Oh no, more new ranges!

Some of my Musketeer Early Saxons

I really like the sculpting style of Bill Thornhill of Musketeer Miniatures and have painted quite a lot of his Great Northern War and Early Saxon figures.  They really are a delight to paint!

L to R: Musketeer, Great War Miniatures and Renegade

Today he has announced not just one but four new ranges!  At Musketeer he is going to produce early war Germans for the Great War.  Now the BEF figures that Musketeer produced are the nicest Great War figures that I have seen but, sadly, they are quite small compared with Great War Miniatures and Renegade (of whose range I have painted quite a few early war Germans). Actually, I think the British were sculpted by Paul Hicks (who is launching his own early WW1 range this year) so maybe Bill's chunkier style will work with my Renegades.

Next up, he has announced that once he has finished on the Great Northern War range (obviously the Danes are never going to appear) this year he will also be working on a new range for the Sikh Wars.  Now, of course, I have already bought into the Studio Miniatures Sikh Wars Kickstarter but having two manufacturers doing the period in 28mm could be a good thing, if they are compatible.  I really am fussy about figures going together and can't understand people who can have figures of different sizes in the same army.

Footsore French Officer

He has also set up a new company in the US, where he now lives, called Footsore Miniatures.  He has announced two ranges for this firm: Caesar's Gallic Wars and, first, the Franco Prussian War.  Both will be of interest to me.   The Franco Prussian War figures could start to be released as early as March.  I have always been interested in this but the lack of a good modern range of figures has, fortunately, put me off. Certainly, the initial almost completed first figure is very impressive.

So much for reducing the lead pile this year!

Today, encouraged by Giles' comments, I have been listening to Korngold's Symphony, which was premiered in October 1954.  It's a symphony of mixed moods; with a Brucknerian third movement and a more typically "swashbuckling" finale.   The second movement's style will be very familiar to anyone who has listened to John Williams' soundtrack to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.  Or, rather, the styles are the other way round!

Afghans and more!

I seem to be posting every day at present, which may have something to do with the fact that I am actually painting again.  Although I did not finish any figures this weekend, despite Sofie's Paint Table Saturday, I did get a good few hours done each day and have moved my Servants of Ra along enough that I hope to finish six figures at least, before the weekend.  I still can't find my copy of the In Her Majesty's Name rules, however.

Now, Wargames News and Terrain is an excellent site for spotting the new and shiny (I probably shouldn't look at it) and today they have a picture up of the first in what will be a Second Afghan War range from Artizan.  Now this really is a conflict I have always wanted to game but there isn't a good range of figures out there for it.  Artizan, however, have a patchy record on completing ranges.  Their Arab Revolt range never took off at all and while their French Foreign Legion range has an impressive 34 packs their opponents have just four and no cavalry (which is a common complaint I have with many of their ranges).  So an Artizan range is a risk.  Still, I'm prepared to take a punt on these!

So, looking forward across the rest of 2014, the new ranges I am planning to buy into are these Afghan War figures, the North Star Pirates and the North Star Biblicals.  There is also the little matter of the new theatre, but not new period, figures I have ordered from Perry Miniatures and figures from three Kickstarters that haven't arrived yet: Mars Attacks, the Sikh Wars and 15mm Ancients.  More than enough to keep me going.

As regards existing projects I am hoping to do more IHMN and Empire of the Dead (I have about twenty under way at present), get my Latin American Wars of Independence figures moving along and doing more for the Argonauts project.  I'd like to get on with my Baluchis for my Zambezi project too.  I'd also like to finish my Perry Prussians.  Busy, Busy.

Several people have noted that Colours won't be running this year, which is a shame as it is probably my favourite show.  At least, it is the one where I spend the most but that is because I can drive there in about an hour so can buy things like big lumps of resin from Grand Manner, which I can't at Salute.  I don't like Warfare, which follows Colours, so much because it always feels a bit too cramped and the process of driving into and, more importantly, out of Reading is very stressful.  The Legatus is not an experienced driver (I didn't learn to drive until I was 28 and have never owned a car) so finds Reading's notorious one way system horrendous!

Finally, it was Burns' Night on Saturday and although, unlike my wife and, therefore, my children, I don't have any Scottish blood I thought I would cook a haggis for the first time.  It was absolutely delicious, I have to say!  I had it with peas as it is not exactly a low calorie dish.  Now about those Sudan War highlanders I started...

Fortieth Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons

This was the set of rules we used - the 1977 Advanced Dungeons and Dragons release

Today, it seems, is the fortieth anniversary of the release of Dungeons & Dragons.  Or, more properly, the day on which the fortieth anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons is being officially celebrated, as no-one seems quite sure what day it was released or even what "release" might constitute.  Certainly, January 1974 is agreed on as its birth month.

For some reason I always thought that it was an older game than this, going back to the sixties.  This means that when the Legatus first started playing it in September 1979 the game was only five years old.  Of course, I haven't played a game since 1980 so my flirtation with it didn't last very long!  I'd been playing proper wargames (rather than just solo Airfix clashes in the garden) since about 1972 although my wargaming activity (at least with school friends) had tailed off during the sixth form as I enjoyed archery and some rather more entertaining games with my first girlfriend from the archery club.

I'm afraid archery girl got the push when I went to university especially when I discovered she was rather younger than she claimed to be, although you wouldn't guess from her physical development, however. Anyway when my new girlfriend in my first term  at  university, C, suggested we go along to the Oxford University Dungeons and Dragons Society (now the Oxford University Role Playing Society) I had, at least, a passing knowledge of what the game was about.  I think someone else at school played it but I wasn't interested as it didn't use scenery and then, as now, nice figures and scenery are more important to me than game play.  This feeling was reinforced last year when I sat down at Colours to play Big Red Bat's Thapsus game.  Such lovely figures! Such splendid scenery!  I was quite happy gazing admiringly at the whole set up and would have been so without moving a single figure in anger. 

Exeter College

Anyway, I didn't know what to expect when C and I went along to Exeter College for our first game.  It being thirty six years ago I remember very little about it.  There were about eight players.  The Dungeon master was a beardy chemist (aren't all chemists beardy? -even the girls -like dwarfs, I suppose) and we soon discovered, as humble law students, that many of the puzzles he set required A Level Physics, Chemistry or Maths to solve.  In the game we seemed to be regularly confronted by three dwarfs called Thiamine, Niacin and Riboflavin, which tells you everything you need to know about him. The dungeon, disappointingly, was just a series of rooms drawn on lined paper laid out like dominoes as the quest progressed. We did at least have painted figures to use, which we borrowed, although they didn't have a female miniatures for C.  I suggested using a dwarf instead (she always claimed to be five foot two - hmm) but got one of the regular thumps that seemed to punctuate our relationship.  I didn't thump her of course; just tied her up once in a while but she wanted me to do that. C was the only girl there and, I gather, the only girl to ever turn up.  These days the OURPS has several women on its committee but there were a lot less women at the university then. 1979 was the first year that most colleges went mixed (my college had gone mixed in 1973, one of the reasons I chose it) so the two years above us had only a few hundred women from the four women's colleges to go around about 4,000 men.  Our year was far more even, thank goodness.

The Legatus and C in 1980: I have no idea why I thought purple would be a good colour scheme for clothes!

We went to D&D every week and over Christmas I bought some miniatures to represent us, so we didn't have to borrow them.  I've no idea where these figures came from.  I can't think that there was a shop where I could have bought them so they must have been mail order. An advertisement in Military Modelling, perhaps.  I painted up the female figure with red hair (Humbrol number 100) which went down well.  We developed a tradition that after every D&D evening we would have a bath together in the one decent (i.e. heated) bathroom in college, on Heberden staircase.  I think this might have been brought on by the fact that the room we used to meet in always seemed to be cold.  C really felt the cold.  Soon the baths became more interesting (perhaps they always were) than the games and we stopped going to D&D in the summer term.  I haven't played it since.

Still, I put the fact that I was in the OUD&D Society on my law firm applications and the firm that actually hired me mentioned it in my interview and later said it made my CV look a bit different.  So maybe all that dwarf chasing had been worthwhile after all.  Still preferred the baths though.

Today's post's music is the Moscow Symphony Orchestra's reconstruction of the complete score to The Sea Hawk (1940), Erich Wolfgang Korngold's greatest score, despite his Oscar for The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)).  In my first year at Oxford I bought an LP of Korngold's music (which I had loved since I first saw The Adventures of Robin Hood) conducted by Charles Gerhardt and put together with George Korngold, the composer's son.  The Gerhardt recordings date from 1972 but for sheer panache they haven't been surpassed, although there have been many new and more complete versions of Korngold's scores since.  Gerhradt's recordings did a lot towards rehabilitating Korngold, who had become desperately unfashionable in the fifties and sixties.  These days you can buy many recordings of his work and his symphony and violin concerto have both entered the classical repertoire.  Unfortunately, and unbelievably, when Gerhardt was putting together his suites of music for his recordings he was given Korngold's original score and cut it up and blacked out pieces he wasn't going to use.  That his son would allow this is even more amazing but perhaps he believed that this would be the only modern recording of his father's music, so just let it happen.  As a result, the score for this 2007 version had to be painstakingly reconstructed.

C didn't like Korngold and said it was just typical Hollwood film music (I think she was tone deaf, she only had three cassettes of music) but as Andre Previn observed, in the notes to his own recordings of excerpts from The Sea Hawk and other scores, it wasn't that Korngold sounded like film music it was that much film music started to sound like Korngold.  Every person who writes an orchestral film score  (especially John Williams) owes a huge debt to Korngold, who created much of the soundtrack idiom still in use today

Anyway, perfect background for swashbuckling games of Donnybrook, I would venture, although Korngold's score for Captain Blood (1935) has the advantage  in that the beginning of the film depicts the Monmouth Rebellion.

Paint Table Saturday

It's Sofie's Paint Table Saturday!  I can't believe that Saturday has come around again already.  For the first time in about nine months I got some painting done during the week so have added a trio of Foundry pirates to my batch for this weekend.  Guy's rowing has been cancelled, due to the still perilous nature of the river, so I actually have this morning to paint and the light is not too bad for once.

My main target is to progress, although not necessarily complete, seven figures for my In Her Majesty's Name Servants of Ra company.  The pirates and the Moriarty figure will also get some attention.  Aim: to finish one figure by the end of the day!

Something for the weekend...steampunk heroines

This weekend we have some steampunk cheesecake heroines to celebrate my new Victoriana blog...  They are here.

Donnybrook

I read about this new set of rules out of The League of Augsburg in this month's Wargames Illustrated, so I ordered a set which arrived today.  It sounds ideal for me as it is for skirmish gaming for the period from 1660 until 1760.  I am attracted to many of the armies from this period but the sheer number of figures need for, say, the Marlburian period has put me off.  These rules contemplate forces of around 20-30 figures (and no more than 48) per side.

The rules look at a number of different conflicts during the period covered.

The English Possession of Tangier 1661-1684

I have seen a wargame set in this period at one of the shows shortly after Mark Coppletsone's Glory of the Sun figures came out.  The big issue on this one would be finding Berbers with appropriate weaponry.  Too hard.

The Dutch Wars 1665-78

This is very interesting because of the Copplestone figures.  The only problem being with them that they are in uniform poses which are not so good for skirmishing.  Still, this is one I will investigate.

Bacon's Rebellion in America 1676

Never heard of this one and not really interested.

Dragonades persecution of the Huguenots 1681-85, Camisard Revoltr 1702-15

Like many of the conflicts in the book they involve too many civilians, figures which are often difficult to source

Covenanter Rebellions 1666 and 1679, Argyll Rebellion 1685, The Jacobite Wars 1689-92

Again not interested in these.  Too much plaid!

The Monmouth Rebellion 1685

On my regular visit to a girlfriend who lived in Somerset in the early eighties I used to cross the battlefield of Sedgemoor which was also featured in Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood.  There was a big game of Sedgemoor doing the rounds at the shows a few years ago  and I know that at least one manufacturer has a dedicated range for the rebellion.  The problem is I can't remember which!  If anyone knows...  Interested in this one.

The Glorious Revolution 1688

I don't know much about this but I have a feeling that there wasn't much actual fighting.

The War of the Grand Alliance 1688-97

Interested in this, given the Copplestone figures, although it's at the back end of what they work for.

King William's War 1688-97

Too many civilian clothes again.

The Darien Adventure 1689-99

The Scots try to colonise Panama.  This is largely a what if sort of scenario, which I am not very keen on (I can't see the appeal of the new Perry British for the ACW, for example) but there were a few skirmishes so it might be worth a bit more research.  It would be fun to play a game set in Panama, given I went there last year.

Witch trials and persecutions

Really not interested in this.

The War of the Spanish Succession 1701-1715

I hate to admit it but I know absolutely nothing about this period except that they had really nice uniforms.

Other conflicts not mentioned in the book, but which might be interesting for me for this set of rules include the Great Northern War and the French Indian War.  It could also work for pirates against local government troops too (if anyone ever bothered to make the latter!).  If the rules take off, which I have a feeling they will, the authors have many ideas for extensions and even a range of figures.

The rules are beautifully produced with lots of excellent colour photographs.  Some of the pages tell a story almost in the manner of Look & Learn magazine.  There is flexibility as to how you organise your units, given what figures you have.  So if your allowance includes 12 figures of one type you can put them in one unit of twelve, two of six, three of four etc.  The actions are card driven but you need some exotic dice to resolve combat.  Given I can't read a set of rules and for the life of me work out what is supposed to happen any further look at these will have to be done by someone a lot cleverer than me.

So, I'll try to give it a read later and see if my vague ideas coalesce into something more solid.

The only slightly dubious thing about Donnybrook is the lifting of a girl from a Frank Frazetta painting on the cover.  Frazetta's estate is notoriously litigious but mainly they are suing each other at present and so maybe the image is just different enough to not attract attention.  I wouldn't have risked it though!  The authors say that the figure was deliberately done in the "character of a Frazetta heroine".  Hmm, as a published artist myself there is a big difference between doing something in the style of an artist and copying a pose exactly.

This post was written to the soundtrack of Cuthroat Island (1995) by John Debney.  An example of the soundtrack being much better than the original film.

Allan Quatermain and another blog!

I can't start a new year without a new blog so I have decided to lump all my steampunk and other Victoriana into a new one called Legatus' Victoriana Wargames.  This will cover In Her Majesty's Name, Empire of the Dead and anything else which is nineteenth century skirmish based and outside Africa (I have a hankering for Wild West this year!).  One of the things I want to do this year is go back to the neglected blogs and try to do at least one thing for each so they don't look quite so sadly abandoned.

Of course, this brings the number of my wargaming blogs to 22.  Some people have wondered why I don't consolidate all my posts into one blog.  Well, apart from the fact it's too late to go back at this stage, I really like having separate ones for each period as I am often reminded of something I have half finished by looking at the various blog titles and thinking something like "now, where is that half finished unit of Carthaginian veterans?"  I set up the first blog to focus my painting (hollow laugh) and I do find that even if I don't do any painting I can at least do something on one of the blogs (especially if I am abroad).  

The first proper post (I have copied my other appropriate posts across too) is of my newly painted West Wind Allan Quatermain.  I have to acknowledge that Sofie's Paint Table Saturday is giving me a boost to get stuff done at the weekend and I am now evolving, for 2014, a process of working on one unit and one character at a time. 

I'm also going to note down the music I was listening to when I wrote each post.  Today it is the Symphony No 1 by Lars-Erik Larsson a hugely underrated Swedish composer who sounds like, as Sophie once put it, "Sibelius with tunes".   His piece Dagens Stunder (The hours of the day) is one of the most atmospheric and melodic pieces of music I know and deserves to be much better known.