Paint Table Sunday: Back to Napoleonics and on to US Infantry

Even though I didn't think it was a classic Salute this year it has got me energised about my painting again. Having finished the Byzantine archers just before I left for Excel last Saturday it was time to get going on another unit. So far this year I have completed three units. Not quite one a month, partly because I was in Botswana for ten days, so I should really have picked some figures for April which I could get on quickly with. 

So last week I decided to get started on assembling some of the new Perry Miniatures WW2 American infantry. These have a pretty simple colour scheme so I thought maybe I could get some done, start to finish, in a couple of weeks.  Oh dear.  Now I often read about wargamers who refuse to do plastic figures because they don't like assembling them and I have some bad memories of some Victrix Napoleonic French from years ago. I have always found the Perry figures easy to do, however. Not these!  To cement six pairs of arms to the bodies took me 38 minutes. Argh,  I thought. as yet another arm fell off as I tried to position it. The real problem is the arm poses that require two arms holding a rifle. The left hand is attached to the rifle so there are three gluing points: the two shoulders and the wrist of the left hand. As soon as you get one arm in place and try to attach the other you end up pushing the first arm out of place When you try and get the wrists in the right place for the hand on the rifle, one or other of the shoulders (or both) go out of place. All the time you are trying to manoeuvre the parts into place the glue is drying. The whole process is really, really stressful and not part of what should be a relaxing hobby! Some of them still aren't quite right and the shoulder joints will require some filling. Also, the Perries themselves say that not all arms will fit on every body but there is no information in the instructions to show which ones go with which, Very much the least enjoyable half an hour with model soldiers I have had for many years. I was going to build and paint a section of 12 men but don't think I can bear to build the next six for a while!

Before I could even build them I had another crisis as I was about to build the first figures but found that I couldn't get any glue out of all three of my tubes of Revell cement. It seems to be like Games Workshop liquid Greenstuff; you open it to use it once but the next time you want to use it it has all set. Fortunately, the people of the Painting, modelling and gaming Facebook group came to the rescue. After well meaning suggestions such as use a lighter to heat the metal tube, use a gas cooker lighter and use a guitar string (?) someone said any flame would do, given I didn't have any of the three things suggested. I actually didn't have any matches, either, so had to go to Tesco but using a candle flame soon had them unblocked, miraculously. I would have just gone out and bought another tube of glue but couldn't as it was ten o'clock at night. I am just hopelessly impractical!

 One figure missing, which I found after I took the picture, thank goodness

Instead, inspired by the three-ups of the Perry French Napoleonic infantry I saw at Salute I got my British 87th Foot out to work on. I put these to one side as I had a nasty attack of strap phobia but yesterday confined myself to shading the flesh and the trousers. This is a big unit, for me, of 24 foot and a mounted officer so they will take some time to finish. Now, too, of course, I realise that I have the stress of the arms to do, as I am painting them without arms so I can access the front of the uniform. Looking at the arms on the sprue I can't work out which arms will give which pose so that is more stress to worry about. Good job the doctor has just doubled the dose of my blood pressure pills.

2016  - 22

2017 - 17

2018 - 13

2019 -  12

I have enjoyed reading everyone else's Salute posts and looking at the pictures of all the games I missed. When I went round I thought that there was less, WW2, Napoleonic and ACW games than usual but it my be I just missed them.  Other people have said that the Blogger meet up was smaller this year (it was an hour earlier than usual) so I have decided to apply some science by digging out pictures from the last four years. Now, of course, people come and go ,so this is a only a point in time sample. The trend is down, however.  I don't post on my blog as often as I used to, so perhaps if there was a wargames Facebook meet up there might be more people but who knows?

My forces overrun the kraal and send the British scarpering

One thing I posted on my Facebook page but haven't mentioned here was another enjoyable Zulu ward game at Eric the Shed's.  This was a recreation of the Battle of Khambula held just a few days shy of the 140th anniversary.  We had five players: two for the British and three for the Zulus. I took control of the Zulu right wing and was immediately in trouble because I couldn't remember anything about the Black Powder rules; in particular how to activate my forces, so spent the first two moves immobile, waiting to see what everyone else did. In the end the game was something of a draw but miraculously I didn't lose a unit, unlike everyone else.

Eric's table was simple but effective and the battlefield layout was instantly recognisable from the central fortified British position on the hill. Eric's account and some excellent pictures is here.  What I really need to do is read up on the rules before I play a game so I have at least a vague idea of what is likely to be going on. Unfortunately, I play so rarely (this was my first game for a year) that I always forget the rules completely.

Another issue is that,all of my wargames rules are trapped behind a giant pile in my study consisting of cardboard boxes (mainly used to send Charlotte things to Edinburgh which she has forgotten), seven file boxes of unpainted figures and almost the entire output of Penthouse magazine from the nineteen eighties.  All need to be relocated so I can actually read my rules before a game!

I went off to MG day at Brooklands with Guy today, as his grandfather wants to buy him an MG (the Old Bat is resisting of course but then she resists anything which isn't her idea).  There were hundreds of MG's of every sort there but I really liked this one!

Back home for lunch and the light was quite good. I meant to get on with the Peninsular British but caught the end of John Carter (2012) on TV last night so did a couple of hours on this Modiphius Thark. There is still a lot to do on him but he is probably more than half finished now.. It's so nice to paint such a large figure. Maybe I should get some Victrix 54mm Napoleonics!

Last week I went to the Bonnard exhibition with my particular friend K, who used to model for me at Oxford, Not in the bath, though, as you would need hot water to keep the lady comfortable but the steam wouldn't be good for the paper.  Also, I remember the BBC drama on the Pre-Raphaelites where poor Lizzie Siddell had to spend days in the bath while Millais painted her for his Ophelia, As a result of being in the cold water she got very ill and her father, fifty medical bills later, demanded that Millais pay up for her treatment, which he did, fortunately. Interestingly, the landscape part of Millais'  picture was painted from the Hogsmill River in Ewell, not that far from where I live.  No such worries for Bonnard, who largely painted in the South of France, so his naked ladies (usually his wife and the occasional mistress) would not have been too cold, hopefully. This one, Nu dans le bain, was quite a late one, painted in 1936.  I first learned about Bonnard from an art book in our school library and I had several postcards of his paintings on my wall at college. 

Today's music is the soundtrack from John Carter (2012) by Michael Giacchino, which I had to buy, at great expense, off eBay not long ago as it is no loner available. I've played it a couple of times now and it's definitely growing on me, with some strong themes although some of it is quite remiscent of Howard Shore's Lord of the Rings and David Arnold's Stargate scores but that is a good thing!

Anna Gaël, the latest addition to Legatus' Wargmes Ladies

Finally, some of you (quite a few by the number of hits!) have noticed a few posts on Legatus Wargames Ladies this last week from Italy's Playmen magazine. It was designed as an Italian copy of Playboy from a time (1967) when Playboy was banned in Italy, Unlike Hugh Hefner at Playboy, Bob Guccione at Penthouse, Larry Flynt at Hustler and Paul Raymond at Men Only and Club, Playmen was very much the brainchild of a woman, Adelino Tattilo, who ran the magazine for over thirty years; choosing the centrefolds, cover pictures and championed its left wing, reforming written content. The effect that Playmen had on the social attitudes, fashions and culture of Italy cannot be underestimated. Tattilo was very interested in the cinema and there were regular pictorials from the sets of films being shot and virtually every young Continental actress happily stripped off for its pages, thankfully. We will be featuring some of these on Legatus Wargames Ladies over the next few months, as we have shamefully neglected it!

Paint Table Saturday: Byzantines, Dutch, Indian Mutiny, some Kickstarters and back to school.

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It's a very long time since I have written a Paint Table Saturday post but I am indeed, doing some painting, thanks to the ongoing Sculpting Painting and Gaming Facebook Group (although the lack of a comma in the title continues to annoy me). In theory, you are supposed to paint for 30 minutes a day but what with the bad light and four proposals to get done for work since January my output has dropped a bit. I am not managing 30 minutes a day but I have now painted for at least 30 minutes a week for 16 weeks in a row.  Some weeks I am close to, or even over, the required 210 minutes.

So far in 2019 I have completed 29 figures which is not a bad start for me, given that my bad eyesight makes it hard for me to paint for very long. Last month I finished a unit of twenty figures depicting the 64th Foot from the Indian Mutiny (Iron Duke Miniatures).  I will get some more of these soon as I have actually painted all of the ones I own, shockingly. As usual with wargaming flags, for some reason, the standards are rather oversize making it difficult, given I gave them the correct length (scale 9' 10") poles.  I wish flag manufacturers would say that there flags are oversized. 'Oh they look better on the table' say idiots on TMP. Not to me they don't. It's like those people in the past who used 54mm figures on the table to depict their generals. Also, the standard bearer figures' hands are in just the wrong position to easily hold the flagpoles. It took me a very frustrating hour to get them attached, Immediately afterwards I had to go to the doctor and he was concerned about my 'alarmingly high 'blood pressure. I had to explain what had caused it.

My current projects include a unit of Fireforge Byzantine archers and three Byzantine command to go with the nine rank and file I finished in January. I have all the base colours down on these now so hope to push on with them this weekend, In addition, I am working on a couple of individual figures for when L get bored with production line painting. One is a pulp Turk/Egyptian and the other is a Harry Potter figure for my daughter, really just to see if I can do it justice and thereby justify buying the game which my daughter would then play with me, at least.

These six figures are a purchase from this week; six North Star 1672 Dutch. I ordered these at lunchtime on Tuesday and they arrived Thursday morning, which is nearly as good as Amazon.   This purchase was inspired by a new book on the Dutch army of the period which came out this week. I bought some of these Copplestone sculpted figures ten years ago when they first came out and even painted a couple but finding information on the Dutch army of the time proved impossible so I gave up on the period. Hopefullym I will now be able to produce something for use with The Pikeman's Lament.  Compared with the plastics I have been painting lately these big chunky metals are going to be easier to deal with I think.  I just need the book to arrive so I can get properly started.

A big box of a Kickstarter I backed some time ago arrived this week: The John Carter role playing game. I couldn't even remember if I had backed this or cancelled it but here it is. Now what on earth do I do with it? Lots of delicate looking resin figures. Oh dear!  Thirty four figures and a 238 page rule book!

I first read the Edgar Rice Burroughs books in the early seventies when I was enticed by the covers of the New English Library paperback issues which largely featured under dressed ladies, much to the delight of my twelve year old self.  The key painting issue with these is going to be devising an appropriate flesh tone for the Red Martians.

The problem is that the more I paint the more figures I want. When I wasn't painting much I didn't buy many figures. I really, really must sell some I am never going to do!

So absolutely no reason to back another Kickstarter this week, of course. But that is exactly what I did with Paul Hicks' American War of Independence figures for Brigade Games (it's funded with 26 days to go). As usual I am influenced by the sculpts not the wargaming potential but this is a period I have literally toyed with for many years, ever since my Airfix days. I bought a lot of the Perry Foundry figures but although Perry Miniatures comprehensive range is very fine the older Foundry sculpts look rather old fashioned (and small) now,   Rebels and Patriots will be the set of rules for those and I will resist the temptation to do a historical battle (always my downfall) in favour of some skirmishing.  The only issue will be, I suspect the massive customs duty and shipping charges for the 20 packs I have committed to.

I was actually supposed to have a game Sunday week at Eric the Shed's. He is doing one of his big weekend games and this one will be Hastings; a battle I have always wanted to game. Sadly, I discovered yesterday that I have to return to Botswana next Saturday so will miss it. This will be my third visit in thirteen weeks. Never mind it will provide some money to buy more soldiers I will never paint! Also lurking about is another Kickstarter I bought into: West Wind's War & Empire Dark Ages figures. Maybe I can do 15mm Hastings instead!

Other than lots and lots of work (although it would be nice if some of our government clients actually paid their bills - not mentioning any names, effendi) not much else has been going on.  The most bizarre day was being invited back to my school to talk to some pupils about working internationally).  One thing I hated when I was young were all the 'Back to School' adverts in shops at the end of the summer. Not something I wanted to be reminded of when i was on holiday.

I really enjoyed the tour of my old school they gave me, although I hadn't really been back properly for forty years. They now have twice the number of pupils we did and the buildings are three times the size.  The first thing I saw when I walked through the main door (we weren't allowed to do  that when I was there) was a group of willowy teenage girls from the school next door (where my daughter and, indeed, the Old Bat, went).  They have a number of joint lessons with the boys from my school now. This would have actually caused a riot in my day. We weren't allowed within 22 yards of the fence between the two schools in order to prevent any fraternisation at all. There was, however, a small area behind the CCF glider hut where you could engage with conversation with the young ladies without being seen from either school building. So I was told.

The school had copies of the School magazine out from when I was art editor and we looked at the pictures I had done for several issues. Mostly of young ladies. I was notorious for being the first person to submit drawings of women to the school magazine.  The food choice at lunch was amazing (whatever happened to beef/lamb burgettes and the spaghetti bolognese that looked like worms in a cow pat) and I was surprised to learn that fifty percent of the staff were now women. We had one lady German teacher and that was it.

Although a lot of the fabric of the school I attended was still there it has been extended and changed so as to be almost unrecognisable. In particular replacing the parquet floor has changed the whole nature of the place. Walls which were external are now internal with additional atria added putting what was outside inside, like parts of Las Vegas. Occasionally there would be an unchanged part, like the school hall and it would take me right back. I told them that my Uncle went to the school and they found his entry details from 1932. They emailed this to me, I sent it to his sister and she sent it to his children and as a result I have reconnected with my cousins who I haven't seen since 1975.

"What one piece of key advice do you have for the boys?" I was asked. "Don't have anything to do with the girls from the school next door!" I replied.  It wasn't just the Old Bat. There had been other stressful interactions with these girls. As my friend Dibbles told me at the time: "you are better off with the girls from Surbiton High, they are prettier, sluttier and less stressful." I wore my old school tie and they wanted it for their museum display case. I felt like a museum piece myself after I left.

In memory of Andre Previn, one of my favourite conductors, I am listening to his recording of Prokofiev's atmospheric Cinderella. It's not as well known, or as melodic, as Romeo and Juliet and takes a bit of time to get into but the more  I listen to it the more I like it. 

William Etty Female nude in a landscape circa 1825

Today's wallpaper is by the English painter William Etty (1787-1849).. He was the first major painter of the nude in England but scandalised parts of the artistic establishment by continuing to paint from life well after his student days and scandalised parts of the rest of society by including ladies' pubic hair in some of his paintings. Out of fashion for a hundred and fifty years after his death, he has recently come back into favour again, particularly after a large retrospective of his work in his home town of York in 2011

Wargames Review of the Year 2018

Victrix Carthaginian war elephants.  A good start to the year.

Determined not to issue my wargames review of the year when the crocuses are coming out I have decided to start it before Christmas. In fact, 2018 saw very little wargaming but an otherwise disastrous hobby year was saved by a late flurry of painting.


Figures Painted

The Army of the Dead from the Lord of the Rings Painted in just five weeks!

I began the year full of good intentions and a nice project of the lovely Victrix war elephants but having finished the pachyderms I had a failure of nerve as regards shield transfers on curved surfaces so haven't quite completed them. I have just four crew to complete so will try to get them done in January. I counted each rider and elephant as two figures so I had completed just four figures come October.  I did do some odd bits on my Fireforge Byzantines and started some Napoleonic British but was stymied by continued struggles with my eyesight and can now only paint in bright daylight.  I have had a series of injections into my left eye and it has really improved my vision in that eye, which was my weaker one but is now the stronger. Today, the hospital has recommended that I get my right eye done too over the next six months.

My painting year was saved, however by the Sculpting Painting and Gaming Facebook Group. Someone had the brilliant idea of having a 'paint 30 minutes a day' challenge. I set to work to do some more figures for the Lord of the Rings and although I haven't managed to paint quite every day I have painted the most for about four years. So my completed totals are:

Lord of the Rings: 89
Punic Wars: 4
Total:93

Ninety-three figures in a year is my best total since 2014. I have also finished another nine Byzantines in the first couple of days of January.  I tried using washes for the first time (hit and miss) and acrylics (definitely a miss) and I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that I just can't see to paint as well as I could even two years ago.  Figures with shield transfers, even though they are a pig to put on, make my figures look much better than they are.


Wargames played 

Just one wargame, again, in 2018 with a Napoleonic game for Richard Sharpe and associates at Eric the Shed's.  Epic scenery, of course, and an entertaining large skirmish which also incorporated offshore naval; bombardment.  Sadly, that was my last visit to the Shed as I am too unreliable an invitee because of evening conference calls as well as my total inability to remember or understand rules. Although I have now discovered the reason for this, as it turns out that I am dyspraxic. This explains many things about me; such as the fact that I didn't learn to tie my shoelaces until I was about fourteen, still struggle with tying ties and cannot do knots for sailing. It also explains my total inability to play ball games such as football, tennis or golf or play computer games. This may also be why I can't use tools, do DIY, constantly drop things, trip over all the time, can't parallel park and have difficulty reversing the car (I cannot comprehend how people can reverse into a parking place at a supermarket and always choose those slots with an empty space on each side). I basically cannot envisage stuff in three dimensions and my brain just freezes.  Difficulty in interpreting rules of games is part of this, it seems, which may explain why I can read them but cannot imagine how they work out in practice.  I'm too stupid for wargaming, basically, as I have long suspected.

So it will be solo gaming going forward, if any, where I don't feel pressured to think quickly, so I am going to focus for next year on rules that allow for this (like The Men who would be Kings and the new Sons of Mars gladiatorial set).


Scenics

I started a number of scenic projects in 2017 but haven't progressed any of them at all in 2018, apart from some undercoating.  Several projects have got stuck because I started painting them and now can't remember what colours I used on them.  I did buy some more stuff from Grand Manner before they went to only selling painted items, principally a Zulu village and some Sudan type houses. I really hope to move some of this along this year.  I have been buying the occasional piece of aquarium terrain, and plastic plants though, for my Lost Word/Savage Core project.

Shows

Sixth from the left

I did get to Salute this year and it was, as ever, nice to catch up with other bloggers but that was my only show as I didn't get to either Warfare (I hate driving into Reading) or Colours, due to having to collect Guy from Oxford for the end of term. Anyway, I really do not need any more hobby stuff!


Lead (plastic and resin) Pile 

I stopped recording my purchases this year so have no idea how the lead pile increase went but I bought a lot, mainly in the second half of the year.  I bought the Red Book of the Elf King figures but may sell these on as I can't do them justice in paint, especially now that I am painting Middle Earth again.  I also bought the Star Wars Legion boxed set but I have seen so many exceptionally well-painted figures for this it has put me off painting them, even though I have wanted such figures since 1977.  I have bought quite a few plastics (Victrix Republican Romans, Perry Zulus, Lord of the Rings Pelennor boxed set and Fireforge Byzantines) and some metal figures too, such as more North West Frontier, Stronghold female Vikings and even some English Civil War.   I also bought some more resin Raging Heroes figures although assembling them looks to be a nightmare!


Kickstarters

I did buy into a number of Kickstarters.  I couldn't resist the 28mm Bunny Girls from Dark Fable miniatures even though I have no idea what I will do with them but I did create this Osprey cover for them!  Not that I would need an Osprey as I know pretty much everything about the evolution of the uniform! At least these have arrived, as has another load of Ancient Egyptian ladies, also from Dark Fable.  Other ones I backed and am still waiting for are the John Carter of Mars roleplaying game figures, the Black Hallows townsfolk and the War and Empire Dark Ages figures.  I am still also waiting for anything from Kongo Acheson Creations African scenery which I supported back in 2017. In February, nearly four years after I ordered then, my Wargods of Olympus figures arrived. I am not planning to play the game but use the figures for Jason and the Argonauts.



Wargames Rules

I didn't get many sets of rules this year, which is just as well as I never use them! The new consolidated Middle Earth rules were in the battle of Pellenor Fields set. I also got some Back of Beyond scenarios. The main rules were the Red Book of the Elf King ones and the Sons of Mars gladiatorial rules which are supposed to work for solo play.

Wargames Blogs and Facebook

I only posted twenty times on my main blog (this one) in 2018, which is the least ever. Mainly this is because, of course, I didn't really paint anything until the last quarter of the year. I also only posted on four of my other blogs.  The most popular of these, with nearly 200,000 visits, is my Sudan War one and I haven't posted on that since 2012, although it still gets around 2000 visits a month.  I passed 750,000 vies on this blog this year and the most popular post, with 2025 views, was my Salute post.

I am posting more on Facebook, hence the lack of blog posts and in the last few months there have even been some wargaming posts! This time last year I had 151 friends and today I have 246, although I have deleted a lot due to political posts. The real positive aspect of Facebook for me is the groups and I have joined a lot of these this year. The most influential was the Sculpting Painting and Gaming group as someone came up with the idea of a paint for thirty minutes a day challenge and this has re-energised my painting.  In the last 9 weeks, since the challenge began at the beginning of November, I have averaged four hours forty two minutes painting a week.  I hope to keep this going!

Plans for this Year

I want to keep my painting momentum going but need to finish a few odds and ends including the War elephant and the Byzantine spear unit. I have the first unit of Byzantine archers ready for painting now (undercoated today). I also want to dig some figures out of my 'under way' pile which I can complete fairly quickly. I'd like to do some more ACW, some more North West Frontier and also some more on the 1864 Danes. If I am brave I will go back to my British Napoleonics too, although I am stymied on those by not being able to work out which arms I need to fit for which pose and I don't want to paint them all and find I don't need half of them! . It's the dyspraxia again!  I have also, at last, found the painting reference I have been looking for for my Franco-Prussian War figures so they might get some attention this year too.

Distractions

Another Facebook group I joined was the Mediocre modellers group on the basis that I might have to move onto making model kits if I couldn't paint figures any more.  The name proved to be a total misnomer, however. with people posting the most amazing things. any of these (and on some of the figure groups too) have the poster saying something like "Hey, guys, this came out OK, I suppose, what do you guys think". They then show some incredible example of construction/painting.  One day I am going to tell them not to fish for compliments because it is vulgar, desperate and arrogant. The false humility does not fool me. These are my most hated hobby group of people of the year (even more than the 'we shouldn't paint small figures of objectified women' types.  Sorry, I will continue to appreciate women as beautiful objects (as long as you don't treat them like objects) and that includes tiny sculptures of them. You are girly men (like Chris Boardman banging on about abolishing podium girls at cycling races).

Anyway, I bought a Tamiya Sherman to have a go at in the a dark evenings when I can't paint.


Musical Accompaniment

While writing this post I listened to John Williams' soundtracks for the first three Harry Potter films although I am not really a fan of the films and certainly haven't read the books. I have just ordered the limited edition seven CD extended soundtracks for the first three films.  Charlotte has been trying to persuade me to get the new Harry Potter miniatures game but I have heard bad things about the quality control of the set: broken and missing parts, mainly. The real issue is that I just wouldn't be able to paint them properly!

Next time it will be my non-wargaming review of the year.

Salute Eve and a Sharpe adventure at the Shed

Well, I didn't enjoy last year's Salute very much.  I wasn't feeling well and my eyes couldn't cope with the murky light and my crumbling joints couldn't cope with the concrete floor.  I did enjoy the Bloggers meet up (12.30 this year, rather than 13.00), though, and met some new people in real life who I had only previously encountered in the Blogosphere.  Whenever I appear in the Blogger's meet photo my hair always looks like John Harvey-Jones' so I was determined to get it cut this week but sadly, Tracy, my hairdresser had no free appointments when I was in London, so I will look my usual dishevelled self.  Not such an issue amongst a group of wargamers, at least.

Usually, I have a list of things I want to buy but not this year, apart from some more Afghan cavalry so I can complete my TMWWBK force for the North West Frontier.  This week the Old Bat wanted some money for paint (we don't have a joint bank account so if she wants something she has to beg) and was shocked when I gave her fifty pounds (which is what the sort of paint she likes costs per tin) from my wallet.

"Why do you have so much cash in your wallet?" she asks, suspiciously.  It gradually dawns on her, about ten minutes later.  "You don't need any more soldiers!"  So, of course, obedient as ever, I won't get any.  Honest.

That said, I went over to Eric the Shed's for a game this week.  It is the first time I have got there since January 2017 and since then he has extended his shed even morem so he can now host two games on separate tables in separate rooms.  To call it a 'shed' is like calling HMS Victory a sailing boat.  This time it was the second game he has had featuring Sharpe and Harper, using the Fistful of Lead Horse and Musket rules.  He assured me that these would be simple enough for even me to understand.

As ever, he had done a lot of work on creating a scenario wherein Sharpe had to capture a renegade Irish priest in the French port of Brest  and take him away by sea, supported by a Royal Navy ship, HMS Indecisive.  This name reminded me of a more recent adjectival Royal Navy vessel, HMS Active, which some years ago was the guard ship for the Royal Yacht Britannia at Cowes Week.  My sister joined us for the Royal Yacht Squadron Ball and danced the legs of the officers and a good number of ratings who had been invited to participate.  They didn't look so active afterwards, as she is a very fit woman. Anyway, each of five players (Eric was referee) had a character and four ordinary soldiers each; two groups of five British Riflemen and three groups of French Infantry.  

I had a group of French light Infantry ensconced in a fortress on the seashore.  Every turn I had to blast away at HMS Indecisive; largely ineffectuall, given my usual dice throwing.  I wasn't sure what effect this might have on the game (Eric kept much of the scenario plot points from us) so whether my slightly better throws in the second half of the game helped mean that Hornblower and his scurvy crew (who spent the whole game equally ineffectually floating about the harbour in a small boat) didn't land, I don't know. 

My fellow French commanders engaged the Riflemen as they infiltrated the town. I was worried about the random bombardment from the Royal Navy ship, so kept safely inside the fort for much of the game. I was in nice, safe, hard cover so decided to wait until any of the British appeared at the dockside before employing those famous sniping skills French infantry are so well known for. Ne pas.

Callum (Alastair's son - pitched against his father for much of the game) managed to kill Sharpe (although, apparently, Sharpe has a Dracula like ability to rise from the dead - probably something to do with the blood of virgins).  Encouraged by such a setback for the British and with the bombardment from HMS Indecisive diminishing somewhat, following a couple of large hits from the fort, I set my troops out skirmishing, as Callum had got the Irish priest into the fort from which the rosbifs would be unable to liberate him. 

My officer, stung by the accusations of his fellow commanders that he had been cowering in the fort too long, ordered his four privates out onto the dock where three of them, who we shall call Lebrun, Leblanc and Lefebvre, bravely cowered behind some boxes and barrels.  He sent his fourth and fastest soldier, Le Mans, to charge into the nearest house where he was confronted by a large Irishman with a seven barrelled Nock gun.  What should he do? 'Tirez!" shouted my officer from behind his pile of boxes.  Le Mans did and Harper dropped dead (well at least for the game).  He will no doubt be back.  Le Mans didn't last very long after that but he was my only loss.  

Only two Riflemen escaped to a boat, HMS Indecisive was in flames, the priest was safely in the fort, Hornblower's boat drifted off like a bread crate from the beach and the French were victorious. Hourra!  Another wonderful game at The Shed and I really liked the Fistful of Lead rules which are obviously the Peninsula skirmish rules I have been looking for. 

What this does, of course, is put me in a vulnerable position vis-a-vis Napoleonics at  Salute.  I sold nearly all my unpainted ones last year but maybe a few for a skirmish?  The ones I really like are the Paul Hicks sculpts for Brigade Games but I don't think you can buy them in the UK.  Probably just as well! 

Rorke's Drift at the Shed

My belated account of last weekend's excellent game at Eric the Shed's is now here.

Isandlwana at the Shed

Some of my Zulus approach the British

I have written up our Zulu Wars Isandlwana game organised by Eric the Shed on my Zulu Wars blog here.  One of the many good things about this game was that it got me to paint 32 Zulus in January, thereby tripling the number of figures I have painted in 2017 compared with 2016!

In the afternoon we played a Rorke's Drift game and I will look at it shortly.