Bull to Bull Run...and more from North America

I just had my best weekend's painting for a long while and finished some more stuff from the workbench.  Firstly, this is one of Foundry's new Tribes of Legend's efforts: a bronze bull suitable for Jason and the Argonauts.  See more about it on my Argonautika blog.

Here, also, are my first 28mm American Civil War figures, which will represent the 4th Virginia regiment at Bull Run. I found these slightly easier to paint than most Perry figures with the various belts and straps rather more clearly sculpted than is sometimes the case (or maybe it's because they are less exaggerated than some other manufacturers).    Of course un-regimented looking regiments like this will always take more time to paint.  I haven't got any more line troops suitable for this unit to paint but have some command figures which I will gradually more along.  I'm just doing occasional bits on the various ACW units I have on the go at present when I need a change of pace.  What makes ACW units, of course, are flags and I don't have any yet.  I need to research who does good ones for the scale and the period  maybe someone out there knows! 

I've also started some more 18mm fantasy figures and am progressing on the Baluchi and Back of Beyond Bolsheviks too but don't have anything nearing completion yet.  Still, 34 figures this month which is the most I have completed in one month since March 2010 and is more than the total I managed between December 2011 and May 2012.

Earlier this week I popped in to Orc's Nest en route to the East India Club for lunch.   I wanted to find out when the Victrix plastic Athenian Hoplites are due in (hopefully next week) and I picked up the new (in English anyway) Muskets & Tomahawks rules by Studio Tomahawk, the people behind Saga.  Even though they are an older set of rules I think these look very good and seem quite simple but you can add layers of complexity in stages if you want; an approach that would have been welcome with Foundry's Tribes of Legend, for example.  You can have a game with, they claim, 30 figures a side, as little as 10,  but as many as 100.  I have pulled out half a dozen French and Indian war figures from Galloping Major to work on, as a result.  These are big figures and not as elegant as the Conquest Miniatures figures I have but should paint up OK.  More thoughts on the FIW and Muskets & Tomahawks another time, perhaps.

Some of my old Foundry mountain men

The rules would also work well for mountain men skirmishes which is another project where I have loads of unpainted figures.  In fact I have every figure Foundry produced for this characterful range.  I painted a few but they, like many of my other older models, will need a bit of touching up to bring them up to standard.

My Mexican force so far!

I don't know whether it's my recent trip to Boston but I seem fixated on North American wargaming at present and, going back to another range where I painted a few figures but haven't progressed much, I notice that Boot Hill Miniatures have released Mexican infantry in their (white) summer uniform.  I would really like to get some of these but need to finish a few more of the ones I have already, I think!

Finally, I am just finishing Agent of Rome: The Siege by Nick Brown.  It treads the Simon Scarrow path of Romans in the desert but is set a couple of hundred years later at the time of Queen Zenobia.  The book improved as it went on and the final battle scenes are well done, although he falls into the annoying trap of archers and slingers firing their weapons.  Grr!  Now, where is that unit of third century Romans I have undercoated?  

The Russians are Coming!

Well, there are many other figures I should be finishing off on the workbench at present but instead I have just completed these three Mark Copplestone Back of Beyond Bolsheviks.  Technically, the lady is a repaint as I first did her before I got my painting glasses and I realised that she was far too contrasty.  I have toned her down a bit, therefore.

The other two Russians weren't completed so I finished them off too.  The cause for all this Bolshevism is that I have been helping Guy revise the Russian revolution for his GCSE.  He asked if I had any figures for this period and, of course I did.  I have a reasonably complete Chinese warlord force for the Back of Beyond but they don't have any opponents.  I have started another unit of Bolsheviks, therefore.  Like all Copplestone figures they are easy to paint and not too complex as regards uniforms so I would like to get the unit finished this month.

I think this range was one of Mr Copplestone's best and I still have a fair few to paint.  I did play one game of Back of Beyond with my Chinese against someone else's Russians at Guildford a few years back.  You don't need a whole lot of figures for a good game so I will try and get another unit or two done as I know I have more soldiers in these peaked caps.  The other unit I am working on has the distinctive pointed caps.  The Russians switched to grey for their uniforms in 1922 but Back of Beyond has some non-historic aspects (or maybe it's alternative history) anyway, so I am keeping mine in khaki.

More 18mm Fantasy

 June 18th

Some people use a points system to keep track of how much they have painted and I can see the sense in this; as a horse and rider takes a lot more painting than a foot figure, for example.  My system is a very blunt instrument, however, and one piece gets 1 point whether it is one foot figure, a man on a horse or an artillery piece.  There is an argument, I suppose, for giving 15mm figures less points because they are smaller.  However, these Copplestone Castings fantasy figures take as much time to paint as 28mm figures I am finding.

June 5th

Here we have the next eight (after the seven I painted earlier) but I still have another nineteen to paint until I will get some more as I am rationing myself (unusually).  I took a picture of these when I first started to paint them so can tell that, rather surprisingly this picture was taken on 5^th June which means I have finished them in less than two weeks.  This is especially good as I was in Boston for a week during that period and also finishing the Darkest Africa wangwana, standard bearer and pirate girl as well as starting another unit of 28mm (non-Darkest Africa) figures which are well under way.  

I really am starting to get some more painting done at last, again, after a very fallow six months.  I have a lot of part-painted figures on the workbench at present so starting another unit last week probably wasn’t a good idea but they have simple uniforms and I hope to get them done next.  I have also started on the Baluchis but these are going to be slow work I think.  

The Battle of Bunker Hill

Diorama in the Battle of Bunker Hill Museum

Well, I have been trying to resist the call of the American War of Independence for some time.  In fact I can remember the big new Miniature Figurines line being released in 1976 and all the attendant features in Military Modelling.  The Airfix and Revell sets actually got me painting some of my plastics, a very rare occurrence, but then I moved on to metal 28mm and forgot about them.  Then Foundry started to release their 28m metals and I immediately bought some but didn't pursue this as I had just joined Guildford Wargames Club where I found that Dark Ages, Ancients and ECW were the favoured 28mm periods.  I sold the figures I had on eBay with all the attendant Ospreys I owned.  I started looking at Giles Allison's superb blog which was so definitive that I decided that it was pointless to pursue the period any more (I think he may even have bought some of my surplus figures).  But...  But, I kept thinking about the period, with its interesting and colourful mix of forces, its very differing tactical approaches and the added appeal of woodland indians and New World forest engagements. 

Bunker Hill Diorama

More than this the combination of the Foundry and Perry figures offer an almost uniquely comprehensive range of figures.  More recently, when considering a new range of black powder period figures for skirmish wargames, it appeared on my shortlist once more. Scott, from Middle Earth, opined that he was never interested in the period because it was a (rare) conflict which the British lost.  This was something that I hadn't considered overtly but may well have been behind my unwillingness to dive in.  Or was it all those blessed straps!  

Today, however, I find myself in Boston with time on my hands.  Now, other than military history (and Victorian art, wine, food and women -which are all basically the same thing) I am also interested in historic ships.  I am staying in Cambridge, as I am giving a lecture at MIT tomorrow, so I am very close to Charlestown, home of two interesting ships.  The USS Constitution (more on which another time) is the oldest commissioned warship still afloat.  Built in 1797, they took it out for a sail last week!  Next door to it is the USS Cassin Young, a destroyer which saw active service in the Pacific and survived a number of kamikaze hits.  

USS Cassin Young.  Looks like it is doing 35 knots even in dry dock.  It actually weighs less than the USS Constitution, I was told

Now when I was visiting the Charlestown shipyards today they were just starting a parade to celebrate the 237th anniversary of the battle of Bunker Hill (even though that's technically next Sunday).  Charlestown was very much en fete and there were lots of re-enactors about, from various periods, but mainly concentrated on the Revolutionary War, as they call it here.

There were some ACW people with a rather splendid cannon and some WW2 softskins with a nice half track which got me feeling all nostalgic for Airfix kits!

Manky looking colonials

Now that's better!  Glad to see that there are still some Loyalists in Boston!

Lots of lady reneactors and some very small reenactors too. Off they all troop in the heat (unlike Britain, heh, heh!) up to the Bunker Hill monument.    I climb up to the top (all 294 steps), admire the (excellent) view and gingerly make my way down to the bottom again where I discover that my quadriceps muscles have ceased to function to the extent that my companion, who has flown from Vancouver to be with me (or go clothes shopping, in reality - the clothes shops here being some of the best in the Americas I am told), has to stop me from falling down the steps.  She runs five miles a day so seemed to have no trouble, or maybe its being ten years younger than me!  Never mind a couple of pints of the local Harpoon IPA seem to restore my equilibrium somewhat, although this evening my legs are getting very stiff!

The Bunker Hill Monument: actually on Breed's hill, the site of the battle, strangely.  221 feet high it feels like it when you are climbing up or, worse, coming down.

Having managed to negotiate the steps down from the monument we cross the road to the Battle of Bunker Hill museum which has an excellent diorama of the battle with lots of 10mm (I would guess) figures.  Oh dear!  All those ranks of redcoats, all those manky looking colonials and the Perries promising plastic British infantry which will, presumably match the anatomical proportions of their recent figures, as compared with the rather dumpy Foundry ones.  Oh dear,  I'm starting to feel weak again...  

As Sophie said,  "model soldiers are to you like shoes are to me.  You can never have enough and you only regret the ones you didn't buy!"  

A little more time...

My second unit of Wangwana freedmen finished today

For various reasons I have had very little time for painting over the last few months but, hopefully, I should be able to do more going forward.  I've spent a lot of time working on winning a new contract which I now have so that will enable me to add to the lead pile for the next year or so!  I've had a bit more time for painting in the last few days because of the Bank Holiday and have managed to finish another unit for my Zambezi Campaign.  Still, I have painted less than fifty figures so far this year so need to up the output again.  There won't be much more this week as I am off to Boston where I really will have to resist the lure of the American War of Independence on my return!

Fife & Drum's AWI British

That said, I am sorely tempted by the wonderfully elegant 30mm figures by Fife & Drum miniatures showcased in this month's Battlegames, which was given away free with Miniature Wargames. Sculpted by Richard Ansell, in his typically anatomically correct style, the range will, of course, be less comprehensive than the Perry figures for Foundry and Perry Miniatures.  However, they look so nice that maybe a couple of small skirmish forces wouldn't be a bad idea and the fact that they will be a smaller range may be a good thing! The pictures of them make them look more like 40mm figures and show how distorted most 28mm figures are; something which has always offended my artistic sensibilities!

I haven't bought Battlegames for some time but the decision by Atlantic Publishers, its new owners, to give it away free was sensible as I had forgotten what a good magazine it is.  The feature on the Two Fat Lardies (I still hate the name) approach to writing rules was fascinating and I also liked the look of the smuggler's scenario.  I'll have to start buying it again and also pick up some of the back numbers I have missed.

Many other people have commented on the fact that Warhammer Historical have stopped trading and there have been many discussions as to the reasons for this. Arrogance towards the customer seems to be the main one which is obviously (but not to Games Workshop) not a sensible way to retain loyalty from retail customers.  

As to the rules themselves they got me back into wargaming partly because they adopted the visual style of the top magazines.  I remember when wargames rules were just copied typewritten sheets with hand-stapled covers.  I need visual stimulation to get me interested in painting and the Warhammer Historical provided just that.  Their approach has had a major influence on the presentation of wargames rules ever since, although some will say that the resultant high cost of these full colour volumes was been a negative. WAB was a revelation to me when I first saw it.  Indeed, my first wargame against opponents since 1981 was a WAB Saxons and Vikings game at Guildford against Mike Lewis of Black Hat miniatures.

Even though I am not a rules monkey there were still some things I didn't like about WAB and these were mainly to do with the look of the game; principally that units tended to be 4 deep square (or near as) blocks, whatever their historical formation may have been.  This was especially the case for Romans whose units tended to be small.  I wanted more linear looking units and thought that WAB 2 had solved this as it made the maximum rank bonus limited to 3 instead of 4 ranks in total.  Unfortunately, WAB 2 had so many other problems with it that it essentially killed it off as a game.  People started looking for other options, not finding them and so writing them; hence the slew of new ancients rules of late.  I've just found a space on my shelves for War & Conquest which looks set to fill the gap left by WAB.

One set of rules I did like was Warhammer ECW.  We played these at Guildford several times and we thought they worked well and had some period flavour too.  Nevertheless I have just bought the new Pike and Shotte rules from Warlord Games.

Interestingly prices on eBay and other places such as Caliver Books are seeing the more recent Warhammer Historical games, such as Kampfgruppe Normandy, now selling for more than their original selling price.    I'm still trying to obtain a copy of the WW1 Over the Top supplement. Although I will keep playing some of the games it does mean, sadly, that none of the promised future supplements (covering WW1 in Africa, for example) will see the light of day.

Copplestone 18mm fantasy are next

My next figures under way are some more 18mm Copplestone Castings fantasy.  He has released quite a few more packs since I bought the first three but I am being good and won't buy any new ones until I finish the ones I have!

Foundry Baluchi swordsmen

I have also now assembled and based a unit of Warlord's Natal Native Infantry for the Zulu Wars and, also on the Darkest Africa theme, have my next unit for the Zambezi campaign, some Baluchis, ready for undercoating. 

  

Back from Dacia...

Not the prettiest city in Europe but at least it was 27 degrees

I'm just back from Romania; a country I haven't been to before.  This now means that there is only one EU country (Cyprus) I haven't visited.  

Large, cold and, most importantly, with just one olive. 8/10

I had low expectations of Bucharest, which certainly has more than its fair share of ugly, Soviet era blocks but also has some pretty Austrian-style villas scattered throughout the centre of town.  It's no Prague, Riga or Ljubljana however.  There was some big football match on which made getting a good hotel almost impossible but, again, much to my surprise the Howard Johnson Grand Plaza (the only place with any rooms available) was actually OK with a rather good restaurant.  I had some excellent local wine and they even managed a decent Vodka Martini in the bar.

The Legatus was very well looked after by the lovely Ana

Romanian girls kept telling me that the country had the most beautiful girls in the world.  I have heard similar claims from Russians, Latvians, Lithuanian, Hungarians, Colombians, Argentinians etc.etc. Romanian girls, if one can generalise, tend to have slim figures, long legs, large noses, big brown eyes and slutty looking mouths.  Many of them had very long hair too, which you don't see in Britain that often these days. Well, many of them look like prototypical gypsy girls, of course.  Perfect for me in fact.  So, I wouldn't say they were up there with the Lithuanians or the Vietnamese but  there were a few very fine specimens around indeed and my own companion and aide was not exactly an old dog herself.

Typical Romanian scenery in the bar.  Always something nicely distracting there

So which country really has the most beautiful women?  A few years ago I was in a restaurant in a hotel in Helsinki where I saw an Italian professional cycling team struggling in trying to order dinner from a waitress who spoke only Finnish or English.  I decided to help out with translation and as a result they invited me to join them for dinner.  There was a conversation about which country had the most beautiful women in the world and the almost unanimous consensus (based on the fact that they had only been to countries on the professional cycling circuit) was...Venezuela.  I've never been there so cannot comment but if you like your women "slutty, dark and obvious" as one of my ex-(blonde)girlfriends once observed, it could be a promising territory.

Anyway, back to the other sort of figures.  On my return, of course, I started to think about getting some Dacians.  In my defence, I have been thinking about this since Warlord came out with their Trajan's Column style Romans with armoured sleeves.  Now Warlord Games do a box of Dacians but, inevitably they are just their Celts with a few extra metal bits thrown in.  I am not convinced by this attempt to produce different armies from the same basic figures.  The real issue, looking at some pictures of their Dacians is that the metal heads seem huge.  So I looked at Foundry and their figures, probably because they are Perry sculpts, look rather better.  They will be small of course but then the Warlord Romans are small too.  Hmm!

Harry Potter experience, particle accelerators, disasters, an Olympic gold medalist, mugshots and the Foreign Secretary

Charlotte gets ready for her experience

It's been an odd sort of fortnight, not least because I am sick of being regularly doused in rainwater and feeling as soggy as a two hour old bag of chips most of the time.  It started last Monday with two very contrasting events I had to take my daughter to.

The sets and props are the real thing not reproductions

My daughter is, indeed, a strange girl (I can't think where she gets it from) but on Monday she had her perfect day.  I had heard about the new Warner Bros Harry Potter experience before Christmas and I booked Charlotte a ticket back then.  Fortunately, she didn't hear about it in the interim and so the tickets on Christmas Day were a complete surprise.  She came to Harry Potter quite late but now, in her scientific way, seems to know everything about it.  

Charlotte in front of the Chamber of Secrets

Given I had to accompany her (my wife has no time for any sort of fiction which she dismisses as "made up stories" -actually maybe that's where the strange comes from) I had to take a crash course in the films (I had seen half of the first one on a flight to Los Angeles) and watched all eight over Christmas in about six days.  The most bizarre aspect, of course, was watching the child actors mature over such a short space of time   (especially Emma Watson) and at different rates.  I can't think of another theatrical production that did this except, perhaps, The Waltons TV show.

Diagon Alley

Anyway,  we arrived for our allotted slot (you can't just turn up) and I have to say I was hugely impressed by the whole operation.  They had filled two sound stages at Leavesden Studios with sets, props and costumes from the eight films.  I have been to a couple of these sorts of things before: a Lord of the Rings props exhibition in London and a Star Trek one at the Las Vegas Hilton but this one was on a completely different scale.

Everything was brilliantly organised and the staff were genuinely friendly and helpful.  I'm interested in behind the scenes stuff in films (maybe it's because I grew up within sight of Shepperton Studios (or at least it's backlot) and worked there for a bit) but the thing that impressed me most about this was the level of detail and craftsmanship on every single prop.  The Star Trek props and models were very disappointing; phasers carved out of wood, spaceships with pencil panel lines drawn on them.  For Harry Potter, however, nothing was bodged.  If there was a trophy visible in a cabinet for just a few seconds it wasn't plain - it had a proper inscription on it (we saw one inscribed for the winner of the gnome racing competition).  

The sets were amazing and they had the Great Hall of Hogwarts complete with real York stone paving.  Even though the walls weren't real stone you could stand six inches away and not tell.  You go in to the exhibition in batches and start with a short film introduction which led to a coup de theatre that literally left the audience gasping.  We had been in Christ Church College, Oxford hall a few months previously (they had used the stairs at Christ Church as the entrance to Hogwarts Hall in the first film) and there was a certain resemblance.

Charlotte outside 4 Privet Drive

After this they took you through different aspects of the film's production, make-up, wigs, costume, creatures, props, special effects, all interspersed with some of the sets from the films.  Eventually you end up outside (it was tipping down with rain, naturally) to see some external sets and props.

The Night Bus

You finish with the large model of Hogwarts, the effect of which was similar to the first time I saw the Swedish ship Vasa.  The British Ambassador told me that if I had a free afternoon in Stockholm I should go and see it as it has the "wow!" factor.  I soon realised what he meant because as soon as I went into the museum I went "wow!"  The 1/24 scale model Hogwarts has the same effect!  It's amazing!

One of the girls working there said that they were taking through 6,000 visitors a day which I reckon meant that the takings were about £250,000 a day.  Add to that the amount they were taking for greenscreen photos, in the shop and cafe and I think, even given the £10million cost of the attraction, Warner Bros will be minting it for some time to come.

Dumbledore's study

One strange thing about the Harry Potter exhibition was that there weren't that many children there.  OK, most of the schools had gone back (not Charlotte's) but the biggest group of visitors seemed to be young women in their twenties.  I suppose they started reading the books when they were eleven or twelve and have grown up with them and the films.

Dr Suzie.  She can accelerate my particles any day

After a, fortunately, brief stop in the huge shop  we had to race to Oxford so Charlotte could attend a lecture at the Physics faculty on recent developments in particle accelerators.  If there is anything she enjoys more than Harry Potter it's particle physics.  I prepared to sleep through the whole thing until  I saw the lecturer, the really rather gorgeous Dr Suzie.  I learned a lot and have been boring people with the possibilities of particle accelerator-driven, Thorium-powered nuclear fission ever since.

She can accelerate my particles too

I was quite excited this week as I was booked to give an interview to  a research firm in Washington DC and they paid me £300 for speaking to them on the phone about infrastructure for half an hour.  On Tuesday, however, it all went wrong.   The car broke down (split hose) and had to go into the garage overnight so I had to trudge to the station in the rain and mud.  When the car came back from the garage it had a huge crack in the windscreen which we know wasn't there when it went in.  The garage deny doing it but have offered to pay half the cost.  Then the TV aerial packed up and we had no TV for three days until aerial Scouser could fix it.  Then the tap in the kitchen came detached from the sink and a big bolt dropped out into the cupboard below.  Next the drains got blocked and draino man said it would cost £700 to deal with the roots growing through them. Then the boiler packed up (again) and we had no heating or hot water for 36 hours.  Finally, I cracked a tooth which then got infected so I have been having to anaesthetise it every night with freezing Sauvignon Blanc.  I could very much do with Hermione Grainger to wave her wand and say "dentus repairum!"  As it is I will have to spend several hundred pounds at the dentist.   So the £300 has been more than used up.  Grr! 

I consoled myself with a long lunch with my favourite German, B, who was over from Turkey, fortunately.  We discovered a fantastic Anjou Blanc in the tapas bar from the Ackermann cellars in St Hilaire-St Florent. I had been to these cellars during my holiday in the Loire thirty years ago with the lovely V (my then girlfriend) and J (my previous girlfriend) so it contributed to the nostalgic mood I drifted into as the afternoon (and the bottles) progressed.

Tessa Sanderson: Doesn't look 56!

Later in the week I was at an event with some of our Olympians and gold medal javelin thrower, Tessa Sanderson, who was a very nice lady.  She is four years older than me but, to paraphrase Gandalf, "she hadn't aged a day!"  I think it's the first time I had seen a real Olympic gold medal up close and it has got me excited about the Olympics this summer.  My sister managed to get us tickets for the men's 1500m final so that should be quite good.  I've got the first day of the athletics, some rowing, fencing and, of course the cycling comes past the end of my road.

The modest staircase and hall at Lancaster House

This week all the British Ambassadors were over in London for a big conference so there were endless receptions to attend.  I have literally lived on canapes for four days.  Best reception was for the Latin American-based ambassadors sponsored by drinks giant Diageo, who were supplying endless glasses of Champagne and cocktails.  Poshest was at Lancaster House, the FCO's hospitality and conference building next to St James Palace.  I caught up with William Hague again at that one.  He was President of the Oxford Union when I was art director of the Oxford Union Magazine.

Finally, in a bizarre finish to a strange couple of weeks I was trying to find  an old friend using Google.  I used to work with this lady at a previous job and we kept in touch and met up for lunch regularly until she returned to live in the US.  She had an unusual Arab name so I hoped I would be able to track her down easily.  I certainly did, but didn't expect to locate her through, not one but two, mugshots of her on US police websites, as she had been arrested twice on disorder and resisting arrest charges.  When I knew her in London this lady was cultured, civilised, well dressed and beautiful.  She had been educated at a top Ivy League University.  What happened?  You just can't tell!

I have managed a bit of painting, mainly undercoating stuff but also a bit on my first American Civil War figures.  They are taking as long as I thought they would, especially as I have decided to start with some barely uniformed Virginians from 1861 based on this Don Troiani painting of Bull Run.  Another week and I might have finished six!