to go are all my Warhammer figures, of which I had far more than I realised! Next to go will be Foundry Ancient Egyptians.

My international travel was much more limited this year, I am glad to say, with trips to Ankara, Istanbul (twice), Singapore, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Taipei, Kuala Lumpur and Paris (three times). I am getting really frightened of getting on planes now so prefer to travel by train if at all possible.

I did very well at losing weight in the second half of the year (well over a stone) but I have put some back on as I am having difficulty exercising due to a leg injury. Never mind, got back on the bike a few days ago and am looking forward to the Olympic road cycle races coming past the end of my road. As for the Olympics I am also going to the fencing, the rowing and the mens 1500m final in the stadium. Sadly, I didn't manage to get tickets for the womens beach volleyball.

Hats, Presidents, Oxford, Greeks and the Orient Express

2011-12-01T16:58:00.000Z

Panama's new Ambassador (seriously!) to the Court of St James. Fancy a Ferrero-Rocher, love?

I've not been getting very much painting done of late, partly because of the bad light but mainly because of work (I seem to be spending a lot of time with Latin American presidents). London is awash with visiting heads of state at present and I seem to get regularly dragged in to see them to talk about infrastructure. One benefit of this was that I met the new Panamanian Ambassaador to London over Champagne before a dinner with their president. What a very fine advertisement for Panama she is!

Pirate girl

I thought I might have some time for painting this week time today but I had to contribute to a paper for the World Economic Forum. I'm also editing my father in law's new book on the NHS as well as doing the company's year end filing. I did have a couple of hours yesterday so decided to finish this Black Scorpion lady pirate as well as start on my next batch of 15mm Copplestone Fantasy. Added to this is the fact that the children's taxi requirements now seem to have extended from just Saturday to Sunday as well, recently, and the two hours I managed yesterday was the longest session I have had for some time.

All aboard the Orient Express for Adventure and Romance!

I am spending some time reading Victorian steampunk novels (my new thing) and watching old Agatha Christie films; largely due to my recent trip to Istanbul here I stayed in the Pera palace hotel which was originally built for Orient Express travellers. Indeed, Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in the hotel.

A long time ago!

In fact, on a recent trip to Paris I picked up the latter novel, thinking that it would be a good book to read on a train. I've not read a Christie before and whilst I suspect that the rather formulaic model might pall after several books I am enjoying this one, rather to my surprise! A very long time ago a much younger Legatus travelled to Venice on the Venice Simplon Orient Express so imagining the setting is quite easy! I look very thin here but then I was still running forty miles a week! Latterly my leg has been painful and I have had to stop my exercise regime on the instructions of my (really rather gorgeous) physio. Instead I have to spend a lot of time standing on one leg, which is helping the ankle but not my fitness or weight.

Therefore I am having to watch one of my other relaxations at the moment which is drinking wine and listening to music (currently Lars Erik Larssen's tremendous Dagens Stunder) whilst working on one of my girlie blogs (if combining girlies and model soldiers was good enough for Philip O Stearns it is good enough for me) under my other online identity. Too much wine and not enough exercise is not a good idea.

My last bottle was Francis Ford Coppola's wonderful Rubicon which is one of the very best red wines I have had for a long time. This was the 2004 vintage; when the grapes ripened and were harvested very early in the Napa. Certainly there are bucket loads of fruit in this but it also has huge length. The woodiness you would expect from being aged in French barriques is not as evident as you might think as the concentrated ripeness offsets it. It's a Cabernet Sauvignon/Merlot/Cabernet Franc blend with some Petit Verdot in there too. Prices vary wildly: its going for about $140 a bottle in the US at present. Tesco (amazingly) have the 2003 for around £63 a bottle if you buy a half case but I picked mine up in the new local wine shop for a comparatively bargain £47. Wish I'd bought more now!

We're also spending a lot of time looking at potential universities for my daughter, Charlotte, which is also eating into painting time. The other week I returned to Oxford for the first time in some years to show her around and try to overcome this horrific desire of hers to go to Cambridge. The fact that the stairs up to Christ Church hall were used in the first Harry Potter film seemed to have a positive effect on her opinion of the place anyway! By an odd coincidence the hall at my son's school also got down to the last three to appear as the hall in Hogwarts in the first film.

On a more military front I was recently shown around the Royal Geographical Society in London, where a young lady was enticing me to join, (successfully!) and they had put out some items from their archive to look at in their reading room. I always find that personal items that belonged to historical figures are most evocative and a few of these, I found, particularly resonated with me.

Livingstone's hat!

First and foremost were two items I recognised immediately, sat on the large grey boxes they are stored in. Stanley’s pith helmet which he was wearing when he met Dr Livingstone at Ujiji with its distinctive pugaree. In addition they also had on display Livingstone’s hat which he was wearing when Stanley met him! To be able to get a few inches away from such iconic items without glass intervening was really quite special!

Who could have guessed that these two hats would still be together in 140 years time!

There were two other items with a military connection, amongst the other fascinating artifacts relating to exploration. Firstly, they had Lord Kitchener’s right glove; the one on his pointing hand in the famous “Your Country Needs You” poster.

Secondly, they had a hand-drawn map of the Hejaz railway by T.E. Lawrence. I was reminded of one of the opening scenes of Lawrence of Arabia when he is working on his maps in Cairo. I saw one of the remaining operational parts of the Hejaz railway, not far from Aqaba (which of course has its own Lawrence associations), when I visited Jordan a few years ago. I still have a desire to do some Arab revolt skirmishes. I even have a few of Artizan's figures.

The Hejaz Railway in Jordan

My desire to paint Dark Ages figures seems to have abated somewhat, after I finished the last batch of Normans, so I will put those on the workbench away again. I still have a lot of figures which are well on the way (especially Zulu War and Indian Mutiny so maybe I can get some done by Christmas). I'm trying not to go to Argentina in the next few weeks; leaving it to January would be much better.

I picked up the Gripping Beast Saga rules in Orc's Nest in London and have been reading them whilst the others watch X-Factor on Saturday. They look interesting but there is a lot of tactical play involving the dice and battleboard system that may not interest Guy (or me). Maybe I should aim to get sufficient figures done to play a game as soon as possible. I am sure I have enough Vikings but may need to paint some more Saxons.

There are a few other things I am contemplating buying (but not before Christmas). Firstly, Crusader miniatures late (c.1250) Crusaders are definitely calling out to me. Secondly, Foundry have started releasing new Greek myths and legends figures. I really liked Steve Saleh's Argonaut figures for Foundry and bought all of them but then the promised Greek legends range never materialised. Now they are not only bringing out new characters but monsters as well. Now, of course, the Saleh figures were anachronistic in that they had Classical Greek armour and Jason was contemporary with the Bronze Age Trojan War but I don't see why I can't launch a second lot of Argonauts. I even have a Grand Manner Greek bireme to carry them in. Even better they are also bringing out a rule set. Harryhausen type adventures may only just be around the corner! They have some skeleton warrioirs in the first release but I think that the Wargames Factory plastics might be better; although I hear that they are very delicate. Actually, Foundry have also brought out some Trojan War characters that are obviously inspired by the film Troy. These are also quite tempting although I suspect they will be a lot larger (and they are cruder) than the Perry sculpted Foundry Bronze Age ones! I was also thinking that the Saga rules might work well for Greek raids on Trojan settlements too.

I have based a Foundry Hercules figure to be going on with. I also hope to finish my next batch of Zulu War British soon but more about that on the Zulu War blog in due course, as there is a lot happening in that area at present.

Some 15mm Copplestone Fantasy Figures and some music to paint by

2011-11-27T15:09:00.000Z

Well, I have now finished seven of Mark Copplestone's new 15mm fantasy figures and very nice they are to paint too. They are, however, very small and I think they actually take longer to paint than 28mm figures given that I keep making mistakes and then have to try to correct them. How people paint armies of 15mm figures is beyond me! Maybe five colour shading isn't really necessary on figures this size!

Copplestone Castings have come out with three more sets since I bought the original three sets but I am going to be be disciplined and not buy them until I have painted the remaining 23 figures -sometime around next June I suspect!

Basically, there are two forces out so far barbarians (and a few barbarianettes) and Northlanders (with beards). There is also a trio of snow trolls who are about 25mm tall. I'm not usually a fan of monsters in fantasy wargames but these do look rather good.

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the next figures would include some archers. Then the idea is to do some fantasy Romans as opponents. Hopefully these will sell well and he might add to this range. I notice that he has sold his Glory of the Sun range which means that this fantasy range is the only one he is producing new figures for at present.

I've been reading the new Gripping Beast Saga rules this week and think they might work well for these figures with not very much tweaking.

Anyway I have based and undercoated another eight figures so will work on them in the very little time I have to paint at present.

Finally, I always need the right music to paint figures to and recently picked up the new recording of the complete score for Conan the Barbarian by the City of Prague Symphony Orchestra. I usually don't like re-recordings and prefer the original soundtrack but this new recording is a marvel and shows the limitations of the original soundtrack, as Basil Poledouris himself acknowledged.

It is one of the best orchestral film scores ever written, with Poledouris bunging everything from mock Orff, Prokofiev and Vaughan-Williams to medieaval plainchant and Renaissance music into it but making it all sound completely coherent. It was also very influential in that you can hear parts and effects which have been re-used by other soundtrack composers ever since. Whilst typing this I just noticed one cue that reappears, virtually unaltered, in Jerry Goldsmith's soundtrack for The Mummy.

In addition, I manged to find the hard to get score for Red Sonja by Ennio Morricone on eBay which is not nearly as complex but has some strong themes in it. I had, therefore, to paint one of my figures as Sonja. Schwarzenegger pronounces it "Sew-nya" in the film whereas in Britain, at least, we would call her "Sonn-nya". Anyway, for me the name always reminds me of one of my sister's friends who I got very drunk with at my sister's fortieth birthday party some years ago and we both behaved very inappropriately (according to my sister, anyway, it all seemed most appropriate to us). She had short blonde hair, not red, but she had a formidable, gym-toned body (and a much bigger bust than Brigitte Nielsen) and would have been well able to wield a broadsword I think.

If I managed to get through both Conan (which also contains a long suite of music from Conan the Destroyer) and Red Sonja there was also James Horner's excellent early score for Krull to move on to. So, all in all I had more than enough appropriate music to play during my painting sessions.

Lord of the Rings Attack Troll

2011-10-23T17:16:00.001+01:00

I don't paint a lot of fantasy figures but I do like the Games Workshop Lord of the Rings ones. Given that they actually do see service in the occasional game I usually have a few at various stages of completion.

I bought this down on the Isle of Wight last summer and based it and undercoated it immediately but it then sat on my workbench for over a year. It's the first big plastic LotR figure I have done (my other troll was a metal one) and apart from the typical lack of undercutting it was fine to paint. I have another big figure undercoated, a fell beast, which I may have a go at next as it is gathering dust on my shelf.

Made good progress on the Copplestone 18mm fantasy figures today so may try and get some more done this week.

Norman Milites on foot

2011-10-16T22:07:00.002+01:00

I always shock myself when I actually finish a wargames unit, as I very rarely paint a unit at a time, preferring to have a lot of groups of half a dozen very different figures on the go at the same time. However, here is my first unit of Norman milites on foot. These Crusader figures are pretty quick to paint because of all the chainmail although I have to say that I didn't give them a lot of attention; just bunged on paint as fast as I could to get them done. More about my Normans and. indeed my other thoughts on my many ongoing Dark Ages armies will be found on my Dark Ages blog in a few days or so (which probably means a week!).

Had quite a good weekend painting, despite the usual taxi service for the children, with some more done on my Copplestone 15mm figures and a lot of progress on the Lord of the Rings troll, which might even get finished by the end of the week.

Aliona!

I assembled my first sprue of Perry plastic Mahdists whilst watching Strictly Come Dancing last night (that Aliona Vilani was looking particularly sumptuous we thought) with the family (well not with Guy, he was watching Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines on my computer instead). My first impression is that she looks much better without that ridiculous scarlet hair. No, no! What I meant to say was that my first impressions of the plastic Mahdists are very positive indeed. I have a couple of minor reservations but they will have to wait until I have painted some up.

Can't write much more tonight as I have to prepare for a panel discussion I'm on tomorrow with a government minister, so I better try and sound intelligent!

Army Creep

2011-10-11T19:44:00.000+01:00

I picked up this month's Wargames Illustrated which, featuring as it does a lot on Vikings and Saxons, is very much up my street. Other than yet another look at the battle of Maldon using Hail Caesar there was an interesting piece on Gripping Beast's new Saga Dark Ages skirmish rules. Both these pieces exemplify a slightly worrying trend for me, as a hopeless dabbler in multiple periods, which I can best describe as army creep.

Saga is described as a skirmish set and yet they were talking about forces of around four to five dozen figures a side. Now they say that it can be played with less (two dozen figures a side) but the larger figure seemed to be the sort of numbers of miniatures they were contemplating. Now, to me, a skirmish wargame should be about 10-20 figures a side, not sixty. The Lord of the Rings Battle Companies games I play with my son gives good game with less than ten figures a side. So what is this sixty figures a side nonsense?

It wasn't clear how many figures were deployed on the Hail Caesar Maldon scenario, but looking at the photos it looks like at least 400 figures a side. Also in that issue is a Black Powder Second Afghan War clash which has armies of over 500 for the Afghans and over 175 for the British. Now of course, Games Workshop no longer supports Battle Companies, no doubt on the basis that forces of ten figures a side aren't going to help shift figures. When you have manufacturers developing rules then, naturally they are going to want to sell as many figures as possible, but for me moving from 150 figures a side to 400 figures a side just makes building armies impossible. Interestingly, there was also a Greek and Persian game using the new Clash of Empires rules and these had what I would consider much more normal numbers of figures a side (175 ish).

So are we in a period of army creep? Are these rules only designed for club play where you need multiple players to help field each side? Oddly, it seems to me, big armies with lots of figures would tend to militate against a game played in an evening at a club. My experience of the bigger games I have played at Guildford (mainly Colonial, Dark Ages, ECW and Ancients) is that we rarely get to finish a game in the usual three hours we have. I have always derided the DBA players and their silly little armies of forty figures but are we now heading too far the other way? Is bigger necessarily better?

Anyway, the more I read the Clash of Empires book, which I picked up recently, the more I like the look of the rules. I think Guy and I will try them out over half term with some Romans and Celts to see how they go.

As for the Saga rules, they certainly sound interesting but may be too boardgame-like for me. There is a lot of husbanding and utilising resources, tactics and "tricks" which is not really my thing. There are a core of boardgamers at Guildford and I suspect they will like these rules but I think they sound like too much hard work for my increasingly age-demented brain. I do not like studying rules to see where I can gain an advantage. I don't like boardgames (even Cluedo and such like) or card games or anything that involves having to think too much! So Saga, I suspect, will not be for me. I'll probably buy them anyway, though!

Now of course I am always tempted by interesting new figures and one advert that caught my attention in Wargames Illustrated was for an Italian company Fireforge Games (whose website was launched today) who are planning to release a box of plastic Teutonic knights. I have always wanted some of these, partly due to the amount of time I used to spend in the Baltic States, and these look excellent. I looked at the Gripping Beast ones long ago but they suffered from the dreaded Gripping Beast horses (frankly I find the new ones just as horrible). Excellent artwork (cf Wargames Factory, for example) helps a lot but the images of the planned figures look brilliant with lots of optional heads and what have you to customise the figures. These will be a definite buy!

I'm not getting much painting done although I am slowly and surely progressing with another small batch of Norman infantry, have nearly finished another couple of Darkest Africa characters and am enjoying painting my 18mm Copplestone Castings fantasy figures. More of these were released this week but I am going to have to think about what to do with them!

Right, time for a bit of static grass on my Darkest Africa figures!

18mm Conan

2011-10-03T17:57:00.002+01:00

I've been struggling with getting any painting done of late but I did manage to finish my first of the new Copplestone Castings 18mm fantasy figures. I have to say it took as long to paint as a 28mm figure but now I have one done I will aim at doing a few of his Northlanders next. I'm not sure about a whole force of barbarian types as I tend to think of all the figures in the pack (apart from the two girlies) as Conan but with different clothes on. Maybe if I paint some with differrent hair colour they could be Cimmerians, I suppose.

I've not done very well at finding any 15mm Hyborian type scenics, much to my surprise. Oh well. I'll have a look at Warfare, I guess.

Colours 2011

2011-09-11T02:07:00.000+01:00

Isandlwana at Colours

I had quite a quick trip to Colours today as I had to get Guy to and from rowing this morning. His coach is one of the British Olympic coaches and said that he has the potential to go a long way in the sport. Unfortunately, this means he now has to move up to a group that starts at 8.30 rather than 10.30 on Saturday mornings. Grrr!

Two of the traders I wanted to get things from, Gripping Beast and Grand Manner, weren't there but I picked up a few things on my list. Some more Mutineer Miniatures, including the Naval Brigade gun crew who are actually destined for my Darkest Africa Zambezi campaign, plus the new generals packs for both sides which aren't on the new website yet. I also bought a couple of packs to see if I can do some head swaps on them which may be possible with a bit of work.

I picked up a few odd packs of things I fancy painting at present: some more Artizan Carolingians and Andalusians (I'm seriously thinking about El Cid again), a pack of Crusader Norman crossbowmen (which will be fast-tracked) and the Perry plastic Mahdists. I also got the new Black Powder supplement to see how they handle the Great Northern War.

I also bought a nice Baueda 15mm Viking tent, for my new Copplestone fantasy figures, from Mike Lewis at his Black Hat Miniatures stand. He asked when I would next be at the club: good question! I have a sort of outstanding invitation to do a World War 1 game but haven't been for ages.

Otherwise, I was disappointed at the lack of 15mm fantasy scenery. I am looking for some Conan the Barbarian type not quite Celtic or Dark Ages stuff; like the old Celtos 28mm scenics which had mammoth bones and such like in them. I quite fancy a walled village with a tavern in it for some reason. Hyboria has a weird mix of co-existing periods so a medieval Bree type village alongside Celtic round houses isn't out of the question. I enjoyed the scenes in the first Simon Scarrow Romans book where a Roman vexilia attacks a German village and this would be perfect for the Copplestone figures. Maybe a more 13th century Scandinavian look might be better. I was talking to someone who suggested the Mirliton 15mm figures to supply some other armies. They do Burgundians (Aquilonians) and Crusades period Muslims (Turanians). Maybe I just need to paint the ones I've got before I get too carried away!

Best thing about the show was the amazing Isandlwana diorama (I hesitate to call it a wargame as it wasn't actually being played). I will put some more pictures on my Zulu Wars website in a few days.

Tomorrow I have to buy some more football boots for Guy (I wish he'd stop growing) and take Charlotte to and from her play rehearsals so I suspect I won't get much painting done!

Little tiny people have arrived!

2011-09-08T14:41:00.000+01:00

Well you can't fault Mr Copplestone on his service. My new 18mm fantasy figures arrived just two and a half days after I ordered them.

The first thing I noticed was that they are really, really tiny. I was sort of expecting them to be small Airfix size but they are, as my daughter said, "reallly widgey!" This makes the level of detail, particularly on the faces, even more amazing. If more 15mm figures were like this I might buy them! Best thing about them is the anatomy: in proportion heads -amazing!

The Northlander warriors are basically his Foundry Ancient Germans and nothing wrong with that. The male barbarians are all basically Conan and the female ones actually have pretty faces!

I have based them on 12mm card squares (two thirds of the height of the figures) as I am going to use the Song of Blades and Heroes rules which I just downloaded. Apparently you can play a game with 4 -20 figures: ideal. This is because I want to do small skirmishes (I always thought that people who do skirmish wargaming in 15mm are a bit silly!) rather than Hordes of the Things type big battles. Anyway, I have played the firearms equivalent of the rules, Flying Lead, and liked them a lot.

The suggested battle area is a two foot by two foot square so I can use my Citadel battle boards. It's Colours this weekend so I am thinking about looking for some Conan type scenic features. I'm now having to go on Saturday, which I have never done before, as my daughter has a school play rehearsal on Sunday.

Painting them is going to be a major challenge (which is really why I bought them) and I will probably need a new brush before I do any detailed work. I will start with this group of a half dozen and see how it goes!

It's madness really!

Oh no! 18mm Fantasy!

2011-09-06T12:43:00.000+01:00

Work in progress today

I notice that this blog has just reached 50 followers (thank you to you all) so felt that I ought to post something as I have been very poor at updating of late.

I have been doing rather better on the painting and recently finished a Darkest Africa lady, a gladiatrix and a Carolingian knight. More progress isn't immediately apparent because I am working on four big (for me anyway) groups of figures at the same time. Firstly, I have a group of 12 BEF Miniatures (they have just been bought by Warlord Games which bodes well, I think) 1940 British. These will eventually be for skirmishes in Norway and France (I'm currently reading the excellent book Dunkirk: Retreat to Victory by Julian Thompson which is full of scenario ideas). They are just started: skin shaded but only basic colour on uniform and helmets.

My second, group is 16 Muitineer Miniatures Indian Mutiny British. I just repainted the officers coats in scarlet so they look smarter than their troops. These are slighly further along: skin and jackets shaded, rifle, trousers and haversack basic colour done.

Thirdly, a group of 11 Norman infantry. Basic skin colour done but some shaded sleeves and trousers.

My final big group is 17 Zulu Wars 24th Foot. These are well on the way with just rifle shading, haversack shading, helmet staining and bases to do.

I've got some more odd figures lurking around, mainly some Spartans and a few Darkest Africa characters. Oh, and for some reason I started my Lord of the Rings attack troll which I bought, assembled and undercoated in Cowes last summer. Its been sitting like that on my desk ever since and every time I turn my speakers on or off I knock it over so I decided to get it done. It's quite nice working on such a big figure for a change.

Copplestone 15mm Northlanders. Very reminiscent of his Ancient Germans for Foundry

Given all this why on earth have I just ordered three packs of Mark Copplestone's 15mm fantasy range then (well, alright, 18mm)? The truth is I will buy almost anything Mr Copplestone produces as they are so nice to paint. I have only ever toyed with 15mm: some Peter Pig Romans and Germans and some of their WW1 figures. Recently I bought a few Black Hat Miniatures French Marlburian figures but although I started them I never finished them. My real issue with 15mm has always been their lousy anatomy rather than their size. Copplestone's new barbarians look great, however. Will I paint them? Maybe. When I was much younger I read all the Conan the Barbarian novels so it is a fantasy world that resonates somewhat. Their opponents are going to be fantasy Romans which is not so Conan-like unless they are the ancient Acherons or, possibly, the Zamorans, Maybe if the line is a success we will see some more races. One thing is for sure, I will need some new brushes; my last two, as sometimes happens with the Winsor and Newton Series 7 sables, were not entirely satisfactory.

I want one of these!

I will go to Colours at Newbury racecourse this Sunday mainly because I am after some Gripping Beast plastic Saxons to pitch against my Normans. I'm not sure if Grand Manner will be there (they usually are but will be at Warfare if not) but they have some awesome new Sudan paddle boats which look a must buy!

Back from Cowes...twice

2011-08-31T19:39:00.000+01:00

Charlotte with astronaut and Space Shuttle pilot Ken Ham

Well, I have just returned from two vists to Cowes. During the first visit I had a particularly relaxing middle portion with my son, Guy, as my daughter and wife had to return to London for a week so Charlotte could attend a NASA space course at Imperial College. Much to my amazement Charlotte is turning into a scientist and is doing a terrifying collection of A levels from September: Maths, Further Maths, Chemistry, Physics and Biology. She got 300 marks out of 300 for her Physics GCSE! It makes my head spin just to think about it. This is all very strange for someone who comes from a family of writers and journalists who were always rather suspicious of boffins.

Fortunately Guy (who is whatever the opposite of a boffin is) is interested in history and we managed a few historically themed excursions whilst in Cowes without the girls.

Inside Brading Roman Villa

There are a couple of good Roman villas on the Isle of Wight and Brading now has a splendid new building to protect it after the original 1901 tin shed was condemned by the Isle of Wight council. There were fears that the splendid mosaics would have to be reburied if the money couldn't be raised for a new building. Fortunately, the Times came to the rescue with an appeal and the new building shows of this impressive villa most effectively. Brading has the advantage of being close to Adgestone vineyard as well!

The villa that fascinates me, however, is one that was reburied after excavation and which is now in what is Robin Hill Adventure Park. My interest is because of this splendid painting of it at the site and I am determined to build a model based on it for some Romano-British vs Saxon games. I've made model buildings before, reasonably successfully, but the only issue will be where to get some nice Roman style tiled roof sheets as I don't fancy cutting straws into hundreds of tiny pieces to do it!

Down at Fort Victoria we accidentally came across a pirate day which featured this motley crew of re-enacators. I was intrigued by the fellow who walked around with a bottle and glass on a tray throughout the skirmish!

Big model of the Queen Mary in Southampton

Guy and I decided to have a quick day trip over to Southampton to visit the Maritime Museum which had an interesting Titanic exhibition on. Guy and I had bought the Revell model of the Queen Mary in Pit Stop in Cowes (which basically sells die -ast model cars but also has some old 54mm Napolenic figures for sale) to work on during our stay and they had a fabulous 1/48th scale (!) model of it in the museum which gave us the opportunity to take some reference photos.

The Legatus with an even bigger model of the Queen Mary in Long Beach

I have always been interested in ocean liners and had lunch on the Queen Mary a couple of years ago. Progress on the model is going slowly but surely but I am now faced with the dreaded issue for all ship models: painting the waterline!

Short Sandringham at Solent Sky

Whilst looking up the opening times of the Maritime Museum we came across a museum that I didn't know existed: Solent Sky which tells the pivotal role of the avaition companies (more than twenty aircraft manufaturers) in the Solent area between the wars. In quite a small space they managed to cram in a Spitfire, a Supermarine Schneider Trophy plane, a Gypsy Moth, a Sea Vixen and, most impressive of all a Sandringham (the civilian version of the Short Sunderland) flying boat. If there is one thing I like more than ocean liners its flying boats and this is the only complete one on display in Europe. You can go inside it as well although, personally, I wouldn't have fancied flying in one. My experiences in sea planes in Canada have not been happy ones!

As regards figures I took too many down with me, as usual, but have made great progress on some Zulu War British and some 1940 and Indian Mutiny British too. Sadly, I didn't actually finish any figures this time but the 1879 ones are well on the way now.

I am trying to read some of my pile of unread hardback novels as they take up far too much shelf space which I really need for other things (well, figures). Whilst down in Cowes I got through the two latest Simon Scarrow Roman novels, The Gladiator and The Legionary, both of which were better than some of his recent efforts in this series I thought. I also read Saul David's Zulu Hart which I thoroughly enjoyed (despite the hero being rather too clever as regards the mistakes the British were making at Isandlwana) and look forward to reading the next one which, as it is set in Afghanistan, is very much mirroring John Wilcox's first two Simon Fonthill books as to setting. I also enjoyed David's (does anyone else remember him from the BBC's Time Commanders) history of the Zulu war but one person who didn't was Ian Knight who never misses a chance to attack David's book. Notably David doesn't cite any of Knight's books about the Zulu war in his historical sources section of Zulu Hart. He did however put some in the bibliography of his non-fiction work Zulu so Knight's comments must have really annoyed him. Historians, eh? I have now moved on to Patrick Mercer's Dust and Steel which is about the Indian Mutiny and is keeping me focussed on bringing my Mutineer Miniatures figures along as well.

My second trip down was to watch the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes powerboat start although it's no longer the huge international event it was in the seventies and eighties. Health and Safety now forbid the boats actually starting in the Solent anymore so they don't get up to full power until after they have reached the open sea.

Some of my nephew's Space Marines

My wife's sister's family joined us for a few days and their eleven year old, Philippe has just started painting Warhammer 40K. I was pretty impressed by what he has done so far; particularly as he has devised his own, very effective, colour scheme for his Space Marines.

For the next month or so I hope to finish my next batch of Zulu War British, some more Indian Mutiny, the 1940 BEF and some more Normans. Added to this I have some more plastic hoplites and Darkest Africa characters floating about. I am also trying to finish off a few odd characters off, like this Foundry Argonauts girl (so she must be Atalanta). How she would ever pick this tree trunk spear I do not know! Maybe she is looking after it for Hercules. I am tempted to do some more Argonauts, especially given the new Wargames Factory skeleton warriors. Maybe Hercules next!

I have cleared most of the figures off the workbench, now and don't feel quite so swamped but I am starting to notice the poorer light in the evenings again. Part of the reason I got less figure painting done in Cowes was because it was so dark and our house there is north facing (whereas my study at home is south facing).

Paint

2011-08-30T21:18:00.000+01:00

I just had a comment along the lines that a statement I made about painting some figures in Humbrol enamel must be a joke. Well, it's not! I first started painting figures in Humbrol enamel in 1970 and see no reason to change now. The picture above is of my workbench and, as you can see, most of my paints are Humbrol enamels. The few acrylics I have are largely metallics from Games Workshop and Vallejo.

Apart from the fact that I have hundreds of tins of enamel (often half a dozen reserve tins of my favourite colours so I don't run out at a critical point) I just never switched to acrylics as I don't like them. I was talking to an acrylics fan only this week and he was saying "but how do you find your paint shades?" I wasn't sure what he was talking about but, it seems, some people who use acrylics don't mix their own shades but use another pure colour out of the jar for shading a particular colour. I was always a painter (I had a place at art school but went to University instead) so am very happy mixing colours as I studied it at school. I like enamels because they are slow drying and, once you have a colour just right it is easy to make it go further with a bit more white spirit. Now I am sure that you can do the same with acrylics but I find they dry on the palette very quickly (I know you can mix stufff in to delay this).

However, the main reason I don't use acrylics is that they are far too bright. I paint mainly historical figures from ancients to the nineteenth century, with the weighting very much on the earlier part of the period. This was a time before chemical dyes when fabric was coloured by a number of natural means. I remember seeing some examples of wool coloured with natural dyes at an exhibition at Fishbourne Roman Palace and they were very muted indeed. I find the muddy sort of, for example, aircraft colours that Humbrol produce ideal for my purposes. Whilst the Games Workshop paints may be fine for Warhammer the only fantasy figures I paint are for The Lord of the Rings where I follow the muted colours of the films rather than the brighter GW interpretation.

So I have no intention to move over to acrylics and will stick to my enamels!

Update to Dark Ages Blog

2011-08-23T21:05:00.000+01:00

Shock, I have actually painted some figures (well, three) and posted them on my Dark Ages blog here. I have also changed the name of the blog from Dark Ages Warhammer Ancient Battles Armies to Dark Ages Wargames Armies, given that I am now looking at some other sets of rules; having recently bought Clash of Empires and Hail Caesar.

Thinking about new rules...

2011-06-24T11:28:00.001+01:00

Despite not posting much lately I have been able to get some more painting done of late. The Argentinean office is up and running and staffed (entirely with attractive young ladies, we have to admit) and a last minute project (in Kursk!) has been dealt with. Fortunately, I haven't had to travel to any of these far flung places and, anyway, my colleague has been stuck in Buenos Aires now for over three weeks because of the Chilean volcano.

I haven't quite taken a rest from Darkest Africa as I finished a unit of Zulus which had been hanging around for far too long and have nearly finished a cannon and crew for my Zambezi campaign. It's that time of year when I have to start thinking about what figures to take down to Cowes for the summer. This year my wife and daughter have to go back to London for a week as Charlotte, who wants to be a rocket scientist (literally), has got on a space course run by Imperial College and NASA. The opportunity to develop experiments for the International Space Station working with real astronauts is too much to pass up, despite it being right in the middle of our holiday. This means that Guy and I have five days when we can run riot and do all the things we aren't usually allowed to do (like drinking rum and having cooked breakfasts at Eegons cafe). So, hopefully I will have more time to paint for a few days anyway. I will probably take down some more Darkest Africa Arabs to do so will not do any more of them for a month. We got the work finished on the front of the house in Cowes (a whole lot of tiles fell off the winter before last and we had terrible problems with the council about the type of tiles and sort of mortar we were allowed to use to replace them as it is a listed building) so it should be brighter without the scaffolding we had last year.

Recently I bought the Hail Caesar rules and have heard good things about them. Likewise, I have been looking through Black Powder as well. Basically I bought both sets for the pictures but, at the back of my mind, I was thinking about moving away from Warhammer Historical which, certainly for Ancients, I have been unhappy with. Now, given that I enjoy painting more than gaming I want rules that make my figures look good and my principal problem with WAB is that (at least under the first edition) ranks are important which makes my Romans look wrong; I want them in two long ranks not a square block. From this point of view alone Hail Caesar looks better.

My biggest problem with most rule sets is that they require element basing. I hate element basing; I like my soldiers to be based as individuals so that is a big advantage of the new Warlord Games sets. I can't stand it when I am playing someone at Guildford and they have all their figures on bases of six and can't remove individual casulaties so have to use dice to record casualties. Totally irrational, I know, but that's the way it is!

I was also interested in the write up (well, actually, really what they used to call an advertising feature) of Clash of Empires in this month's Wargames Illustrated as they sound quite good too. Maybe I'll see if they have them next time I am in Orc's Nest.

Now the problem with both Hail Caesar and Black Powder is that they contemplate big armies of big units which isn't ideal for someone who only gets six figures painted a week at best. Nevertheless, I was inspired by the Greek Hoplite battle in Hail Caesar and so have started a few more Immortal plastic figures. There is much to admire in these figures (shield detail, spears, proportions) but there are also some significant things I don't like about them (the way the sword scabbards fit (or don't) and, particularly, the handling of the pteruges which are depicted as long trapezoids in shape rather than as oblong strips) but en masse I suspect they will be fine.

Other than Ancient Greeks I sat down and painted some more Perry Napoleonic Dutch (27th Jaegers). The only Napoleonic rules I have are the old Charles Grant ones that first appeared in Military Modelling in the seventies. These suggest 48 man units! Black Powder split foot units into Standard (24 to 30 figures), Large (36-40), Small (12-16) and Tiny (5-6). They give suggestions for unit sizes with "standard" equating to between 24 and 30 figures. Still large-ish but not out of the question. The problem is that if I look at the battle I am contemplating for my Napoleonic figures (Quatre Bras) then if you take the "standard" unit as the battalion you have numbers ranging from just over 400 to over 1000 men. Given the broad banding of the unit sizes and the fact that "standard" units are what you are supposed to have most of then you get a problem with the French, most of whose battalions would fall under the "small" definition but they obviously controlled two or three battalions as one regimental unit. This is important for things like forming column where, under the rules, a unit must be the same depth (or more) as it is wide. Questions arise like: if I have three small battalions from one regiment can I use their total complement to form one column or does each battalion (which could be only 12 figures) have to be a column of 3 by 4? If the answer is to have regimental, rather than battalion sized units then most of the French would become "large" units, again conflicting with the fact that most units should be "standard" sized.

All this was provoked by my Dutch Belgian Jaegers who, at nearly 800 men were one of the biggest units at Quatre Bras. However, If I make them a small "large unit" (36 figures: 6 companies of 6) then they are far too close in size to, say, the Coldstream Guards at 1,050 who would be only 10% more figures (at 40 figures) but were actually 20% larger as a unit. If I decide to make the jaegers a "standard unit" they should be at the top end of that (30 figures) but then they don't rank up as neatly as 24 figures (6 companies of 4) which would then be on the bottom of the "standard" as opposed to the top end. This all may seem boringly irrelevant but it makes a big difference as to how many I paint as can be seen from what I have done so far. At six figure companies I have only finished two and a bit companies whereas with four figure companies I have nearly finished four companies. Maybe the 30 figure unit is best....

Oh well, my next figures are still en route from Perry Miniatures so I have time to think about it yet, I suppose. Maybe I should take some Perry plastic French down to Cowes instead. I had lunch with one of my European lady friends last week and B is the only woman I have met who can discuss wargaming sensibly (she comes from a German military family). Her view was that anyone wanting to wargame seriously should really only play Napoleonics as everything else is just "not Napoleonic". Rather in the way that at Lloyd's of London insurance is referred to as "Marine" and "Non-Marine". Basically, marine is what it is about but they have to grudgingly acknowledge that other stuff too. I sort of have some sympathy for this view but my army building is basically based on what is the smallest army I can get away with; which is certainly not Napoleonics (but does explain why I like Spartans!). When she discovered that the Perries were now producing Prussians she couldn't understand my problem. "But, of course, all is clear and you should just paint Prussians!" She actually tried to get me to go to Orc's Nest to buy some Perry plastics but I resisted and had another Grappa instead

Oh well, a busy weekend (with Charlotte and Guy variously running, dancing, shooting and rowing) with not much chance to paint, unfortunately, but I hope to move my Darkest Africa cannon on a bit at least and maybe finish a couple more Spartans.

Citadel Finecast

2011-06-15T19:04:00.001+01:00

TMP has been awash with (mainly negative) comments about Games Workshop's replacment of metal figures with resin. GW's line (naturally) is that this is a huge step forward in the production of model miniatures which have superior detail and are closer to the original master than metals. The naysayers say that everyone they know has had to take their models back as they were pitted, broken or warped. One story relates how some of the figures actually melted in the window of Games Workshop in Bath.

Well, I was in Oxford Street today and so decided to pop into their shop there and have a look. They had a Finecast set of the Fellowship of the Ring on display so I had a close look at them. I have some (but not all) of these figures and had painted one or two so knew them quite well. The figures in this box set are not the same as the original box set but I will examine that issue more closely on my Lord of the Rings blog in a day or two.

The figures come in a box with the notorious plastic "clamshell" inside. There is no protection or padding for the figures at all they just rattle around in the box. The figures are attached to a sprue and I gather that you need to be careful in removing them from this so I will break out a new craft knife and have a go tomorrow when I haven't had a bottle of Frascati for lunch!

There was no sign on any of the figures of the pits or bubbles. The chap in the shop said that quite a few did get through like that because their quality control people weren't looking that closely for pits as this isn't an issue with metals. They have now been re-trained (all very Soviet, no doubt). There was, however, some flash on some of the figures so I will have to see how easy that is to remove. The resin itself feels like...well, exactly like hard plastic actually. It is certainly nothing like the stuff that Grand Manner et al use for scenery or even the resin lady pirate I picked up from Black Scorpion at Salute which was very brittle ( I broke her sword off very quickly). I say it is like hard plastic but then again it has a sort of soft plastic texture and is matt in finish rather than shiny like other hard plastic. If I didn't know better and someone handed me one I would have said plastic for sure. I have flexed some of the weapons (not too much!) and they have a fair amount of give; I would say that there is no immediate chance of breaking a sword off these. In fact the only issue I can see is the soft plastic-type paint flaking on bendy swords and what not. I'm not sure how the new resin will deal with spears, for example. Some people on TMP have said that if you drop a figure it would shatter which just shows they haven't touched one. I would say that they would be about the same as a plastic figure with, I suspect, more strength in the delicate bits than plastic.

So what about GW's claims that the detail on the figures is better? Do you know what? It is! Quite noticeably sharper than the metals I have. The light isn't very good this evening so my pictures aren't brilliant but I was convinced enough to fork out £37 for the set. How this detail will look after several coats of Humbrol enamel is a good question, however, so I plan to paint Gandalf over the weekend.

GW have already removed all metal figures from their shops (you can still get them but only on the website) so the stores now only sell plastics and finecast figures. Is this the future for wargaming figures? I'm not sure what sort of set up costs were involved, which GW can afford and smaller one man firms couldn't so whether any other manufacturer goes down this route may be doubtful.

I was actually thinking, the other day, "I must order some more LotR metal characters before they are replaced by this horrible Finecast stuff" and now I am thinking "I'll wait to get them until they are out in Finecast". So, I am convinced but no doubt the naysayers will continue on the basis that wargames figures should be made of metal, full stop (a view I have some sympathy with!).

Oh, and I went into GW before lunch and the Frascati!

Workbench and a Dunkirk little ship

2011-06-09T09:28:00.000+01:00

The workbench today

I haven't had a chance to post for over a month due to various things taking my time (working on the company website, hiring some staff in Argentina, getting a report done for a new Russian client etc). In addition I have foolishly entered not only a 25 mile off-road charity bike ride this month but a 5km running race in September, so felt I ought to do some training! I managed a 17.5 mile bike ride over the bank holiday and one 20 minute run: but the latter is the furthest I have run for about five years. The days when I ran the Westminster City Mile in four minutes 50 seconds seem like a very, very long time ago (as, indeed, they are). I've also had some problems with Blogger caused by moving onto a new version of Internet Explorer but these have at last been remedied thanks to changing my compatability settings.

Charlotte with the pinnace MB 278

My father in law ran another Rolls-Royce rally in support of the Dunkirk Little Ships and we got half a dozen of them to the river at Runnymede. This one, MB 278, was originally a steam powered naval pinnace built in 1914 by William White & Sons of Cowes, coincidentally. Cowes was a good sized naval shipbuilding establishment for many years. The MB 278 was used by HMS Sir John Moore, HMS Raglan, HMS Iron Duke, HMS Barham, HMS Resolution, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Erebus from whom she sailed to pick up troops at Dunkirk.

HMS Erebus in 1944

HMS Erebus was a 15" gun monitor built at Harland & Wolf in 1915. Later she was stationed with US ships to bombard Utah beach before the D-Day landings. During her pick-ups from Dunkirk MB 278 was machine gunned. Although she has recently been re-fitted the new owner left an unrestored panel inside to show where the bullet holes had been filled.

Filled bullet holes in the cabin

I have started a little painting again over the last week. Having painted my British Darkest Africa force and my first unit of Wangwana Arabs I needed a break from Darkest Africa so decided to finish off a unit of Zulus I started ages ago (OK, not much of a break from Africa!). These are mostly Empress Miniatures figures and they are horrible to paint due to their awful anatomy - the British are so lovely in comparison. I like the look of the new Warlord Empress plastics, however, so won't be buying any more Empress metals, although I still have a couple of dozen more to paint.

I have started a couple more Arab units for the Zambezi campaign: more Wangwana and a cannon and crew but it will be about a month until these are finished. Also on the workbench are my (or technically Guy's) first Warhammer 40,000 figures: some Imperial guard. These are very easy to paint so I may finish these sooner rather than later. I am also building a Warhammer tank! I am still working on a few Black Scorpion lady pirates and a couple more ladies for Darkest Africa. Somehow a female Argonaut (must be Atalanta) has crept in there too from my "to finish" pile.

Finally, I picked up the Hail, Caesar rules from Orc's Nest last week and was inspired by one of the scenarios to paint a few more Ancient Greeks, so have started on a mixture of Immortal Miniatures plastics and Gorgon Studios (ex Artizan) Spartans. I usually find Greeks fairly quick to paint (unlike Zulus!) so hope these will get finished in the next few weeks. All I have to do is avoid the looming foreign trip at the end of the month.

Stylish Blogger Award

2011-04-25T08:41:00.003+01:00

This is a rather strange but, nevertheless, welcome piece of recognition from another blogger. Someone else nominate's your blog (in this case Steve for which huge thanks) and the rules require that, in order to accept it you:

1) Thank and link back to the person who gave you this award.

2) Share 7 things about yourself.

3) Award 10-15 blogs you feel deserve the award.

4) Contact these bloggers and let them know about the award.

So eventually, every one you know should have awarded it to each other. Splendid!

This does not, however, detract from the fact that someone bothered to link to you at all. So many blogs stop after a few months and, initially, I wrote mine solely for myself. I was slightly surprised when I found out that other people actually looked at it and, in fact, this fact has meant that the reason I started my first blog (which was to force me to paint regularly) has indeed come to pass! So, now to fulfill my requirements.

1) Steve thanked above but another thank you is deserved.

2) Seven things about myself. This is tricky!

1. I always wanted to be a paleontologist when I was small. To the tedious extent that when I saw the trailer for One Million Years BC (1966) at the cinema, when I was six, I was appalled that they had depicted dinosaurs and humans as living at the same time.

2. I had my first glass of wine at the age of eighteen months and protested loudly, in a restaurant in France, when I wasn't allowed another.

3. I own three German First World War pickelhauben.

4. I have visited over sixty countries.

5. I am really, really scared of flying (or, rather crashing) hence number 4 gives me problems.

6. I really don't enjoy driving, can't parallel park, can't reverse into a parking space in a car park and have never owned a car. Fortunately, I have always had women to drive me around, although I do drive if absolutely necessary!

7. Two of my ex-girlfriends have been on the cover of Vogue.

3) My nominated blogs are (and I don't think it matters if they have been nominated before):

1. Grimsby Wargaming not least because he is also a Chicago Bears fan!

2. Flintlock and Tomahawk is full of useful source material for the day I eventually do manage a skirmish wargame set in North American forests.

3. BigRedBatCave His focus on Ancients, and Romans in particular, is awesome.

4. Tarleton's Quarter another chap with more focus than Greenwich Observatory. I am convinced he is actually really a small Asian figure painting factory.

5. Waterloo to Mons is an inspired theme for a wargaming blog and also features Matt's very desirable Schleswig War figures.

6. Wars of Louis Quartorze offers an amazingly eclectic but still somehow comprehensive coverage of this period.

7. Solo Wargaming in the UK is also engagingly eclectic.

Well, I know that's only seven but on the same day my Darkest Africa blog also got a nomination so I can add my extra ones over there and reveal seven more things about myself!

A little Mexican interlude...

2011-04-23T16:12:00.000+01:00

Seventy five figures painted over a continuous period. Surely a record?

I'm taking a short break from painting Darkest Africa, having now finished my entire British force for the Zambezi campaign (apart from a Naval Brigade cannon). In fact, I painted rather more figures than I needed. So before I start on the Arab force (which is much larger) I thought I'd try and finish some figures lurking around on the workbench.

First off are these Boot Hill Miniatures Mexicans (Matamoros Regiment) from 1836. I've no idea why I bought these (the prospect of refighting the Alamo is rather daunting) but I now have another six under way. I downloaded the flags that Boot Hill produced but they seemed huge. An enquiry on TMP revealed that they had deliberately produced them oversize. Why? I can't understand why anyone wants out of scale flags. As printed from their pdf they worked out about 6'x9' scale size.

A bit of research revealed the fact that Mexicans standards were in fact about 1 metre on a side and were square rather than oblong. A bit of fiddling on the computer got the correct eagle for the Matamoros regiment off the surviving flag in Texas. I added the Boothill flag text and re-sized and re-proportioned the standard.

Next up I have started work on the 40mm Mexican Marine Infantry I bought from Gringo40s at Salute. These are for the later Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. I've never painted 40mm figures before and I will find them a challenge, I think, as my usual three colour shading isn't going to work on these lovely figures. They remind me of the old 54mm Rose Miniatures I used to paint years ago. The cavalry figures they are promising should be awesome. Gringo40s have arranged with Two Fat Lardies (surely the worst gaming company name ever) to produce some Mexican-American War scenarios for their Sharp Practice rules, thereby encouraging the purchase of even more figures, no doubt.

Next up I'm working on a few Black Scorpion lady pirates and some Darkest Africa characters and then it's back on to the Arabs (who are mostly African!).

Eye, eye...

2011-04-20T22:44:00.001+01:00

Steve the Wargamer had an interesting post about painting eyeballs (or not, in his case). Everything he said was quite right, of course, and yet I always paint eyes on my figures otherwise they just don't come alive for me: they look unfinished and dead, like zombies. Now, of course, Steve posited that badly painted eyes (like mine) are worse than no eyes at all and he is probably right (I expect it was some of my squint-eyed masterpieces that got him thinking about it). Not painting eyes on anything 20mm or below is probably reasonable but for 28mm figures, with their usually disproportionately big heads, I feel I have to put their eyes in, however anime-like they end up.

The figure above I painted a month or so ago and I am not arguing that this is a good paint job but her head is large for her body and you can see where her eyeballs are supposed to be; further, she has eyelids as some sculptors manage. OK, they are exaggerated but then so are the size of hands and feet. I was quite surprised to see how many comments (and there were a lot) were in the no eyeballs camp. Who paints eyes well? I have always liked the eyes Giles Allison manages on his figures. No mean feat on Perry figures, who have smaller heads than most!

I will carry on painting eyes on mine and hope that once in every ten figures I manage to get one that doesn't look like a cross-eyed Manga character!

Salute 2011

2011-04-17T23:29:00.000+01:00

I'm trying to remember how many Salutes I've been to. Probably not that many. The first one I attended (and indeed my first wargames show) was in 1999, the last year that Salute was at Kensington Town Hall. I remember then going to lunch in Chelsea (where I used to live) to meet up with my ex-girlfriend from my Rome days, I, who was in town. I was a member (a princess no less!) of a very well known Italian historical family and, unlike most women, found the idea of wargaming intriguing.

There seemed to be a lot of ECW this year but this alternative siege of Worcester 1651 was the most impressive

I have been to most Salutes since then, although have missed a few, usually due to being abroad. I created a bit of a stir on TMP a few years ago by making negative comments about a group of what I saw as Nazi (rather than German) WW2 re-enactors when I felt that the South London Warlords should have had a word with them about some of the material they were selling but didn't. The ensuing debate got quite heated.

Guy enjoyed this recreation of one of his xbox games, Battlefield Bad Company. He said it looked just like the game setting!

Anyway, nothing so controversial this year as the re-enactors were for the American Civil War; this year's theme. I have mixed views about re-enactors. Some of them have done useful research which has thrown light onto some military puzzles from the past. But I find it rather odd that people in the UK want to be American Civil War re-enactors. Fair enough in the US but for some not really explainable reason I think that re-enactors for, say, the English Civil War are more understandable for people from Britain. Maybe it's a throwback to seeing a TV piece years ago about people from Essex who dressed up like cowboys, looked totally authentic and then ruined the effect by speaking in Essex (or such like) accents. Better than bad American accents anyway.

I had a list of stands I wanted to look at and things to buy (not much, really) and did quite well although, as usual I forgot some things (like getting some fully armoured pikemen from Warlord Games).

The biggest disaster was that I carefully charged up my camera battery and then forgot to put it back into the camera so I had to rely on my son Guy's Blackberry camera! This was a shame as I was particularly impressed by the standard of the scenery on many of the games this year. Guy and I thought it had the highest number of games with really good scenery we had ever seen. All I have are a few very blurry pictures, therefore!

A slightly blurred Gallipoli!

Dave Bodley's Gallipoli board for Gripping Beast and Wargames Illustrated was indeed magnificent. However, I think that it might have been a bit of a double edged sword given that part of the intention must have been to shift more Woodbine WW1 figures. The problem was that the layout just demonstrated what a difficult battlefield Gallipoli is to recreate on the table top. The cliffs, the steep hill and the trenches are really beyond the ability of most of us. I just looked at it and thought: forget Gallipoli I will stick to the Arab revolt for the Turkish front: lots of nice flat sand.

Matt's Schleswig game. No teddy bears were harmed in the making of this picture!

It was good to see Matt's Schleswig game. His figures are really nice and I must paint up some more although I have to say I think I prefer the red coated Danes!

Purchasing wise I was pretty good. I got a few packs of Foundry's new Normans to add variety to my Norman knights and that was it for the Dave Thomas stand. Must be a record mimimun buy! I got some more magnetic paper for my file boxes to stop my figures falling over on the way to Guildford Wargames Club. I went a bit mad at Mutineer Miniatures and bought a unit of Gurkhas, some Sikh cavalry and some more mutineers. About nine packs overall. They'd sold out of GNW Swedish cavalry at Gripping Beast (if they were there in the first place) but I did get a pack of the brand new Russian Horse Grenadiers so that will be enough to be going on with.

I bought the new pirate rules from Black Scorpion along with the limited edition resin figure of the impressively constructed young lady on the cover of the rules.

Black Scorpion Alexis figure

It must be strange for the model for the painting, the splendidly named Alexis Eickelsbacher, to be reproduced as a small miniature. I will try to paint her up this week.

The impressive figure of Alexis Eichelsbacher in real life

Finally, the one thing I did buy this year which I really wasn't intending to was four of Gringo 40's new 40mm Mexicans from the Mexican-American war. I've always wanted to get some figures for this ever since I saw the bodice ripping American TV miniseries North And South some years ago. Subsequent visits to Mexico City have had me looking, in vain, for a modern range of 28mm figures. I bought 4 Mexican marines standing at attention which is not ideal for what must be a skirmish range but they looked so splendid! Now I have had to spend £30 on reference books to find out what their uniforms were like. I've already cleaned them up and based them so I might just get started on their faces anyway! I've never had any 40mm figures before, they look huge, but I suspect these will not be a quick painting job!

So, I thought it was a good Salute this year and it seemed crowded despite the recession but maybe others were like me and spent less. Best thing I am looking forward to are the Perry plastic Wars of the Roses men at arms. My WotR army doesn't have any cavalry yet and these will fill a gaping hole. The next best thing was the preview of the Immortal plastic Persians. Can't wait for those ,although dreading painting them!

Salute Eve

2011-04-15T18:42:00.001+01:00

Ah, Salute Eve rolls around again and with blisteringly brilliant timing my first regular payment for the job my firm is working on in Argentina came in from Buenos Aires today. So Salute is now not looking as thin as I thought it might!

Things I am looking forward to seeing are Matt's Schleswig game, the Hail, Caesar demo and the Gallipoli game from Gripping Beast and Grand Manner. I am keen to see what plastics the Perries are coming up with (and finding out what is happening on the plastic Mahdists) and the same on the Immortal Persians. I am hoping to buy some Musketeer GNW Swedish cavalry (at last!) and some Mutinner Indian Mutiny figures.

Other than that...who knows?

Back from Asia

2011-03-29T07:56:00.011+01:00

So, I'm back from two weeks or so in Asia which has hit my monthly painting progress fairly badly! After two weeks I had completely adjusted to being eight (well, sometimes seven) hours time difference so have not been feeling brilliant since I returned, but did get a bit more done on my British levy askaris yesterday, although I didn't find it easy to concentrate for very long. Never mind, got their rifles done yesterday.

I started by flying to Singapore, then Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and then back to Singapore again. So, seven flights in two weeks which is not brilliant for someone who is really frightened of flying! Never mind, the lovely local stewardesses (as they still call them, none of this "flight attendant" politically correct rubbish out there) soon calmed me down with lots of Champagne. Hard to say which airline had the prettiest girls, but I was very impressed with the young ladies on Taiwan's EVA Air, an airline I hadn't flown on before. Then again, the Malaysian airlines girls were nice. And the Air Vietnam ones and the Singapore girls, of course...

Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum Hanoi. About the closest I got to a tourist attraction

It's that time of the month when the wargames magazines come out and this month they are the pre-Salute issues. Miniature Wargames carries on with its articles about first Bull Run which is my big Achilles heel as regards ACW. I would really like to get some regiments for this battle, especially as the Perries are promising some appropriate figures. However, I have come to the conclusion that ACW is like Napoleonic in that it has to be your main, if not only, interest. You just need too many figures! I had some Perry Plastics but sold them on eBay. Maybe one day...

I notice that Wargames Illustrated features, as its special subect this month, the Vietnam War. Vietnam is where I spent the majority of my trip; in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. I didn't go to any of the military sites in either. The tunnels are too far north of Saigon (as most of the locals still seem to call it) and anyway, being quite claustrophobic and not exactly Vietnamese size I don't think it would be a great destination for me.

There is a military museum in Hanoi which I have visited before. It's treatment of the war is very even-handed, unlike the accounts of the colonial period: the older Vietnamese still don't like the French much! However, the Vietnam War is far too recent for me to consider wargaming especially as I like the Vietnamese (and I don't necessarily get on with some of the people from other Asian countries, not mentioning any names but lets say they are the bigger economies in the continent).

Metropole Hotel Hanoi

In Hanoi I stayed in the very colonial Metropole Hotel. Now, I stay in a lot of five star hotels but this really was one of the very best I have stayed in anywhere. I always prefer an older hotel rather than a modern one and this one has a lot of heritage (it was built in 1901) but has recently been renovated to quite extraordinarily fine standards (by the French!).

Coq au Vin - controversially without mushrooms. Still excellent, though!

Regular guests at the hotel in the past include Noel Coward (who was inordinately fond of the coq au vin in the restaurant -as was I- it was excellent!), Charlie Chaplin (who spent his honeymoon with Paulette Godard there), Roger Moore and Graham Greene, to name but a few.

The hotel also had a very good local Asian restaurant and a quite superb Italian restaurant, Angelina, where I had the best Ossobuco I had ever had in my life and I set up an office in Milan once so was there a lot. There were two bars, one outdoors, and another restaurant attached to the bar so despite being there at the weekend I didn't run out of places to eat.

The main restaurant, Le Beaulieu, is the oldest continuously operated restaurant in Vietnam and I had another tremendous dinner there. It also did a very good breakfast indeed. Outside, they have a very French pavement cafe where you can have escargots and grenouilles but it wasn't really the weather for that as it was only about 15 degrees. Actually, I did have some grenouilles as part of my buffet lunch, when I first arrived, and they were very good, not chewy and stringy as they can be.

Hanoi has changed a lot since I last went there about eight years ago; more than any other city I have re-visited, in fact. Then, everyone was riding bicycles or (a few) scooters and there were no cars unless they were government ones or foreigners'. There were no tall buildings, except for the Melia Hotel, and no western shops. All the girls wore the traditional áo dài and many wore the famous nón lá conical leaf hats too. Today there are lots of cars (expensive ones too, I saw several Bentleys in Hanoi), the bikes have all but disappeared, there are lots of western shops and the girls all wear western clothes unless they are wearing áo dài as a uniform in hotels etc. Ho Chi Minh City, which was always that little bit more western, is even more so now with lots of new tall buildings. The girls in HCMC not only wear western clothes (the all white Southern áo dài even seems to be dying out as school uniform) but are more likely to dress in denim hot pants or micro skirts. Not that I'm complaining, but the traditional dress was so elegant. Still, Vietnam is a country that is going places and is seeing huge foreign investment. Chinese manufacturers are moving their factories to Vietnam as labour is cheaper. Before long I expect we will be seeing plastic model kits being made there!

Miss Vietnam. She's n-n-n-n-n-nineteen!

I can't not put a pretty girl in for Matt and in Hanoi I met the completely luscious Nguyễn Ngọc Kiều Khanh who was Vietnam's entry for last year's Miss World competition. Having met at lunch I took her to a performance at the splendid opera house in Hanoi before rounding out the evening with drinks and dinner with her equally lovely friend.

Kiều Khanh is 5' 10". Most of it legs

More importantly, after we emerged fom the opera, she helped me cross the street. If you have never crossed a busy road in a Vietnamese city it is rather like that scene in The Empire Strikes Back where the Milennium Falcom has to go through the asteroid field.

On your marks! You don't want to be half way across the crossing when this lot starts!

No-one actually stops for a pedestrian, even on a crossing. You have to proceed steadily and hope the hundreds of scooters and cars, will steer around you. While I was there an article in the Vietnam News in Hanoi said that they have 33 road deaths a day, there. That's 12,000 a year or about five times the UK rate. 85% of the deaths involve the dreaded scooters which go the wrong way down the road, the wrong way around roundabouts and, most alarmingly, on to the pavements if the roads are jammed. I saw up to five people on one scooter as well as people carrying boxes of live ducks, fifteen foot bamboo poles, a standard lamp and, memorably, a live pig.

I took this picture of the opera house from the far side of the road. After the performance we had to get back from the steps of the opera house to this point through the traffic, which is coming at you from about five different directions! Kiều Khanh firmly took my arm and guided me at a constant pace through about fifteen lanes of speeding traffic. I certainly needed a Martini after that!

The Legatus, Miss Vietnam and her equally lovely friend

Next it was down to Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon, as most of the locals still seem to call it. I was staying at another historic hotel there, the Caravelle, but historic for a different reason. Built in 1959 this was the headquarters, during the Vietnam War of the press corps with ABC, NBC and CBS all having their Saigon bureaux there.

Caravelle Hotel in May 1975 shortly after the fall of Saigon

It was from the Saigon, Saigon bar of the Caravelle (then the tallest building in the city) that the press corps watched the North Vietnamese army roll into the city. The hotel is now owned by the Vietnamese Government but if you are imagining some sort of Soviet Intourist look forget it. It is a quite splendid five star hotel that employs some of the prettiest girls I saw in Vietnam and that is saying something.

The Caravelle Hotel last week

They have now added a new 19 storey extension next door with shops and restaurants in. I even managed to get a refill for my pen in the Mont Blanc shop. You wouldn't have got one of those in Vietnam when I was last there! The Saigon, Saigon bar, however, has barely changed since it opened.

Saigon, Saigon

The Saigon, Saigon bar is a great place to have lunch and a Bia Saigon overlooking all the manic traffic below. In the evening it becomes one of the places to be in HCMC crowded with a mixture of locals, hotel guests and American Vietnam War veterans. Served by waitresses in fetching off the shoulder red tops it is one of the most characterful bars I have ever visited and must be on any must-visit bars around the world list. It's certainly more attractive than the nearby Rex rooftop bar which has equally strong Vietnam War credentials. They also have a great Cuban band playing from 10.30 on most nights. Their Vodka Martini was rubbish, however!

Finally, business over, I had a couple of days in one of my favourite hotels, the original Shang-ri La in Singapore. Set in acres of tropical gardens it was a good place to decompress with my particular friend, Sophie from Vancouver, who was also touring the region. I don't know what it is about this place but as soon as I walk through the door into the cavernous lobby I feel as if a weight has been lifted of my shoulders.

Many things contribute to this feeling of well-being: the tree lined pool area (I temporarily abandoned my book about the Hawker Hurricane for Lost Horizon in a splendid hardback edition they sell in the hotel shop) is a great place to sit and read. The lobby lounge where you can get proper tea served in a china tea pot with proper tea leaves and watch all the activity whilst waiting (yet again) for someone to return from buying even more shoes. Beautiful girls serve you on their knees without in any way appearing to be servile (a neat trick).

The best thing about the Shang-ri La, however, is the Blu bar and restaurant perched on the 24th floor of the hotel and offering a great view. It is cool and dark (actually so dark they have to bring you a torch to read the menu) and you get served by lovely waitresses wearing black evening dresses who waft out of the gloom like benevolent sirens; "Would you rike nuvver Martini, Mr Harri?". Oh, alright then. Sophie thinks the latter phrase would be a most appropriate epitaph for me!

Needless to say, I had the best Martini of the trip there. It was served in a properly cold glass with a fine layer of ice crystals spread across the surface, like diamonds around a beautiful girl's neck.

So, no trips for a bit (I hope) and looking forward to Salute. I'm still progressing on my Darkest Africa figures but have been painting nothing else for three months now so am feeling the inevitable urge to do something different for a bit. I've been following the planned releases for Mutineer Miniatures with interest so maybe it's time to finish that first unit of Indian Mutiny British before I start on the Zanzibari force.

Dreaming about wargaming..

2011-03-18T22:23:00.000Z

Flying Eva Air today: they have model stewardesses!

I had a rather vivid dream about wargaming last night, which is a first. Given that I have spent the last week flying about in Asian airliners it would have been more agreeable to have had a dream about Asian stewardesses, but there you are.

It was dream set in a parallel world Guildford (many people think that Guildford is a parallel world anyway and in fact the club meets in Burpham not Guildford) where everyone was playing a strange fantasy wargame using a bizarre mixture of historical and fantasy figures in different scales. Everyone was having a brilliant time except me as I had no idea how the rules worked. In fact that sounds like most of my experiences at Guildford in real life. All the other Guildford players were fictitious except for Keith who was the only one I recognised (we must do that WW1 game soon, Keith).

Now I have had other wargaming themed dreams before but these always involve the discovery of hitherto unknown figures in the back of a dusty shop somewhere. The sort of shop that you get in films where you meet a strange and mysterious shopkeeper who sells you something remarkable but when you go back there it doesn't exist. The former Fun, Fact and Fantasy shop in Ryde, Isle of White was just such a shop. It was certainly the dustiest shop I had ever been in. Anyway, the best version of this dream was discovering a whole Copplestone sculpted Arabian Nights range. If only...

Talking of figure ranges, I note with interest the Foundry "sell off and never replace" sale at present. Looking through the ranges that they claim they are terminating it doesn't surprise me as they are almost all ranges that are being done better and cheaper by others and, probably in plastic too (ACW, Napoleonic, Wars of the Roses). There are a few odd packs of figures from other ranges thrown in almost randomly. For example why cut one of the Thracian cavalry packs? I ordered a pack of these as I actually do have some painted Thracians I keep meaning to add to. Then annoyingly, two days later they cut the other one! I needed some more Darkest Africa figures so could swallow the £8.00 postage. I have never been a Foundry basher but the current price of £14.00 for six figures does make me think. I intend to search harder on eBay if I want any more, I think.

Talking of eBay, I got my TWA Lockheed Constellation from there. Luckily it finished in the middle of the night which happened to be morning here in Taiwan.

Quite missing painting at the moment but still have another week to go in Asia. Off to Hanoi now.

Planes, Swedes, Portuguese, Africans and Mercedes Benz

2011-03-11T08:38:00.006Z

More for Darkest Africa

Well it's been rather a lot of weeks since I posted on this blog although, to be fair, I have managed a few posts on my Darkest Africa blog. Amazingly, I have managed to keep to one army for two months now, which must be the first time I have been so focussed since my Cynoscephalae force back in 2007. I am now working on the last combat unit for my British colonial force; levy askaris (although I still need to do the baggage unit). Rather than move on to the first Arab unit I may take a brief break to finish half a dozen Mexicans which are very nearly finished and have been lurking on the workbench for far too long.

Mexicans under way

Since my last post, I succumbed to a box of the Warlord Games Swedish infantry although, having opened the box, I rather wish I hadn't: that is a lot of bits! Never mind it looks like I will have to go back to Stockholm in May so that means another chance to look around the army museum (not to mention dinners with my particular friend Anna, as she tries to, yet again, persuade me that herring is food fit for human consumption as opposed to consumption by seals; which is all it is really good for).

John Jenkins tempting Portuguese

Talking of distracting figures, I was very taken with the new John Jenkins Portuguese conquistadors. I bought a box load of the Foundry conquistadors a few years ago but just couldn't work up any enthusiasm for Incas or Aztecs despite doing a prize winning project on them at school (the only time I ever won a prize for anything but art). However, I am more enthused by the thought of skirmishes with Brazilian indians and, indeed, West Africans, for which the Portuguese would be ideal. Maybe if anyone stocks them at Salute, which is bearing down on us like the irresistible juggernaut it is, I will pick some up.

My only painted Foundry Conquistador

It was my little boy's birthday yesterday (actually he isn't little any more; he is fourteen and suddenly 5'7" tall) and having totally failed to procure the requested Blackberry (out of stock everywhere, it seems) I decided he needed something to open on the day so took myself over to Modelzone in Kingston yesterday afternoon. That was, of course, a mistake.

Mercedes Benz World

I got him two Scalextric cars including a McLaren Mercedes; one of his favourites, although Scalextric are promising a Bugatti Veyron later in the year. I actually saw a Bugatti on the road, in Guildford last year. So far my sightings of these had been limited to two at Top Gear Live and one outside the Beverly Hilton. McLaren Mercedes are far more common around here! Now, I always always had this view, from many trips to Eastern Europe, that Mercedes are really only suitable for use as taxis in places like Bratislava. However, I live fifteen minutes drive from something called Mercedes Benz World, which now takes up much of the old Brooklands motor circuit and Hawker airfield site.

Inside MBW

Guy loves this place but I hadn't been there until recently when he spent some of his Christmas money on an off road driving experience there. It is a huge place, with floors of shiny new Mercedes which you can climb all over and, more interestingly, some old cars too. It has a shop, a cafe, a restaurant, several driving tracks and a disturbing number of very pretty girls in black Mercedes jumpsuits. It is free to enter and is quite the most impressive example of brand loyalty-building marketing I have ever seen.

Guy's favourite car

My favourite car

Of course, siting it in the Weybridge/Cobham/Oxshott "capital of bling" triangle doesn't hurt, where a Mercedes is what you buy your au pair girl to run around in. There was an advert from one of the parents in Guy's school's parents association newsletter last February advertising a six month old Mercedes convertible. "Would make an ideal Valentines gift" it said. Quite. Personally, I got my wife a heart shaped cucumber this year and she was lucky to get that.

Guy at the wheel

After a Mercedes lovely whisked Guy off to join his instructor and we had trekked out in the rain to the off-road circuit my wife informed me that she hadn't bothered to buy the optional £15 insurance for the session. So I had a tense hour whilst Guy drove £58,000 worth of Mercedes around the course with me knowing that if he bashed it I'd have to pay the £1,500 excess. Fortunately he didn't.

The ultimate car kit

I think the exhibit I liked best was the exploded Formula 1 car reduced to 2,500 components and hung on wires by a Dutch artist. Perhaps even more impressive, however, was the finish on the cappucino in the cafe; now that is branding!

Good grief!

Anyway, back to Modelzone. As usual I ended up buying something I didn't need; in this case the new Airfix 1/48th DeHavilland Sea Vixen. I'd been thinking about it since the big article about building it in Airfix Model World magazine a couple of months back. Added to this, we saw one doing aerobatics over our house in Cowes a couple of years ago.

Sea Vixen over Cowes

Airfix Model World really is a deadly little magazine. Beautifully put together and full of unbelievably gorgeous painted models, there is usually something in it that makes me want to go and buy something or, perhaps, dig something out of the loft. This month's issue has an article on the Airfix Vostok kit and I know I have one of those in the loft somewhere. I also bought a model F-86 Sabre just on the basis of the picture on the cover of the magazine (and the kit). Not since the days of Roy Cross have I been so easily influenced!

Now, I really don't need any more model aircraft (or ships or 1/35th tanks). I never build them (or rather I never complete them) and the group model build I tried to do last year for the Britmodel site was an utter failure as well. Except now I have decided to finish my Westland Whirlwind from that aborted project as a change of pace from painting Darkest Africa figures. In particular I can contemplate doing a little in the evenings when the light is too bad for figure painting. I also have a 1/48th Mark 1 Spitfire under way and I'm reading a book about the Hawker Hurricane which has a strong local association.

It's nice to go trav'lin...on a Lockheed Constellation

I have also been contemplating a Lockheed Super Constellation, largely, it has to be said, because I have recently been listening to Frank Sinatra's 1957 album, Come Fly with Me which features Constellations on the cover. The problem is that I really want a TWA one but the current Airfix (which is the old Heller 1/72nd model) one only has Qantas and Aer Lingus markings. I just managed to get an old Heller one on eBay with TWA markings! However, it is a bit of a problem kit to build, it seems. I recently watched the film The Aviator which had a scene where Howard Hughes (a surprisingly good Leonardo DiCaprio) inspects his fleet of grounded Constellations following a crash. Except I am enough of a nerd to have noticed that they were Super Constellations (as on the Sinatra cover) rather than the original Constellations they would have been at the time (it's all about the windows).

Increasingly, however my view on model kits is rather akin to that on figures. I am tending to the view that 1/48th is the one true scale just as 28mm is for figures. I find both 1/72nd and 15mm too small these days. I also find it hard to get a convincing paint job on a 1/72nd kit. I may have to bite the bullet and invest in an airbrush although the thought of all that cleaning isn't very exciting. That said, I was also looking at the old Airfix B25 Mitchell in Modelzone but 1/72 for bombers seems more reasonable. Although, apparently, there was a 1/48th kit of the B-25 revealed at the recent Nuremburg toy fair! Maybe I need to actually finish a model first before I get any more. No doubt all aircraft modellers have the equivalent of the lead pile.

Talking of big boxes of Airfix, and prompted by a recent visit to the Imperial War Museum, Guy spent some of his birthday money on the World War 1 battle set. This has trenches, figures and a couple of Mark 1 tanks. The bizarre thing about it is, of course, is that it is totally historically inaccurate, as the figures are 1914 period whereas the tanks are from 1916. It's rather like the old assault set they did with the Patton and Centurion tank attacking the German strongpoint.

Most of my time, lately, has been spent trying to sort out my book shelves. There is no way I can display all my books, given the limited shelf space I have, so I have been going through them and packing some of them into crates to go up in the loft. So it's goodbye all those "making of..." film books, American car books and many of my art books for a while, for example.

Some of my early nineties planes in Guy's room

I certainly have no shelf space to display models so I may have to go for the Modelzone method and hang them from the ceiling! I feel that I am now old enough that I don't care about this anymore! I made quite a few model aircraft in the early nineties before I started painting soldiers again and now many of these are hanging up on Guy's ceiling. For some reason I decided to only do US Navy carrier based planes. I still have a half dozen or so unbuilt USN kits in the loft and an unfinished 1/32 F-14. At least if you build them for flying mode you don't have to worry about the undercarriage!

Oh well, it's off to see the Iraqi finance minister now and then this weekend I start a two week trip to Asia so that will put paid to any painting or, indeed, Airfix kit building!

John Barry 1933-2011

2011-02-01T23:01:00.000Z

I don't usually post about non-military subjects on this blog, as I have others for that, but just have to note the passing of John Barry who provided the soundtrack to some significant parts of my life.

I am listening to The Beyondness of Things at present which my particular friend S bought for me when we both visited Vancouver in the summer of 1999. We were in a suite at the end of the Pan Pacific hotel in Vancouver overlooking the harbour. It was sunset and she had a CD ghetto blaster in order to preview some music for the conference she was organising. We looked out of the curved windows over the "sails" of the convention centre, sipping Martinis, which we had ordered at enormous expense on room service, and this glorious music floated out the speakers as the sun went down... She said there and then that she was going to live there, with that view which she now does so, thank goodness, I always have an excuse to go back, drink Martinis and listen to John Barry as we contemplate the sparkling lights (and strange piles of sulphur) across the water from her (very) fancy apartment.

My Martini glass is chilling in the deep freeze as is my Lithuanian Vodka and Bombay Sapphire.

The next one, Mr Prendergast, is for you...

Re-painting, plastics, Sibelius and the Thirty Years War.

2011-01-19T22:21:00.001Z

The sun is actually out this morning and so I got a bit more done on the Naval brigade

My posts are starting to be, rather depressingly, only monthly. Partly this is because the figures I have painted come from periods that have their own blog. Never mind, as I am actually painting regularly again. So, anyway, here is this month's ramble.

Amazingly, I have managed to stick to one project for a month without getting distracted! So far I have painted over 30 figures for my Darkest Africa Zambezi campaign, which is based on the Gary Chalk article in Wargames Illustrated last April. Because there are so many different troop types to paint I should be able to keep my attention on this for some time, I hope. More on my Darkest Africa blog.

The best thing about this project is that the units are often very small. For example, after I finish the Naval Brigade the next unit ready to go are the Sikhs and their unit is only six figures. I had a few Sikh NCOs from the Darkest Africa NCO pack but needed to get one more pack of six from Foundry, so took advantage of their 20% discount over Christmas to get them and a few more DA figures I needed. Interestingly, and this has happened before, when they arrived they were the old eight figure packs not the six figure ones that have been up on the website for years. This obviously shows that these are not exactly best sellers if they still have stocks of the old packs. I also picked up a big job lot of Darkest Africa on eBay which had some porters, as I found that one of my porters has mysteriously gone missing. They've never left the house except for my first game at Guildford Wargames club (which must be at least five years ago) and I have checked everywhere else they might conceivably be. I'll have to ask Mike Lewis if he ended up with his Belgians!

Sarah looking dinky as usual

I have had a whole series of evening events to go to over the last week which has taken up any painting time in the evening. Last night I had a reception at the law firm where Giles Allison works. It was so boring I nearly called him up! I did go to the more entertaining leaving party of a former colleague last week, which would have been great (especially as the lovely Sarah was there) except it was Friday night in one of those City wine bars which was so noisy you had to shout to be heard. I must be getting old because I do not think this sort of environment is fun any more (despite the presence of some very attractive girls). Part of the problem is that I just can't hear very well when there are lots of people in a room these days. Added to which there was the inevitable pounding music (not very far) in the background. Why do they have music so loud that people have to shout?

Sony TPS-L2, my first Walkman

Over thirty years ago, my Uncle Wally, who was a very senior executive at Ford and a friend of Akio Morita, founder of Sony, presented me with one of the first Walkmans (Walkmen?). Since then, and a whole string of Walkmen and now iPods, my hearing has taken such a bashing that I wander around the trendy places of the world like a zombie whose only vocubulary is "What?", "Eh?" and "Sorry?. Tragic, really. Still. Mustn't grumble.

The notoriously grumpy Sibelius caught off guard in 1939

Speaking of music I have just read a biography of Sibelius, my very favourite composer. Why I like such stark music I do not know (perhaps it's something to do with my part Nordic DNA) but he has very much the biggest classical composer section on my iPod. One thing I did know about Sibelius before I read this book was that he was a compulsive reviser of his compositions. They would be performed and then years later he would go back and fiddle around with them a little. Or so I thought. One thing I learned from the book was that there had been a recording of the original versions of my two favourite Sibelius pieces, the 5th Symphony and the tone poem, En Saga. I downloaded this from Amazon (cheaper than iTunes as usual) and listened to them yesterday. Having done so I realised that he didn't just fiddle around with them he chopped them up and re-ordered them completely. The original version of both pieces contains most of the constituent pieces of both works but what now seems like, in the revised works, a coherent progression of ideas is not there at all. The 5th Symphony, in its original form stops and starts with none of that characterstic Sibelian evolution. It's a mess, frankly and I realise that the real genius of the composer was to take his original building blocks and reassemble them to make a much more coherent whole; something akin to clever film editing. It just shows, as Sibelius himself admitted, that these works don't just spring fully formed from the mind of the composer but, even if the inspiration is there, still need a lot of work.

And what has all this to do with painting model soldiers? Well, the question of revisiting old work is very much on my mind on this Darkest Africa project. The Foundry DA figures were the very first 28mm metal figures I bought and painted and, frankly, I wasn't very good at painting in those days (ten years ago). When I look at them now they are a bit, well, blotchy. I later discovered that I needed glasses for reading and as soon as I got these the faults in the figures were all to apparent. I wear 1.5 x magnification for working on the computer and reading in bad light (I don't need them most of the time) and use 3 x magnification reading glasses from Boots for painting. I looked at one of those optivisor things but found that the glasses were just as good and you didn't end up looking like a character from Blade Runner. So now I will be repainting quite a few of my DA figures to sharpen them up. I first did this a few years ago and was pleased with the result.

Foundry Darkest Africa Princess. Painted 1999, revised 2007

Also, at this time, I had not discovered static grass so just painted the bases green and bunged a bit of sand on them. Some people turn their bases (especially the element basing people) into little works of art but, on the whole I can't be bothered, unless it is a character figure.

Khurusan Cuirassiers

Now, I am notorious for starting new periods but am making some effort to get rid of figures I am never going to paint. However, I still have this hankering to start a Thirty Years War army. This is patently ridiculous as I still have hundreds of ECW figures I haven't painted but I was thinking about it again when I saw a new range of 15mm figures from Khurusan appear on TMP. I don't like 15mm figures but these looked good and, given the size of many of the battles of the Thirty Years War 15mm would be a sensible way to go. it's a new range, though, so you never know whether it will get completed (still waiting for those Swedish Cavalry from Musketeer!).

A small part of the model Swedish Thirty Years War Army in the museum in Stockholm

At the very least it would give me a good excuse to go back to Sweden and stay with my particular friend A, who has a lovely apartment in the centre of the old town in Stockholm. I could then visit the Swedish Army Museum again which has quite a few Thirty Years War Exhibits, as you'd expect. Most impressive is a model of a Swedish Army from the Thirty Years War made with what looked like 20mm figures. It was about twenty feet across.

Other than the 15mm figures, however, I have also been very tempted by the Warlord Games Thirty Years War boxes; which are their ECW figures with some extra metal bits. I really like their ECW range but they are too small to be compatible with my Renegade and Bicorne figures. Now I know that the clothes of the Thirty Years War and the ECW were different and for historical accuracy I should go for The Assault Group's range. I bought a few of these but Nick Collier, the sculptor of Renegade's figures as well, has gone for much smaller figures but with big heads. The Warlord figures are much more anatomically correct. I actually had a box in my hands at Warfare last November but put them back. I think that one of the issues is that I have never painted more than one or two figures from any of the boxes of plastic figures I have bought over the last few years. I don't think its their plasticness per se, as I have happily painted dozens of GW Lord of the Rings figures, but the fact that you just end up with an overwhelming number of figures in one go. Given that I paint six figures in a good week a box with 47 figures in it engenders a feeling of utter helplessness. Even so...

Finnish Thirty Years War Hakkapeliitta

One interesting snippet from the Sibelius biography I read is that one of my favourite Sibelius pieces, the central movement, Scena, from Scenes Historiques No 1, actually depicts the activities of Finnish Troops in the Thirty Years War. Originally a four movement piece written for a Finnish Press Pension Fund benefit concert in 1899, the fourth movement, Finland Awakes, became so popular that it developed a life of its own as Finlandia, Sibelius' most famous composition. Scena has one of the most rousing climaxes of any Sibelius composition and is appropriately martial.

Finally, talking about plastics I have been following, with increasing disbelief, the utter nonsense (much of it slanderous and much of it racist) being talked about Wargames Factory on TMP. Its always sad when a company with good ideas runs into trouble and it seems the issues that they have had with their suppliers are very much akin to what Airfix suffered when its French suppliers were unable to deliver a few years ago, which ultimately led to them going bust. For my part, I just ordered a few packs of their Zulus off eBay, just in case. Plastics really do have a role in building mass armies like this which is why I am sure that I will get over my aversion to painting boxes of plastics when the Perry Miniatures plastic Mahdists come out.

Year End and plans for 2011

2011-01-06T14:00:00.000Z

I did manage to get a bit of painting done over Christmas and finished these 26 Foundry Darkest Africa British Askaris (for more about them see my Darkest Africa blog). This sort of makes up for the fact that 2010 was my least productive year since records began, with only 148 figures completed compared with 212 last year. 29 of these were Darkest Africa figures of one type or another and if you add on the 25 Zulu Wars and 14 Sudan figures I completed it was very much an African themed year. Other than these, Lord of the Rings, Carthaginians and Wars of the Roses were the only other periods where I got into double figures.

Looking back to my plans for 2010 I did predict my main efforts would be for the Zulu War, Sudan War, Darkest Africa (although I didn't get any Masai done), Punic War and Lord of the Rings. The real period I failed to progress was WW1 but Keith at the club is keen to do some WW1 games this year so that may encourage me a bit.

Looking forward it will be more of the same but I would add that I would like to get more Indian Mutiny figures done. I have a unit of 20 well on the way so if I lose my current enthusiasm for Darkest Africa I will do some of those (and some Normans) as a change.

This years travel starts up again in a couple of weeks time with a visit to Turkey. I will try to restrict my travel a bit more this year.

Now I have to take down Christmas as my wife and children tend to go a bit mad on the Christmas tree front. It usually takes about eight hours to dismantle!

Some catching up...

2010-12-19T20:08:00.001Z

Who needs turkey?

Well, I am back from my final trip of the year and I didn't get eaten by a lion, catch malaria, pick up a tummy bug or get carjacked. More on my trip on my Darkest Africa blog here. It's not been too bad on the travelling front this year; only nine countries (USA, Colombia, Mexico, Canada, UAE, Switzerland, Lithuania, Zambia and Turkey for the record) but next year may be worse again.

I actually got some figures finished this month!

Unfortunately, having been away for nearly two weeks (including last weekend down at my friend's house in Bath) my wife now has an appallingly long list of jobs for me to do so if I so much as pick up a paintbrush I get shouted at by the evil old harridan. I am managing to sneak in some painting when she is out of the house but that isn't giving me much time. I am trying to finish off some part finished figures at present but the trouble is I keep preparing more! I have now finished my batch of Zulu War British and am very tempted to fast track some more which I started some time ago. I will try to be good, however, and move on to another small group which are well on the way instead. Which group, is a the crucial question!

It was good to get down to Aquae Sulis again. My friends are great cooks (they import all their fruit and vegetables direct from Italy by courier!) and have a wonderful, real cellar. We had some nice Dom Ruinart 1996 Rose, some good claret (Gruard Larose), a fine Barolo and bottles and bottles of other stuff fom the cellar (I think the four of us drank eight bottles with dinner on Saturday!). One blast from the past was Coteaux du Tricastin which used to be a favourite from Sainsbury's years ago. I used to drink it with a former girlfriend V in the early eighties. It was a very nostalgic bottle, especially as my hostess in Bath (she later married one of my best friends) was my girlfriend immediately before V. All very complicated. Not the wine; that was as rustic as ever!

One disappointment is that Bonapartes, the model soldier shop, which was literally a hundred feet from their house, has closed. It sold mostly 54mm and up figures but they also had a very good second hand military books section and I usually managed to pick up something there. It has moved to Westbury and can be found here. Somewhere I have got a 90mm Roman legionary I bought there a few years ago but I never get around to starting it as I always feel I should be painting 28mm figures.

From this...

...to this.

Also, the very large Games Workshop in Bath (the biggest I have ever been other than HQ in Nottingham) has now been replaced by a normal sized shop. This is a shame as they often had things in there that the smaller shops didn't. I resisted the urge to buy something on the basis that I have hundreds of GW figures to paint. When I got back I started to assemble some more Rohan riders which I aim to paint at the same time as my new plastic Normans as they will share a lot of colours. Something for Christmas time I think. I also finished off an Orc tracker which had been sitting on my desk for far too long. No idea where the other two from the pack are, though! Talking of Normans I finished another metal Crusader figure this week as well so at least there is some progress on the painting front.

On the plane to Zambia (a ten and a half hour flight) I started the third Clive Cussler novel about detective Isaac Bell. Clive Cussler is one of my guilty pleasures and I can still re-read his early novels: especially Raise the Titanic, Deep Six, Vixen 03 and, probably my favourite, Night Probe. After this his novels seemed to deteriorate and become more hackneyed, formulaic, stodgy and just juvenile (there were even the odd raunchy sex scenes in the early books but now they seem to be aimed at 12 year olds). Part of the problem was that he seemed to be writing with one eye on a film option so they became full of completely unbelievable, Roger Moore-period James Bond-type action sequences. Adaption of his books has not been a happy affair and I can't think that anyone else would bother now. Like many successful US authors he has now become a franchise churning out multiple volumes in different series "with" other authors. The quality of these depends, of course, on the actual author. His colloborator on the Isaac Bell books, Justin Scott, writes at a level or so above some of the other writers attached to his series and they are now very much the most enjoyable of his current output. I think the interesting period they are set in (early twentieth century pre-Great War) helps and the novel I read on the plane, The Spy, features the pre-war dreadnought race.

I am still reading multiple books and started the the first Garry Douglas Killworth book about the Crimean War, The Devil's Own, (which I bought on ebay as they are out of print) on the flight back. It really is Sharpe in the Crimea and I whilst I found it a bit stodgy at first it is now rattling along nicely.

I also finished some Darkest Africa British, which I started years ago, inspired by a recent Wargames Illustrated article by Gary Chalk. I also have a batch of British askaris, which I might now fast track, to go with these.

This week looks quiet on the work front so I may get some more done this week.

Blood of Honour by James Holland

2010-11-25T21:59:00.000Z

One of the problems with travelling a lot is that I often end up with multiple books on the go at a time. There is no point in packing a half finished book so I inevitably start a new one on a trip. Inevitably, I tend to finish it half way through and then move on to one I've bought at the airport. So when I get back I have yet another half finished book.

Currently I have five novels on the go and the gap between starting and finishing can be so large I often have to go back and re-read parts of them!

At present I am trying to finish Blood of Honour by James Holland, the third novel about Sergeant Jack Tanner of the fictional Yorks Rangers. This is not to suggest it is a struggle. Far from it, but, rather like my "in progress" section on the workbench I am determined to tie up a few loose ends. I enjoyed the first novel in the series, The Odin Mission, with its unusual setting of the Norwegian campaign. It was, as others have said, very much a Second World War Sharpe, with a small band making a trek through enemy controlled territory. The second novel, Darkest Hour, set during the French campaign which led to the evacuation from Dunkirk, was not nearly as successful. Rambling, muddled and with characters that float in and out for no discernable reason it also suffered from what looked like a horribly rushed ending. It may well have been rushed as, about the same time that The Odin Mission appeared we also got Michael Asher's The Last Commando, a similar, although bloodier and grittier, attampt at a WW2 Sharpe. Whilst the second book in that series is scheduled to appear in a couple of weeks Holland has since produced two more novels in his World War 2 series.

His third book, Blood of Honour, is set during the Crete campaign, about which, other than the island was captured by German paratroops I knew nothing. As you would expect from a World War 2 historian the "big picture" stuff is handled well and informatively without it holding up the action. Others have said that the characterisation in the novels is a bit weak but I wasn't expecting Sebastien Faulks, to be honest. For me what I wanted was some inspirational battle scenes that could be turned into a wargame. In this, Blood of Honour succedes much better than the previous two books. There are assaults on a town, ambushes and battles through vinyards; all good stuff. One of the reviewers on Amazon said that Holland conveyed no sense of place and that the action could have happened anywhere. I have to disagree with this as I think that he gets the feeling of being on a Mediterranean island in the summer very well. His fourth book featuring Jack Tanner is due out next summer. I'll certainly be picking it up when it comes out

My second hand Eighth Army

Meanwhile, I picked up a batch of undercoated Eighth Army, LRDG and commando figures via someone at Guildford. They need rebasing and undercoating in white before I can work on them but now I'm thinking of getting German paratroops to oppose them rather than Afrika Korps, So maybe I should add my half dozen part-painted Eighth Army figures to my finish before Christmas pile

Warfare

2010-11-25T17:01:00.003Z

I went to Warfare briefly on Sunday. My main reason for attending was to visit Mutineer Miniatures but, although they were listed on the programme there was no sign of them and the organisers hadn't a clue about them. Maybe they only attended on Saturday.

I was amazingly restrained; buying a few loose (!) Foundry elf nymphs, some Musketeer Miniatures Saxon slingers and their "not Jack Sparrow" from the Gripping Beast stand for my daughter (who has shown some interest in a Legends of the High Seas game). Disappointingly, Warlord Games didn't have any of the new Paul Hicks sculpted Crimean War figures and didn't sound very excited about them when I asked. I have heard that their are big plans for the range and I hope so because the figures I am working on at present are superb.

I did look at the Great War Miniatures Crimean figures for the first time and they aren't quite as gnomic in real life as the photographs might indicate. What was obvious, though, was that they are by different sculptors so some, to me, are better than others (just like their Great War range). At a push I could team them with the Warlord ones in seperate units so all is not lost. I also recently ordered an Osprey on the British army in the Crimea but their main Men-at-Arms ones on the conflict seem to be out of print. Certainly they are selling for silly prices on eBay (circa £45) and with book sellers at Warfare.

I also got a box of the new Norman cavalry from Conquest Games which I have started to review on my Dark Ages blog. I think I will be getting a lot of these.

I looked at a lot of tempting stuff, such as Empress Miniatures new Boers, but realised that I have so many figures I really don't need any more yet; not when my desk is covered in half-finished miniatures!

Next up: more Normans, Zulus, 1879 British and Indian Mutiny. Oh, and I need to do another artillery piece.

Back from the desert...

2010-11-13T22:55:00.008Z

There is nothing like a nice light starter

So, I've been back from Abu Dhabi (and one or two other places in the Middle East) for ten dys or so, and while it is not one of my favourite destinations it was nice to be able to sit outside and have dinner at an Italian restaurant in November! I don't go to the Middle East that much and am not that inspired by the UAE because of the lack of history about the place. Of the places I have been in the region I prefer Jordan and Oman and am indifferent about Qatar (which is still nicer than Dubai, however). So much for that being my last trip of the year as I have just booked my next flight today to somewhere rather more exotic...

Speaking of exotic I know that Matt likes to see the people I have to put up with on my trips so here is the lovely S in Aqaba!

I've been wondering what figures to try to finish next after my Beja cavalry (see the Sudan Blog) and I've got a few Zulu War British half done so will have a go at them next. I am pleased to see the new Empress Miniatures Boers which will also be good for the First Boer War. My first ever game of the Sword and the Flame was a First Boer War game and I have been keen to have another go at this.

Even though I really don't need any more figures I think I will go to Warfare this weekend just in case I spot something interesting. Actually. there is one thing on my list and that is some Mutineer Miniatures Gurkhas. I was in the City just after I got back from the Middle East and the British Legion had deployed, to sell poppies, a whole load of servicemen (and women I bought my poppy from a very fetching lady sailor (I don't think they are wrens anymore). They were all in uniform and were doing very well in attracting people to buy poppies. In Leadenhall Market they had the band of the Gurkhas playing which made for an unusual accompaniment to tapas!

My Norman army so far

Basically, I only get to paint on Sundays at present and if I do go to Warfare I won't get much done this weekend so my annual painting total looks like it will be well down. Next after the Zulu War British will be some Norman cavalry which are also well on the way. I have been painting a few Crusader Normans this year and have some more lined up. They are really quite quick and easy to paint. Then it's Indian Mutiny British and Mexicans. Hopefully, I will also be able to fit in some work on my Crimea British; especially as much of the uniform colours are similar to the Zulu War period troops.

I recently picked up the new Airfix Model World magazine for Guy but it had a couple of interesting articles inside I enjoyed as well. One was a very good piece on weathering a WW1 tank and the other was on how to paint the Airfix Saturn V kit. I have had one of these up in the loft for years and Guy keeps asking me to build it for him but I remember from when I built one in the early seventies that painting it was a nightmare, so this article should be useful. All in all I was quite impressed with it and will definitely pick up the second one. It seems to have a good distribution and I have seen it in Sainsburys as well as Smiths.

I'm very envious of all the painting everyone esle seems to be getting done!

Even more thoughts on the Crimea...

2010-10-30T22:06:00.006+01:00

I am rapidly talking myself into this one, unfortunately. In the very little time I have had this week I have started to paint my eight Warlord Games figures. The Paul Hicks sculpts are very detailed in the Perry style, rather than the chunky Foundry style, which means the details are rather fine but already I am enjoying painting them.

I have now started to order some of the Gary Douglas Kilworth novels off eBay to keep me in the mood and have bought a few reference books. In fact I seem to have bought four books this week. An overall history, Crimea, by Trevor Royle which I managed to get for £4.99 instead of £14.99. Secondly, I picked up the Osprey Essential History as a quick primer. Another book The Thin Red Line, which is based on eyewitness accounts, by Julian Spilsbury has some nice colour illustrations. The Battle of the Alma by Ian Fletcher and Natalia Ishchenko covers the first major battle of the War and has some useful maps.

Finally, while sorting out the books on my shelves to find space for this new Crimea collection, I discovered I had already bought a book on the Crimea in the Isle of Wight in August so I must have been thinking about the period longer than I remember! This was the out of print Uniforms and Weapons of the Crimean War by Robert Wilkinson-Latham which has some great illustrations. I bought this in a funny little second hand bookshop in St Helens on the Isle of Wight which, nevertheless, has a great military history section. In fact, the basis of the whole bookshop business was a huge private colection of military books that he current owner purchased.

Just to give you an idea this photo is of just one of around four sections of military booksI always find half a dozen or so books there when I visit, although it is by no mean a cheap bookshop. Expect to pay antiquarian prices for some of the older volumes. I have paid £60 or £70 pounds for nineteenth century accounts of the Sudan Wars.

Further good news from Warlord Games today with the announcement of a splendid mounted officer by Paul Hicks.

Off to Abu Dhabi for a week tomorrow so won't get any painting done this week. I am really hoping that this will be my final overseas trip this year but you never know...

Thoughts on the Crimea...

2010-10-19T21:16:00.012+01:00

Laura in Bogota. Very much the acceptable face of government!

Well, I have just returned from a ten day trip to the Americas (Mexico City, Bogota and Houston) and accompanying me for much of the way (apart from the lovely Laura) was To Do or Die by Patrick Mercer.

Now I have never bothered with novels about the Crimean War (notably Garry Douglas Kilworth's books about "Fancy Jack" Crossman) as I never found it a very inspiring war (if there can be such a thing). My view has always been, informed by period photographs, that it was a very grim affair (as if any war isn't) fought in horrible conditions in a dull, treeless landscape. Perhaps it is the recollection of Roger Fenton's The Valley of the Shadow of Death taken on the battlefield of Balaclava.

The Valley of the Shadow of Death by Roger Fenton

I bought Mercer's book at the airport as I calculated that the novel I had packed wouldn't last me the five flights I had to make (correctly). The real reason I bought it was that he has written a sequel set during the Indian Mutiny, a period and theatre I am interested in and I felt I had to read the first book as a matter of course. The problem with it is that it is a very good novel indeed and so am now, not surprisingly, contemplating getting some Crimean War figures. In fact it is worse than that as I have actually ordered a pack from Warlod Games of their new range sculpted by Paul Hicks, whose Zulu War British for Empress are so characterful.

Warlord's elegant British line figures

Now, of course Great War Miniatures have just started a range as well and, in fact, have far more troop types out already. The problem is is that GWM seem to have missed the fact that 28mm figures are increasingly tending towards better proprtioned anatomy. As a result, given big bearskins and big beards some of their figures are somewhat gnomic.

Great War Miniatures Guardsmen gnomes

Warlord are claiming on their website that Hicks will create a full range of French, Russians and British (when will he have the time?) and I am more prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt as their other ranges so far have been admirably heading towards completeness.

95th Regiment troops 1855

Mercer's book features as its hero an officer of the grenadier company of the 95th Regiment and, as a former army officer commanding operational British troops he has a good eye for striking images and a good ear for the troops' badinage. It also gives a great idea of the fog of war in that the combatants have absolutely no idea of what they are doing most of the time. This is probably the key to my approach to wargaming it (if indeed I ever do) as having (eventually) enjoyed the Flying Lead rules then something using a small number of figures in a big skirmish at company level may be the answer. Possibly, even a 1 to 1 ratio.

95th Regiment 1855

Oddly, the book, which generally has such narrative drive that I finished it on one 10 hour flight, does slow a bit in the middle (he has to find a way to break the action to allow the hero to return to the Crimea for the final battles) and this begs the question as to why he didn't turn his story into two novels. Nevertheless, it is one of the best novels of nineteenth century warfare I have read for a long time.

95th Regiment

Another part of my interest in the period may stem from the Black Powder rulebook which includes a scenario loosely based on the Battle of the Alma. However, the fact of the matter is that the Crimean War contained a very few set-piece battles and little in the way of extended skirmishing (cf the Peninsula, for example) and for Britain it was, in reality, more of a naval war.

Mexican Lancers in a very big landscape

2010-10-14T04:57:00.012+01:00

Mexico City 1837

I was having dinner in the British Ambassador's residence in Mexico City earlier this week (as you do) and was very struck by this magnificent painting of Mexico City in 1837. Mexico City is now around 28 million people so to see what it looks like less than 200 years ago is rather thought provoking. At home I have a painting of my great great great grandmother, aged about 12, painted in the same year. I remember my grandmother telling me about how she met her when she was young which gives me a rather spooky direct connection to the time when both this picture and my great great great grandmother's portrait were painted.

The painting in situ in the Ambassador's residence

The picture, entitled, accurately if rather unimaginatively, Mexico City 1837, was painted by an English artist Daniel Thomas Egerton. Mexico city can be seen on the left and beyond is Lake Texcoco, which surrounded the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan. It has now been completely filled in. In the background is the Sierra Nevada mountain range and the snow-capped peak of the Popcatépetl volcano. It was unusually clear in Mexico City this week and you could actually see the mountains surrounding the city. Yesterday I flew over Popcatépetl on my way to Bogota.

The mountains from the top of the HSBC tower this week

Daniel Thomas Egerton, first exhibited in London in 1824. He arrived in Mexico some time before 1834 and traveled through Mexico and the United States later publishing a set of 12 lithographs of views of Mexico when he returned to London in 1840, where his wife had remained. He returned to Mexico in 1840 with a lady called Agnes Edwards with whom he lived, rather controversially. In April 1842, as the couple were walking their dog, they were attacked by bandits and murdered.

Although the painting, as a whole, is splendid Egerton was obviously more comfortable with landscape than figures but I liked these Mexican lancers in the foreground, very familiar for anyone who has watched The Alamo, and it has got me keen to paint some more of my Boothill Miniatures Mexicans when I get back. Hopefully. they will produce some of these lancers in due course.

Boats,Tanks, Girls, Wine and Forts

2010-09-08T18:07:00.014+01:00

Charlotte at the helm!

I haven't updated this blog for some time as I have been in Canada and then had an unexpected extra holiday on the Isle of Wight on top of the three weeks we had around Cowes Week. We didn't do any racing at Cowes Week this year but did have some cracking sails in the boat. We actually managed to get all the sails up (which is a big job) and give it a bit of a run. Charlotte helmed mostly and wouldn't give anyone else a go.

1:1 scale Comet kits

Guy and I made our annual trip to the Isle of Wight military museum where they are still making slow but steady progress on their troop of Comet tanks. They had a new tank in the moving tank display too, a Centurion AVRE. This one was a first Gulf War veteran.

Centurion AVRE

They seemed to have spent a bit more on the museum and are trying harder. Guy and I enjoyed the air rifle shooting range and we managed to find a gun shop in Newport where I managed to get some pellets and some targets for my recently repaired Lincoln Jeffries Air rifle. This belonged to my grandfather and dates from about 1910. Guy and I have happily blasted away in the garden with it; when my wife is out, of course.

I watched the start of the Cowes Torquay Cowes powerboat race (a long time ago I competed in the Round the Island powerboat race) and watched the children sail at the RYS Swallows & Amazons week in Newtown creek. I read the Arthur Ransome books when I was young and then one of my classmates at junior school was cast in one of the lead roles in the film, which was made in about 1972. Wierdly I was chatting to a lady at one of the RYS barbecues the other week and one of her schoolfriends had been cast in one of the other parts! Charlotte, picked up the seamanship prize from the RYS and a special prize for learning semaphore in about two days and giving instructions out with flags all week. Sir Robin Knox-Johnson is a friend of my father in law and he told her how impressed he was with her signalling, which made her week!

Not so much happening on the painting front as apart from being away I have been working flat out on my new business which has been very stressful. Never mind, we have just won our first contract, beating PwC, Deloitte and Ernst & Young. Lots of trips to South America will now follow!

I enjoyed my Sudan wargame this week http://sudan1883.blogspot.com/2010/09/another-sudan-wargame.html and am now working on the final four camel mounted Beja I need for the El Teb and Tamai orders of battle. I have also started to base a few more Beja so think I will work on those for the next few weeks.

The lovely Cheryl and I after more than five hours drinking Niagara wine in the library bar of the Royal York Hotel, Toronto. I look ropey, she still looks gorgeous in her leather suit!

My Canadian trip was very enjoyable as I met up with a few old girlfriends (including some of those whom my wife doesn't like me meeting up with!) and catching up on Canadian wine. I also had a fascinating visit to Fort York with my particular friend Sophie (although it cost me £85 in lingerie as compensation) which I will write more on soon.

I'm off to Istanbul this week so don't expect to get much painted for a while.

The Dunkirk Directive by Donald Richmond

2010-08-16T20:56:00.007+01:00

I've been back from Cowes a couple of weeks now but I've been too busy catching up on work to do any painting. I didn't do as well as I had hoped on the painting in the mornings on account of the fact that I took my bike over to the Isle of Wight this year and was wearing myself out so much that I didn't wake up in the morning until gone eight! Never mind I lost over half a stone and am now the lightest I have been for over five years. Also, Cowes Week was busier than I had expected with more sailing than I had planned for.

Never mind, I got on with some Beja, some Zulus and moved my first Indian Mutiny unit along quite a bit. More on these when I have finished them.

I took quite a bit of reading with me but didn't do very well on that either. I took along the second James Holland WW2 novel, Darkest Hour, to read but struggled a bit with it. Its set in 1940 France just before Dunkirk and almost felt like two books. It didn't flow as well as the first one, The Odin Mission, which was set in Norway. The latter, very much a Sharpe for the Twentieth Century had a real narrative drive to it which is rather lacking in the rather episodic second book. I gather the third novel, Blood of Honour, set in Crete in 1941 is much better. I only finished it on the train last week on account of the fact that I picked up a much better World War 2 novel in the Freshwater lifeboat fund raising stall in Freshwater Bay (which is where I get the sand I use for my figures from-it's just the right level of coarseness).

Once I opened The Dunkirk Deception by Donald Richmond I completely abondoned the Holland novel. Sadly now out of print, it tells the story of a German plan to destroy the Supermarine factory in Southhampton using captured British Matilds tanks landed secretly on the South Coast. It was exceptionally well written and although containing a host of characters these all contributed logically to the story, unlike the Holland book where they pop up and then disappear again for no reason. One bonus was that it was set in an area I know very well; from Newhaven along the South Coast through Brighton, Chichester and Southampton. At one point I was travelling back to London for a meeting and passing through the suburbs of Southhampton which was being mentioned in the page I was reading as I passed through it! Although the concept behind the book seems hugely unlikely the author manages to make the whole thing quite plausible. A truly excellent read.

I am in Toronto at the moment and then back to Cowes for the Cowes-Torquay-Cowes anniversary race over the bank holiday so I doubt very much painting will be done until September!

Artillery piece of the month and workbench

2010-07-05T19:32:00.006+01:00

Artillery piece for June is the Perry Miniatures Wars of the Roses cannon I bought for Guy's mini Bosworth project but never got time to paint. This is the first artillery I have painted for my Wars of the Roses army except, as mine is the Earl of Oxford's and I have painted it as Richard's Royal artillery then technically it is for another force.

These guns had barrels constructed from welded iron staves held together with hoops. They were breech loaders with separate chambers that could be pre-charged. Two of the figures in this set are depicted with these chambers. The breech chambers were held in place by a wooden wedge but the power of the gun was lessened by the gases escaping through gaps between the breech and the barrel. The stave constructed barrels were also not strong enough for the new more powerful corned gunpowder (where the constituents were mixed with water, dried and formed into granules) either.

My next Wars of the Roses figures will be some of the plastics which I have assembled but I need to get some more half finished figures out the way first.

Looking at my half way through the year painting totals I have not done too badly; having painted 98 figures compared with 213 for the whole of 2009. I am hoping to do much better in the second half of the year and shortly we will be off to Cowes where I always get a good batch done (largely as there is no television there). I am now starting to think about what to take with me to paint and I am thinking that it is time to paint some more Sudan figures again. Maybe I should be really brave and just take my Gordon Highlanders. Other possibilities are Zulu War British and maybe some WW2. I'll probably have changed my mind again by the time I leave! In the meantime I am going to try to get another unit finished and my Indian Mutiny figures are looking to be a high probablilty. This is mainly because Mutineer Miniatures have come out with another load of great new figures, including a splendid mutineers command elephant.

Looking at what I thought I would be painting and what I actually did had its usual disconnect!

This section includes armies I thought I might paint and did:

Darkest Africa Force publique 21
Carthaginians 14
Zulus 6
Elizabethan sea dogs 4
Lord of the Rings 3
Great Northern War 2
Normans 2
Gladiators 1
Schleswig War 1

These are armies I thought I might paint some figures for but didn't: =

Darkest Africa Masai
WW1 Germans
Louis XIV

Figures I had no plans to paint but did, included:

Wars of the Roses 11
Indian Mutiny 8
Spartans 8
Zulu War British 5
Darkest Africa Baluchis 4
Pirates 2
Pulp 1
Vikings 1
8th army
Trojan War 1
Mexicans 1

OK, no plans going forward other than to try and finish some more units...

Valhalla

2010-06-20T20:53:00.007+01:00

Not exactly ExCel

Valhalla, run by the Farnborough Wargames Society, is one of those smaller shows that fill the calendar between the behemoths of the likes of Salute and Colours. I've not been before but today I was at something of a loose end. Having spent the last however many Sundays revising English and History with Guy I found that this Sunday, Father's Day, I was on my own. My wife was at work, Charlotte was doing her Duke of Edinburgh hike and Guy is in the French Alps mountain biking with the school. I could have spent the day painting but I did quite a bit yesterday (more of which later) and didn't feel like doing a whole day's worth. I was supposed to go and collect a bike at some point from my sister in law down in the Meon Valley and realised that if I took the A31 route I wouldn't be very far from Farnborough. Decision made.

This is not a part of Surrey I am familiar with. It is very much Army country although I also drove past the famous Farnborough airfield which reminded me of a funny story my sister told me about the air show which I can't repeat as it is contrary to the Official Secrets Act!

The show was held in Elles Hall, which is now part of a large sports and community complex. The hall was named in honour of Brigadier General Sir Hugh Elles, the first commander of the Tank Corps. It was a rambling old building and I'm glad they provided a map as games and trade stands were tucked away in all sorts of odd corners. It was a very small show with 20 or so traders and a dozen or so games. It reminded me of the only other small show I sometimes go to; To the Redoubt in Eastbourne. I had a chat with Mike, at Black Hat Miniatures, and vowed to get down to the club and play a game as he was the person that recruited me. Maybe another Sudan game with Keith would be an idea.

Speaking of which, I had a look at the Redoubt stand and they had a painted model of their Sudan camel borne artillery piece and I have to say it looked pretty good. Having seen their ECW stuff I am always under the impression that their figures are huge (their ECW figures dwarf Renegade's) but most of them looked OK. I thought that their French Indian War figures would go with Galloping Major's ones and their Trojans looked a reasonable size too.

My first Mexican (actually, her name was Alicia but that is another story)

I also got some more of the Boothill Miniatures Mexicans. Whilst the Alamo would be a silly project I have really enjoyed painting the one Mexican which I did yesterday and have already got a few more well on the way. This time I got some Presidial troopers, foot and mounted, because I read a book about mountain men last summer and there seemed to be quite a few cases of mountain men coming down from the mountains (naturally!) into California and having run ins with the local troops. These presidial troops would have been just the sort in the local garrisons that would have been in California at the time.

I also picked up some more of the Newline Designs Mycenaean figures for my Trojan project. Also on the Newline stand were a bunch of packs from a firm I hadn't heard of called Pontoonier Miniatures, who are based in the Eastern US. Looking them up, they have a rather elusive reeputation (no website, for example). Their figures were lovely, however, British colonial infantry and Burmese from what turned out to be the 3rd Anglo-Burmese War of 1885-1887.

The figures turned out to have been sculpted by Paul Hicks and there are a few (not very good) photos of the range here:

http://gallery.me.com/phicks1#100040&bgcolor=black&view=grid

They look like they may be easier to get from now on through Newline, however.

A multi use building from Frontline

Finally, I found myself at the stand of another firm I didn't know, Frontline Wargaming, who had some lovely buildings and other resin scenic pieces. I picked up a thatched bungalow which would work for Darkest Africa and India and an adobe type flat roofed building which would work, at a pinch, for Mexican Texas or California, the Pirate Caribbean, the Sudan, Arab Africa and maybe India also. In addition, I got a couple of explorers tents and baggage. I recently rewatched Mountains of the Moon and they would be perfect for the attack on Burton and Speke's camp by Somali tribesmen. Maybe I should do a scenic piece of the month as well as an artillery piece!

So I bought more than I intended but hopefully I will have a bit more time at the weekends going forward.

Huge relief...

2010-06-17T18:01:00.009+01:00

St John's

Things have been very tense over the last ten days at the Villa Hedlius as my son, Guy, has been doing his common entrance exams and we have been waiting to hear about his result. We have been helping him with his revision for the last month and so I have had very little time for painting. Him passing these exams was by no means a foregone conclusion, as he is quite dyslexic (my daughter sensitively calls him "Yug"). He needed to get 55% in his core subjects of English, Maths and Science and an average of 55% in the others. We got the results today and despite failing French he managed to get enough on the others (including an A for physics: shock!) to get his place at St John's, Leatherhead.

Where I used to work

St John's alumni include the architect Richard Rogers (who kindly got his studio to make a scale model of the Lloyd's building, where I met my wife, for our wedding cake) and Anthony Hope, the author of the Prisoner of Zenda.

Serious uniforms in Ruritania

From a military point of view the most interesting old boy is Lieutenant Geoffrey Harold Woolley, who was the first Territorial officer to win the VC. He was a member of the Queen Victoria Rifles and his unit was posted to Ypres where on his first day at the front a hand grnade was thrown into his trench. Wooley calmly picked it up and threw it out saving six or seven men.

Woolley on Hill 60

On the night of April 20th-21st 1915 the Germans launched an attack on the trench held by the QVR. Soon all his superiors had been killed leaving him in command of the forces on Hill 60. He was ordered to withdraw but refused, saying he would only pull back if properly relieved. Waves of German troops attacked the position but Wooley stood on the trench parapet in full view of the enemy throwing bombs at them and encouraging his men to hold on. When eventually they were relieved their unit had been reduced from 150 to 20 men. Woolley was promote to captain two days later. He survived the war, served in North Africa during WW2 as a chaplain and died in 1968. His brother, who also went to St John's, was the famous archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley who excavated the Sumerian city of Ur.

Leonard Woolley (right) with TE Lawrence in Carchemish where they were excavating between 1911 and 1914

Now of course, I have all the expense of getting Guy's uniform and sports stuff so that will cut my wargaming purchases a bit this summer !

On the Workbench..

2010-06-06T16:58:00.015+01:00

Black Scorpion pirate girl

After a rather disastrous May, when I only completed four figures, I have already had a much better first week in June getting nine figures finished this week. Apart from my Baluchis:

http://returntodarkestafrica.blogspot.com/2010/06/omani-baluchis.html

and my Elizabethan cannon
http://wargamesswashbucklers.blogspot.com/2010/06/sea-dogs-cannon.html

I also finished another Black Scorpion lady pirate and a Trojan War figure. The Black Scorpion figures are bigger than my Foundry ones but their girlie pirates are just irresitable! Next up I have some very Pirates of the Caribbean marines and skeleton pirates to do.

Ajax by Wargames Foundry

The Trojan is a Foundry Ajax figure and, like many of that range, is based on the illustrations in Peter Connolly's The Ancient Greece of Odysseus. Although this is a children's book, the pictures inside are wonderful; alternating between telling the tale of the siege of Troy and the Odyssey and sections on costume, warriors buildings etc.

Ajax from the Connolly book

I first got to know the story of Troy from a book about Greek heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green, which had evocative pictures of warriors fighting outside the walls of Troy. The Greeks wearing turquoises and blues the Trojans in red. The problem of differentiating armies for this conflict remains so I am considering, for my Trojans, giving them earth colours such as terracotta, red browns and ochres etc. A book I had as a boy on archeology, by CW Ceram, introduced me to Heinrich Schliemann and the historic background of the legends.

The best hats in cinema history: Helen of Troy (1957)

Next, I remember seeing the film Helen of Troy (1957) at my uncle's house in about 1972. He had a colour TV a long time before we did (I think it cost £400!). The impact of the colourful Mediterranean backdrops, girls in very short pepla and thousands of extras attacking Troy with siege towers imprinted it in my memory and for weeks afterwards my Airfix Romans became Greeks as they tried to get into my Lego Troy. I even made a Lego Wooden Horse!

I'll be your dog! Brigitte Bardot in Helen of Troy

Watching it today it seems, appropriately, rather wooden but contained some good battle scenes and a very young Brigitte Bardot as a slave girl. Actually, I have stopped being a fan of Brigitte Bardot since I lost my Ray Bans. We had anchored in the bay outside her house just round the corner from St Tropez and suddenly her dogs started barking. Unfortunately I was just climbing into our dinghy and the cacophany (she has a lot of dogs) made me jump causing me to lose my sunglasses into the sea.

I even enjoyed the 3 hour American TV version of Helen of Troy (2003) with the luminous Sienna Guillory.

Sienna Guillory as Helen

Wolfgang Petersen's Troy (2004) wasn't as bad as everyone said (well, apart from Brad Pitt and granted they completely changed the story...) and I liked their take on the wooden horse. Part of Troy was filmed in Malta and I had to spend some time a few years ago working with the Finance Minister. My favourite restaurant was also Brad Pitt's, when he was filming there, and this had the distinct advantage of attracting lots of young women to the place.

Frankly, if its got Medierranean scenery, galleys, girls in Greek frocks, chariots, big walls and a wooden horse I'll watch it!

Foundry archers

Some time ago I painted some Foundry archers for the Trojan war but lost interest given the limited figures in their range. Recently, however, we have had the Newline Designs Mycenaean range and they fit perfectly with the Foundry Trojans. I picked up a pack at Salute so may add them to the never ending list soon.

Currently in the active section of my workbench I have Perry Wars of the Roses cannon and crew, Foundry Masai, Empress miniatures Zulus and British, Galloping Major French Militia, Musketeer Russian GNW, Foundry Trojans and Crusader Miniatures Normans. I'm hoping to have a good go at them this month now we have finished revising with Guy for his common entrance exams.

Artillery piece of the month: Elizabethan Sea Dogs' cannon

2010-06-06T14:33:00.006+01:00

Slightly late again for the May artillery piece. This is a more recent purchase from eBay and is designed to give some punch to my Elizabethan Sea Dogs as they roam the Atlantic looking for trouble. They are Mike Owen sculpts for Wargames Foundry's sadly short-lived Sea Dogs range.

More pictures on my Swashbucklers blog:

http://wargamesswashbucklers.blogspot.com/2010/06/sea-dogs-cannon.html

More on WW2 Norway

2010-05-25T18:20:00.006+01:00

Norwegians by Valkyrie

Several people have commented that they would be more interested in the less usual WW2 fronts rather than Normandy or the Eastern Front. Well, I was just looking at TMP this evening and saw a post about the 1940 Norwegian campaign and a firm who were going to make some Norwegian figures. It turned out, as I feared, that these were 15mm, but someone else posted a link to Valkyrie Miniatures who do make a 28mm Norwegian range.

http://www.valkyrieminiatures.co.uk/

The figures look a bit crude compared to the Mike Owen ones but, hey, who else is likely to make Norwegians? I do like the prone figure too. Not enough manufacturers of modern figures do prone figures; given that is a common firing position in modern warfare.

I have found a picture of a Norwegian infantryman in my trusty Blandford Military Uniforms of the World so no excuse not to get any I suppose...

Gerbirgsjager by Brigade Games

Here is a picture of Brigade Games German Mountain troops which do look nice. The postage is a bit steep from the USA but there you go. I have also now acquired the Osprey so this is looking more and more like a proper project (another one!).

A small WW2 Diversion...

2010-05-25T08:28:00.006+01:00

Artizan Designs 8th Army

I've always been slightly dubious about gaming World War 2 (or indeed any "modern" conflict) and still feel slightly queasy about people who build, for example, large SS units for the tabletop. However, as I have said before, both my father and uncle fought (actually fought) in World War 2 and this, added to the two WW2 novels I have just read, got me searching around in the lead pile for the pack of Artizan 8th Army figures I bought in a sale at one of the shows a year or two ago.

Thinking that the Norway campaign (which my uncle fought in) might make for some good skirmishes (having just read James Holland's The Odin Mission) I also ordered the Crusader Rate of Fire Rules as a pdf, although, sadly they seem to involve counters; which I detest on a wargames board. Maybe I will use the Great War rules instead as the Norway campaign had very little armour (none on the British side) so we are really just talking about infantry and artillery. I also ordered a squad of early British infantry from BEF Miniatures which arrived very quickly.

BEF's excellent early war British Squad. Seven rifleman (including an NCO) and a Bren gunner.

Mike Owen sculpted both the 8th Army and the BEF early British but they are somewhat different in style. With the BEF figures he went for more proportional rifles which makes them look much nicer than the over-sized guns and (especially) bayonets on the 8th Army figures. However, it's a small range so I will have to look for things like machine guns elsewhere. Crusader Miniatures do early British although they don't have the characteristic chest-carried gas mask cases which the BEF ones do.

For the Germans, Crusader do early WW2 figures (including MG 34 teams) and Artizan do figures in greatcoats (although the Norwegian campaign was in April and May it was still quite snowy). The figures I am really interested in, however, are the Brigade Games German mountain troops, which will be an unusual alternative.

The Artizan figures are easy to paint but I did have some trouble finding suitable paints in the Humbrol range. As a reference I have Brayley and Ingram's excellent Khaki Drill and Jungle Green which poses people in genuine WW2 uniforms. The nature of photographic reproduction being what it is, however, meant that in different pictures the uniforms the troops wore in North Africa looked completely different. I suspect mine are a bit too dark but it was either that or much too pale. I am happier with the colour of the webbing which definetely had a green tint to it. Here I mixed some Humbrol 72 (khaki drill) with Humbrol 120 (pale green) for the right shade. I have now based the rest of the 8th Army pack and have already started the Norway British (I've now painted their skin and the uniform base colour since I took this picture). Finding the correct colour for them was much easier, Humbrol 26, but theire is a surprising difference from my current tin and the one I am used on my WW1 British.

Although I am not going to get that many figures done for May I have quite a lot nearly finished so in the next week or so I hope to complete my Great Northern War Russian Command, my Elizabethan gun and crew, a couple of Norman Knights, some more Zulus and Zulu War British and my Wars of the Roses cannon.

Not painting in Switzerland...

2010-05-15T07:15:00.006+01:00

Sir Henry Havelock: hero of the Indian Mutiny

Well, here I am in not very sunny Geneva with a lot of health ministers. This is a shame as my painting was going quite well lately. I finished a Gripping Beast plastic Viking test figure and will put up something next week on my Dark Ages blog. Not entirely convinced, I have to say.

Almost finished as well is the long awaited Musketeer Miniatures Great Northern War Russian command figures I bought at Salute and, likewise, I hope to have these on the blog before the end of next week. I'm also working on some more Zulu War figures, a couple of Fantasy pirates from Black Scorpion, some Foundry Swashbucklers, a Perry Wars of the Roses cannon, some Crusader Normans and my first Immortal Miniatures plastic Greek. The usual focus, in fact! Basically, I am trying to finish some of the figures that have been sitting on my desk for far too long. The Norman knights have made an appearance because we have been doing Hastings as part of Guy's common entrance revision and I enjoyed painting the Wars of the Roses mounted figures recently. I used to hate painting mounted figures until I discovered that if I stuck the figures on the horses before painting it was a lot easier.

I didn't have anything on my camera's card to illustrate this entry with except this bust of Sir Henry Havelock which is tucked away in the basement of the Lord Mayor of London's official residence, Mansion House. The bust is by William Behnes who was also responsible for the statue of Havelock in Trafalgar Square (which Red Ken Livingstone wanted to replace with something more ""relevant"). I took this picture a few weeks ago when I took Charlotte on "take your daughters to work day" and I arranged a tour of the Mansion House for her.

Anyway, given the paucity of pictorial material available to me it leads quite nicely on to my contemplation of Mutineer Miniatures Indian Mutiny range which is coming along very nicely; with new British Infantry, Gurkhas and Highlanders out (oh, no more tartan!). Also very welcome are the first scenic items which include some houses and we are promised parts of the walls of Delhi soon. The latter has helped crystallise what part of the war I want to concentrate on. Street fighting in the city fits more with the skirmish nature of the figures, I think. Anyway, it will be back to my Mutiny figures once I have cleared the current figures I am working on.

I notice that the first of the Great War Miniatures Crimean War figures are out and hope that I can resist these. I am still thinking about the Matabele figures but they are really too similar to Zulus to think about at present and I still have a lot of Ngoni to paint too.

Currently I am reading the novel The Odin Mission by James Holland which I picked up in the airport on the way out here yesterday. Its an OK time waster and those who say it is a World War 2 Sharpe are spot on but the war in Norway makes an unusual World War 2 setting. Militarily, it seems quite accurate even including the German Panzerkampfwagen Neubaufahrzeuge VI which was used in this campaign, where it performed rather poorly.

The original Panzer VI: way before the Tiger. Photographed in Lillehammer in April 1940

My Uncle Keith served in Norway with the Sherwood Foresters before transferring to the Airborne Division later in the war so I am, yet again, toying with the idea of getting a few WW2 troops for a skirmish game (The Two Fat Lardies rules for WW2 seem quite popular at Guildford). Failing that the Warhammer Great War rules would probably work for a platoon level game.

Right, it's time for a Martini I think. Let's hope my lovely new friend from Guyana is in the bar!

Artillery Piece of the Month: Zulu Wars Hale Rocket team

2010-05-01T17:58:00.003+01:00

Well, one day late for April's artillery piece of the month but here it is. Empress Miniatures Hale rocket team with a couple of 24th Foot soldiers to assist.

More about it here:

http://zuluwargames.blogspot.com/2010/04/royal-artillery-hale-rocket-team.html

Mini Bosworth

2010-04-30T09:44:00.011+01:00

Mini Bosworth with the battlefield Guy made: an exemplary lesson in minimalism

My little boy Guy had to do a presentation on Bosworth at school and suggested that the battle would be easier to understand if he could put some figures on a battlefield. Originally I had thought of putting some 15mm figures on some stands or maybe getting some 6mm figures for this. In the end, however, we were running out of time and given that I had already got quite a lot of the old Foundry figures painted we decided to use those; with each figure representing roughly 500 men. I had most of the standards and banners to hand and a few hasty repainting jobs put figures into the correct livery.

Henry Tudor and his standard bearer William Brandon who was killed by Richard himself whilst charging to attempt to reach Henry.

What I didn't have was any figures to represent Richard III or Henry Tudor as mine is, at present, an infantry only army. So Dave Thomas' stand at Salute was our first port of call on Saturday and we picked up the Richard and Henry character sets. These contain the character plus a standard bearer and a herald. The presentation was on Tuesday and I realised that I wan't going to have time to paint all six figures so I just went for Richard and Henry and the two standard bearers.

Henry Tudor

I filed, based and undercoated them on Saturday night. On Sunday I painted Richard and Henry and got the standard bearers done on Monday, thereby breaking my record for fastest painted purchases from Salute! The two standards are included in the Perry Plastic infantry box.

King Richard III who according to Shakespeare rode his grey White Surrey that day. Although a pure white horse would have been more appropriate I wanted to have a go at a more complex grey coat in preparation for some Sudan figures I am preparing.

I really enjoyed doing these and will fast track some of the plastic infantry now. My figures are painted as the Earl of Oxford's force so I will paint the first batch of plastics as Norfolk's troops. I also bought an artillery piece but didn't get time to do that but have started work on it so maybe it can be artillery piece of the month for next month (this month's is the Zulu War rocket team from Empress Miniatures, which is nearly finished).

Richard III and his standard bearer Sir Percival Thirlwall who, although unhorsed and having had both legs cut off, continued to hold Richard's standard aloft until he was killed

Guy's presentation (he also did an excellent powerpoint) was so good he was awarded a headmaster's commendation for it! Well done Guy!

Salute

2010-04-27T22:04:00.008+01:00

BigRedBat's amazing Zama game

I''m a bit late with my thoughts on Salute as I have been working flat out on painting the Perry Richard III and Henry Tudor figures for Guy's presentation on Bosworth at school tomorrow.

These were my main targets to buy and I also picked up a WotR gun and crew but didn't get time to paint it. Nevertheless, I am pleased that I painted Richard, Henry and two standard bearers in a day and a half. They are now packed up in a box to go to school so pictures will have to wait; but suffice to say, I am now very keen on the Wars of the Roses again. It's a popular period at Guildford Wargames Club and I would gues that maybe as many as eight of us have a WotR army. I will do a few plastics next.

I didn't actually buy anything at the Perry plastics stand (i've got four boxes to paint already!)and it was so busy I missed the fact that they are going to do plastic Mahdists! Hooray! More on my Sudan blog in a day or two on this.

Busaco

I didn't think it was a classic Salute. Parts of it seemed a bit empty but I believe that there was actually a bigger hall this year which may have explained it. Also, I didn't think there were any really stunning demonstration games to look at. There were some very good ones but I thought the standard of scenery (which is what I mainly look at) was a bit down this year. My favourite was the Battle of Busaco game which had one of the best rendered hills I have ever seen in a wargame. BigRedbat's Zama was amazing, from the figures point of view, and I was very pleased to have seen it in real life having followed its building over the last six months or so. I was glad to see that both the aforementioned games won prizes for best scenery and figures respectively. I also liked the Grand Manner/Gripping Beast Dark Ages game.

Dark Ages by gripping Beast and Grand Manner

I was so busy working on a presentation on Saturday morning I totally failed to check which issues of the various wargames magazines I was missing so I could pick up back numbers. Oh well, I can do it after the fact, I suppose. I also forgot to note down the WI and MW cds I had got so couldn't get any more to fill the gaps and enable me to get some of the binders off my shelves and into the loft.

I missed a couple of stands completely even though I meant to visit them: Battlegames, so I could renew my subscription and Mutineer Miniatures so I could get some Gurkhas. Really annoying that, but that's what happens when you don't make a list!

I was pretty restrained this year. Other than the Perry WotR figures I bought the following:

Things on my list:

Two Zulu War cannons and the Rorkes Drift personality set from Empress Miniatures.
A Great Northern Wars pack of Russians (complete with the new command figures at last).

Gripping Beast plastic Vikings. They look very compatible with the Foundry ones. Again, I have started painting one and will do a review on my Dark Ages blog later.
2 boxes of Immortal Miniatures plastic Hoplites (one box was for a friend of my sister's). Are these the most gorgeously presented plastic figures ever? More on the Spartan blog on those.

Things not on my list:

A pack of Great War Miniatures German uhlans.
A Black Scorpion naval captain for Guy's Pirates of the Caribbean project.
A big pack of New Line Designs new Mycenean pikemen. These are completely compatible with my Foundry figues and it still lingers on as a project I want to do.

Things I failed to find but wanted.

Foundry Darkest Africa Belgians. Dave Thomas didn't have any Foundry figures on his stand this year, apart from a few remaindered blisters.
A Miniature Wargames binder; they haven't got any and are redesigning them so they won't be available for sometime.

So, not too bad. Traders who I usually get something from but who weren't there include Copplestone, Grand Manner (a shock that one) and Realistic Modelling Services (I usually buy some of their trees).

No Nazis this year , thank goodness, just some silly Dark Ages re-enactors (who reminded me of that film Faintheart). Not so silly were a couple of chaps in some beautifully realised early World War 1 German uniforms. The quality of their equipment was exceptional and I took a picture of their pack as reference material.

Guy enjoyed the radio controlled tank game and the giant model panzers again. His favourite game was the attack on the Roman hill fort one.

Lastly, it was a pleasure to meet up with Matt, of Waterloo to Mons, again and hear his latest plans for his Schleswig Wars range. I am working on some of his Schleswig soldiers at preent and they are lovely little figures. Fortunately, I am enjoying painting again at the moment and have a bit more time now that I am not commuting into London quite so much.

Salute Eve

2010-04-23T20:09:00.008+01:00

" I've got an old mule and her name is Sal. Fifteen miles on the Erie canal."

Well, off to Salute tomorrow with my little boy, Guy. The usual transport disruption is expected; this time of the Jubilee line and the Waterloo and City line. Oh well, at least the DLR is running so hopefully it won't be too bad. I'm going to try to be restrained this year as I really do have so much to paint. But my tragets are as follows:

Musketeer Miniatures claim they have the Russian command ready for the Great Northern War. Let's see. I want to have a look at the new Immortal plastic hoplites and the three ups of the Victrix plastics. I suspect the Victrix figures will be slightly bigger.

World's smallest Bosworth re-fight! Bottom left-Oxford, top left Norfolk, Centre Northumberland, right the Stanleys. A few more figures to do!

I want to get some Perry metal Wars of the Roses figures. Guy is doing a project on Bosworth at school and he wants to demonstrate the forces using blocks of figures. Fortunately, he has chose a ratio of 1 figure equals 500 men. I dug out some of my old Foundry figures and repainted a few in the right livery and stuck on some of the flags from the Perry plastic boxed set and elsewhere. The metal figures we need are Richard III and Henry Tudor. Guy thinks I can buy them on Saturday and have them based and ready to go for Monday. Hmm! Maybe if I paint them flat with no shading and go back and finish them later.

If there are any Foundry Darkest Africa Belgians I might get some of those too and maybe a WotR canon if I can find one. I will be keeping an eye open for the Wargames Factory Vikings too. I hope to see Matt of Waterloo to Mons and I want to see BigRedBat's Zama game.

I have a few back issues of magazines to pick up but that's it. I really will be good!

I haven't done much painting, although I did finish another six Spartans and the above mule. The mule was bought for use by my mountain men but I suspect this one will see more service in the Congo than in the West. Most of the mules used in the American West were actually bred on the Isle of Wight and exported to the States! Not many people know that! Talking of which I have developed a fascination for the Alamo and have a huge desire to buy some Mexicans and Texians. Must resist!

We will see what actually transpires tomorrow!

Airfix Westland Whirlwind stage 1 and 2

2010-04-06T20:00:00.013+01:00

I am building this as part of the Britmodeller group build.

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?showforum=286

The rules are that you can only use what you get in the Airfix starter kit plus a few basic tools. I haven't finished a model plane kit for about ten years and that was a 1/48 one (a Zero) but I did start a 1/48 Spitfire before Christmas, much encouraged by meeting James May (not to mention Arthur Ward) and talking about Airfix kits for a while.

http://legatuswargamesarmies.blogspot.com/2009/11/james-mays-toy-fair.html

The first thing I noticed when I opened the box, therefore was how small the blooming thing was! Only 34 parts but most of them seem to be for the undercarriage. I used to hate making undercarriages and always made my planes with the wheels up if possible and mounted them on Airfix's lovely clear stands (they seem to have stopped doing those for some reason).

So on to sections 1 and 2 of the instructions: a very basic cockpit build and then inserting it into the two halves of the fuselage.

I only have six paints to work with (and they are acrylics... ugh!) so doing any shading on the pilot figure was tricky.

I used the duck egg blue to lighten the flight suit and do the shirt collar but the real challenge was his face. I had two choices: paint his face yellow so that he looks like one of the Simpsons or go for a green-grey look so he looks like a zombie. I went for the zombie look and hope he doesn't look too bad when he is behind the canopy.

Thanks to Sue the postie for some extra rubber bands when I needed them!

After I had done the pilot (no undercoating is allowed so the paint kept rubbing off) I glued the two halves of the fuselage together. These went together really well and after the glue had dried I carefully scraped the join with a modelling knife and got a pretty good seam.

So far I have discovered the following: I reallly hate acrylics! You mix some up and its dry before you can get in on! You also have to thin it with water or its like painting with fromage frais. Then, of course, you need lots of coats. Why its so popular for painting figures is beyond me. I suspect its because people use ready made colours for shading out the pot whereas I mix all of mine on a paper palette. The brushes in the starter kit aren't too bad but I miss my Windsor & Newton No 7 sables. The Airfix polystyrene cement (the smell is nostalgic: I started using superglue on plastic kits years ago) is runnier than the Revell stuff I bought for my Wargames Factory Zulus.

Well that's the easy bit (or at least the familiar bit) done. Next step is to make the propellors and wings.

My own influences...

2010-04-05T11:09:00.020+01:00

Both Matt and Fraxinus have been having a bout of nostalgia on their blogs; looking at their early influences on their interest in wargaming.
http://fraxinus-victoryv.blogspot.com/2010/04/airfix-nostalgia-ooho-figures.html

http://matratmatt.blogspot.com/2010/04/nostalgia-on-stick.html

Many of our influences are the same, not surprisingly (Fraxinus and I lived very close together when we were young), but some are different. So now its time to drag a few relics out of my collection and bung them under the scanner!

My main influence was my father who fought in the Second World War in North Africa. This meant that the very first proper wargames I played against other opponents were Western Desert ones. My main opponents were my classmates: Bean kid, Cess-Pitts and Jimbo (we all had nicknames at my school except John Palmer who was too boring to have one-I was "The General"). I wrote the rules for this and, typically, revolving as they did around AFVs, they were fixated on relative armour thickness. Very good news for me if you were the Afrika Korps and could field loads of Tigers and Panthers against Bean-kid and Cess' Lee/Grants and Shermans! Oddly, thanks to Airfix I still think of the name of that tank as the Lee/Grant rather than identifying each version with its individual name! My main source of information on WW2 was the Purnell History of the Second World War; an immense part-work (and still the best part-work ever issued) which seemed to go on for nearly as long as the real war! I still have every copy in their binders and nearly all of the one-off specials which had great artwork by John Batchelor.

Later I learnt more about my grandfather (who I can barely remember other than the fact that he wore incredibly thick brown suits even in the middle of summer) who started in WW1 in the KRRC and then transferred to the RFC. Even later I found out that my Uncle Keith (who died a few years ago but not without leaving me some WW1 German pickelhauben and cases and cases of classed growth claret) was in the Airborne Division at Arnhem but was so shell shocked he spent over a year in hospital afterwards. He never spoke about it until about two months before he died when he came out with a whole load of funny stories; including the fact that the airborne troops were used as human ballast when the glider pilots were being trained, as they were quicker to load than sandags. He said he had to endure about twenty crash landings as a result!

I actually came to Airfix 20mm figures rather late, as my initial interest in Airfix had been in aircraft and battleships. Certainly, the first ones I acquired were the Napoleonic ones at the time of the film Waterloo. I loved everything about this film and my father bought me the programme (you used to get illustrated programmes for big films in those days). Years later I picked up a CD of the (memorable) music by Nino Rota in a shop in Rome. I can't say that I have ever seen it anywhere else.

I bought hundreds (maybe thousands) of those cream coloured Airfix Napoleonic figures and my two main sources were Gamleys, the toy shop in Staines, and Johnson & Clarke a large and independent department store in Staines. If you have ever seen Grace Brothers in the old TV series Are you Being Served? then you will get a feeling for what it was like! Bean-kid was an excellent modeller and when the Airfix Waterloo Farmhouse came out he built a model of Hougoumont using plans in Military Modelling magazine. He then added a model of La Haye Sainte and we would have huge two or three day re-enactments of Waterloo in our dining room using two big boards which gave us a 7'x6'8" playing area.

We never painted any of the figures though! Neither did we mount them on stands so if you bumped into the table everyone fell over! At first all our rules came from Terence Wise's book Introduction to Battlegaming but later we progressed to Charles Grant's Napoleonic Wargaming with its 48 man battalions.

I also picked up a great book which I still refer to today: The Armies at Waterloo by Ugo Pericoli, who was the costume designer for the film and contains all his sketches and paintings of uniforms he did for the movie. This was backed up by my first proper uniform book; Rene North's Regiments at Waterloo which helped a great deal as I did paint the large 54mm Airfix Napoleonic kits. I still remember the pain of cutting out all those straps on thin plasicard.

Apart from these social wargaming efforts much of my time was spent on solo wargaming (especially when I was younger), much of it more along the lines of HG Wells' Little Wars than anything scientific. This was especially true of the garden escapades which also involved digging little trenches for my WW1 figures. I had two main periods. Ancients, using the Airfix Romans and Ancient Britons, and World War 2 in the Pacific. The latter was always always fought outside as the Airfix Marines crossed our pond to assault the dug-in Japanese on the rockery. These games could last weeks over the summer holidays, as the tide of battle went to and fro and extra boxes were bought as reinforcements. My mother is still digging up these long lost soldiers, who still think the war is on, forty years later. So for me the most evocative Airfix box is definitely the US Marines one!

I read a review of the new series The Pacific a couple of days ago which said "this conflict has been largely ignored by film makers". Yes, probably if you are a junior 25 year old journalist but for me my main memories of WW2 films are from the many WW2 Pacific films I saw on TV. Guadalcanal, The Sands of Iwo Jima, From the Halls of Montezuma and all those John Wayne ones where he sufferes a heroic death at the end. He never died in his Westerns but always did in his war films! I never liked those set in Europe as they always used American tanks for the German ones whereas there was no Japanese armour to get wrong in the Pacific set ones!

The interest in Rome which, unlike WW2, persists to this day was down to the combined possession of my first box of Airfix Romans and my favourite Ladybird book: Julius Caesar and Roman Britain. Watching films like Spartacus and the Fall of the Roman Empire only encouraged me even more to pitch my grey Romans against my reddish-brown coloured Britons.

The last key book for me was Preben Kannik's Military Uniforms in Colour which, like many of my books from those days, is very well loved! It was the pictures in this that got me keen on my last great wargaming period of the Seventies: the American Civil War. Always a popular Airfix period because of the availability of infantry, artillery and, via the US Cavalry, mounted figures.

This early golden age finished on December 31st 1975. I went to a New Years Eve party to the parents of one of my mother's friends. Most of the people there were my mother's age but there were two sisters who were 15 and 17 years old. They had that short, late Seventies, hair and very tight dresses. We all got quite drunk and disappeared outside into the garden where they taught me how to kiss (firstly by demonstrating on each other!). Next day I had a wargame with the guys from school but didn't really get into it as, firstly, I had a hangover and secondly Airfix tanks had suddenly lost their primacy in my most wanted list.

Oddly, when I started university in September 1979 I met a girl, Catherine, who I had originally met at interview a year before (I took a year off between school and college) and she got me back into painting figures and tanks again through playing Dungeons and Dragons. We only went along to the Oxford University Dungeons and Dragons Club for a term; mainly because all the other players were scientists (we both did law) and kept including scientific and maths puzzles in the games which we didn't understand! Catherine, a dazzling red-head (the first in a long line at college!), lasted another two terms (although there was some overlap with another one!) before going off with someone who ended up being a top wine writer. I was very pleased to hear that he was later sent down for something dodgy involving his college cellars, we believe. Heh, heh! In college I found out that one of my best friends was also a wargamer but he painted those little blocks of 5mm figures (no individual ones at this point) and I couldn't see the point so I carried on painting WW2 tanks (there was an excellent model shop in Oxford) from Italeri and Esci. They never saw service in a proper wargame but my son plays with them now.

I didn't read WW2 comics when I was young; I got TV21 and Look & Learn which contained the Trigan Empire strip, largely illustrated by the great Don Lawrence. The Trigan Empire would make for a great range of figures! I particularly liked the hover tanks that featured in it and used to build them out of Lego for battles on my carpet. I am now collecting the beautiful books of reprints produced in the Netherlands at enormous expense. I think some of my strange interest (even though I should know beter) in Warhammer 40K comes from my love of the Trigan Empire.

Well the nostalgia continues as I try to get to grips with my Westland Whirlwind!

Schleswig-Holstein infantryman

2010-03-31T14:43:00.008+01:00

I am nothing if not easily influenced so when I saw Matt's latest posting about his lovely Schleswig figures I spotted that I had one of his Schleswig infantryman undercoated at the back of the workbench.

http://matratmatt.blogspot.com/

"I know, I'll finish it now!" I thought, putting on some Carl Nielsen to listen to. Lo and behold I had him finished in the time it took to listen to his first two symphonies and the Helios overture.

I found him easier to paint than the Dane and in a way, as the figures are very slight, it was almost like painting one of the bigger 20mm plastics. Its amazing how having finer proportions means less area to cover and, consequently, quicker painting. I have another seven Schelswig infantry (and a lot more Nielsen to listen to) so they will be filed and based tonight.

Since the advent of the Black Powder rules I am looking at nineteenth century wargaming much more again so maybe its ime to build a unit or two.

Airfix Westland Whirlwind

2010-03-28T14:41:00.003+01:00

I was intrigued by Fraxinus' post on his Victory V blog about the Britmodeller's Airfix starter set group build. http://fraxinus-victoryv.blogspot.com/2010/03/britmodeller-airfix-starter-set-fun.html

Whilst wandering around Hamley's this week I came across this Westland Whirlwind kit and immediately felt inspired to have a go, despite the fact that I haven't finished an aircraft construction kit for at least ten years (although I have started several!).

The Westland Whirlwind is a plane I had actually completely forgotten existed! It wasn't in front line service for very long (it was replaced by the Hawker Typhoon) but it has that great mid-Thirties twin engine look (like the De Havilland DH88 Comet racer).

The rules of this build mean you have to use the paints, glue and, worse still, the brushes from the set! The build runs from April 2nd to 1st May so let's hope I can get it done in time. At least I should have a bit of time over Easter!

It will have a wargames life eventually as I will be donating it to my son for his World War 2 "carpet wars" whch take up a large portion of our living room floor at any point in time!

Artillery Piece of the Month: Force Publique Mountain Gun

2010-03-28T13:54:00.005+01:00

Not really a historical piece, this, but I wanted to give my Belgians something to pound Arab slaver strongholds (not that I have painted any of my Arabs yet!); so it's the Foundry Askari Mountain gun painted up with a Force Publique looking crew.

Belgian Nordenfelt 4.7cm

The Force Publique did use a selection of artillery in later years: including Krupp howitzers and Nordenfelt 4.7cm cannons (which were very similar in size to this mountain gun). They also had bronze 7.5cm cannons for use against the Arab slavers so it's not too much of a stretch to give them this.

Next month's artillery piece will be something for my Tudor period swashbucklers which I recently bought on eBay.

Artillery Piece of the Month

2010-03-24T18:37:00.007Z

If there is one thing I hate painting more than cavalry it's artillery. I have only painted one artillery piece for my armies and that is this field gun for my Chinese Warlord army. However, I have several model guns floating around at present so have decided to try to get one painted a month. I am starting small with a mountain gun for my Belgian Force Publique force as part of my attempt to boost it a bit from the 48 figues I painted in November. Since then I have painted another 10 figures with five more under way and the addition of the gun will give it a bit more punch. I hope to finish it this weekend./p

I have a new set up for photographing my figures which means that I can use natural light or, as here, daylight bulbs when photographing at night. This removes the nasty flash shadows and also stops washing out pale colours.

Doing a bit more painting...

2010-03-18T19:43:00.009Z

Vilnius Cathedral this morning (strictly, Vilniaus Šv. Stanislovo ir Šv. Vladislovo arkikatedra bazilika)

I don't know why it never occurred to me that it would be snowy in Vilnius in mid-March. I've been here enough times to know that it gets blooming freezing (-25C the first time I came here) but perhaps I thought that by now it would have become a bit more Spring like. Anyway, everything was still covered in snow when I flew in yesterday and it snowed again quite hard last night. It's now nine o'clock at night (two hours ahead of London time) so I thought I ought to get something down on the blog, especially as I found a few pictures on my camera which I can put up here. In truth, I'm waiting for my friend Ringaile but as she is always late I might as well sit and type whilst drinking a Vodka (very good, Lithuanian vodka) Martini and eating too many nuts.

Ideal complement to blogging. Vodka Martini, nuts, olives and a nice fire. Now all I need is a six foot tall Lithuanian girl...

I've done very little painting over the last six weeks as I am just starting up a new company with a friend and its taking up all our time at present. Can't say that we have actually made any money yet but its looking very promising. Stressful but exciting. If you are the mayor of a major city and need an Oystercard type travel card system, or are a defence minister and need a national command and control system do let me know!

Mutineer Miniatures 53rd Foot

Anyway, last weekend I did get some painting done as I attempted to reduce the number of half painted figures on my desk. I had some success on Saturday as I finished seven of the Mutineer Miniatures Indian Mutiny figures. I've now done eight and have twenty four more on the go. I used the new(ish) Citadel Dead Grass on these which looks quite good.

Mutineer mutineers

I haven't decided which unit the mutineers belong to so haven't given them a number on their hats yet. I am reading Saul David's Indian Mutiny but it's taken about 120 pages before we have had any wargameable action yet. Once I have a better feel for what units were where and who they fought against I can work out what units to paint.

Fancy a jolly roger?

The other big timewaster in the evening, when I could at least be painting some base colours, is that my little boy has got me hooked on Pirates of the Caribbean: the online game. I have never been a computer gamer; I tried Tomb Raider once but found it very boring. All the games Guy has seem too fast moving and complicated for me! I do own one Playstation game (Alias) but that's only because my friend J was the motion capture body double (for Jennifer Garner) for it and I've never managed to play that either.

The lovely J was a respectable infrastructure journalist by day, computer games body double and actress by night! Here she has to interview the Legatus when he was at least two stone heavier, in Berlin a few years ago. Maybe I won't have any more nuts!

Anyway, as a result of all this piratical nonsense I decided to paint up some more pirates and finished this Black Scorpion pirate girlie last weekend as well. I also finished another five Force Publique Belgians and should get another ten done by the end of the weekend hopefully. Guy is keen to have a wargame over Easter so we might do a Legend of the High Seas or Darkest Africa game. Anyway, Ringaile is slinking across the bar and I have just ordered a third Vodka Martini so it could be time to stop...