Picking away

• Reading Fools and Mortals, a Shakespearean mystery by Bernard Cornwell.
• Listening to Ashes of the Imperium, the first novel in Games Workshop's new Scouring subseries set immediately after the Horus Heresy.
• Waiting for Blood on the Snow: The Carpathian Winter War of 1915, and Samurai Warfare by Stephen Turnbull. The first suggested by listening to the Great War documentary series on Youtube (an absolute classic) and the other by the commenters here (thanks).
• Arranging to demo Charge! at the club next week.
• Undercoated a Skaven figure.
• Finished building three bases of paper knights.
• And built five more ECW musketeers.

They need hats.

How do I rotate a picture again?

Also bought a used office chair, more comfy to sit in at my desk. So all in all, a productive day!

Fluttering By

No gaming this week (other than a couple rounds of Chess and Tafl at work). Have been under the weather all week, more tired than actually sick, but coworkers calling out have kept me busy. 

• Built a couple more regiments of Paperboys Continental infantry, continuing to experiment with basing. I got hold of a few beer mats from my favorite watering hole and I like them. They are a bit difficult to glue the Paperboys to, simply because the figures are divided into ranks so that you actually have three flat areas to stick down, not just one. This, I imagine, is one of the benefits of the "new" style where figures are not accordion-folded but directly stuck to the base.
• In other Paperboy news, Peter Dennis is able to receive shipped figures now, and I have mine to send him. However, they've been sitting in the car for weeks now and I should probably check them over and build some spares in case of damage in transit.
• Received some orders of my own. An Usagi Yojimbo action figure in samurai armor, a little stiff so I haven't messed with it yet. The color scheme is actually black armor heavily highlighted with blue, grey cloth, and yellow lace and armor/helmet trim. The blue being standard for comics, but might be interesting to experiment with painted figures. It comes with a sashimono banner with Mifune mon in red - three dots in a triangle, surrounded by a circle.
• A copy of The Pikeman's Lament. The For King and Country box set contains 58 infantry and 12 cavalry, so with six cav, twelve pike, twelve shot and six "forlorn hope" per side, this would be 18 points for each force, smaller than normal but a good starter to experiment. There are no bases, so I bought some GW ones. They are 25mm in width but though wider than the norm for Black Powder, units will still fall within the limits for normal size as well, so I can experiment with 28mm BP too. I am more likely to use the Japanese figures for that, though. The rules for a company officer in The Pikeman's Lament look fun and may be useful for a solo campaign.
• I haven't built any of the Warlord figures yet, but hope to next week. I will want a mask before I undercoat them, however; I think I will try the "stick" method this time! I would like to try painting some of the ECW types with the speedpaint markers.
• Read The Battle of Adwa, about a battle and period I know little about. It covers all the characters, political background and international reaction as well, an excellent introduction to the campaign. I may delve back into my copy of CE Callwell's classic Small Wars to see what he has to say about it.
• Read the Helion wargamer's guide to Leipzig, another battle I don't know much about. A fair overview that makes the battle comprehensible to a beginner. The scenarios are useful and can be played as a small campaign, a tempting target for a binge weekend at the club.

So that's what my internal hobby butterfly has been bouncing between all week. See you next time.

Miscellanea, and a Treat

Work has been <bleeping> tiring this week. Hopefully that will turn around tomorrow, as we have a couple new staff joining us. In the meantime, I've only got bits and pieces done, but they are usefully inspiring nonetheless:

• Basecoated my Citadel hills in white. Will finish them in speedpaint green, brown and grey.
• Received and read much of Talking Miniatures:

A remarkably good oral history of Games Workshop.

I'm serious. It's worth the money.

• Started on my bit of the Hastings960 project:

Three sheets of Saxon Fyrd (300 figures).

Trimmed.

Frames separated...

... and folded.

Next is gluing them all - then cutting with my new Beaditive and Fiskars scissors.

This is a test strip on 80gsm paper rather than the
requested 120gsm. If you see a green tinge, it's because
I experimented with a speedpaint marker on the edges.

• Tested a speedpaint marker on a couple Reaper Bones orcs (no good pics).
• Finally, a treat - my talented brother has made some progress on the LDV I sent him. Here's the first Scottish militia!
  
  

A how-to, mostly Speedpaints:

Undercoat: Slap-chop
Cap: Caribbean Ocean

Skin: Pallid Bone
and Crusader Skin

Straps: Pallid Bone
Hair: Dark Wood

Uniform: Noble Skin
and Tyrian Navy

Boots: Grim Black

Weapons: Broadsword Silver

Base: AK Muddy Ground

Base highlight: Pro Acryl Pale Yellow

Base detail: Vallejo Scorpy Green

Ready recruits.

My intent was to have only the guys in tam-o-shanters be in Scottish Republican grey, with the other twenty being more generic, but my brief confused my brother who has never painted historicals before. Part of the problem may have been a picture that scanned fuzzy.

He was a bit disappointed, but hey, I'm not going to look a (beautiful) gift horse in the mouth here. I'll take what he gives me and work with it. The guys in caps could be Scottish BUF, or Republican militia who couldn't find tams. VBCW offers plenty of explanations!

All in all, a productive week for him, not so much for me, but still - making progress!

Happy Solstice, Merry Yule, or whatever you celebrate. Life gets brighter from today (in the northern hemisphere, anyway). See you around.

On an ECW Kick

Not sure how I got onto this. Might have been when I idly googled Warhammer Historical, and turned up 1644 and its derivation Warhammer Historical English Civil War. I always preferred the turn-of-century style of GW games - not just the rules but the style of writing and illustration. So I read both of these. And then...

• Pike and Shotte
• To Kill a King (Pike and Shotte supplement)
• The Pikeman's Lament
• From Pike to Shot 1685-1720 (by Charles S. Grant)
• Ironsides (by Howard Whitehouse)
• Regiment of Foote (by Peter Pig)
• Dominion of Pike and Shot
• Wargaming Pike and Shot (by Donald Featherstone)

Not all of these are yet received or read, but ... yeah. I have half a mind to order the Pike and Shotte starter box and try Pikeman's Lament with it. (It would provide an opportunity to use the 28mm Warhammer walls I just got.) 

Curiously, I can't find out exactly what's in the box! There are 58 pike and shot figures in addition to cavalry and "forlorn hope"/commanded shot, but the regiment shown in the pictures has 36 figures (12 pike, 24 shot). Two of those would be a lot more than 58 - and if it is a two-player starter, there ought to be two full regiments at the very least, which would mean each might number twenty-four plus some sort of command... All the reviews I can find focus on the rules rather than the minis, which seems unusual for starter sets.

Anyway, whatever there is ought to be enough for two small Pikeman's Lament forces. A lot of people (including my local gaming group) dislike the activation system of this series of rulesets, since there is a very good chance that some or even all of your units will just skip their turn, repeatedly. However, I think I have a way around that - specifically, the way Bob Cordery does it in Bundok and Bayonet. This is to allow the order to go through when failed, but any movement must be away from the enemy.

Partly it's just because it's the last one I've read, but the Dominion ruleset is my current focus. There is a lot of buzz on the Facebook Portable Wargame group about the series, and the fact that it is solo, quick and can be played with my small Wofun ECW collection is appealing. I printed it out and in the process discovered that material can be sent to the printer in "booklet" form - even more useful as I have been asked to make club copies of the 1981 Charge! too.

Speaking of the club, the annual "regatta" is tomorrow at the new location, and I hope to be there and provide a battle report and pics afterward. Hope your holidays and gaming gifts are as good as mine are shaping up to be. Til next time!

Reading and other Miscellany

You'd think I'd get something gaming-wise done during a four-day weekend. Nope.

I had a couple things planned:

• I broke out my two Kill Team boards with thoughts of playing 8th edition 40K on them. Never got around to it, since the pieces have to be removed from three different boxes first, all of which are buried under the table. But I was looking through a Charles S. Grant scenario book, and realized that 30"x44" (the size of both boards together) is barely over half the size of the 5'x7' Tabletop Teaser maps. Add a drop cloth so the game isn't set on Mars, play at half move/range, and I can use the 18mm Wofuns just as I did for Blasthof.
• Jim Johnson is running his annual Christmas Carnage game at Das new Kreig Haus tomorrow. I can't make it due to a prior commitment, though if it finishes quickly I might be able to drop in at the end. Traffic around here is hell though on Black Friday weekend. We'll see.

On my reading list:

• Wargamer's Annual volume 1 - with a miscellany of articles on 17th-to-19th century topics - mostly by Charles Grant, Phil Olley and the late Stuart Asquith. Also lots of lovely Bob Marrion illustrations and other eye candy. This series is hard to obtain in physical form, and I was delighted to find this issue in pdf on Wargames Vault. I hope they publish more.
• Challenger, by Adam Higginbotham - about the space shuttle Challenger disaster, this was chosen by my former workmate for next month's book discussion. Looks very thorough. Sadly, the members were reticent (despite my assurance that it's not quite as technical as it sounds) and I selected something more "conventional," but I'll still read it, and maybe try to talk them into using it for January. The 40th anniversary is next January, and a manned flight to the moon (!) is scheduled for February. Good luck to them.
• Homer's Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles - an old and spotted Penguin edition I weeded from the library collection. I never have read the Iliad or the Odyssey, might as well get to it now.
• Anzac to Amiens - an old classic by CEW Bean, a one-volume extract of the twelve-volume official history of Australia in WWI. Pretty good, though it takes a third of the pages to get past Gallipoli.
• Hero of the Empire, by Candice Millard - about Winston Churchill during the Boer War. A fine adventurous story with potential for TSATF games.

I've ordered some terrain by Games Workshop. With the reproduction of the "Old World" Warhammer Fantasy, their plastic hills, walls and fences are available again. The obstacles are 28mm, but the hills can be used with my 18mms as well. I hope to paint the obstacles up with speedpaint markers as those become available - the local shop has told me they will be getting a display in a couple weeks. They may not work for the hills as those are much larger and there's not much paint in the markers, but touchups and edges? Maybe.

Finally, a tempting project that Paperboys are planning:

A massive commemorative display game for the anniversary next year of 1066. I haven't done any papercrafting at all recently, but I could use the relaxation - provided I can source the required paper, card and ship the lot back to Peter Dennis afterwards - it is a community project to make a one-to-one-scale pair of armies. Would be cool to do, but a fairly massive project as it involves making one huge base with up to 300 figures on it!

Should I?

*cough*cough*hack* Mk II (or is it III?)

Haven't had a great couple weeks. I took my entire course of antibiotics this time and still find myself sick now. On the other hand, my injured finger has recovered - while there's still a bit of pain I'm assured I can and should use it to strengthen.

• Finally obtained my second CS Grant scenario book, Scenarios for All Ages, after (like the other volume) it took three trips across the Atlantic. Shared with the late Stuart Asquith, there are a similar number of scenarios, mostly small and basic (only half a dozen units a side, most of them). To my delight, there is a version of Sittangbad from Charge!
• I've been a little more cautious with ebay stuff lately. I was looking for the OOP simple plastic trees from Merit that feature in The War Game, and while they're a bit expensive I found Zvezda trees which look similar. I received two boxes a couple days ago. They're a little fiddly to put together, but the smaller ones don't require glue and I've built about a dozen without pricking my fingers on the pointy edges too much. The larger ones seem looser. The very tops of the trees are easy to lose. Overall, they look like they'll go well with my Wofun 18mms. I found it easier to build them from the bottom up - largest layers first.

  

  Assembly.

  

  The tops of the trees would be just fine for very-small-scale games.

Completed. They seem hefty enough to stay in place without
basing, especially sitting on a cloth mat. We'll see.

• As of today, I've only got twelve of my 30 Wargames Atlantic BEF built; still hoping to finish them by August and then send them off to my brother to paint for me.
• Waiting on Victoria Miniatures' Space Aussies 2 pledge manager; I hope it and the 3dprint files might come in time to make a few on a YouMedia printer before August 9 (when I'll be visiting for game day).
• Speaking of which, still have my painting program to prep - will need to construct and undercoat the Warhammer Alliance minis before then. Another deadline.
• Reread the rules for Fistful of Lead, with the intent to try a couple solo skirmishes. I'm increasingly sure it'll work for Picacho Peak, if I ever get around to running it...

So that's it - another short post but with some hopeful progress. 'Til next time.

Reading Again

As usual of late, I haven't got much gaming done. There was a TSATF game at the club last Saturday that I missed. I might get something in during the Fourth of July weekend, if I can clear off my table:

Hey, at least it's full size now.

Been reading a lot instead. Just today, I received one of my Charles S. Grant books that has taken three trips across the Atlantic to reach me, an old classic:

I've only taken a quick glance through it, but there is plenty of food for thought. Two of my favorite scenarios, for one - Fontenoy and Sawmill Village. I hope to try them out at Das Krieg Haus one of these days. Sawmill Village and a couple others provide a choice of units to the player and the first, with about six units rather than the original four, would probably be enough for two players a side.

Several of the scenarios require map-moves - not quite mini-campaigns as they are over the course of a single day and lead up to a single battle. Others are for specific periods (mostly 20th-century, with airborne and one specifically Vietnam scenario), and there is at least one small-scale skirmish game, with a dozen guerrillas, 50 civilians, and a middling number of opposing troops. Charge! isn't quite designed for it, certainly not with my Wofuns, but there are enough minis in the club collection for a try. There are even a couple scenarios that would work in The Sword and the Flame. Rest assured I will take a closer look at this book and see what I can make of it. Playing the 52 scenarios at the rate of one a week is, while a tempting prospect, sadly not doable here.

A better choice for an "ongoing" project would be my 30 BEF plastics, of which I've still only assembled five, one of which I reassembled after its arms fell off. One a day, thus finishing them within the month, seems an achievable goal... though a plausible excuse for not finishing will be that I sprained a finger at work. Physical therapy is going well, but I suddenly wonder what the physiotherapist and gamer Donald Featherstone would have suggested for wargamers with injured hands... he seems to mostly have dealt with sports and dancing injuries, though (maybe he had early members of the Sealed Knot in to see him?).

Enough asides; what else have I been reading?

The Siege of Gibraltar, 1779-1782 by Tom Guffie - part of a "British Battles" series by Batsford. Fairly short, but comprehensive. I'm unfamiliar with the siege, but I've always wanted to visit the Rock and this scratches that itch. I'll look for more of this series.

The Boy Generals, by Adolfo Ovies - the first two volumes of a three-volume trilogy (the third appears to not yet be published) about George Custer and his rival Wesley Merritt during the American Civil War. The first volume covers events up to the end of Gettysburg, the second the beginning of Sheridan's Shenandoah campaign; the third will go to the end of the war. Merritt, who has been forgotten because, unlike Custer, he wasn't interested in publicity, was two years senior to Custer at West Point. They were both promoted to brigadier just before Gettysburg and emnity developed from there. While they're also absorbing biographies, the series is largely about the development of the cavalry from riders with swords (which Ovies characterizes as hussars), to mounted infantry with carbines (characterized as dragoons). Custer was basically the former sort and Merritt the latter, except that Custer seems to have used mounted action as a partner to Spencer carbines. Two of his regiments used firearms to pin the enemy while the other two got into position to charge. So while he was famous for his charges, he's shown to have more depth than is usually depicted.

Unsung Hero of Gettysburg, by Edward G. Longacre, is recommended by approving mentions of its subject in The Boy Generals. It's a biography of David McMurtrie Gregg, another Union cavalry general, which I haven't started yet but looks quite good. While he commanded Custer during Gettysburg, like Merritt he was unassuming and led an unrecognized if busy career. I look forward to reading it.

Queen Emma and the Vikings, by Harriet O'Brien - A biography of a Norman queen of Saxon England, betrothed to Aethelred the Unready and the mother of Edward the Confessor. Another period I'm not very familiar with, but looks very involved with a great deal of intrigue and interesting characters.

In "fantasy" news, my coworker who was going to GM Dungeons and Dragons at an August library event has had to beg off, which may put me on the spot. There is a meeting tomorrow to discuss plans which I hope to attend; at this point, while I am expecting to do a painting program in the background of the gaming, I don't yet know the space I'll have or the people who'll be backing me up. I like to think I've learned lessons from previous tries, so I will have plenty to say!

Thanks for reading. Until next time...

Getting there

 I've cleaned up a quarter of my 4x4 "table" and put my 2x2 carpet square on it.

Look familiar?

I'm planning to test out the Asquith version of Charge! by converting inches to mm. Giving me a battlefield effectively five feet on a side. This isn't quite in scale with the minis (18mm vs. the original 30mm), but their flatness and thus ability to cram more figures in a small space should help. I'll start with the original Blasthof Bridge scenario - 40 infantry and 12 cavalry vs. 32 infantry and 18 cavalry, plus guns of course.

The house is obviously dilapidated (and doesn't have a door), while the bridge is crude. I've tried toothpicks underneath to help it stand up, but may make a Paperboys one instead. I printed out a couple sheets yesterday, then forgot to bring them home!

I've been vacillating between this and my new Kill Team box:

I really like the MDF terrain.

Speaking of Games Workshop, I volunteered to help out with a planned D&D day at another branch in August. As I'm not a D&D player, I offered to do a paint-n-take activity instead. (The event will be four hours and more than just the games alone.) The planners jumped at it, so I have another painting event to plan. They were interested in paper minis, too. I'll also attend a couple local conventions during the summer for work.

I've been doing some reading three books too, of course - two Helion and one Black Library. I finished You Have to Die in Piedmont!, an interesting account of the bloodiest battle ever fought in that part of the world - and Marlborough's Other Army, a fairly staid book about the War of the Spanish Succession in Spain (ie, a Peninsular War a century early.) It has a lot of statistics, useful for planning a campaign or reenactment-game, but not that interesting to read.

The third is Gotrek and Felix: The First Omnibus - the first three novels in that popular series. I'm two volumes in, just started the third, and quite enjoying it. There are at least a dozen more, the latest of them set in the Age of Sigmar. Good rollicking fantasy adventure, and inspiration for Minceheim.

That's it for tonight. I'll try and get a solo game in on Sunday. See you then. Whether it's Kill Team or Charge! is up in the air; for comparison with the first photo, here's what curious cats have made of Blasthof Heath:

Still going slow

I'm posting at a much slower pace these days. Even the "edge" of wargaming is mostly out of my mind, and it's only now I've built up enough to make a post out of. 

Got hold of some daylight bulbs, but only one of them fits my three available lights. Shall have to go back and get smaller ones for the light over my desk.

Picked up these old classics. No idea
what I'll do with 'em, but nice to have.

Messed about with the 40K 10th edition
starter set. The rules aren't actually quite
the same as the Space Marine board game;
the latter are a bit more complex. This one
is simplified enough that the sides are
surprisingly even.

Watched a not-so-good film with some very good actors, Q Planes from 1938 and starring Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier. It's actually a comedy, though this isn't immediately obvious. It's a spy thriller with sci-fi elements and some classic planes - good fodder for VBCW.

Picked up some ancient paperbacks from the local dusty used bookshop:

• The Prince Commands by Andre Norton - a Ruritanian romance with a good combat scene. Again, some fun inspiration for VBCW.
• Ranks of Bronze by David Drake - another classic I'd never read. A Roman legion is sold into slavery to an alien merchant combine. Makes me want to look up his Raj Whitehall and Belisarius series.
• A US Boy Scout manual from 1948. 500+ pages, should be fun.
• A history of the Battle of Leyte Gulf published in 1947. I never did read Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, so I look forward to learning more about the Battle off Samar.
• A first edition Games Workshop Fellowship of the Ring rulebook, complete with card miniatures (!) folded inside the back cover. A throwback to a time of more attractive rulebooks from GW.

Also reading The Bletchley Riddle, a recent children's mystery.

Ordered a Kill Team starter set to supplement my 8th edition 40K collection.

Finally, while at an action-figure store (who I need to send a list of stuff I'm hunting for), I spotted and snagged a set of Enterprise-D blueprints for a mere $20.

So no gaming (other than getting paid every week to lose badly at chess), but plenty to chew on. See you next time.

Still a Long Month

Work hasn't been going great. I am getting tired of Florida. Still not much interested in play when I get home, despite the burgeoning collection. Or maybe it's just my table, crowded high with game boxes that are in the way of actually laying out a board and playing something! (One of the reasons I'm tempted to move is to get a second bedroom and turn that into a proper game room.)

Been doing quite a bit of reading, nearly all milhist. Finished Barbara Tuchman's classic The Guns of August, now working on The Scramble for Africa. Both quite good, but the real reason is I'm trying to clear out my bookshelves a bit, by adding to those of the club. Got a campaign game at Das Krieg Haus this morning, so I will bring some in and put on the shelves.

Hobby-wise, built some Paperboys Romans to go with the Britons, and started on the 10th edition 40K beginner set. The "beginner" rules are exactly the same as those in the Space Marine board game, which means the flame troopers can be led by an officer against a larger Tyranid horde.

Very nice "easy-to-build" figures.

Having built up my 8th edition Nurgle and Space Marine collections, I'm also tempted to pick up the current starter for Kill Team, which has some good character figures as well as (a first for GW) MDF terrain. The FLGS also has a 15% discount on GW and Warlord Games stuff.

Historical gaming? Will have to wait for a clear table! But I am still leaning towards the Athena Charge! Just need to dig back into my Wofun collection and get around to building and organizing the ones I bought last fall.

See you hopefully in a couple days with a battle report.

Ups and Downs

So, yeah, I didn't make any progress. It started last Sunday night when a pipe burst on the seventh floor of my apartment block. About a quarter of my floor flooded. I rescued a handful of minis boxes sitting on the floor, but spent the next day futilely waiting for an inspection that never came, rather than going to work. Eventually the floor dried and today I got a cleaner in to go over the floor and hopefully stave off any mold.

Spent most of my time reading. Finished a recent biography of Flora MacDonald of 'Forty-Five fame, started on a brief memoir of a US Marine in Vietnam and my first Iain Banks Culture novel, slowly worked my way through Charles Darwin's classic Voyage of the Beagle, and picked up an entire set of Tintin volumes.

That reminds me, I want to 
buy a few of Roly Hermans' paintings.

I did get permission to build a diorama for Black History Month, and have started on a Paperboys depiction of Olustee. Past displays have increased kids' interest in building their own paper models, so with luck I can "spread the love."

Finally, I obtained a copy of the Bolt Action starter set. Took a while, but on the upside it turns out the shop offers a 15% discount on Warlord and Games Workshop kits. That tempted me to pick up an LOTR set, but it'll have to wait. The Bolt Action box is very nice for the cost and even includes a dice bag for its initiative mechanic. The building sprue looks good too. I look forward to assembling this one. With luck, I might be able to get away with doing it at work as well, as I am on the WWII-80th-anniversary committee. The German vehicle in the box is even flat; perfect to go with Paperboys!

So... looking up, I guess. See you next time.

Mixed progress

No campaign game today, too many players called out and none of the map moves resulted in combat encounters anyway. I missed a Bardia game, worse luck. Work has been tiring (and cold, thanks to the weather) and I failed to pay close attention to my already overwhelming email folder. Also a cat had to visit the vet repeatedly... the discounts due to insurance however provide an excuse to spend the leftover money on more game stuff.d 

The campaign map; I'm on the Spanish team.

Work is inching towards gaming (well, besides the healthy chess club); our new teen librarian is seeing interest and planning a weekly activity that will include something I can help with. He's also a gamer (DnD only, though), and I've spoken with a teenaged volunteer who is interested in 40K but unfortunately will be moving shortly. I did get permission to build a Civil War display for Black History Month which I will try to get his help with - an Olustee diorama.

I finished a medieval murder mystery and am most of the way thru The Illusionist, a biography of pioneer Commando and deception artist Dudley Clarke, who most critically distracted Rommel from the true attack direction at Second Alamein. The book is a bit superficial, but with plenty of anecdotes. It criticizes Operation Mincemeat on the grounds that it nearly gave away the attack on Sicily from which it was supposed to distract, although reportedly Churchill approved it on the grounds that the Germans expected Sicily anyway, so anything was worth the attempt. Next will be a biography of Flora MacDonald, who sheltered Bonnie Prince Charlie after Culloden.

I have not received my order of the Bolt Action starter set, though the shop somehow got a box of metal tools from Warlord Games... Instead I've been messing with Know No Fear, the medium-sized 8th Edition 40K starter set, which I picked up on Ebay.

I still have the Quar to finish, too.

Anyway, that's what little I've done this week. Maybe next will be better. See you then.

Year's End

 As usual, more reading, and finally some proper painting!

I spent some of today working on some of the Quar. I now have five Coftyrans basecoated, all except skin.

Highlord Blue coats, Hardened Leather straps, stocks and boots,
Averland Sunset collars and cuffs, Sir Coates Silver metal.

Skin will take a little thought, as it's varied, pastel, and often spotted. I think it should contrast a bit with the uniform, too, so I won't use blue or yellow. But I'm pleased I've got this far!

There's also the machinegunner's hat, and the blanket rolls. I need a spot color for those, and I'm leaning towards red.

Reading-wise, I found an excellent new book on the 1216 French invasion of England. I was surprised to find it's published by Osprey.

It's fairly short (which makes sense for Osprey), but is not typical even of the publisher's more "conventional" histories - it's not a summary, guide or overview, but an in-depth coverage of the years immediately following Magna Carta.

The author has nothing good at all to say about King John, except that he died at just the right moment. His son succeeded him as not a tyrant but an innocent, now not about to be overthrown by a savior but by a foreign usurper. He also had the support of the Pope. The struggle is depicted as one that turned England from a cross-channel empire into an individual country independent of France. This started with the loss of Normandy, although nothing is said of Aquitaine.

The battles are Dover (a typical siege), Lincoln (pitched cityfight, relief of siege), and Sandwich (a naval battle). (Hilariously, Sandwich is now landlocked.) Hanley describes these all in a lively style, along with the key characters. Two of the most interesting are the female chatelaine of Lincoln, and a Robin-Hood-esque character who led a savage rebellion on the south coast, forcing the French invaders to go out of their way to avoid him.

The cross-channel relations of the two sides also made for interesting interplay - many of the lords on both sides had holding in both Normandy and England and had been forced to choose a side when Normandy abruptly became French. The King of Scotland held lands in England and swore fealty for them to the pretender from France. 

There are so many interactions between so many characters that I have only really given a taste. But this is quite a good book, and I'm glad I read it.

Happy New Year. I hope your next is full of hobby. (I still have two boxed games on the way myself!)

Waiting, Watching, Reading, and just a bit of Painting

Mostly waiting on a number of holiday orders I've made. Starting with two more game starter sets. These are the Port Royal "Mordheim"-type game for pirates, which is delayed until February, and the new Bolt Action 3rd Edition starter set which I hope to receive next week. I might try and use it during the planned WWII commemorations at work. I've also ordered Thud!, the Discworld version of Tafl, and a few favorite picture books.

I watched War of the Rohirrim yesterday. (I was alone in the theater, but it was a Thursday night.) Not bad, but there is a bit of an uncanny valley both in the designs (classic anime for characters, photorealistic for the terrain) and the plot (built up from a handful of paragraphs in the appendices. As fanfic, it's pretty good. At least one review has compared the protagonist to Studio Ghibli heroines, which I can agree with. It does interest me in the new version of Games Workshop's LOTR games, but they don't have a small starter set for that. Still tempting, but I don't think I can justify dropping 2-300 bucks on their boxes...

I also watched Ender's Game on Netflix. Not very good; I suspect anyone who hadn't read it wouldn't understand at all what was going on. The plot was drastically compressed; for example, there are only two of the iconic zero-G battles, and only one under Ender's command, so his leadership and genius are basically told, not shown. The simulator battle graphics weren't very clear. Though I liked the method of putting the child fleet commanders together, again the lack of time meant that their exhaustion wasn't emphasized as it was in the book. The ships are also described as drones rather than manned, which takes away some of the punch of the ending. While I've read the book, and its sidequel Ender's Shadow, I've always preferred the original short story, and think it would have made a better movie with its more compact plot and lack of sideplots. What we actually get are bits of the novel sideplots, but too brief to have the impact from the book, let alone clarify what's going on.

Touched up the undercoats of 27 Quar, by brushing White Scar paint over the greyish areas partly missed by the spray paint. Next (at some future point) will be using Contrast paints on them. Still missed bits and pieces here and there (don't you always?), but this project's been delayed long enough I really do need to get cracking on it.

Finally, reading.

A good short history of the Australian
involvement in New Guinea and Bougainville.
Lots of quotes and vignettes from
individual soldiers increases the enjoyment.

My third issue from this late '70s magazine series about
Israel's military. A good mix of prose, period photos, and
Osprey/Squadron Signal-like color plates.

I've never been as familiar as I'd like
with classic Greco-Roman myths,
so I snapped this one up. Very well
written, I can see why it's a classic.

Really enjoyed this one. The potted history
is actually good, the battle maps are useful,
and there is lots of inspiration for gaming.
Makes me want to break out my Mutiny collection.

Thanks for reading. Happy holidays, and I'll see you next time! (Hopefully with greater progress.)

Reading, Reading over the Bounding Main

After the account of the Saratoga campaign, I'm on to The Coward of Minden, by Piers Mackesy:

An unflattering portrait.

A quite good volume that seeks to rehabilitate Sackville; the author has also written a book on his conduct of the American Revolution that I will read next. He describes the cavalry debacle of Minden very similarly to, say, the Charge of the Light Brigade; as a comedy of errors caused by confusing orders to someone who couldn't see where he was expected to go. Worse, there were multiple contradictory orders, and I feel sympathy for Sackville in that situation. Prince Ferdinand, who commanded at Minden, is depicted as the villain of the piece, in part because he gave little initiative to his subordinates.

Another British submarine memoir:

First read at university
over two decades ago...

A rare account of British submarining - U-boats and US subs get virtually all the WWII press. Quite good and suspenseful account of the North Sea and Mediterranean. I'd be interested to find one of the U and V class boats that sailed out of Malta.

Hastenbeck 1757, by Helion and Company. Still waiting for more of their wargames volumes to show up on Hoopla, or better, the Christopher Duffy books.

The campaign was over some of the same ground as that of Minden. The book is translated from French, and is entirely from the French perspective, but that's not the real problem for me; it's that like many books on the wars in the Low Countries and the Holy Roman Empire, I'm utterly lost by all the names of towns encountered on the march - except a few from the World Wars - I can orient myself a bit when, say, Ypres or Nijmegen turn up, and I've heard of major cities like Dusseldorf and Munster. The maps, however, are bare bones. In the Minden book there are at least arrows, if not major roads and terrain "hash marks." In this one, there are just rivers and dots-for-towns. There is a ton of potentially useful statistics about supplies, wagons, pontoons, etc, so this might be interesting for a gamer who likes campaigns, but without good maps you'd have to keep it in your head or make your own map! There's only one map with units and arrows on it, the battle of Hastenbeck itself, and that makes the account of the battle more comprehensible.

To be fair, I imagine Europeans reading about the American Civil War are equally as lost.

The battle itself is described pretty clearly, and it ultimately led to the convention of Klosterzeven in which Cumberland gave up Hanover and got in a lot of trouble. Unfortunately for the French commander, he had actually been recalled shortly before the battle, though he didn't learn this until after it, of course. The French were also criticized for not having forced a British surrender.

There are lots of eyewitness accounts, and the book is relatively short. I'm middling in my thoughts about it, but I have learned something about a battle I wasn't familiar with. I'm happy I borrowed it rather than bought it. There are a handful of nice uniform plates.

OK, that's it for this week. On to:

An excellent quote from the above, on Bennington: "Baum ... qualified for marching through a country of mixed friends and foes by speaking no English." His unit included, "... for secrecy, a German band; to speed the column, 170 dismounted German dragoons in search of horses, marching in their huge top boots and spurs and trailing their sabres."

Will I game? Well, maybe. Something solo tomorrow or Sunday. See you then, and thanks for reading.

Trundling Along

I'm tired, depressed and not in much of a mood to game real life history at present. I think I'll concentrate on Quar and VBCW for a while (which I need to anyway). Having nearly all Quar built (a cat stole one) and a clear day outside, I chose to undercoat them. I only have pure white to do it with, but it should be an OK base for Contrast-type paints.

As for what I've been reading...

Published in the '60s. Quite short, it's thus pretty superficial, concentrating on personality quirks and famous incidents rather than being true biography. It's written in chronological order, too, and in a style that makes me unsurprised the author specializes in fiction. It's not a bad introduction, though.

This one, on the other hand, is new, and quite scholarly. It focuses on the military side of things, primarily strategic and operational. The author's key concept that he uses to rank the main players (Howe, Burgoyne, Washington, Gates, Sackville, etc) is grip - a term I haven't heard before in reference to military competence. Basically, it means partly understanding and recognition of the many variables a general needs to make a decision, and partly the ability to control the units under his command to carry out his intention. He uses Montgomery in the Western Desert as a good example of a general with "grip." Washington and Gates had it, the British didn't. This was mostly because of distance and the fact that some of them didn't like each other (The Americans didn't either, but they still managed to work together).

To Weddle, the reason the British campaign failed was because it was managed from afar, in a strategic sense from London, and in an operational sense between commanders variously in Philadelphia, New York and Canada. Both sides had to spend weeks (months in the case of overseas) communicating, but one was operating on interior lines. Both Howe and Burgoyne focused on parts of their orders that said they could work independently and assume the other would support them, rather than the parts that said they could and should use their own initiative because their directors were too far away in space and time to have the "grip" they needed.

There was also the problem that the goal was to link up the armies at Albany and then, somehow, the British would profit - when instead supply would still be so strained that there would have to be penny-packet garrisons all along the line, and taking Albany wouldn't prevent the Americans linking up anyway. He doesn't mention the parallel, but I'm reminded of the Vicksburg campaign which really did cut the Confederacy in two.

All in all, an excellent and well-researched volume on the campaign, and the battle narratives aren't bad either.

Finally, I've started an account of HM/Submarine Trenchant:

Best known for sinking the cruiser
Ashigara.

Quite good so far, even in the first chapter on the construction and working up; I liked the description of a senior WRNS officer as "the Great Crested Wren!"

OK, just finished undercoating 27 Quar:

Ten Crusader "line squad" and four trench raiders.

Ten Coftyran line and three snipers.

I experimented with an undercoating method I found on Youtube - sticking the figures to a paint stick and wearing a glove. In theory, this makes it easier to aim the paint at all the undercuts; in practice I still missed a lot, and will have to use some white paint to neaten. Still, one step done, a dozen to go...!

Enjoy your week, folks. Two of my coworkers are off so I'll have a busy one. See you next time.