Paint Table Sunday: Back from a break, reading a wargames magazine over lunch, new temptations and devil dogs

I haven't been painting for  around two months now, largely because the Old Bat has taken a turn for the worse with her Long Covid and Charlotte has been unwell too, so I have spent a lot of time running around after them, going to pick up prescriptions, take the Bat for blood tests, doing domestic stuff, gardening (ugh) and cooking with some work fitted around all that. Latterly it has been the Tour de France on TV as well. Really, however, I have just not felt like it. We had that very hot weather which made painting impossible and then it got very grey and dark and I really need good light to paint as I cannot manage it under artificial light at all. Mainly, however, I was in that situation where the figures I had started on my workbench (to use an inappropriately artisanal term which makes it sounds like I could actually make something) were really only just started. I find nothing more demotivating than having a load of figures which are a long, long way from being finished.

Today, however, I actually sat down and did an hour's painting. It was all base coat stuff and I was struggling with my eyesight again but I will try to do a bit every day; as I have done in the past. I have Lucid Eye Atlanteans, Crooked Dice V aliens and some of the new Wargames Atlantic Afghans on the go. Now, since I got the latter, Perry have announced their own plastic Afghans as well but I will just get those too. With Afghans you need as many different figures as possible. More interestingly, Wargames Atlantic have announced plastic mounted Afghans which I will need for my The Men Who Would be Kings force (as I have actually painted my British starter force). I suspect the Afghans will be quicker to paint than the others.

In the past, my far from eagerly awaited pieces, Reading Wargames Magazines Over Lunch, have described a succession of meals in London, usually in what would otherwise be non productive gaps in my work schedule between meetings. No such luxury these days, as I haven't been to London since 28th February, so it was a rather unexciting tuna salad (the only fish I eat, along with smoked salmon) in the garden as I am on yet another gentle fitness programme. 

A long time ago as photographed by Sophie...

This one is working quite well, mainly because I do not have the Old Bat bullying me into running which I can no longer do, due to bad knee and hip joints (caused by doing too much road running in my twenties and thirties). Instead, I spotted something on Facebook called the Conqueror Challenge where someone (in New Zealand, where there is little to do) organises set walk routes which you do virtually. So you choose your target walk (I chose the ninety mile Hadrian's Wall) and you go out and walk (or run or cycle) whenever you want and put the total down (I've worked out how to do this on my phone or, rather Charlotte did).  You pay £28 per challenge and then have a homepage you can plot your progress on. The Old Bat thinks that paying someone else so you can walk is insanity but it is working and I have been doing it for three months now. I completed Hadrian's Wall and am now doing the 280 mile Grand Canyon (as I have visited there). You can even see where you have got to, virtually, on Streetview. The Streetview views of the Canyon are not very interesting. It's a rocky canyon with a river at the bottom. That's it. Even Up North looks more interesting than that.

They even send you a very blingy medal when you finish so you do get something for your money. When I started, in June, I struggled to walk a mile and a half and was puffed and had chest pains but a month ago I walked six and a half miles home from Epsom hospital after my latest eye injection. You aren't allowed to drive after the injection and the Old Bat is still too ill to drive me, so the fact I could walk that far (in thirty four degree heat) shows how far I have come. No more breathlessness and no chest pains! I have to admit that accompanying wine and food for the Tour may have had a somewhat retrograde effect in the last two weeks, though, so I did another six and a half mile walk today.

Wargames Illustrated have been giving away a lot of Warlord Games figures. I can't bear to throw them away but I don't want most (any?) of them. There must be lots of wargamers with piles of these things. It's like accumulating Salute figures or free plastic rubbish from cereal packets in the sixties. The idea, of course, is that you look at your freebie and then go out and buy more. The opposite has been true of me, I am afraid. I looked at a set of Warlord Napoleonic cavalry and was so unimpressed by the poor sculpting and lack of crispness in moulding I vowed never to buy any Warlord plastics again. Victrix they are not. Anyway, last month the give away was a set of rules for Warlord's new French bread pizza naval wargame, Victory at Sea, which I have no interest in, having seen the ridiculous bases the models are on. Maybe it's not selling very well. Despite being interested in warships and having built many an Airfix ship model in the past I have no interest in naval wargaming. I just see an article in a wargames magazine on naval wargaming and my brain goes into power-saving mode. Yawn. So I didn't bother reading the rules showcase on the rules or another article about eighteenth century naval wargaming. I don't scan over the articles in Miniature Wargaming because the type is now so small I struggle to read it even with my reading glasses. I have to really want to read it to strain my eyes that much. Surely most wargamers are old like me and have eyesight that has deteriorated? Perhaps not. My father in law is 92 and doesn't use glasses for anything.

There was quite an interesting article on how wargames manufacturers are coping with the Chinese Virus but I was surprised, given Baccus employ seven staff, to discover, according to the article, that Warlord employ 103 people. One thing that occurred to me, regarding all the lockdown stuff, was how many rules writers were producing new solo versions of their games. I think I wouldn't buy a set now if it didn't have some solo rules as, realistically, I am not going to be able to organise my own games for multiple players. None of my close friends are interested in wargaming (possibly because most of them are women). I am still too nervous about the Chinese Virus, seeing what it has done to the Old Bat, to venture over to the Shed, despite Eric's kind invitations. Will things return to normal and solo players be forgotten again or will the Chinese keep churning out deadly viruses every year in their bat infested labs until they have achieved the crushing economic dominance they are seeking in their, no doubt, forty year plan?

Starlux 54mm (cicra 1970)

I always look at the figure reviews in magazines and in the August issue I discovered that the new Plastic Soldier Company 15mm ancients figures are made of that new plastic resin which gives them bendy spears, No thanks. I had enough of that with my Airfix figures. Presumably, if they used hard plastic the spears would all break off, which demonstrates, once more, how inferior 15 mm is as a scale for model soldiers because the material you make them from seriously distorts the look of the figures (metal ones have fat spear syndrome, of course). Also, in the review section were the new Victrix French Imperial Guard lancers, How lovely are these? I would love a box of them! My father bought me a Starlux, painted 54 mm figure of a Dutch lancer (sorry, it's a better uniform than the Polish ones) when we went to Paris when I was small (I still have it).

 But I saw an early painted example (above) of the Vixtrix models which just made me realise that I can't paint Napoleonics any more. Does unattainable quality painting of this level actually put people off from buying? It did me.  I couldn't even begin to approach this level of painting. Just trying would stress me out. Thinking about the stress I have experienced here in Chez Sick over the last months I realise that one of the reasons I haven't been painting is that I often find painting figures stressful, not relaxing, when things don't go the way I want them too.

The theme of much of the magazine was command and control which writers all seem to think isn't considered very much in wargames magazines but actually seems to come up quite regularly. This is of great import to the gamer (rather than painter, like me) end of the hobby who love to bang on about it all the time. I remember many tedious discussions about it when I went to Guildford Wargames Club (an old school sort of club) which I no longer go to, partly because of the stress of driving down the A3 on a Monday night in an eighty mile an hour traffic jam. I didn't read any of these command and control articles as they are probably designed for all those people who used to write orders on paper or have courier models to deliver orders. They tend to not care if their wargames table are covered in counters (which I hate). 

There was one article I actually bought the magazine for. I recently picked up Dragon Rampant, as it was reduced, and this article by Daniel Mersey, the rules' author, included all the statistics for the Copplestone Barbarica range of 18mm fantasy figures. Well, the name Barbarica is fairly recent, they weren't called that when they first came out (18mm Fantasy was the catchy name Mr Copplestone devised) and I bought a lot of them. Having been rude about 15/18mm figures in my last (and this) post I am quite excited now about organising some armies for these rules, as they require small forces. I painted some of these about nine years ago (above) and have some others underway (if I can still manage to paint them!). They are very small.

Now, of course, I shouldn't buy any more figures but I did buy into the Kickstarter for Hot and Dangerous figures which are, essentially, 28mm models of attractive ladies in historical uniforms (what can be their appeal?). They are reasonably historical and not too pin-up like, compared with some I have seen, perhaps because, they have a lady designer. They are a Polish firm, I believe. Certainly some will go on eBay but I just hope I can paint them to the standard they deserve.

A major temptation are the Perry brothers announcement of plastic Franco-Prussian War figures. Will this mean metal ones as well? I bought some Franco Prussian figures from Eagles of Empire some time ago but they were, perhaps, a little too idiosyncratic in style for me.

However, this week Eagle of Empires announced a new range of First Schleswig War figures. Now some years ago Matt Golding, of Waterloo to Mons, started to produce his own range of (25mm) figures for this but the range went into limbo, so I might be very interested in these, depending on what the figures look like. Early examples look good.

Good news is that North Star have put their 1864 range back up on their website so I will order some more Danes to finish my first unit.

Two rants this week. One wargames related and one not.

Now, last time I derided the people who hijack new products launches with demands for information on forthcoming pet projects or different scales. This time I have recently seen examples of ridiculously inappropriate ranges in plastic. Some time ago Victrix launched a page on the internet where people could make requests as to what they would like the firm to do next. As ever, some of the answers amazed me. Now I see Victrix as what I would call a rank and file supplier. You buy lots of boxes of core troops in plastic from them and then fill out the more unusual items with metals. Making plastic figures is expensive so you need to be on to a sure seller to make money hence, no doubt, their focus on Napoleonics and Ancients/Dark Ages. Some of the suggestions are very sensible such as Biblical or Bronze Age figures where, rather like the Dark Ages, the number of different troop types needed is quite limited. It didn't take long for the first request for Dynastic Chinese to come in, then Renaissance Poles, fourteenth century Koreans, War of 1812, Bannockburn period, Spanish Civil War etc. Then there was a suggestion for Ancient civilians. And how much diversity will plastic enable you to do on these? Think, man, think. Then there were the people who said 'I know such and such a company already make them in plastic but yours would be better' (ACW and WW2). Then, of course, you had people suggesting plastic forts and dice. One woman suggested female figures including such future best sellers as RAF female supply pilots. Really? A plastic sprue of these? Calm down dear.  Wargames Atlantic, who are even more a rank and file supplier, have also just launched a similar poll to equally inappropriate answers.

This is how I see all dogs.

Speaking of which, one of Wargames Atlantic's recent sets was of Dark Age Irish, which would be quite useful for Vikings in Ireland type games. However they include no less than six warhounds in the set. I have noticed a plethora of doggy models coming out recently. Were war dogs really that common? I  have to confess (and I know some of my readers really like them) that I hate dogs. Not just dislike but hate the stinking, filthy, barking, biting, disease carrying, aggressive carnivores. I cannot for the life of me understand how people can bear to have them in their homes. It's just medieval! Would you keep a sheep or a pig in your house? Ugh! No doubt this is all made worse by recent encounters on my walks by these bounding, yapping creatures jumping up at me when I am trying to walk, quietly. "Oh he is just being friendly' cry the owners, who are totally unable to keep them under control. No he isn't. He is a dog. He is seeing if he wants to eat me. Last year more than 3000 people in Britain needed surgery after dog attacks, Another 5000 had to go to hospital but didn't need surgery. Imagine if wargamers were injuring this many people. Wargaming would soon be banned as inciting violence. Before Lockdown, my lovely former girlfriend K suggested she drive over to see me. That would be splendid, I thought. "Oh I'll be bringing our dog. He is very friendly!" Sorry K, you can't come, I replied. When someone says friendly dog I just have visions of them licking your face. Just disgusting! You make friends with people, not dogs. Grr! I shall now see how many friends on Facebook I lose.

Today's music is Rick Wakeman's new album (as it is Rick Wakeman you can no doubt still call it an album) The Red Planet. This is very much in his The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Criminal Record  (my favourite) mode, although perhaps there is a little too much guitar for me.  The first non classical record I bought (or rather John Palmer at school bought it for me as he worked in Our Price in Kingston and got a staff discount) was Wakeman's White Rock which I then spent ages seeking out on CD as it wasn't released in the UK until comparatively recently, so I had to buy a Japanese import at great expense.

Today's wallpaper is William-Adolphe Bougereau's Biblis (1884). During his lifetime (1825-1905) Bougereau was considered one of the world's greatest painters but he fell out of favour at the beginning of the twentieth century, along with most other classicist painters, and was not really rediscovered until the nineteen eighties. Biblis (or Byblis), the legendary daughter of Miletus of Crete, is here depicted in despair, as her twin brother had just fled her amorous advances. Naughty!

Paint Table Sunday: Jaguar Tribe and back to Romans!

I finished another seven figures yesterday (that's twenty-nine in May!) in the shape of the Lucid Eye Jaguar Tribe for Savage Core. I stupidly decided to paint central American style art jaguars on their shields and really wish I hadn't. The good thing about the Savage Core rules, though, is that this is all you need for a force (plus the two jaguars).

I have already got the Atlanteans under way but, even though I have a few more Savage Core forces to paint,  I will not start another one of those for a bit.  Instead I will progress my 1864 Danes as they are rather more straightforward figures. I did a bit on them today and I might even get them finished next weekend, especially as my Nigerian work seems to have finished for a bit so I can do some in the early mornings if it stays sunny.

Current projects

I was reading a piece in Variety about the twentieth anniversary of the film Gladiator (2000, naturally) which is this year. While interesting, in a behind the scenes way (I met Ridley Scott a number of times and disliked him immensely), it contained two extraordinary statements. Firstly, the otherwise estimable actor, Djimon Hounsou was quoted as saying that there were no slaves in Roman times (obviously slaves were only owned by American plantation owners who were sold them by the dastardly British). Secondly, Richard Harris said that Romans didn't wash, hence Connie Nielsen's herb fan in the film. I know he was Irish not British but had he never heard of the city of Bath? Perhaps he thought it was named after the biscuit. This just adds to my utter bemusement as to why people (they are probably the ones who refer to themselves as 'folk') would take any notice of anything an actor might say and treat it as if it were worthwhile, correct or important. Most actors are an ill-educated bunch who fall into acting because they are too stupid to get a proper job and messed around at school doing impressions and being the 'class clown'. I really hope, in a post viral world, that people realise what a worthless bunch most of them are.

Very happy to be assimilated

That brings me to Star Trek: Picard which I realised I can watch on Amazon Prime. I am quite enjoying it, even though I found the Picard character rather annoying in Star Trek: The Next Generation.  In fact, most of The Next Generation cast were annoying, other than Michael Dorn's Worf.   I hadn't realised Star Trek had jumped into the random swear words pool as I've not seen Star Trek: Discovery. But Stewart is an Ac-Tor who also thinks that people should take notice of what he says because he cam memorise a few lines and employ a portentous voice.   In fact, I was surprised how frail Stewart's voice was in Picard (I hadn't realised that he will be eighty in July). I was surprised to see a Star Trek TV show with state of the art modern digita1 effects. I was also surprised to see how good Jeri Ryan looked at 52 (Borg implants, eh? - she claims not).  She was, of course, the only reason to watch Star Trek Voyager and, indeed, her appearance in that show pushed the ratings up 60%.  There have been some complaints about some nasty violence but, of course, the actors in the bedroom scene (in Star Trek? I thought they all went to bed and had a cup of replicated cocoa) keep there underwear on so God doesn't get upset (or, rather, her peculiar self-appointed representatives on earth don't get upset). 

McGregor: characterful

It is much better than two of the other Sy Fy shows I am watching, Pandora (shot in Bulgaria, so you can imagine the budget and, indeed, all the sets look like, well, modern Bulgaria - I even recognised some of the buildings) and Vagrant Queen (shot, more interestingly, in South Africa on an even smaller budget).  The latter is saved for the Legatus, in a Jeri Ryan sort of way, by South African actress Alex McGregor who has an interesting nose (I do like a lady with a characterful nose - see also Claudia Black from Farscape).  It does generate a slight urge to think about some dusty SF backwater type gaming. I wondered what Rogue Stars might be like but saw some reviews of it which put me right off.

Would you like mayonnaise with your fish and chips

The third  Sy Fy channel series I am watching is Siren which is a quite good fantasy (not Fantasy)  series about feral mermaids set in a fishing town in modern Washington State and filmed, inevitably, in and around Vancouver. One of the main locations is Horseshoe Bay and I stopped there for lunch once, with my particular friend Sophie, on the way up to Whistler and an insurance brokers' conference which, I am afraid, we largely ignored when we got there in favour of invigorating outdoor activities.  The mermaids, when not walking around naked (no, nothing is shown as that would be too rude for Americans) when in human form eat a lot of raw fish and those scenes, for a fishaphobic like me, are really offensive.  Although the lead actress is quite cute (despite being Belgian) the male actors are almost unbelievably ugly.  I know they are supposed to be in  a fishing village but some of the beards make me feel ill.  You really need that blurring effect to be deployed that puritan TV shows use if anyone is naked.  The following programme contains offensive beards. Ugh. At least Siren has survived for three series, I suspect Pandora and Vagrant Queen will not be so lucky.

Perhaps being a bit ambitious here, although Eric the Shed would have them painted in an afternoon.

Anyway, this is all an extraordinarily roundabout way of saying that my next figure painting project, now the Jaguar Tribe are done, is going to be...Romans. Not Early Imperial Romans, even though I have a bag (my daughter tells me that the boxes are much more eco-friendly and I should boycott firms who put figures in plastic packaging) of Victrix EIR which do look lovely. No, thinking about Gladiator got me seeking out the unit of Aventine Praetorians I started years ago for the Macromannic Wars (as depicted at the beginning of Gladiator). I found them quickly enough but then I couldn't remember where I had put their shields and pila but eventually located those too. Disappointingly, I thought I had painted a bit more of them than I had and they are not going to be quick to do but am happy to get going on them again after an (ahem) seven year break.

Completely, contrary to my intention I bought into The Drowned Earth Ulaya Chronicles Kickstarter during one of their live chats this week.  Two things changed my mind: firstly, the dinosaur I painted last week came out quite well and secondly, we won another contract for the Nigerians (no, fortunately it is not the Oil Minister's daughter)and we get paid by the UK).  Actually, another reason is that creator James Baldwin says some interesting things about creating games and figures and sends every backer a personal thank you note. It won't be out for a year, though so no pressure on the painting!

Today's music is Oscar nominated American composer Marco Beltrami's score for 1864. I also own his score for Gods of Egypt (2015) which I have played when painting some of my Dark Fable Egyptians.

Today's wallpaper is another illustration by an artist who worked for La Vie Parisienne in the nineteen twenties and, appropriately, features Ondine, the sea nymph who falls in love with  a mortal (yes, The Little Mermaid is based on the same story), The French in the twenties were not worried about their mermaids being naked. This is the work of French artist Léo Fontan (1884-1965), He also designed posters for the Folies Bergère and worked on the interiors of some French ocean liners in the thirties. Some of his book illustrations were very graphic, in more ways than one.

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.

Daleks, American football, SF babes and ACW infantry.

Well, you don't get any posts from me for weeks and then there are two in two days.  Although. one might say that the second is as unwelcome and pointless as two buses arriving together.  This is the first Sunday for two weeks that I haven't been at an NFL match.  The brandmeisters seem to have successfully changed the name from American Football to NFL in the UK.  

Just to spite them, I proudly wore my CFL Toronto Argonauts sweat shirt to both games, Mainly because it is thermal and really, really warm.  I went and watched the Grey Cup final in Edmonton in 1997 (it was the coldest place I had ever been -36 degrees) and later bought the celebratory sweat shirt in Toronto. 

I hadn't been to the new Wembley Stadium before and at least it had escalators to get you up to the top levels, unlike the long, dizzy-making spiral walk at Twickenham. The sound system wasn't so good, though so listening to the commentary was harder.  I had an aisle seat this time which was good as regards getting out but bad in the number of times you had to stand up while idiots went to get beer and then, of course, needed the loo. If you can't hold it don't drink it!  I felt like there were about 250 people in my row. Lots of Germans again. I left early, to avoid the rush, which was just as well as the game was drawn in overtime.   

It was nice to see the Washington Redskins play but the Bengals have always been one of those "couldn't care less teams" for me.  The latter were nominated as home team so they brought their cheerleaders (the Ben-gals - good grief!) with them.  My scientific research showed that they had a lot more 'blondes'' than the Los Angeles Rams did, which probably says something about the ethnic mix in LA compared with Cincinnati. Not that any of them have real blonde hair of course!  I remember striking eighties actress Sean (Blade Runner) Young being asked once: "What do brunettes know?"  "Most blondes aren't,"  she said. 

Now at 25 figures painted a year...

Less than ten minutes walk from Waterloo station is Dark Sphere "London's biggest gaming shop." Dark Sphere is almost entirely a SF and fantasy miniatures shop although it does carry a lot of Warlord's Bolt Action stuff and 4Ground scenics.  I just had enough time to go in there and pick up the new Perry Union infantry on my way home (they have a few boxes of Perry figures but seemed bemused by historicals).  However, because I am working on the Union cavalry at present I will do some Confederate infantry first, I think. I found a box of old Perry ACW plastics in my plastics pile today. They were not well thought of, I seem to recall but I can use some as unit fillers, I think.  I suspect they may be smaller than the newer figures in which case I will get rid of them.  I hate different sized figures in my armies.

Today the Old Bat made me go for a walk/jog in the woods near our house for thirty five miniatures.  It was nice and dry, fortunately.  Now you can get in by a new metal gate whereas before you had to apply for a key from Windsor Castle (it is Crown Estate).  We used to do this a lot but haven't for several years. It was just the sort of sunny, crispy autumnal day I like and I was surprised at the amount of  distance I manage to run without stopping for a walk.  ALthough my legs really hurt now!  Unfortunately, by the time I got back, had some lentil and bacon soup (200 calories), took a phone call from KPMG Botswana ("are you free to come here on 27th November?") and finished a document for them, the light had gone.  I did do the shading on three more horses but not really the progress I had hoped for this fine, sunny morning. At least it helped my decision as to how many cavalry to paint at  a time and I will do six rather than all twelve together.  Hooves, tails, eyes etc next.

 Last night, while watching Strictly Come Dancing, I assembled the other three Kurganova SF girly troopers I bought at Dark Sphere the week before. I thought Victrix Napoleonics were a pain to assemble but they are nothing compared with these.  I have lost a number of pieces from them as they are so fiddly.  Fortunately they come with spare heads as two disappeared completely somewhere on my floor.  Each figure has seven parts made form that hard plastic-type resin which, even with superglue, takes ages to set for pieces to join together.

These were very much an impulse buy (suggested by the evil Tamsin) and some of the other figures in the range suffer from Games Workshop rococo encrustation syndrome but these are fairly basic trooper types.  "They have very pert bottoms" my friend, A, observed when I met up with her at the Archduke wine bar after buying them. I explained that was because they were French.

Raging Heroes, the manufacturers, are planning to bring out rules for the figures but I am not sure whether I will buy into that.  Wondering what to do with them eventually I saw the announcement of the new Warlord Games plastic Daleks.  The whole history of plastic 28mm figures, since the first Perry ACW ones has been leading to this.  Little plastic Daleks! Excitement! It's like reading the words "Kelly Brook in Playboy."

I watched Dr Who from the beginning (yes, I remember William Hartnell) and loved the Daleks, of course. Actually, I didn't watch it quite from the start but I became aware of it through a large cough sweet tin I had which had this completely unappealing image on it (isn't the internet marvellous?).  Did they actually think this would help them sell more cough sweets?  Anyway,  I kept Lego in it but my mother said the man on the front looked like Dr Who (Hartnell, of course).  So next time Dr Who was on TV I insisted on watching it.  I remember several creatures other than the Daleks.  The  Zarbis (1965) were weird insectoid men in suits (I realised in retrospect).  I also remember some not very scary robots called the chumblies (not exactly a sinister name, either).

Mine will be these colours!

When I was little, a truck load of Daleks drove past our house on the way to Shepperton Studios for one of the Peter Cushing Dr Who films. I haven't watched many of the new Dr Who episodes yet (except a couple of Christmas specials with my sister) because I insist on watching TV shows in order and Charlotte has had my Dr Who DVDs up in Edinburgh for years.   Of course like James Bond actors you tend to relate to the one actor as the real Dr Who and for me that was Tom Baker.

Another Dr Who fan who lived nearby was our neighbour's son who was an only child and seemed to have far more toys than we did, including a train set layout in his loft.  What he had, which I coveted even more than the train set (and his Mousetrap game), was The Dalek Book.  I'd love to buy a copy of  this today but they go for over £100 on eBay and you can get an awful lot of Perry plastics for that!

I loved this book and my friend kindly lent it to me (again and again).  It had some pretty terrible comic strips and stories (I remember one about a Dalek invasion force being destroyed by diamond dust blown out of London Underground tunnels by tube trains- I suspect the physics was quite weak). I also remember a story called Monsters of Gurnian which featured what looked like two headed  dinosaurs taking on the bizarre two legged Marsh Daleks.  Daleks with legs! You would have thought that the Daleks would have developed this technology further!

My favourite story was a strip called City of the Daleks which was, basically, an excuse to show you what the Dalek city on Skaro looked like.  I subsequently built the Dalek City out of Lego.  My favourite bit was the Dalek War Museum which was full of exotic space ships (it looks a bit like the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum).

Another favourite part of the city in the strip was the golden Emperor's quarters which I built out of yellow Lego.  In retrospect, it seems a bit odd that the Emperor Dalek (an invention of these books and not seen in the films or TV shows up to this point) had quarters.  What would he need quarters for?  Being a robot you would assume that he wouldn't need time off.  Did he relax and sip cocktails and listen to Mantovani?  

I populated my Lego Dalek War Museum with little model spaceships that had come with packets of Sugar Smacks cereal.  This was my favourite cereal (appallingly, it was 53% sugar by weight - it is now known as Honey Smacks) as they often had little free gifts in them and you would have to search around in the opened packet with a spoon (or my hand if my mother wasn't watching) to find them,  The little plastic packets would emerge, covered in sugar and cereal dust as you hoped that you hadn't got the boring Apollo Command module again. You would then have to clip the pieces together.  This sort of thing is probably not allowed now, due to health and safety (Kinder Surprise eggs are banned in the US for these reasons). They did quite a lot of Gerry Anderson giveaways too but these ones were a mixture of real and fictional spaceships.  

 Similar clip together (no glue necessary) fun looks like it will be had with the Warlord Daleks.  Looking at the Warlord Games website I noticed that the Dr Who figures are not 28mm as I thought but they describe them as 38mm (including the base).  This will be fine for the Kurganovas though, as they appear to be about 35mm tall.  So it will be Daleks versus SF babes!