Jason and the Argonauts!

 Atalanta, Zetes, Jason, Cepheus, Herakles and Argus

Well, this year's skirmish project will be Jason and the Argonauts using the Steve Saleh sculpted Foundry figures.  I have finished six now and have another five on the way.  I had already painted Herakles and Atalanta but the other four have been done in the last week. 

Cepheus

The story of the quest for the Golden Fleece is set, of course, in the Bronze Age.  I intend to have my Argonauts in classical Greek armour with iron swords, as they have been gifted by the Gods.  Their opponents may well be more Bronze Age in appearance.  Or not, depending on how I feel!  Most of the new Foundry Greek mythological figures seem to owe more to the classical period than the Bronze Age. 

Zetes

This is my first fantasy force outside of the Lord of the Rings.  The latter, however, is almost like an historical period, given the painting guides, rules and attributes of the figures provided by Games Workshop.  With the Argonauts I will need to create more stuff myself.

Argus

Inevitably there will be a seperate blog for this project and indeed it is here, although there is very little on it as yet.

Jason

I have ordered The Foundry Tribes of Legend rules from Amazon but there seems to be some delay on them.  I am enjoying painting these a lot so far.

Playing Favourites - my 300th post

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

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.