Paint Table Saturday: Painting progress and some Kickstarters

Good progress on the Carthaginian war elephants this week and the elephants are now, well on the way to being  finished. They need to be varnished and metal work done but it is cold and damp here today, unfortunately. The next jobs are the howdahs and crew.  The Little Big Men transfers look very good but do not precisely fit the model so some touching up was required.  I found then extremely fiddly One of the small one popped out of my fingers as I was bending it to remove the plastic coating and disappeared completely, lost somewhere in the clutter of my desk.  I am not looking forward to putting the very tiny transfers on the howdahs.  This weekend's job is to get those moved along.  

I have put bases on the Zulus and undercoated them (although somehow I have lost a shield bearing arm but I think I can fix that from the bits box).  I have also based a couple of the Wargods of Olympus figures (see below).  I am now also starting the tedious black bits on the 1864 Danish infantry.  Slowly but surely!  Any way this is what is going to see some attention this weekend.

I seem to have bought rather a lot of art books lately and desperately need shelf space which is currently being taken up by a lot of old wargames magazines.  In addition I have a pile of wargames magazines on the floor.  I have decided to be brutal and get rid of them.  I don't read them again, anyway and usually only find one or two articles in them worth keeping but as they do feature in my occasional Reading Wargames Magazines over Lunch (TM) posts, I won't stop buying them.  Instead, I am going through them and removing any articles I might want to read again and scanning them.  I can then file them in the relevant section of my computer and it makes it much more likely that I will refer to them in the future, as I will know exactly where they are.  So the first one I scanned last night was a Sudan scenario from this month's Miniature Wargames.

Back in 2014, I bought into the Crocodile Games Wargods of Olympus game Kickstarter.  Not because I was interested in the game but because I was interested in the figures for my Jason and the Argonauts project.  There were huge delays on this and I contacted them again recently and they told me they had my parcel all ready to go but they needed my address confirming. Well, they said they had sent me an e-mail asking for it but they hadn't. Anyway a massive box of stuff arrived yesterday and it looks very good.  A huge impact on the lead pile, though!

The figures come on slotta bases, which I hate so I will saw off most of the tab and will mount them on my favourite steel washers from Hurst in Cowes.  The gods and goddesses are a head taller than the rank and file figures, appropriately, and I will start with some of these I think.  In fact the goddess Artemis (above) and the god Dionysus seems as good a place to start as any.

Ewoks, anyone?

I have bought into a number of other Kickstarters and, on the whole, have found them a good experience.  A couple I regretted, like 18mm Forged in Battle ancients (although I like the look of their new Dark Ages Kickstarter) and Mars Attacks (I still have them all somewhere) but usually I find them a good way to pick up new ranges.  Sometimes I change my mind before the Kickstarter ends and cancel, as I did with The Drowned Earth (I really liked the miniatures but reckoned the scenery would cost a fortune).  This week I cancelled another Kickstarter, Freya's Wrath by Bad Squiddo games.  Now I should really want lady Vikings and I have the Foundry ones plus some other odd figures I picked up for a planned Frostgrave Force.  I decided that Frostgrave probably isn't for me, despite buying some figures, as the magic element seemed to make it far too complicated for me to understand and Eric the Shed didn't think much of it when he tried it.  The rules we play at the Shed are usually excellent so I trust his judgement on this. The real issue I had with the Freya's Wrath figures was that I decided that I didn't like the sculpts.   These are squat ladies and suffer from, not only big head syndrome, but also old style Gripping Beast fat calf syndrome (like their Early Imperial Romans).  Life is too short (especially for me) to paint average figures. Now, to be fair, you can't always tell proportions from photos, as the camera often distorts figures but I can always look at them, once they are out, at one of the shows. Instead I put my money into the new John Carter range (something I have wanted since I was about ten).

On Thursday I also pledged for Dark Fable's bunny girls Kickstarter.  I have no idea what these will be used for but they are sculpted by Brother Vinni and he does the best 28mm women on the planet. I have bought most of Dark Fable's Egyptian harem girls and even painted some, so I know these will be excellent and they were fully funded in a couple of days.  Fortunately, I have just the right reference book for the figures: Osprey's  Playboy Bunny Girls in Urban America 1960-1988

Well, no, of course, but I do have this in my extensive Playboy library so that will help with research, enormously.  I did once have a notion to do a (perhaps) Black Ops style fight in the sort of nightclub you used to get in Alias, using the excellent Sally 4th Terra-Block bar.  Now I could build a miniature Playboy club! Hmm. 

Winterhalter - Florinda (1852)

Talking of scantily clad ladies, today's wallpaper is Florinda by Queen Victoria's favourite painter Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805-1873).  I saw this painting in Osborne House on the Isle of Wight this summer and it featured in the most recent episode of BBC4's enjoyable series Art, Passion and Power: the Story of the Royal Collection.  At the time, this would have been something of a daring painting for a woman to purchase and a rather surprising birthday present, as it was, from Queen Victoria to Prince Albert. It must have been a favourite of both as they had it hanging over their adjoining desks in the Queen's Sitting Room in Osborne House, where it remains to this day.  In her diaries, Victoria bemoaned the fact that it couldn't be a secret gift (perhaps she was conscious of its  perceived raciness as a gift from the monarch) as it had to appear in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition that year.  Likewise it looked like Winterhalter hadn't expected it to sell quite so quickly as he had to rapidly paint a copy (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) for the Paris Salon the following year.

Bernardo Blanco -King Rodrigo before his defeat by the Moors at the battle of Guadalete in 711 (1871)

The subject is based on an old Spanish/Portuguese/Arab story.  Florinda was the daughter (or wife, depending on the version of the story) of Count Julian governor of Cueta for the Visigothic King Rodrigo in the 8th century.    Illustrated in Winterhalter's painting is one version, where King Rodrigo (just visible in the bushes at the far left) spies on Florinda and her lady companions as they prepare to bathe in the River Tajo, near Toledo castle. Instantly falling in lust (not surprisingly given, Winterhalter's lustrous treatment of flesh) Kind Rodrigo either seduced her and she became his lover or he abducted and raped her ('falls violently in love' as the Royal Collection euphemistically calls it).  Some versions of the story have Florinda as the seducer, however. Whatever, her father/husband Julian is none too pleased so colludes with the leader of the Ummayad Caliphate, Musa Ibn Nusayr, then running riot in North Africa, to invade Spain and kick out King Rodrigo and the Visigoths. This of course they did, leading to the death of King Rodrigo at the battle of Guadalete, centuries of Moorish conquest, flamenco music, a heroic crusade to oust the Moors, a Hollywood epic feature film with a wonderful soundtrack by Miklós Rózsa and a Warhammer Ancient Battles supplement.  That's a lot of stuff caused by one naked woman. In some versions of the legend, despite the rocky start to their relationship, Florinda, distraught at the death of her lover Rodrigo, commits suicide by jumping into the river where she was first spied upon by the King.  Her spirit, embarrassed at the terrible fate she had caused to befall Spain, would haunt the area ever after, especially if you have consumed too much Manchego and La Mancha wine, no doubt.

Winterhalter - Leonilla, Princess Sayn Wittgenstein (1843)

It was a popular story in the mid-nineteenth century (less so now) and indeed Queen Victoria, with Albert, had attended the world premier of the opera by Swiss composer Sigismond Thalberg, Florinda, ou Les Maures en Espagne, the year before she bought the painting, so was well aware of the legend.  The bodies in Winterhalter's painting would have been professional models but many of the faces were that of Leonilla, Princess of Sayn Wittgenstein, as Queen Victoria noted in her diaries. The Russian Princess Wittgenstein had been painted by Winterhalter in Paris in 1843 in a remarkably sensuous, for the time, odalisque style, portrait. She was famous for her intellect and her beauty and in 1860, when she was in her mid-forties, Queen Victoria noted that she was 'still very handsome'.  Born the year after the battle of Waterloo, she died in 1918, at the age of a hundred and one.

Thalberg's opera, Florinda has never been recorded and these days he is best known as a pianist who was a bitter rival to Liszt and who produced a number of piano arrangements of other composer's opera music.  So to keep the theme I am listening to the monumental soundtrack of El Cid, by Miklós Rózsa, in the truly excellent re-recording of the complete score (all 150 minutes of it) by The City of Prague Philharmonic.  

2016 Wargames Review

A good start to the year but from then on...

It is time for my wargames review of the year, which is even less thrilling than the last one.  Well, actually it is well past the time for my wargames review of the year but I have been spending all my time painting Zulus and writing bid documents so here it is, nearly at the end of January.  Changing jobs, domestic issues and two long overseas trips really hurt the amount of time I had for the hobby last year and I achieved very little really, despite my good intentions at the beginning of last year.


Figures Painted

70% of the figures I painted in 2016

I thought that last year's score of twenty five figures was bad but this year I only managed a paltry ten.  The year started well with the hydra and the Golden Fleece and tree but apart from a few Neanderthals that was it.  So in total I finished:

3 Jason and the Argonauts
7 Neanderthals

To be fair the Hydra, tree and golden fleece would probably count as more than three figures if I used a points system but I don't, so they didn't.  This is the lowest number of figures I have ever painted in a year.  I did do some painting it is just I didn't finish very many figures.  2017 has got to be better and, in fact, I have already reached 32 figures just in January!

What I have discovered is that, because I paint using 3.5 magnification reading glasses, my eyes get tired after about twenty minutes of painting so I can't sit down and paint for hours at a time like some people do. Also I use enamels, the fumes from which start to get to me after a while.  I did paint all day on Saturday but felt shattered on Sunday, during our big Zulu War games, as a result.


Wargames played 

Thanks to the kind invitations from Eric the Shed I have a number of games this year but less than 2015's ten.  In April we did a Muskets and Tomahawks game which was as enjoyable as ever.  It is a period I really like and mean to paint some units for it at some point.

We also did a big English Civil War Game.  Eric and Mark had managed to paint two large ECW armies in a very short space of time and these looked fantastic.  We used the Pike and Shotte rules.  I have played a number of ECW games before at Guildford Wargames Club and even have a couple of regiments of figures painted.  My forces, however, are the large but splendid Renegade figures by Nick Collier and dwarf the (very nice) Warlord figures.  Still, I hope to get back painting ECW figures again.

Finally, we had a Zulu Wars game using The Men Who Would be Kings, stretching the size of the armies, somewhat, as regards what the rules envisage but they worked remarkably well.

So only three games this year.  I was annoyed that because of work I had to miss Frostgrave (although Eric was not impressed by the rules) and Congo games, though.


Scenics

Because I have decided to get into the American Civil War I bought a couple of the Renedra plastic buildings and have even built them.  I am looking forward to painting these in the near future.  This year I really have to sort out how to solve the wargames board problem, though.  We have a table tennis table which will work for a game but it is how to dress it. Hmm.


Shows

Salute!

I went to Salute as usual and attended the bloggers meet up again (I'm second from left, above).  I didn't get to Colours but did attend Warfare in November thanks to a lift from Eric the Shed. Next year I will try to get to Colours again, as it really is my favourite of the three shows I visit.  It was good to meet up with George Anderson for the first time at Salute as I love his blog and the fact that he is as grumpy as I am.   It was also a delight to meet the Uber Geek during a visit he made to London late last year and he kindly bought me dinner.  My turn next time!


Lead pile and Kickstarters

Lead pile reduction didn't go so well this year, given I bought quite a few ACW plastics and a few other oddments.  I was still down 39 overall so the pile did decrease. I did buy into the Empire in Peril Kickstarter, though, but the figures haven't arrived yet so they don't go on the total. I also bought some North Star African princesses for Congo and a box of Raging Heroes SF babes (above)


Wargames Rules

I didn't play games using any of the sets of rules I bought in 2015 (7th Voyage, Frostgrave, or Black Ops).  This year I bough The Men Who Would be Kings, played a game and liked them.  I also got Congo, which I will use at some point. I bought Blood Eagle at Salute but haven't really looked at them. I am interested in buying Chosen Men and The Pikemen's Lament as I try to find large skirmish rules and avoid Warlord Games style massive armies. I gather that Sharp Practice is good for the Peninsula but I refuse to buy anything from a company that calls itself Too Fat Lardies.  Gross.


Wargames Blogs and Facebook

This blog celebrated its 10th anniversary this year and I posted on eight of my other wargames blogs as well.  I only managed 49 posts, down on 2015's 78, but it is still a reasonable number. I have added five followers this year but I don't really publicise it on TMP or whatever. It is on 572,000 page views which means I picked up about 120,000 views in 2016 or 10,000 a month, which is surprising (admittedly my girly blog picks up that number a day but then it is full of naked women).  My number one post was the one on Daleks, American Football, SF babes and ACW Infantry with 1l00 views.

My Facebook experiment continues and having deleted 70 'friends' last year, for political ranting and posting tedious recycled material, I have gradually increased to the current 107.  I also deleted some who were posting multiple times a day and flooding my feed in a TMP Tango01 type way.  I do not see the number of Facebook friends as a measure of worth!  I am only interested in those whose pages are primarily about wargaming or who I know in real life.  I do find the various groups I am on (when I realised that they existed) very inspirational and do use it to keep track of manufacturers new releases.


Plans for the next year

Now I have got my Zulus finished I will go back to my plastic ACW project to refight the fictitious Battle of Centerville from Terence Wise's Introduction to Battle Gaming.  No doubt I will get distracted by other things too but ACW is going to be my main thing for this year!  I am actually looking forward to it!

Musical Accompaniment

While writing this post I listened to a recent purchase of the extended 2 disc version of Basil Poledouris' soundtrack to Starship Troopers which will, no doubt, get further outings when I start to paint my Raging Heroes Kurganovas.  I am still keen to get a wargaming on a desert planet game sorted.

The Golden Fleece!

In a burst of activity over the weekend I finished my Wargames Foundry Hydra and the Steve Barber tree with golden fleece for the planned Argonauts campaign at the Shed this year,  I don't think that the picture is very good but I can't check it as my desktop PC packed up today (I actually think the drive is full) so I am struggling on Guy's small laptop.  Hopefully, the people at KAD computers can fix it on Wednesday! A better picture is now on my Argonautika blog.

It gives you an idea, anyway.  Both tree and hydra are very much based on the 1963 film version of Jason and the Argonauts.  I had actually misplaced the golden fleece itself but after a good tidy up of the workbench I located it,  My first completed figures of 2016!  I will score these as 3 figures, so more than 10% of my total last year!

2015 Wargames Review

Some of my figures on location at the Shed for a Pulp Alley game

Here we have my thrilling 2015 wargames review and at least I had enough games this year to qualify me as a wargamer, even if my painting output was tragically small.


Figures Painted

After 2014's score of 114, 2015 was very disappointing indeed.  I painted just 25 figures:

11 North West Frontier British
5 In Her Majesty's Name
4 Pulp
2 Argonauts
1 Pirate
1 Roman
1 Carolingian

This is my lowest amount by far since I started recording my painting in 2007, when I managed 312 figures.  I haven't completed anything since September although I have done some painting.  I just didn't have anything close to being finished.  I'm not quite sure why this is.  I cannot paint under artificial light and I suspect that my eyesight has deteriorated quite a bit this year.  I have spent a lot of time at the eye departments of local hospitals.   Hopefully, 25 is such a miserable number that I can beat it this year.  I will just have to accept I can't paint to the quality I used to.

Wargames played 

Some of my girly pirates at the Shed

Thanks to the generosity of Eric the Shed I have played a record breaking ten wargames this year!

First off there was an epic pirate game, next my first game of Lion Rampant for Robin Hood, a science fiction bug hunt game, a Pulp Alley 1930s Egypt game, two games of Battlecars, a big Lion Rampant Crusades game, a 15mm Black Powder Quatre Bras game and two more Pulp Action games as part of Eric's Scales of Anubis campaign.  Firsts included my first Lion Rampant game (excellent) and my first 15mm game, which was also my first Black Powder game.

Eric's scenery is legendary and I was pleased to field some of my own figures in some of these games.  It makes all the squinting worth while when they can see action on such spectacular boards.


Scenics

I meant to paint a building or two this year but totally failed and the only scenic item I have been working on is a tree to hold the Golden Fleece for Jason and the Argonauts.  Actually it is now finished but it wasn't in 2015 so can't appear here in it's final form!


Shows

I went to Salute, as usual and actually attended the bloggers meet up for once.  I even appeared in the official picture!  In 2014 Salute was my only show as Colours was cancelled.  I tried to get to Colours this year but was defeated by horrific traffic on the M25 and M3.  Fortunately, Eric the Shed gave me a lift to Warfare in Reading (whose one way system scares me to death) so I scored two shows this year.

Leadpile

I have done quite well on reducing the lead (and plastic - more on this soon) pile this year; realising that I am never going to paint all the figures I have got.  I bought just 98 new figures, painted 25 and sold 518 leaving me a minus 446 score for the pile.   New figures were mainly Frostgrave. Lucid Eye Savage Core, First Corps Mexican-American War and Iron Duke Indian Mutiny.  Apart from the Mexicans, I have at least started most of the others.


Kickstarters and pre-orders

Too small!

I've tried to avoid these this year.  I sold all my War and Empire figures on and having committed to the second W&E Kickstarter of Romans I then cancelled it.  I just don't like 15mm and I can't see to paint them any more.  The only one I backed this year was for Miniature Wargaming the Movie, which doesn't involve having to paint anything!  I realise that I still haven't received my Wargods of Olympus figures which I ordered in 2013 because I wanted the rule book at the same time.  Now they want me to pay extra postage to get the figures first, which I will have to because I want them for Jason and the Argonauts.

Wargames Rules

Now as my regular opponents at the Shed know, I seem totally unable to pick up wargames rules; a somewhat fundamental issue.  I like playing the games but just don't have a strategic mind, which makes winning a game a rare event.  I don't play boardgames for the same reason, as they have all the stressful strategy and none of the enjoyable figure painting.  My friend A wondered if I shouldn't just paint 90mm figures for the fun of it and forget about the gaming.  The problem with that being that the quality of finish on most 90mm figures I have seen is so astounding as to make my efforts look embarrassing. It's a lose-lose situation, rather like my gaming.

That said. I have played several rule sets for the first time this year.  Black Powder (in 15mm), Lion Rampant, Battlecars and Pulp Alley.   Pulp Alley is very enjoyable but of these Lion Rampant was my favourite, once we had agreed as a group to abandon the rule whereby if a unit fails to activate the whole side fails to be able to do any actions.  For our larger games where we had 10 or 12 units a side this just didn't work (Eric has also had to modify the rules to allow for multiplayer games).

I bought several new sets myself this year: Black Ops, 7th Voyage (for Argonauts games) and Frostgrave.  Needless to say reading them has given me no clue as to how they will work in practice!  Eric's analysis of magic in Frostgrave scared me to death.  However, now I have realised that I don't care if I win a game or not so long as I can field some nice figures in it.  I assembled some plastic Frostgrave figures last night and they are very nice indeed.

Looking forward I'm quite tempted by the Dragon Rampant fantasy rules, The Men who Would be King, En Garde and Studio Tomahawk's Congo rules.


Wargames Blogs and...Facebook

Well I actually didn't set any new blogs up this year, although I have expended some to a more widescreen format and increased the font size for my poor eyes. I only did 78 posts on this blog compared with 111 posts in 2014.  The blog now has 203 followers and has just passed 450,000 views.  My post on a bug hunt game at the shed and thoughts on Black Ops got the biggest number of views at 1547.  Could this score (I usually get between 200 and 400 views per post) have anything to do with the picture of Maggie Q and Lyndsey Fonseca in the post?  After all, my girly blog has just passed 12.5 million views! Speaking of which, Blogger threatened to take down all blogs with an "adult" tag this year and so I removed some of my posts from Legatus Wargames Ladies, in order to avoid the blog being closed.  Then of course, they changed their minds but I haven't replaced the deleted posts.  I really, really can't understand many Americans' fear of nudity or sexuality.

The biggest 'social media' (even typing the words makes me feel sick and ashamed) development was my Facebook page, which I initially set up so I could follow figure manufacturers' pages when I realised that they posted about new products on Facebook long before they appeared on their conventional websites.  Guided by my daughter, I set up a page and soon had around 160 "friends".  I then realised that many of these pages had nothing to do with wargaming (fair enough if they are for family purposes).  What I couldn't understand were all the ones full of tedious political cant or regurgitation of ghastly American homilies or so-called humour created by others.  Originate your own stuff, don't just circulate garbage!   Frankly I'd much rather look at pictures of people's cats, holidays or meals than see some cringe-making graphic with Minions in it!  So I unfriended dozens of them and am now down to just over 90.


Plans for the next year

Well, to paint more than 25 figures, obviously.  As regards what I will slightly cant it towards figures I might be able to deploy in the Shed.  This means a lot more for Jason and the Argonauts and, possibly, some English Civil War.  Other than that I will try to finish the units I have on the paint table at present which are my 1864 Danes, Carolingians, Indian Mutiny British and North West Frontier.  On the skirmish side, figures for the Lost World, IHMN, Black Ops and pirates are all on the desk at present.  The Neanderthals next!

Now I really, really shouldn't even be contemplating any new figures but Unfeasibly Miniatures new Empire in Peril range is very tempting!


Musical Accompaniment

While writing this post I have been listening to one of my favourite TV soundtracks ever, The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe.  Many British people my age will have seen this series from the time it was shown and repeated on TV between 1965 and 1975.  

The music was the work of two composers: Robert Mellin (1902-1994) and Gian Piero Reverberi (1939-).  It did not feature in the original French and German release in 1963 but was specially composed for the British version in 1965.  Mellin (born Israel Melnikoff) was a Ukrainian born, composer, lyricist and publisher whose family took him from Kiev to Chicago as a baby.  He wrote hundreds of songs and lyrics including words to Acker Bilk's Stranger on the Shore.  He moved to London in the seventies and had music publishing businesses both there and in New York.  Mellin produced some scores for spaghetti westerns and had the publishing rights to a lot of Italian film scores.  He was instrumental in locating the recordings of The Adventure of Robinson Crusoe in Rome for the CD soundtrack release in 1994, dying in Rome shortly afterwards

The much younger, classically trained, Reverberi worked with rock bands and also scored spaghetti westerns and TV series.  He is best known these days as the founder, conductor and composer for the hybrid baroque/pop ensemble Rondò Veneziano which he founded in 1979 and has now produced over 70 albums.

A quick trip to Warfare...

As I have said before, the Warfare show in Reading is not one of my favourites to travel to, as driving in Reading is like driving in the Monaco Grand Prix with no pit exit lane.  The awful one way system means that you can be doomed to circle around the centre endlessly, like Halley's Comet or, if you get in the wrong lane, be slingshot off to somewhere odd like Basingstoke, with no way to turn around for five miles, while being cut up by angry men in Vauxhalls.  So what a relief to get a lift from Eric the Shed and arrive stress free.  

I took my camera but really there isn't much to photograph, as the trade stands are trade stands and the hall is cramped (it was busy too) and the games are mostly of the tournament type.  Rank after rank of wargames on largely identical green baize cloths with that sort of toy town scenery.  It is the wargames equivalent of battery farming but I think, perhaps, that my exposure to Eric's marvellous scenery has spoiled me. We did have a chance to talk about planned campaigns for next year including Jason and the Argonauts and Frostgrave.

My limited purchases were all on my pre-show list, pretty much. Frostgrave soldiers and some lady Vikings from the Dice Bag Lady plus a couple of lady Dark Ages archers, which were a new release at the show from Elite Wargames and Models.  I was going to buy the female Frostgave sigilist and apprentice to lead my lady Vikings but the figures were tiny.  In fact all the metal Frostgrave figures were smaller than I expected.  I went for the Norse-looking Enchanter and apprentice instead but I think some of my lady Vikings will dwarf them.  

I thought I had bought the 7th Voyage Ray Harryhausen  type rules when they first came out but have been unable to find them anywhere so I picked up a copy, as one of the stands had them at a third off.

Finally, and the only thing not on my list, was a bag of 10mm Republican Romans from Newline Designs.  I have always wanted to do the Punic Wars but am I ever going to be able to paint enough 28mm figures?  I will see if I can actually paint them but they look, unusually for this scale, quite good anatomically.  I will have to make a decision about basing and rules.  I sold my Warmaster Ancients rules years ago (foolishly, as the cheapest they go for now is about £32 a copy second hand)  but maybe I should just use Hail Ceasar or some such.

It's too dark to paint this afternoon but maybe I can do some basing.

Thanks to Eric for the lift!

The Quest for the Lost Rules

Painted so far

As regular readers will know, I have slowly been working on some Jason and the Argonauts figures.   I have loved the story of Jason from even before the time I first saw the Ray Harryhausen film at my uncle's house in the late sixties/early seventies, when he had a colour TV and we did not.  This is a film I watch regularly and I have also the soundtrack CD for.  I also like the Hallmark TV mini series version from 2000 and even have the soundtrack to that.  

I have many books on the Argonauts and a lot of unpainted figures, monsters and, indeed the splendid Grand Manner Argo, pictured here with one of my Jason and the Argonauts mugs and my long neglected Greek Myths blog. 

Now, another wargamer has suggested a Jason project and so I can bring some focus to this heretofore rather desultorily pursued project.  A key part of this will be a good set of rules and what better than Crooked Dice's Seventh Voyage Harryhausenesque ones.  Said wargamer asked to have a look at them, when I said I had them.  "They are a bit buried," I replied but I set to looking for them today.  Now nearly all my wargames rules are on a bookshelf in my study.  Unfortunately, they are currently buried behind approximately 300 copies of Penthouse magazine which need sorting and a lot of boxes which need to go into the shed.  Anyway, I started to move them today to get at the shelves behind without getting distracted by naked ladies with big hair from the eighties.  I looked and I looked.  I couldn't find the rules anywhere.  I started to doubt if I had, indeed bought them at all.  I looked on the shelves with my Jason books.  Nothing there either.  Puzzled.  I searched this blog and discovered that I had, indeed, bought them at Salute 2013.  So where are they?  I need another search tomorrow.

Wargods of Olympus and more non-painting

Given that I can't summon the energy to do any painting at present it is patently insane to sign up for another kickstarter but this is what I have done by going in (quite big time) on Crocodile Games Wargods of Olympus, which finishes in a few hours.  It seems to have been a spectacular success for them and I am hoping to use some of the the figures as part of my Argonauts project apart from trying the main game itself.  This depends on their size (I gather they are quite large) and whether I decide to mount them on washers, rather than the slotta bases they are designed, for which will require some surgery.  I have done this successfully with Black Scorpion's pirates so see no reason that it won't work for these too.  We shall see. Their marketing has been very good, the concept art has been first class and I especially liked the way they illustrated progress on the kickstarter with a rather splendid map.

When their 300 style Spartans came out a few years ago I thought they were ridiculous but have been won over by their new Trojans which, while at the fantasy end of the spectrum are not by too much. I've also been impressed by some of the extra figures including an enticing Artemis who looks just like my Greek girlfriend F of thirty years ago! 

I've never seen any of their figures in reality but have heard good things about them. I am tempted to order some of the old Greek figures that they have produced just to try them out.

Now then, now then, what's goin' on 'ere?

I really wanted to get some painting done today as I haven't done anything in June and I thought maybe I could finish one figure today but I don't have anything close enough to completion.  I have four In Her Majesty's Name figures (the Scotland Yard policemen)  on the way but I am struggling with two problems with these.  Firstly, I am having trouble doing their eyes.  Annoyingly, rather than a plain oval, the eyes have sculpted irises which is really making them hard to do.  I've had three attempts so far and only one figure looks OK. The other issue is with regard to the uniform.  Police uniform at the end of the nineteenth century (as now, actually) was such a dark blue that it looked almost black.  Many of the painted figures I have seen are far too blue.  I am happy with the colour I mixed for them but shading them is proving a problem. I have actually shaded these figures with what I thought was a darker and then a lighter shade but when the paint dries the shading isn't apparent at all.  Oh well, I'll just have to have another go.

I'm off to the Americas (Houston, Bogota, Medellin, Barranquilla and Panama City) again on Friday, somewhat unexpectedly, so I don't think I'll get anything painted before then.  So it'll be three weeks before I get anything done.

I am going to paint my Grand Manner Roman warship for a game Big Red Bat is planning in the autumn (see my Roman blog) so hope to get that started soon.  I might paint my Argo at the same time.  It'll make a change from getting stressed by not painting figures anyway.

Ray Harryhausen June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013

Although many other wargamers will no doubt be celebrating his life I really cannot let the passing of Ray Harryhausen pass without comment.

Along with another recent loss, Gerry Anderson, he defined much of my life when I was a child in the sixties. I think the first film I saw of his, on television, was The First Men in the Moon (1964), in black and white of course.  The first of his films I saw in colour was the peerless Jason and the Argonauts (1963) on my uncle's colour TV in the late sixties.  The amazing creatures and the sun-drenched Mediterranean scenery left me with an appreciation of these sorts of films that continues to this day and on a wargaming front is reflected in my Argonauts project.

I loved his three Sinbad films too and the dinosaur work on Hammer's One Million Years BC (1966).  I only saw the latter,  The Valley of Gwangi (1969) and his last film, Clash of the Titans (1981) at the cinema but have all his major film's on DVD.

  So, a review...

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

The template for all that followed.

Best Creature: The cyclops!  I even painted my own version!

Babe: Kathryn Grant in figure hugging crop tops.

Do I own the soundtrack?  Yes! A great score by Bernard Hermann.  Harryhausen didn't want Hermann originally but changed his mind when he heard the score,  They went on to do three more films together. I have an excellent recording of the score played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by John Debney.

Mysterious Island (1961)

Parts of the opening were filmed in Shepperton Church Square about two miles from where I lived when I was young. A giant crab, Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo and the Nautilus!  Excellent!

The gorgeous Beth Rogan gets menaced by a very big chicken

Best Creature:  The Phororhacos.  Great interaction between the live actors and the model in this sequence.

Babe: Beth Rogan (who I have met) in a very un-Victorian doeskin top and shorts. Splendid!

Do I own the soundtrack?  Yes! Another great score by Bernard Hermann.  Minor key brass fanfares!  Crashing percussion! Excellent!

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

What can you say. His finest film!  A real galley, some superb Mediterranean locations and a great supporting cast.

Best creature:  The skeleton fight still holds up well today.  I saw the actual skeletons once at an exhibition at the BFI and they were very small but the sinister character Harryhausen conveyed in them by slightly caricaturing real skulls is impressive.  Talos a close second.

Babe: Nancy Kovacks as a slutty looking Medea; especially in the palace dance.  A pre-Goldfinger Honor Blackman scores highly too.

Do I own the soundtrack?  Yes!  Another excellent rerecording of the whole score by the Sinfonia of London under Bruce Broughton.

First Men in the Moon (1964)

Quite a steampunk one this, with an excellent Victorian spaceship.

Best creature:  Only the Selenites in this but I found them really creepy when I was small.  The first really alien looking aliens I had seen on screen.

Babe:  Martha Hyer was the sole female interest but a very interesting female she was too, especially in the Victorian lingerie shots they took for publicity purposes (the outfit, sadly, never appeared on screen).

Do I own the Soundtrack?  Laurie (The Avengers) Johnson came on board for this when Bernard Hermann wanted twice the fee that he had been paid for Jason and the Argonauts. Johnson's score does sound quite a lot like Bernard Hermann.  Update:  I have now obtained a CD of the soundtrack.

One Million Years BC (1966)

A Hammer, rather than a Harryhausen, production I saw it as a boy because of the dinosaurs.  The other attractions of the film became apparent in due course.

Best Creature:  It had to be the Triceratops; my favourite dinosaur of all time, then as now!

Simply the finest publicity still of any actress in the history of cinema!

Babe:  What can I say?  Utter perfection!

Do I own the soundtrack?  Again, this isn't available but there is a suite of Mario Nascimbene's music from it on one of those City of Prague Philharmonic's compilations which I do have.  Nascimbene's is best known for his stirring score to the Kirk Douglas/Tony Curtis epic The Vikings. 

The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Dinosaurs in the wild west.  What's not to like?

Best creature:  Gwangi himself, a sort of super Allosaurus, although the Styracosurus and the prehistoric horse were good too.   The scenes where the cowboys rope Gwangi are brilliantly done. 

Babe:  Miss Israel 1960 Gila Golan is never less than gorgeous throughout.

Do I own the soundtrack?  Yes. Again, the City of Prague Philharmonic have recorded extended highlights of Jerome (The Big Country) Moross' score.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

Tom Baker as the baddie, more Arabian high jinks and a host of creatures mark Harryhausen's return to Sinbad after fifteen years.

Best Creature:  The positively balletic Kali trumps even the sinister figurehead which comes to life.

Babe:  The producers originally wanted Raquel Welch or Paula Prentiss but settled for Caroline Munro.  A most acceptable substitute!

Do I own the soundtrack?  Yes.  Miklos Rosza, who was Harryhausen's original choice for The 7th Voyage of Sinbad in 1958, eventually gets to deliver his Sinbad score.  It features some creepy electronic effects.

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

Probably the weakest Sinbad film of the three with some dull creatures (A wasp? A walrus?) but some striking images nonetheless.

Best Creature:  The Minoton, although quite often played by a man in a suit rather than using stop motion animation.  Still a Harryhausen design, though.

Babe: Jane Seymour shows more skin than any other Harryhausen heroine to date in a (very modest) bathing sequence.

Do I have the soundtrack?  Yes, although I had to buy the out of production 1999 CD of Roy Budd's score at a ludicrous price.

Clash of the Titans (1981)

An end of an era as the economical Harryhausen style was eclipsed by bigger budgets and more modern techniques in the science fiction and fantasy films of the day: from Star Wars (1977) to Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).  Both Spielberg and Lucas (and, indeed, Peter Jackson and Nick Park) have been vocal in acknowledging the influence that Harryhausen had upon their careers.

Best creature:  Harryhausen's Medusa was one of the very best creatures he ever produced and was, as ever, better because it had reptilian skin rather than fur (which he never did get to look convincing).

Babe: Judi Bowker was a pretty but modestly dressed heroine (her famous bath scene was done by a (much bustier) body double, sadly).  Actress Vida Taylor, who played Perseus' mother flashed the only nipple seen in a Harryhausen film, in an early breast feeding sequence and posed nude in Oui magazine in May 1981.

Do I have the soundtrack?   Yes. I bought the 2 disc special edition full soundtrack of Laurence Rosenthal's excellent score last year. 

My signed book

I met Ray Harryhausen a few years ago at a book signing where he took the trouble to speak individually to every person there.  For more than forty years I have been able to submerge myself in his extraordinary worlds and am glad that in the last few years he started to get the general recognition that he deserved.

Now the only thing left to do is decide which of his films I am going to watch tonight.  Although I suspect there is really only one choice!