Le Pilote à l'Edelweiss Deux!

Apparently there is a follow up to Le Pilote à l'Edelweiss, I may have to skip lunch and get over to the shops before heading for the airport!

Le Pilote à l'Edelweiss

Apart from eating snails one of the things that sets us apart from the French is their love of comic books, even when they have "grown up". This is our loss as it is a wonderful medium for telling some stories and when I have to work in Paris I do like to leaf through the racks of hardback graphic novels and bemoan my schoolboy level French. That said sometimes the pictures do the talking...

This week a lunchtime trip to Printemps has led to the discovery of Le Pilote à l'Edelweiss, a wonderful  looking book about a French Nieuport 17 Squadron who encounter a mysterious German Albatross with a large white edelweiss painted on its fuselage.

I shall be getting busy with Google Translate later but the artwork is absolutely stunning and worth buying the book for alone.

It's Going To Be A Long Month...

Dux Bellorum Month is not going to plan. Progress is being made and when I can sit down and paint I seem to be getting on quite well. Unfortunately the opportunity to grab the paintbrush over the last couple of weeks has been minimal and this week is going to be no better as I am working in Paris for a good part of it.

Looking ahead June is worse hobby wise with a week working in Eastbourne at the beginning of the month and then a week in Warsaw at the end (expect me to be rabbiting on about the Warsaw Uprisings then!)

So... I am combining May and June into MUNE! ...or more sensibly Dux Bellorum Months. This month I shall endeavour to finish the Romano-British, June will concentrate on the Saxons so that at least I have two armies to use. The Picts may have to wait on Lead Mountain for a while.

In the meantime please enjoy this lovely piece of Richard Scollins' Arthurian artwork...

Fifth Best Trek Movie Ever!!! *

I managed to get to see the new Star Trek movie today and... it was ok.

I pretty much avoided the trailers and any spoilers so that was good but found the first two acts a bit underwhelming and CGI action heavy. It was not until the final act with "that scene" when the movie picked up, even if the chase scene was very similar to that in Star Wars Episode I.

During the middle of the movie I began to ponder why it wasn't pushing all my buttons. As an SF movie it was pretty good, it could have done with slowing down a bit and allowing some character interaction and development but Hollywood seems to believe we need one fast paced action scene after another these days. In the end I concluded it was the actors.

It is not reflection on them as thespians but Kirk and crew are characters I have grown up with over forty years and for me Chris Pine does not cut it as Kirk. Zachary Quinto has a fair stab at Spock, but Yelchin's Chekov and Pegg's Scotty are poor as well. They lack the chemistry of the original actors, which after two and a half TV series and several movies was pretty much nailed down. Shatner may not be a great actor, but he is Kirk and Kirk is him.

Benedict Cumberbatch was good, though due to an average script illicited little empathy and was more one dimensional than the character that appeared in the original series. That was clearly a failure of the scriptwriters and the lack of any meaningful or epic dialogue (at its heart Trek is cod-Shakespeare and should have cheesy dramatic bad guy dialogue).

It might be better on a second viewing, there are some nice touches and nods to the canon but I have to wonder whether J.J.Abrams blockbuster approach suits the franchise (he also needs to watch out for repeating things from previous movies. Stuntmen rappelling down scene? Check. Female crew member in underwear shot? Check).



Trek is an ensemble product and the characters are paramount not the explosions and effects. The powers that be ought to take a look at how Joss Whedon took what is a quite shallow group of characters in the form of the Avengers and turned it into a superb ensemble work which was complimented by its effects not drowned by them.

Overall, worth a visit to the cinema (it is after all Trek and should be seen on the big screen), but like Skyfall, not the best in the franchise and not the best villain.

* Wrath of Khan, Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country and First Contact are all better than Into Darkness...

My Plans versus SWMBO Plans...

What I wanted to be doing...

What I have been doing...

Sigh...

Burma Victory - Arthurian Defeat

"On the painting front the Romano-British spear are coming along quite well and I hope to get all three bases completed by the weekend if not earlier." - well if writing that on Monday wasn't tempting fate I don't know what was.  Work, more work, even more work, then SWMBO deciding that Saturday was garden tidying up not painting Arthurians day put paid to my unfounded optimism! :-(

Anyhow with thoughts still fermenting about the CBI Front I was pleased to see that Osprey have posted an extract from David Rooney's Burma Victory here, which they are reissuing later this month in digital format. The book focuses on the British and Imperial efforts in the last year of the war and should be a good companion to the American focus in Burma Road.

Of course you can still buy the paperback second hand here for as little as 15 pence, but it is still good to see Osprey making out of print books available...

The Waiting Game...

I'm having an interesting new Kickstarter experience. Normally anything I'm interested in is fully funded in five minutes and I have to try and resist all the stretch goals (and usually fail). Currently I'm sat biting my fingernails waiting to see if one gets fully funded!

Last Sunday Warm Acre's Spy or Die Trying caught my eye and after watching the videos of the game I concluded this would be a lot of fun so in good old Dragon's Den style I decided I was in! With five days to go the Kickstarter is still short of its target. It is getting closer but with five days to go I'm getting increasingly concerned that it might miss the boat, which would be a hell of a shame as I'm quite convinced this could be one of the best new games this year.

So, if you aren't a backer and like spy movies (who doesn't?) go have a look and see what you think...

Hell, just pledge, you know you won't be able to live without it and I'll be really sad if it fails! :-)

Stalingrad 3D

I must confess that I am not overly enamoured with 3D films and that is not just that I have to wear the 3D glasses over my normal pair! However a new Russian film might tempt me to dig out the red and green glasses once more...

Pondering Conscientious Objectors Day

On today's train journey to Birmingham I picked up a copy of the freebie Metro newspaper, normally a shallow read it surprised me to find an interesting article on Conscientious Objectors Day, which is today. The article largely focused on Joe Glenton, who, after one tour of Afghanistan, refused to go back.

It is of course easy to switch on the righteous indignation about "conchies" when brave men and women are dying for their country but it struck me there were two parts to the debate that warranted thinking about.

Whilst not all wars are just, and Joe certainly offers an opinion on Afghanistan that "It was conducted in a climate of racism and indifference to the Afghan people, completely at odds with how it’s sold at home", servicemen and women have laid down their lives for the cause of freedom and the right of individuals to safely express their own opinions, after all that is what democracy is about.

Of course this is balanced by the need for people to protect that freedom but in some way, that we allow for people to object on the reason of conscience reinforces the difference between countries where one is allowed to express their opinion and those that don't.

The second part of the debate was around whether soldiers should "pick and choose" the wars they want to fight. Of course this way leads to anarchy and as such should not be the case, but on the flip side it is established in international law that soldiers cannot use the "I was only obeying orders" defence and that they have the right to not obey illegal orders. The question is whether this extends to illegal wars and thus the relationship between the politician who starts the war and the soldier that fights it. SAS veteran Ben Griffin, who served in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan, refused to serve in Iraq as he believed the role he was being asked (by the Government who led the country into the war) to undertake was contrary to that which he believed British soldiers should be undertaking.

The old fashioned simple view that a conscientious objector is just a fancy name for a coward is clearly false and many who object for reasons of conscience are clearly brave to stand up and cite their beliefs, especially when the outcome can be imprisonment (or in some countries worse).

I'm not sure what I think but Conscientious Objectors Day has given me food for thought and made me ponder the subject.

There probably is not a definitive right answer to the subject other than that war should only be undertaken as a last resort when all other measures have failed and it is the moral duty of  all free people to question the necessity of sending their troops into harms way and ensuring politicians are always fully accountable and held to task if and when they fail their country and its armed forces by leading them into illegal or unjust wars.

Almost Human

Fox have released a very interesting looking trailer for their forthcoming SF series Almost Human. From the people behind the excellent Fringe, all I can say is roll on November...

The Burma Road

The postie delivered another CBI (China-Burma-India) volume for the collection today, Donovan Webster's The Burma Road. Despite the title, the book doesn't just focus on the construction of the Burma Road between India and China by 200,000 Chinese labourers but also the battles fought in the campaign. There may be an over concentration on the Chinese-American efforts but it will be useful to read about this aspect as much as the British and Imperial in other volumes.

The 384 page ex-library hardback cost just 1p plus postage from Amazon which is splendid value and no great loss if not up to scratch (though the reviews suggest it is). Just got to find some time to sit down and read it!

On the painting front the Romano-British spear are coming along quite well and I hope to get all three bases completed by the weekend if not earlier.

Spy or Die Trying... (or Get Thee Behind Me Kickstarter!)

I was feeling quite good about myself today having resisted the urge to go to the Lincombe Barn Table Top Sale and buy stuff I don't need, but my fortitude has been severely weakened by finding out that Warm Acre are running a Kickstarter for a new board game called Spy or Die Trying...

The game looks like it could be a lot of fun, a kind of '60's spy version of Space Hulk although you can play either side; the goodies of Peace Enforcing Nations (PEN) or the baddies of the Secret World Order (SWORD).

I really didn't want to buy into another Kickstarter at the moment but I must confess I am very tempted by this, it looks a lot of fun and one that will have family appeal.

(Dux Bellorum Month) Bowmen Based

Having come up with a multi-purpose basing solution last week, it is now time to put it into practice. First up are the bowmen and as discussed earlier because the unit base is 80 x 40mm the base required a pseudo-sabot approach to fill the gaps.

Here is the finished base adorned with some rocks, tufts and flowers...

Here is the base without the miniatures (I need to give the inside another coat of brown but will do this when painting another unit).

Here is the base with just the rear rank miniatures in place...

On with the warrior units now, the Gripping Beast order has arrived so I now have all the miniatures I need for the Romano-British army, I just need the time...

The Battle For Burma

They say no plan survives contact with the enemy and in my case this proved true today. After a couple of days of meetings this week in London I was working from home so planned to use my lunch hour and overdue time in lieu to paint the next lot of Arthurian infantry. I hadn't counted on the nefarious machinations of human resources whose bumbling incompetence/evil cunning/genuine mistake (delete as appropriate) saw me spend most of the day (including my lunch hour) looking up email addresses of nearly one thousand employees to send them details on a consultation for them. Grrrrrr.... doesn't cover it!

So no painting at all but there was some good news in the form of the postie delivering some Silfor tufts and stuff that will go on the Dux Bellorum bases (hopefully you will see the first base tomorrow) and a copy of Roy Conyers Nesbit's The Battle For Burma. I was really chuffed with this as I picked it up brand new off Amazon for under a tenner.

I have only managed to scan through the book but it is chock full of photos from the fighting in Burma, including some of the Chinese army. The book is a basic history but it seems to cover all participants, including the Chinese, not just the British, so it should prove a good starting point for a future wargames project in the CBI (China-Burma-India) theatre. I have some other books on Burma coming in addition to this, good job SWMBO is away for a couple of days! :-)

(Dux Bellorum Month) Enter the Beast!

After some internet browsing I think I have come across some suitable riders for the Irish army, Griping Beast's Scots-Irish Mounted Ceithern. Of course it would be stupid to order just one pack of miniatures... ;-)

Gripping Beast Mounted Ceithern

Looking to maximise the postage I have also decided to order a couple of Romano-British cavalry to fill the gaps and a box of the new plastic Dark Age Warriors.

Gripping Beast Dark Age Warriors

I don't really need the Dark Age Warriors but as I already have the Gripping Beast plastic Vikings and Saxons insulating the loft I am considering using them to raise Late Saxon and Norse Sea Raider armies for Dux Bellorum. Each box should provide pretty much all that is needed, but the unarmoured generic Dark Age Warriors will fill any requirements for skirmishers, bow, unarmoured spear etc.

The Forgotten Army of World War Two...

The British 14th Army in Burma is often referred to as The Forgotten Army, and given the level of awareness of the efforts of British forces in Europe and North Africa it is an understandable monicker. However there is another army even more forgotten (especially by wargamers) WW2 army and that is the Chinese.

When I was buying the Revell Japanese for a Far East Battlefield Evolution: World at War platoon I gave some thought to a suitable opponent. Having enjoyed Keane's book on Kohima, it is pretty much inevitable that it will be British and Imperial in Burma, it will also allow me to give some thought to raising a small Kings African Rifle force which is something I have wanted to do for a while.

However, the British were not the only allied troops in Burma and I've started to develop an interest in the Chinese contribution to the allied war effort, after all, they were the first to fight, engaging the Japanese in all out war in 1937.

Whilst I know some broad sweeps, Burma Road and all that, I soon realised how little I did know. Further, given the level of China's contribution to the Allied war effort they really are a forgotten army when it comes to wargaming! Ok, the Far East is not as popular as North West Europe, the Eastern Front or North Africa but how many companies make WW2 Chinese wargames figures? Quite...

In 20mm all I have found is one box of plastic miniatures from Caesar (kudos to them) so I have snapped up a set to form the core of a 1944 Chinese platoon to fight the Japanese. They used a lot of Allied equipment and uniforms so they will be bulked out with some British and American troops, with some head swaps to reflect the mix and match nature of the Chinese.

Not sure when I will get around to the Far East, but the stockpiling has started!

Ray Harryhausen RIP

I've just read the sad news that Ray Harryhausen has passed away, age 92.

Famous for his stop motion effects, his work was central to some of my favourite films growing up and formed an important role in developing my love of the fantasy genre.

Jason and the Argonauts, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Clash of the Titans may not be the best movies ever made, but they had some of the best monsters in them!

The world is slightly less fantastic with his passing...

(Dux Bellorum Month) Romano-British Bowmen

Despite the lure of a hot sunny day I slaved over a hot painting desk to crack on with the first Dux Bellorum figures! ;-) Ok, truth be told I popped inside occasionally from some R&R in the garden to paint the six Romano-British bow (the hot weather was a boon as I took the miniatures out to dry in the hot sun!)

The miniatures are Old Glory, they're not going to win any prizes and a couple of the faces are down right ugly (though as SWMBO said, perhaps they were ugly people!)

I haven't finished the movement base yet but the figures are done.

(Dux Bellorum Month) The Inevitable Basing Conundrum

I am sure wargamers spend as much time pondering how to base their wargames figures as they do playing with them. Dux Bellorum is one of those cases in point as basing is not that important as long as they have the same widths (which is also the measuring unit in the game).

I had decided I wanted to get maximum use of the miniatures in other games with Brytenwalda being a skirmish game I fancy trying one day. Figures for that are individualy based.

Logic dictates then that sabot bases are the way to go, but how to base the individual miniatures? Some people use 1 pence pieces, some 2 pence. Looking at the models, the Old Glory would go on 1p's, but not the more dramatically posed West Wind.

To thrown an additional spanner in the works I decided I would also like to be able to use the figures in fantasy games such as WHFB as they would make for good fantasy humans (that effectively ruled out the round base in sabot option).

And of course it would be useful to ensure they could be used in Dux Britanniarum if needed!

After a lot of procrastinating I came to a decision! :-)

WHFB dictated that the infantry needed to be based on 20mm x 20mm squares and cavalry on 25mm x 50mm. I had decided that Shieldwall elements would have eight figures and cavalry three so an 80mm base width was the obvious size. Inspired by the sabot idea I decided to create mini-movement trays for the figures. Infantry ones are 80mm by 40mm, cavalry 80mm by 50mm.

For eight miniature infantry units the figures drop in the base. for four or six figure units I intend to drop in empty slotta-bases (maybe with a rock or discarded shield on) to fill the gaps. For the bow above I have cut one slotta-base in two to add some variety.

For the cavalry I inserted some 2.5mm wide plastic rod in between figures to ensure the base width is 80mm not 75.

Overall I am quite happy with this solution, it seems to answer all the issues I considered and allows the miniatures to be used in a variety of different types of game going forward...

(Dux Bellorum Month) The Irish Army

To be honest out of all the armies in the Dux Bellorum rulebook, the Irish would probably have been bottom of my list, but I was given a pile of miniatures so it would be churlish not to paint them...

The Irish Army looks like this:

Foot Companion - 1 unit (6 miniatures)
Noble Warriors - 4 units (6 miniatures per unit)
Ordinary Riders - 1 unit (3 miniatures per unit)
Foot Skirmishers - 4 units (4 miniatures per unit)

I don't have any miniatures for the Ordinary Riders and need to hunt down something suitable...

(Dux Bellorum Month) The Saxon Army

From out of the east, across the sea they came...

The Dux Bellorum Saxon army looks like this:

Foot Companion - 1 unit (6 miniatures)
Noble Warriors - 3 units (6 miniatures per unit)
Ordinary Warriors - 4 units (6 miniatures per unit)

I've not gone with the Shieldwall option as I wanted my Saxons to be more of a raiding force than a proper army. I probably could have done with some Noble Riders but didn't have any suitable figures.

(Dux Bellorum Month) The Romano-British Army

I managed to grab five minutes today to hunt down the Dux Bellorum armies (not where I thought I'd left them!) and split them up into three. I also found a couple of packs of Old Glory Carolingians amongst them!

The Romano-British army looks like this:

Mounted Companion - 1 unit (3 miniatures)
Noble Riders - 3 units (3 miniatures per unit)
Ordinary Shieldwall - 3 units (8 miniatures per unit)
Bow - 1 unit (6 miniatures)

Army composition has been driven by what I had miniatures wise rather than any great tactical nous on my part.

I am short one miniature for the Mounted Companion base, one rider for a Noble Rider unit and one Shieldwall foot. Rather than get too anal about this I am thinking that I should not worry that the bases don't contain the exact number of figures as long as it is clear what they are.

May is... Dux Bellorum Month!

After a couple of months in the twentieth century it is time for a change of pace and set the time machine to the Age of Arthur!

I've always wanted to do the Arthurian period ever since I saw this wonderful picture by Richard Scollins in Military Modelling back in the eighties.*

I picked up a few packs of Foundry Arthurian figures a few years back and the excellent WAB book but it was really too big a project, even if the Romano-British would make for excellent fantasy humans as well.

Mike Baumann donated a box of Old Glory Arthurian figures to the cause a couple of years back but it was the publication of Osprey's Dux Bellorum last year that proved the spur.

The game only requires armies of around 50 miniatures a side so I dug out Mike's figures to see what I had and what I needed to get to finish them off. Luckily West Wind had a sale on so I was able to fill the gaps quite easily. Unfortunately due to pack composition I am the odd figure short here and there but I am sure I can find some spares or proxies.

So I have a nice pile of unpainted white metal, enough to make a Romano-British army, a Saxon army and an Irish army. The target this month is to finish at least two of them...

* Richard Scollins is a bit of a pain on this front, I always had a niggling urge to dabble in the American War of Independence after he did some fantastic illustrations for an article on Guildford Court House - I am NOT looking at the Perry plastics though, honest!

(WWII Month) For You Tommy, Ze Month Is Over...

So WWII Month comes to the end with a wimper not a bang...

My four Hanomags now have a Dunkelgelb coat on but will not be finished this month and the Soviets still await a painted tank or lorry... However, on the plus side I painted 37 German infantry so now have German and Soviet infantry platoons painted up which is good - and a Kübelwagen let's not forget!

I intend to continue the project in between others as the Soviet vehicles are not going to be that challenging (green, green and more green...) and the German half-tracks are part way done and will only take a couple more hours all told (excluding drying time).

All in all, quite pleased with how WWII Month has gone even if the final week was a bit of a loss.

Defiance - At Long Last, A Proper SF Show?

I caught up with the first episode of SyFy's new SF TV show Defiance last night and overall was very impressed. Set on a terraformed Earth, thirty years after an alien invasion it was an interesting mish-mash of post-apocalyptic Western and classic SF series. For anyone who enjoyed the film or TV seris Alien Nation, the influence of Rockne S. O'Bannon can be clearly seen, especially the use of alien languages.

The Votan arrive - the airliner gives an idea of scale!

The series is being developed in conjunction with the producers of a MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) and as the story develops on the TV, so will the game to reflect it. Whilst not a MMOG player I do think this is very clever and allows the gamer to feel part of a developing arce in a rather unique way. Also some of the things seen in the MMOG will make for great TV!

Something big and alien getting shot in the MMOG

The pilot episode was rather grand with massive spaceships, a whole raft of aliens with interesting traits (and weapons!), a massive alien automaton army, weird alien flora and fauna and Max Max style alien bikers; all good stuff! Ok, the CGI did wobbly on occasion but one could forgive that given the scope and amount of effort that went into the entire production.

The robotic Volge from the TV series

Overall, given the dearth of decent SF that actually looks suitably alien and fantastical on TV, this is a series well worth checking out and could be quite inspiring for SF wargamers.

The Volge on the march...