Ray Harryhausen June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013

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

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

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

  So, a review...

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958)

The template for all that followed.

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

Babe: Kathryn Grant in figure hugging crop tops.

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

Mysterious Island (1961)

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

The gorgeous Beth Rogan gets menaced by a very big chicken

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

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

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

Jason and the Argonauts (1963)

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

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

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

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

First Men in the Moon (1964)

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

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

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

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

One Million Years BC (1966)

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

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

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

Babe:  What can I say?  Utter perfection!

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

The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

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

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

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

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

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)

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

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

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

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

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977)

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

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

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

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

Clash of the Titans (1981)

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

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

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

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

My signed book

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

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

Dr Watson and Tart with a heart and a gun for In Her Majesty's Name

Here is Dr Watson to go with last week's Holmes.  He is also depicted in country attire but Nick Eyre at North Star has dropped a hint that they may work on a "town" Watson and Holmes, perhaps based on the look of the characters in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series.  This is good news as it indicates that there will be more figures in the range.  Watson from the Scotland Yard Company was, like the whole of this new company, sculpted by Mike Owen rather than Steve Saleh who did the first four companies.  There is no discernible difference in style or size however.  Possibly the faces are better on the new figures.

I also wanted to have a go at one of the ladies so here is the "Tart with a heart and a gun" figure which was one of the stretch goal figures for those who signed up for the pre-order.  She does not appear in any of the official companies in the book but rules author Craig Cartmell in a comment on his excellent In Her Majesty's Name blog says he is working on a new list which will include her. 

Actually, I have an idea for my own company in which she will feature as Eva von Tarnhelm, an undercover spy for the Prussian Tarnhelm arms manufacturing company.  Daughter in law of Alberich von Tarnhelm her peculiar appetites have made her a liability even in German society so she was dispatched to London where, under the name of Hattie Eve she runs a superior brothel off Piccadilly.  This is located not too far from the United Service Club at 116 Pall Mall, the senior armed forces members of which are prime targets for the unscrupulous Eva and her talented group of Eastern European and very "professional" young ladies.

An aristocrat in her own right, the six foot tall Eva married the diminutive heir to the Tarnhelm fortune Michael von Tarnhelm (known to his family as Mime).  After just one month, however, after an evening of drinking too much Schanpps with Eva,  Michael fell down  the stone steps of his Bavarian castle; a vegetal folly of recent construction designed by Christian Jank and featuring massive underground laboratories where Michael, uninterested in arms, was trying to build a monumental organ which could replicate all the sounds of the symphony orchestra with just one player. He died instantly according to the second doctor who examined the body.  The first doctor who examined the body seemed to think that he had received several blows to the head as well but, unfortunately, he fell off the rampart of the castle into the gorge below while giving this opinion to Eva.  The question of whether either man fell or was pushed was never asked; not after Eva seduced her father in law Alberich on the evening after her husband's funeral, where he was immolated on a mountain top near the castle.  Eva, dressed in a black tunic, wearing chainmail and a black helmet complete with wings, sang Brünnhilde's "War es so schmählich" from Act III of Die Walküre in her thrilling soprano. She suggested that the laboratories in the castle be used to develop new weapons for the coming conflict, away from the spies which both knew the French and British had placed in their main factory.  Recognising a kindred spirit Alberich made Eva his heir and sent her to London to see if she could discover the extent of the British infiltration into his organisation.

Posing as a high class madam and recruiting as "operatives" a cadre of disaffected women from the minor Baltic regions of Europe her London operation is so successful she plans to open a sister facilty in Paris.

As a widow in Victorian London Eva von Tarnhelm would be expected to be celibate and wear black for the rest of her life.  Her alter ego, Hattie, enables her to satisfy her base desires and act in as scandalous manner as she likes.  She remembers her husband by wearing black underthings (as widows should do) and a cameo likeness of him around her elegant throat.  She is most grateful for everything she has subsequently been able to do without him.

When on less horizontal service she is armed with a Tarnhelm Blitzwerfer arc pistol.

Next up: there's constabulary duty to be done...

First two figures for In Her Majesty's Name

I sat down and painted these two yesterday.  The "Consulting Detective" from the Scotland Yard company and a cultist follower of Akhenaton from the Servants of Ra company.  Yesterday evening I also cleaned up and based the rest of the figures from these companies plus the Lord Curr's Company as well. Still two more companies to go though!

A number of issues have presented themselves, however.  The first relates to the quality of the figures.  Not the quality of the sculpting, I should add, which is characterful and excellent. There are two issues here.  Firstly, several of the figures have been slightly misaligned in the mould which necessitated more than a bit of filing and some actual carving with a knife to get the two surfaces aligned. Nothing fatal, but time consuming. Several figures were also pitted and all had quite prominent mould lines. The second issue is that the metal they are made from is quite soft (usefully given the above) but, as a result I am concerned for the durability of some of them.

Lord Curr himself brandishes a long and exotic gun but the top portion of this is very susceptible to bending to the extent that I expect it to fall off shortly. Likewise he dancer, Sairah, is connected to the base solely by one slender ankle.  She is also looking fragile.  The upshot here is that compared to the Perry and Aventine figures I am working on at present, they have used quite a low quality metal.

The final two issues relate to aesthetics.  A large part of my interest in these figures was because of Kevin Dallimore's splendid paint jobs on them.  Unlike historical military figures, however, you can paint them any way you like and, yet, Mr Dallimore's artistic choices are so spot on that you are tempted just to follow his colour scheme.  If you did, however, you would just end up with an inferior copy of his figures.  This became an issue with my very first cultist figure.  Everyone knows that Pulp cultists wear red but I didn't want to go down that route for the reason given above.  Red would be appropriate for these figures too because of  ancient representations of the Eye of Ra (depicted on the mummified priest figure).  Instead I have painted mine a sand colour (Humbrol 121) as they look appropriately Egyptian.  This is the colour I use for my Sudan bases as it is very close, coincidentally, to the colour of the sand in Egypt and the Sudan, as you can see from my profile picture further down on the left.  The turquoise-blue shade is going to be used throughout this company to reflect the lapis lazuli used in a lot of ancient Egyptian jewellery.  I have decided not to attempt to paint the Eye of Ra symbol on their tunics as this would be beyond me.  I am amused to see that Mr Dallimore has used the Stargate version of this ancient symbol rather than anything more archaeological.

This wasn't such an issue with the Sherlock Holmes figure as a grey coat and deerstalker are common.  Jeremy Brett wore something very similar in a number of his Sherlock Holmes episodes.  I thought that the figure looked enough like the late Mr Brett to give him black gloves which he wore so often in the superb ITV series.  The other civilians, also, will be easier to de-Dallimore and I am currently researching late nineteenth century gentlemen's clothing which is rather more colourful than formal wear today.

The second aesthetic issue is more fundamental.  How do you depict the figures' bases when they may be deployed in both urban and rural settings?  Earth and grass would look odd inside a building (I am having grandiose thoughts about attempting to construct a museum interior).  Equally, a paved surface would be strange in the country.  So I have left the bases as a compromise bare earth.  I'm still not sure on this one.  My daughter says that obviously I need differently based figures for the different environments!  Given it took  me around seven hours to paint these first two I don't think that that is likely.

So, I have some more time today so try to get some more prepared.  All in all they are very enjoyable to paint but take a lot of time as I am using four or five shades rather than my usual three.  Watson is under way so maybe one of the young ladies next!

Renedra Ramshackle Barn

One thing I don't spend enough time on is scenery and in skirmish wargaming, in particular, large amounts of scenery are often a necessity.  I've got some trees, hills and now even a small river (which still needs some work) but very little in the way of buildings.  I have quite a few resin ones from Grand Manner but very few are painted.  

So when I saw this new Renedra plastic kit of a ramshackle (from the Middle English word to pillage, ransaken and hence ransack) I thought it might be a useful item for a number of periods from ACW onwards.  Immediately I thought it could form part of my vague ideas for a board for In Her Majesty's Name.  Normally I would bring it home and forget about it but my lack of good condition paintbrushes (since remedied) meant I couldn't paint any figures properly so I set to work on constructing the barn instead.

It went together quite well without it being completely easy.  The nature of the roof meant that achieving a snug fit was impossible and the small outhouse was tricky to get straight but I soon had a reasonable approximation of the one on the cover.  I decided to mount it on a base as it didn't feel that robust without one 

"Are you my mummy?"

A quick undercoat of black paint and then four or five shades of dry-brushed Humbrol number 98 brown saw it looking suitable scruffy.  I know it looks grey but however I photograph it the colours won't come out properly.

Anyway, I enjoyed painting it so much I am going to work on a building for my Darkest Africa campaign next.

A post Salute frustration, Victorian fluff and nearly a nasty moment...

In Her Majesty's Name - not as much progress as I would have hoped

Usually on my return from Salute I immediately base a figure or two and try to get something painted straight away.  This is exactly what I intended to do today, given that I possess nearly five dozen new figures for In Her Majesty's Name.  I based a dozen yesterday and undercoated three today intending to finish at least one (probably Sherlock Holmes).  Alas, I found myself in a position this morning with not one paintbrush with  a decent point on it.  The one drawback of enamel paints is that they mean your brush life is measured in weeks.  My recent productivity has had its inevitable effect, so no painting today!

What could I do, instead?  I made a nice cup of Lifeboat Tea (my favourite) in my splendid new Salute Jason and the Argonauts red figure-style mug and looked down at my new Renedra barn, sat in the pile next to my chair (I had carefully scattered all my new purchases in different corners of my study to avoid the inevitable Stasi-style raid, but cookerhood woman was safely at work).  Light bulb!  I could have an Airfix sort of day instead!  Now I haven't made any of these new plastic building models, mainly because none of them have suited any of the periods I do and also because, on the whole, I prefer resin (the attempt at thatch on the Perry medieval house is tragic).  But needing some scenery for In Her Majesty's Name I thought the barn could be used on my gradually coalescing Manor House scenario.  It would also work for the ACW as well.  I put it together pretty quickly (although the fit of the parts isn't perfect) and decided to base it for some added strength as the design of the piece meant that there was not much in the way of areas in contact where you could apply glue.  I wanted to leave the roof unattached so it could be removed but I don't think it would have been strong enough on its own.  I've now textured the base, black undercoated it and got the main colour down.  It now needs some detailing and the base painting.  I hope to finish it tomorrow (or, more likely, considering the number of meetings I have tomorrow, the next day).  It's a shock to be working on scenery though!

One is cookerhood cleaner, one is the opposite

I don't use black undercoat that often but as it was a comparatively warm day I took advantage of the warmth to undercoat my new Warlord Caesarian Romans as well, which I decided would also benefit from black undercoat, given the amount of metal on them.  As a result I nearly had a disaster!  I left the can of paint on the worktop in the kitchen.  When my wife came home from work she decided to clean her new cooker hood which has a stainless steel flue.  The electrician had left dirty fingerprints on it so she had ordered some special cleaner in an aerosol.  Looking at the flue in the bright light this afternoon she decided to give it a squirt. Fortunately, I was in the kitchen at the time as she reached for my black undercoat instead!  She was about half a second from spraying black paint all over her £1,000 cooker hood!  It would have all been my fault I'm sure!  

In order to keep me focussed on a project I like to indulge in a bit of background fluff to engender the requisite engagement.  Usually this is just a bit of reading and appropriate music while I paint.  So I've been listening to the Hans Zimmer Sherlock Holmes soundtracks, the Patrick Gowers TV soundtrack and even David Arnold's Sherlock soundtracks.  Sometimes something more visual is needed and so the other night I watched the Sherlock Holmes (2009) film again as it is quite Steampunky in places.  Having been kicked off the TV while Guy played Xbox yet again (he was recently chosen for the UK Call of Duty team and offered an all expenses trip to Las Vegas for the World Championships - that's how much he plays.  Fortunately he was too young!) I decided to finish an episode of the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes which I had started but not finished some time ago.  Quite a lot of these are shot in and around country houses rather than the foggy London I imagined would feature more often (which is why I need to locate my unpainted model mansion which I originally bought for using in ECW games).  This episode, The Man with the Twisted Lip, did have some good dark alley Victorian London scenes however which gave me some thoughts about a London scenic board (eventually).

Eleanor David in The Man with the Twisted Lip

However the scene which really took my fancy was when Holmes (the North Star IHMN figure really looks like Jeremy Brett) and Watson turn up at the lady in distress's house in the country.  Played by Eleanor David, one of a number of splendid actresses to appear in this series over the years, she offers Holmes and Watson a cold supper after their long journey from London.

They never eat it but this sumptuous looking collation of pie, cheese, ham on the bone and cold pork chops quite distracted me from the action.  I proceeded to shop for a version of this to have tonight with a nice bottle of claret while I watch the next episode...  Inspiration comes in many forms!

Salute 2013

Nice scenery for the In Her Majesty;s Name demo game

So, I went along to Salute today but didn't stay too long as I had some stuff to do for work.  Still, I arrived at my usual time of just after eleven and drifted in with no queuing whatsoever.  My first impression was that it was a lot more crowded than last year, which is the opposite of what I would have expected.  In fact, I had to go back to several stands on my target list as I couldn't get near them initially.

The first job was to pick up my In Her Majesty's Name figures and rules.  I had pre-ordered everything and so ended up with 55 figures plus four stretch goal bonus figures.  My initial impression of the figures is that they are excellent although I have to say the casting on many of them is only about 8/10.  Some flash and heavy mould lines caused by slight misalignment on some figures required quite a bit of filing work on the dozen I based this evening.  It's nothing too serious but compared with the immaculate Aventine figures which I have been buying lately it's a bit disappointing.  

There is nothing disappointing about the rule book, however.  I was a bit concerned about the fact that North Star may only produce these five companies for the game as they fell so far short of their pre-order target but the book uses lots of Foundry Darkest Africa figures in their illustrations and some of the other companies such as explorers, cowboys and French will be easy to build with appropriate figures from Foundry and others. They will give me an excuse, for example, to buy some of the new Artizan French Foreign Legion figures without having to commit to a whole army's worth.

They're back!

I've always wanted some cowboys and looked at some of the Foundry ones on their small but busy stand.  It must be some years since Foundry were at Salute and my first thought was how the mighty had fallen, looking at their modest stand compared with the likes of Gripping Beast and Warlord Games. Still, I have a great affection for Foundry and bought a nice giraffe for my Darkest Africa games.

I did end up buying rather more than I intended but was quite good.  I picked up the latest copies of WSS, and Miniature Wargames (both at a discount, although the MW lady just inside the entrance was so pretty I probably would have paid extra just to buy it from her).  I picked up the next two MW DVDs which means I can clear some more space on my shelves. Hooray!

I eventually got to the Crooked Dice stand (they seemed to be two deep in front of it much of the day) and bought their stylish new 7th Voyage rules designed for Ray Harryhausen type adventures.  A quick skim of them indicates that they are everything that the sadly simplistic Tribes of Legend wasn't.  More on these in the future.  While there I bought my first non-planned buy: a Sinbad and sorcerer figure which are made by the Canadian firm Harwood Hobbies.  Hopefully Crooked Dice will carry the rest of the range.  If not I'll have to get Sophie to order them for me and then I'll pick them up from her.  I've always wanted to do an Arabian nights game!

Not only were the Dux Bellorum games attractive but their display material was excellent too

Another unplanned purchase was the Dux Bellorum rules brought on by seeing two very attractive games under way.  I have always been a Dark Ages fan (my first 28mm figures were Gripping Beast Vikings).  The friendly chap at the game pointed out that you could have a reasonable army with not too many figures and showed me some units on 4Ground bases which enable you to use individually based figures.  I bought some of these skirmish bases as an experiment and need to look into this further.  I had held off on DB as it used the dreaded element basing but this may be a way for me to cope with it.

I bought Dux Bellorum on the Osprey stand and also picked up the new Myths and Legends Jason and the Argonauts book.  This is very attractive but a quick flick through it suggests it is quite lightweight, but that is only because I have quite a lot of books on the Argonauts.  Still, any inspiration is good inspiration.

Big skeletons in the South London Warlords game

Incidentally, there were at least three Argonauts games I saw: a Crooked Dice one (nice scenery - or "set" as they would no doubt have it), one with 40mm figures and the Warlords' own one with 1/6 Action Man sized figures.  I couldn't see the point of the latter, really, as the larger scale didn't add much to the game and the scenery was rather basic (if large).

Two more unscheduled plastic purchases included a Renedra barn (which I am thinking of putting in the grounds of my ECW mansion for my first attempt at In Her Majesty's Name) and a set of plastic Velites from a new company called Agema.

These are more anatomically correct than many plastic wargames figures (I have been very disappointed with the big headed Gripping Beast plastics for example) and they said that this was deliberate.  They are promising legionaries later in the year and then, if they sell well, Liby-Phoenicians.

Victrix had some 3 ups of Punic Wars period Romans on their stand but I think I have seen these somewhere before.

I didn't get any of the new Perry 8th Army plastics (although I was tempted, but reasoned I could get them in Orc's Nest) but they did have the 3 ups of their plastic American Continental Army and ACW artillery.

Finally, I picked up a figure of a Viking carrying off a young lady over his shoulder from Heroes of the Dark Ages.  Not very politically correct but she looked so like one of my ex girlfriends that I had to buy it. I may paint this sooner rather than later!

There were a few things I nearly bought but didn't (mainly because my bag was filling up) such as the Ainsty Castings pirate ships which I hadn't seen "in the resin" before.  These are all lovely.  Secondly, some nice terrain boards from Wargames Terrain Workshop which are similar to the Citadel ones but cheaper and free from horrid skull pits.  I might get some of these.  Also I wished I had bought the Ironclad Miniatures VSF tunneling machine.

Left to right: 4Ground factory, terrace houses and police station for Victorian London

Lastly, were some of the new Victorian buildings from 4Ground. I nearly bought the splendid police station but, oddly, what stopped me was that it had red bricks. Observing what few old buildings are left as I travelled on the DLR through the East End I noticed that nearly all the buildings had yellow bricks.   They'd all need covering in soot though.  I remember how grimy the buildings in London used to be when I was small.  These don't officially come out until next month.

Probably not the laser cut model to begin with

Another thing which caught my eye at the 4Ground stand was there massive "Beowulf" type hall.  This I will have to get eventually once I have a bit of practice at assembling these laser cut buildings.  Where I would store it is a different matter: it was huge!

What's the collective term for a mass of wargames bloggers?  A stand?  A sprue?

Finally, I bravely headed to the "red dot" to find dozens of bloggers, as loosely arranged over the last few days by the likes of Wargaming Girl and various Postie's Rejects (ooh er, social networking).  I did have a chat with Big Red Bat but was a bit intimidated by all the other happy bloggers (maybe its because, deep down, I'm not really a gamer!).  Still, an impressive turn out, although I agree with Mike at Trouble At T'Mill blog that next year maybe everyone should wear badges (we shall refrain from the Alfonso Bedoya quote).

The Plancenoit portion of the Waterloo game

I was slightly disappointed in the quality of the display games this year.  There was a large and impressive Waterloo game but not any real show stoppers I thought.

The nicest terrain was probably the Wargames Illustrated (I think) Gettysburg piece.  A really nice hill effect.

So now I need to get down and paint some more stuff and maybe even play another game or two!

Salute Eve

I really don't need any more figures at present but hope to pick up my In Her Majesty's Name packs at Salute tomorrow which should effectively put the Romans on the back burner for a bit.

Other than this it's mostly rules I am after; particularly the Black Powder Waterloo supplement and the Crooked Dice Harryhausen rules.  I have just been going through the plan of the show in this month's Miniature Wargames to identify my favourites to check out and noticed that Wargames Foundry are listed to have a stand.  If so that's their first for a very long time.  Another manifestation of the change of management?

I need to be good this year as we have just done the maths on how much it will cost to keep my daughter at Edinburgh University for five years.  I think I could buy my own wargames company for that!

I must remember my camera this year!