No Plan Is A Bad Plan...

Another knock on the door this morning and another delivery by the postie - this time a copy of Warwick Kinrade's Normandy Firefight rules picked up from one of North Star's increasing irresistible special offers - my credit card curses you Nick Eyre! :-)

Flicking through them I started mentally working this out as a project, thinking about the 1/35th stuff in the attic etc when I had a "hold the horses" moment. What the hell was I doing?! Yes, this looks all very inspiring but so do the 101 other projects partially started and not finished.

Looking back at when I have actually managed to get things done my project of the month approach seems to have been the most successful so I have decided for the remainder of 2012 I will follow the following plan:

August is Athenians:

I have two hoplite phalanxes 80% completed, plus a unit of undercoated peltasts and some untouched heavy cavalry. I am away working next week but have the last two weeks off and the plan is to work through the Athenians in order.

September is Orcs:

My WHFB2 project stalled badly as I got seduced by eBay and started bidding and buying old Chronicle, Grenadier and Citadel orcs. I will now go back to Plan A which is to paint what I have to provide a decent OPFOR for Saul's Dwarves. I also have a unit of undercoated Dwarf Rangers converted a few years back that need painting so I might include these in the month's painting for a little variety.

October is Zulus:

I have made up the Zulu starter army I bought a little while back but have got carried away and bought some "bargains" off eBay to give me enough figures for ten Zulu regiments. This is going to be a "dip" project and quite boring after a while but the idea is to get them all done in one go.

November is Persians:

Since writing about the "Clown Army" I have picked up a couple of Osprey Campaign titles with artwork by Peter Dennis. His Persian "look" and that of Rick Scollins seems much more achievable and realistic. I need to work out an army with what I have and probably need to purchase some more models for a unit of Immortals, some more cavalry and possibly some subject troops but this will require some research and I may just concentrate on the four Sparabara/archer units and box of cavalry that I have.

December is American Civil War:

I have the Bickley rules, I have the Perry infantry and cavalry, ok I need some artillery, but all this project needs is a coat of paint.

Well that is the plan and whilst no plan survives contact with the enemy it seems a better approach than no plan at all...

The Great Clown Army of Ancient Persia

"I must stop going off at a tangent and get back to the Orcs and Zulus..." And almost a month later I am, of course, still off on that tangent. July was pretty much a bust hobby wise (the only painting I have done of late is my Mother's storage room) and I need to re-focus my efforts in August.


I have stuck together one unit of the Wargames Factory Persians and with a little effort they can be made to look really nice, I undercoated them last week and have been pondering painting them. I picked up the Osprey Elite Persian Army book on the cheap and must say I'm really disappointed. Not only is the bulk of the book descriptive text of the colour plates (rather than just the last few pages as normal), the plates are almost exclusively Immortal regiments not the full army.

Persian Infantry on campaign in Greece according to Osprey...

The text is also unconvincing, the author states that Persian units quite probably wore uniforms but the only source evidence he gives is of troops being given cloaks of the same colour. On top of this the plates are ridiculously colourful. I know the Greeks said the Persians were colourful but not only do most of the troops wear yellow and purple (two of the rarest colours in the ancient world) they are so bright, colourful and wearing intricately patterned clothing they look more like clowns than pre-industrial troops on campaign with elongated supply chains.


By dint of some Google-fu I have found copies of all the Richard Scollins plates from Duncan Head's out of print The Achaemenid Persian Army which show  much more realistic colour look to the Persian infantry, even of some of the patterned cloth is pretty daunting from a painting point of view (and I am still slightly dubious that this would be common for run of the mill infantry if a uniform look was the case).

Persian Infantry on campaign in Greece according to Scollins...

Quite where this leaves me I'm not 100% sure. I think I will pretty much ignore the Osprey book and use the Scollins illustrations plus some pages on the Achamenid Persians I have found on the internet, especially this page by the Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies which includes some interesting information on colour dyes from the time. Overall I think I need to follow the same basic principles with the hoplites and make sure I tone down the brightness so I don't end up with an army of clowns...

Indian Mutiny Memorial...

Been somewhat tied up with the real world, but I thought you might like to see a photo I took of a memorial for those that fell as part of the Second Battalion, Military Train during the Indian Mutiny which can be found in the cloisters of Bristol Cathedral.

Pondering Persians...

Well my Wargames Factory prize turned up this week. As suspected HMRC decided to have its cut and together with what USPS decided to take out of it the $100 voucher has effectively turned into $25 - ho hum! As I would have bought the Samurai Cavalry anyway I wasn't too annoyed and at the end of the day it is a pile of free miniatures which you can't turn your nose up at...

Now to decide what to do with the figures, and indeed find out a little bit more about what they are supposed to be. I found a couple of useful blogs with posts on the Wargames Factory figures and Persians in general, namely Grimsby Wargaming and Satrap Miniatures. This has lead me to deciding to organise the models into at least four Sparabara/archer units with three ranks of eight infantry.

Of course by buying the Persian Infantry sprue bundles, whilst escaping having any of the terrible kneeling figure that is in the boxed set, I have a 50/50 make up of spear and bow when what I really need is one-third/two-thirds in favour of archers. I have 12 spare infantry which gives me another six bows plus some from the cavalry box set I have but I will be a few bows short. Nor sure what I am going to do but there may be some crafty use of hand weapon armed troops in the rear ranks if I can't get hold of more bow arms. That said I will need to buy some more cavalry at some stage which will free up some more bows so...

Whilst I wasn't planning to go down the Persian route, looking at some of the subject troops, the old Vendel Egyptian Marines for example, there is more variety than I thought and they would make a great Men of the East style fantasy army as well as being able to crush the impertinent Greeks.

Anyway I must stop going off at a tangent and get back to the Orcs and Zulus...

Tankfest 2012

Saul and I went to Tankfest 2012 at the Bovington Tank Museum yesterday and, despite catching the sun to such an extent that I am doing a great impression of a beetroot today, we had a great day out. I think Saul's comment that "they seem even bigger when they're moving" really encapsulated the experience, the noise, dust and smell of diesel adding to the day.

There were lots of tanks, armoured cars, APC's recovery vehicles etc on show and whilst I have posted a few here, there are more on my Facebook page here if you fancy some more "tank porn".

In addition there were a number of WW1 and WW2 re-enactment groups including some equipped as Russians (which made a nice change from the endless German re-enactment groups). The WW1 lads got the opportunity to put on a mock battle complete with the replica Mark IV and dogfighting planes above which was very entertaining even if we got coated in a layer of choking dust from the explosions of the replica 1916 artillery barrage!

Vehicle wise I know everyone raves about "The Tiger" and yes, it is great to see it running (though personally I'd like to see a Panzer III), but my highlight was the wonderfully eccentric Matilda I running around the area. Definitely the ugly duckling out of the whole pond, but I like it!

Overall a great day and I'd recommend it to anyone, it certainly is better to see tanks moving (or being towed in the unfortunate Black prince's case) than sat on display in a shed under artificial lights...

Armed Forces Day 2012

Today is UK Armed Forces Day 2012, when we celebrate Britain's armed forces past and present. Fortunately my son-in-law is safely at home this year (well probably on the golf course) not having to contend with Libyan rockets or dishonest politicians as in previous years so I have turned my thoughts to the past.

I recently did some genealogy research of the Blease line, managing to get back ten generations I did discover that whilst most of my family had been shipwrights in the Merchant Navy some relatives had joined the army.

Two cousins of my Grandfather (born 1905) served in the Great War, George Blease (born in 1893) and Charles Blease (born in 1897).

George volunteered for service, joining The King's (Liverpool) Regiment in September 1916. Unfortunately he had never been a well individual suffering regular bouts of illness in his civilian job as a clerk. Initially he served as a clerk for the Regiment assisting in recruitment before transferring to the Labour Corps in April 1917, initially the 551st Company, then the 555th. Neither saw service outside the UK but reading George's medical history, that eventually led to him being discharged from military service in September 1918, I could not help be proud that despite being physically unfit he tried to do his bit.

His younger brother, Charles, also joined the The King's (Liverpool) Regiment, serving in the 4th (Extra Reserve) Battalion that served in France from 1915. Like many soldiers who served in the Great War, Charles' service records appear to have been destroyed by German bombing in WW2 and the only surviving record of his service is his gravestone in the Villers-Guislain Communal Cemetery. However from this I was able to find his service number and unit details, and from that was able to track down a copy of the 4th Battalion's War Diary.

The diary is fascinating reading but extremely sobering, especially when I came to the entry for 21st September 1918; "Fine - Battalion sends forward fighting patrols to assist attack made by (unclear)  -Casualties, 1 killed, 6 wounded 4 missing - 3 ors leave to UK." That one killed was Charles Blease.

Unfortunately I did not have this information when I was in France last year, which is a shame as the grave is only a few miles from Albert which Saul and I visited, but when we return to France we plan to make a visit.

Whether there are any other relatives that served in the World Wars (outside the Merchant Navy), I have yet to ascertain. My Grandfather was one of twelve children and his cousins had several brothers and sisters themselves so it seems likely. Unfortunately there are big gaps in the online records, (especially birth, marriage and death records) so some family lines just peter out and odd names cannot be confirmed as to being relatives...

An example of this is Corporal Albert Blease who served with the King's Regiment in Burma being killed in action in January 1944. Albert is a very common name in the Blease line but I cannot trace his birth or baptism records, so despite being of the correct age to have been a son of one of my Grandfather's brothers or his cousins we will probably never know.

Regardless I think it is appropriate to remember his service today, as well as that of Charles and George and any other family members who did their bit to preserve our nation's freedom.

Spending My Winnings...

Flush with my $100 voucher I sat down on the Wargames Factory website last night plotting what to spend it on before encountering a major problem - USPS postage rates. A few months back I'd looked at buying some of Wargames Factory's Horse Sprue Bundles (an excellent 12 horses for just $3.50) but baulked at the shipping costs that was more than the cost of the models.

I had a similar problem last night, shipping from the US isn't cheap and once the parcel gets over a certain weight (4 pounds) it is phenomenal. In the end almost half my voucher went towards the USPS postage charge! I'm not blaming Wargames Factory, the USPS costs are what they are, but it was a shock.

So what did I go for in the end? Well determined to make best use of the voucher I went with the old communist maxim of 'quantity has a quality all of its own' and ordered three of Horse Sprue Bundles to use to make some more centaurs and eight of the Persian Infantry bundles (12 infantry figures for just $2.40). I am not sure whether they will be painted up as Persians (I never planned to expand the Greek project to include the Persian Wars), fantasy Middle-Eastern types or even Martians (see here). I also added a box of the new Samurai Cavalry...

Whilst the postage costs took a little of the gloss of spending the voucher I'm taking a pragmatic view in that I've a box of 96 infantry, 12 cavalry and 36 horses crossing the Atlantic which cost me just $0.06 (the extra I had to pay over the voucher!)

Amusingly I received a shipping email from Wargames Factory tonight with my USPS shipping reference number. Entering it on the USPS website a message flashed up: "Your item was delivered at 3:08 pm on March 29, 2011". Obviously the ability of USPS to travel backwards in time is reflected in what they charge! :-)

And The Winner Is...

Remember the old military maxim "no plan survives contact with the enemy"?, well for wargamers that should read "no project survives contact with shiny new figures". Despite only having the shields to finish on two phalanxes of hoplites I've been distracted sticking Zulus together. Unfortunately the FLGS didn't have the can of brown spray I needed to paint the first couple of regiments otherwise you'd be reading posts about UThulwana and InGobamakhosi!

Anyway despite rapidly getting nowhere you may remember the Cenaturides I made last month. Well as suggested I sent the picture into Wargames Factory and I was chuffed to find out today that they won Best Cavalry Unit in the Wargames Factory Mash-Up competition which apparently means I have $100 to spend in their webstore (just in time for the new Samurai cavalry!).

Some of the entries are really top quality and show a lot of creative thought (especially the Undead Samurai and Savage Orc), demonstrating what a flexible medium hard plastic for conversion projects.

Oh Dear...

The Zulu and British starter armies turned up today - that's a lot of plastic! To compound the issue I made the mistake of going on eBay and enthusiasm got the better of me...

I now own 288 Zulus, 84 British line, 20 Natal Native Contingent and some odds and sods - oh dear...

Happy Birthday Donald Duck!

Apparently it is Donald's 78th birthday today so I thought we'd celebrate with a collection of films showing his wartime service...













And his Oscar winning 1942 anti-Nazi propoganda film Der Fuehrer's Face:

Steady In The Ranks!!!

I caught myself badly infected with "shinyitis" last night, filling my shopping basket on Amazon with lots of "must have" books on the Zulu War. I'd just finished reading Saul David's Great Battle: The Battle of Isandlwana e-Book and having spent far too long on Empress Miniatures looking at some of the Imperial volunteer and auxiliary units I felt Ian Knight's Osprey Elite British Forces in Zululand, 1879, would be a good volume to have. Ian Castle's Osprey MAA Zulu Wars: Volunteers, Irregulars and Auxiliaries also looked very useful but £50 for an OOP Osprey is too much. I then caught myself and emptied the rapidly filling shopping basket which not only was adding a hefty bill to what I plan to be a relatively small, self-contained project, but also realising I hadn't bothered to even check what books I had on the subject!

I knew I had a copy of Donald R. Morris' The Washing of the Spears and thought Ian Knight's Brave Men's Blood spotted on Amazon looked familiar (it was, I already had it) but I also discovered (or should that be re-discovered) a useful mini-collection of Anglo-Zulu War books I had collected years ago when I was first interested in subject.

So in addition to the two volumes above I also already have:

Osprey MAA57 The Zulu War by Angus McBride
The Zulu War by Michael Barthorp
The South African Campaign of 1879 by J.P.Mackinnon and S.H.Shadbolt
Captain Carey's Blunder by Donald Featherstone

As well as some generic colonial volumes including useful sections on the war:

The Colonial Wars Sourcebook by Philip J. Haythornwaite
Victorian Colonial Warfare - Africa by Donald Featherstone
Front Line Artists by Peter Johnson

Ok, I did go back to Amazon to pick up a second hand copy of Saul David's Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879, as it is a bit of a revisionist history, but I have decided that I really don't need to add to the library (especially when I also have a few books on the First Boer War and they'd make a useful third force who can fight both the British and the Zulus...)

Usuthu! Usuthu!

Back in 1979 I went on a scout camp to Llangynidr, the highlight being a a visit to the South Wales Borders museum on a day trip to Brecon. I can't remember a great deal about the small, musty museum but I think it had a number of Zulu shields and weapons. I did buy some photos of paintings of the Zulu War including the two De Neuville paintings of Coghill and Melvill's attempt to rescue the colours of the 24th which adorned the back of my childhood bedroom door along with a print of Fripp's Battle of Isandhlwana.

A few years later I considered wargaming the period buying a pile of 15mm Minifigs, some Hovels Kraal huts and joining the Victorian Military Society but the idea waned as no one else was interested.

Fast forward thirty odd years and with a birthday present of some cash from my Mum and Warlord hosting a 20% off boxed sets for the Jubilee I decided that I would splash out on a British and a Zulu plastic starter army. This means I am going to find it hard to argue I haven't broken my 'no new periods' rule but I am considering the redcoats doing double duty on Mars and the Zulus maybe popping over the Middle Earth as warriors from Far Harad so....

Rules wise I have not set my focus on anything. I have some ideas of what I'd like to do. I am considering sabot basing the figures so I can using them individually for skirmishes like The Sword and the Flame and element based for larger scale games.

I might have a look at what was done in Black Powder but my gut feeling is leaning me towards modifying David Manley's Don't Throw That Bloody Spear At Me Sudan rules maybe with a Pony Wars style random Zulu generator. I have David Bickley's Washing of the Spears which seem to fit the bill with a Zulu generator but does suffer from being one of the worst laid out sets of rules in recent years which makes them hard to follow (as well as having some gaps such as references to a Boer Army list that begin half way through the rules then disappear by the end). I might give them another look though as his ACW rules published by Foundry seemed fun enough in an old school way.

Whatever, there will be no rush, the snap purchase was to take advantage of the 20% off sale and I have no plans to start working on the figures before the autumn, immediate plans are to finish the Athenians, Orcs and start the Spartans over the summer (if we get one). I'll also need to watch Zulu and Zulu Dawn a few more times!

Another Year Older...

Celebrating being another year older today, SWMBO has come up trumps with my Airfix Spitfire birthday cake (available from Sainsbury's) which I think is pretty cool. I was a bit disappointed it didn't contain a real Airfix Spitfire but I suppose somebody would try and eat it...

Present wise no white metal or plastic but some great DVD's including a five set box of Kurosawa Samurai films and a Cthulhu Mythos Encyclopedia which should all be useful from a gaming point of view. Saul recorded me a song!

Centaurides

Ever since Foundry released their Ancient Greek range many years back now I have had an itch that needed scratching. No, not hoplites or the 300, but Centaurs. I'm not 100% sure why, I would guess it might originate with the Centaur model that came in the Citadel Runequest box set, whatever I have had this itch to take some hoplites and convert them into centaurs for sometime.

Anyhow having impulsively purchased the Wargames Factory Amazons at Salute it occurred to me being hard plastic, the upper bodies of the amazons could be used with some plastic horses to make some Centaurs (or more accurately Centaurides as they are female).

For the horses I used those from the Wargames Factory Persian Cavalry set (the horse sprues are available separately direct from the manufacturer but overseas postage scuppered the idea of buying them direct), and quite minimal filling was needed to merge the Amazon torsos with the horse bodies. The horses are four part, head, tail and two body halves so it was a simple job to make the horses sans heads and add the Amazon bodies. The Amazons are one piece bodies so the legs needed snipping off but this meant that the pelvic area could be utilised to form the connection with the horse parts.

The heads, shields and weapons all come from the Amazon box which is chock full of extras (the peltast shields have been added to some Foundry figures for a forthcoming Athenian unit), the only non Wargames Factory bits are the slotta bases and shield decals from Warlord.

Overall I am very happy with them, the only problem is that I have no real plan regarding use, though that Tribes of Legend looks interesting...

633 Squadron Author Dies

I was saddened today to find out that Frederick E. Smith, author of 633 Squadron and numerous other books died earlier this month of a heart attack aged 93. A good innings, it was disappointing to find his passing so poorly reported, indeed all I could find was this article in the Bournemouth Echo here.

Whilst most of us will have seen the film on numerous occasions and can hum the music, I really enjoyed the series of 633 Squadron books Smith wrote over the years (the last as recently as 2007). All are quite good reads, have some great ideas for games and are well worth checking out:

633 Squadron (1956); Operation Rhine Maiden (1975); Operation Crucible (1977); Operation Valkyrie (1978); Operation Cobra (1993); Operation Titan (1994); Operation Crisis (1995); Operation Thor (1995); Operation Defiant (1996) and Operation Safeguard (2007).

Athenian Psiloi

Hurrah! Painted figures!! :-)

I managed to grab a few minutes today to finish off the fourteen Foundry psiloi for my Athenian army for the Peloponnesian War project I started last year (unfortunately missing the deadline of Saul's Classics GCSE which is next week! Still he is hoping to continue the subject at A Level so that should give me another two years to finish it...).

I had intended to make all the army up using Immortal Miniatures but they went off the grid around the time I painted the first two Hoplite phalanxes so after waiting a couple of months I availed myself of a pile of Foundry light infantry and cavalry off eBay - only for Warlord to announce their purchase of Immortal a week later...

I was a tad annoyed at the time but have concluded that the Immortal psiloi with their fur cloaks will provide a good contrast as Spartan skirmishers to the standard linen tunic look of the Foundry figures...

Painting was straight forward block painting using a limited palette of colours and then a coat of Army Painter 'soft tone' dip which I think has worked well. I also painted up the three Immortal musicians for the phalanxes which I forgot to do last year.

The remaining two Immortal Athenian Hoplite phalanxes have been painted and dipped, I just need to matt varnish them and paint the shields. Of course like any wargamer I am being tempted to expand what was a limited project by shiny new things, in this case the forthcoming Victrix plastic Athenians which should be out in time for my birthday and do look very nice...

The Sound Of (Ancient) War!

Apologies for the lack of wargaming posts of late, I have returned to the Athenians in a roundabout way and have been trying to finish off the two remaining hoplite phalanxes as well as doing some work on the psiloi and pelstats (including finding out what they were - I'm no ancients expert - and what the differences were!).

So hopefully some freshy painted joy soon. In the meantime I came across this wonderful video on YouTube of John Kenny playing the carnyx (the ancient celtic horn). I am sooo tempted to copy it, duplicate it a few times add a bit of barbarian cheering from Gladiator and play it when the celts are done and take to the table! :-)

Moon Nazis Need Our Help!

The producers of SF comedy Iron Sky (the one where the Nazis who have been hiding on the dark side of the moon since 1945 come back) have advised that the UK distributors have decided that the film will be shown in cinemas for just ONE day - Wednesday 23rd May.

Regardless of how good or not the film is, this is a complete kick in the teeth for independent film producers (and having seen the trailer and read reviews it is a good film and deserves better!).

The producers are asking people for their support by emailing the distribution company to express their dissatisfaction with the decision, hopefully you will, like me, add your name to the list...

Wargames Factory Revisited

I've eventually got around to playing with the Wargames Factory Amazons I picked up at Salute and the first observation is that detail and moulding wise they are a ten fold improvement on the first releases from the company with none of the soft detail that blighted the Republican Romans and other releases, giving the company such a bad rep.

Indeed I was so impressed with the Amazons that I picked up a box of Persian Cavalry to use in a conversion project (the horses are beautiful, the photo does not do them justice) and with a view to an Old Skool Warhammer Cathay/Nippon army some boxes of Ashigaru and Samurai. Like the Amazons the detail is very sharp and I am looking forward to clearing the decks to allow me to start sticking them together. The only challenge will be painting them, Samurai being a subject I have steered well away from over the years... :-)

ANZAC Day

Lest We Forget...