Blog Hit Parade Update: Revenge of the Cavegirls

" Alright, you've obviously got much bigger weapons, so I surrender!"

Well, it's happened. My Sudan blog has been overtaken in hits by Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis!

http://cavegirlsinfurbikinis.blogspot.com/

I set up the Sudan blog in August 2006 and put a counter on at the end of August 2007. Since then it has had 5322 visits. The Cavegirls blog went up in October 2006 but I didn't do much on it until recently. Again the counter went on in late August and today it's at 5860 visits.

On 22nd December I put on a daily counter and a map to show where people where looking at it and noticed the Cavegirls site went ballistic. I had over 400 hits in one day. My year end count was 4,796 for the Sudan Blog and 4,361 for the Cavegirls. But when I last counted on December 11th Cavegirls had only had 1527 visits in total so that means that I have had 3268 visits in 16 days. Now I am averaging about 200 hits a day compared with the Sudan blog's 25.

All this proves is that pictures of girls in little or no clothes are more popular than pictures of toy soldiers. I should have got a grant from a University and done it as one of those completely obvious studies academic organisations come out with when they are trying to publicise themselves.

So Long to AWI

I have bitten the bullet and started to put my AWI books on eBay. The few figures I have will follow. I had wanted to do armies for this ever since I bought the nice Revell (I think) plastic figures years ago.

However, I think it's one of those periods where you have to make it your main interest, like Giles Allison does, it's not the sort of thing you can dabble in. I am satisfying my need for Tricornes with the Great Northern War!

It's a shame as the Perries AWI for Foundry and Perry Miniatures are turning into the most complete wargames range for any period (and still people are crying out for more figures!) but something has to give!

Back to Byzantines?

I was looking at the Crusader Publishing website today for the first time.

http://www.crusaderpublishing.com/

I hadn't realised that there was a separate site from the North Star run shop for the figures.

http://www.crusaderminiatures.com/

On the Crusader Publishing site Mark Sims outlines the direction he wants his ranges to go and he is indicating that he might be looking to do allies of the Byzantines. I haven't painted any Byzantines for ages, largely, I have decided, because I don't like the Gripping Beast figures, even though they have an extensive range. I do enjoy painting Crusader figures, however, so maybe I will just order one of their boxed units and give them another go. I have a few archers and so may finish a unit of those as I find archers quick to do as they have no separate weapons and shields!

Blog Hit Parade: Year End

I started the hit parade on the 11th of the month but I am going to do 2008 by calendar months.

Year end totals are as follows. I didn't put the counters on until the end of August so for those in existence before this these are only four month totals.

1 19th Century Sudan Armies (August 2006) 4,796
2 Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis (October 2006) 4,361
3 Legatus' Wargames Armies (January 2007) 2,505
4 Spartan WAB (November 2005) 1,870
5 Dark Ages WAB (August 2006) 871
6 Byzantine WAB (November 2005) 800
7 Punic War WAB (November 2006) 736
8 Pulp Warriors (June 2007) 399
9 Return to Darkest Africa (June 2007) 387
10 Great Northern War (December 2007) 169
11 3rd Century Roman WAB (October 2007) 141
12 Swashbucklers (September 2007) 66
13 Lord of the Rings (December 2007) 1


The Sudan is the most popular but the one that is close to overtaking it is Cavegirls in Fur Bikinis which is now getting over 150 hits a day! I wonder why?

Painted Figures for December and 2007

Greeks for Cynoscephalae: If I paint some pikemen I've got a Macedonian Army!

Well, my first year of logging my painted figures is over so now it's time to analyse it.

Firstly, though, the figures for December are as follows:

Sudan British RMLI 3
Cowboy 1
GnW Swedish 9
LotR Gondor archers 4
LotR Uruk hai beserker 1
LotR Dwarves 2
Dutch Napoleonic Jaegers 4
Total 24

This means that I have painted 312 figures this year which is, amazingly, exactly 6 a week, so I have achieved my target!

For 2008 I am going to aim to do 7 figures a week! Whether I achieve this or not will depend on how much travelling I have to do. Last year I was abroad on business 60 days, so in reality I actually painted 7 figures a week when I was at home, so it should be acheivable. Let's see how many I can do in my last week of holiday.

Next I need to look at my real problem: not being able to concentrate on any one army. With 300 figures I could have done two complete WAB armies if I was able to focus!

Actually, when I look at what I painted it could be worse:

Sudan 105
Ancient Greeks 104
Punic Romans 29
Middle Imperial Roman 15
Dark Ages 15
Great Northern War 14
Lord of the Rings 12
Darkest Africa 11
Napoleonic 4
Pulp 2
Old West 1

Other than the Sudan, my main period, it was mostly Greeks for Cynoscephalae. For 2008 I expect Great Northern Wars to be up there.

Mountain Men

For some reason I bought both Foundry Mountain men deals a few years ago. This is far more mountain men than you would ever need but, sad to say, I am a completist so thought I might as well get them all.

Actually, they are great fun to paint and I got these out today, tidied some of them up a bit and put them in their own file box with my Sharon Stone figure.

Again, a skirmish game wouldn't take too many figures and I bought the legends of the Old West Alamo supplement as it has statistics for mountain men in.

Lord of the Rings: Gondor Archers

I am planning a game of LotR or two over the holiday with my little boy and am going to try to paint a Gondor Battle company in the next few days.

I need two archers, three swordsmen and two spearmen. I have just finished four archers as an experiment. They look OK but I am not that keen on the plastic figures. I got three metal Citadel Guard figures for Christmas and they are not only much more detailed but, annoyingly, much bigger as well.

I've painted the armour in quite a dark colour (Games Workshop's Bolt Gun Metal) as I always think that GW paint their figures too brightly. The uniforms from the films used a very muted palette.