Lazy Saturday Afternoon

 After a beautiful morning walk under a very blue sky, your humble author has had a lazy afternoon watching the snow filled clouds roll in. No battles have been fought, however, as a wise man said, "A little exercise on the parade square is the next best thing to a game."

  

General Chatter oversees the Parade.

The band leading the Airfix Guardsmen are actually some late 1960s Hong Kong "replicas". Hugh Walter discusses them in detail HERE so I won't say more than I rather like them. They remind me of the sort of bright plastic things that a child might have received from a Department Store Father Christmas (Santa Claus) back in the 60s, Though cheap and tacky they were probably played with a great deal more than the more expensive stuff! 

There will hopefully be more of these chaps on parade in the future as Army Blue want a band as well now.

As always, please excuse the terrible painting/photography.

Stay safe everyone!

New Year's Message

 

A quick message to wish everyone a (belated) Happy New Year. Thanks very much for the comments during a very trying 2020. Lets hope things improve in the not too dim and distant future.

In case you think I'm resting, there are a couple of posts over on my One Hour Wargames blog (HERE) that you may not have seen (or have chosen to ignore!)

Best Wishes

More from General Chatter

Little activity at the front

General Chatter consults the Campaign map

Another month with little hobby activity to report; a few photos of recently painted figures follow.

 A copse* of Ents (and other treeoids)

(* I suspect the collective noun for Ents ought to be a Moot)

Minifigs ME37 Large Ent circa 1973

Minifigs VFW24 Tree with arms and face circa 1978

Games Workshop Ent - can't remember when I acquired this!

More Elhiem Figures

A few more of Elhiem's 20mm fantasy figures came too close to my paint brush.

I have a lot of time for the Druidic Wizard type (furthest to the right) and the Female Elf warrior (2nd from the left) is rather good too.

New board

Finally, a new board for 2mm Portable War games was painted on Christmas Eve. I hope to play a game on it before this year is finished (though as it's 2020, who knows what will happen next). The inspiration for this board was Martin Smith's painted chess board that was featured on Bob Cordery's post HERE.

Stay Safe and Well! 

General Chatter

 

General Chatter's "Despatches from the Rear"

(General Chatter is residing in a comfy, requisitioned Mansion, half a day's ride from the action.)

There is very little to report on the Hobby Front. Since the end of the last Campaign there has been a severe lack of gaming, due mainly to tedious work related matters, and the continuing over-crowding here at Chez Maudlin (caused by the return of my son due to all things Covid).

I attach a couple of items that may be of interest:

A 50+ Year Old Misconception

It was quite rightly pointed out to me some months ago that I have been using the Airfix ACW running figure incorrectly. For the last  fifty something years, I have assumed that the running figure in both the Union and Confederate sets was an ordinary soldier who, due to a whim of the sculptor, was waving his hand in the air. The misconception was made clear when I was advised that this figure represented a Sergeant as he had a sword.

Looking more closely at the figures it's true that, what I took to be an over long bayonet is a sword! Suddenly the arm waving makes sense; "Follow me men!" Once this had been made apparent, my units of running men seemed to lack something. Fortunately, Jacklex figures come to the rescue with the running infantry men from Jack Alexander's wonderful 20mm ACW range. Please try to ignore the terrible painting / photography!

See the sword? I didn't try to paint stripes on his tunic for obvious reasons.

Some Adventurous Types

Elhiem Figures have started producing a range of Fantasy figures in 20mm. Yes! 20mm, my favourite figure size. I have started daubing paint on some of them as can be seen in the following picture which includes an old Revell 1/72nd figure and a Valdemar figure for size comparison. The idea is to possibly play some skirmish type games with these.

From Left to right we have, Colm the Conqueror (Barbarian Hero), Geoffrey the Green (Wizard), Nobby "Two Knives" Longleaf (Halfling Assassin) all from Elhiem, then Wayland the Wanderer (Ne'r-do-well and teller of tall tales) from Valdemar, and finally Vincent the Valiant (Pantomime Hero) Revell Normans set. Again, please excuse the painting. More to follow in this line, eventually!

End of Communication. Stay safe everyone! 

Links: Jacklex ACW figures, Elhiem Figures

Ghosts of Projects Past #2

 Recent nautical posts by David Crook reminded me of a 6mm project that I started years ago. It was going to be a sort of Victorian Colonial / SciFi affair, some of which was going to take place in Africa, and involved a river war between the British Empire and a sinister foreign power (plus, naturally, some steam powered flying machines). Among the models I started making was this proto-type Iron clad. She was balsa wood with plastic tube for funnels and a plastic plug for a gun turret with a cocktail stick gun. The SS Certain Catastrophe. God bless all whole venture aboard.

Ghosts of Projects Past #1

Whilst searching through folders of old digital photos, I came across a stash of wargaming images that reminded me of some past projects that never really got off the ground. As I'm not getting any gaming done at the moment, I thought I might share these instead! (Sounds a bit lazy, I know!)

I've Labelled these ImagiNotions as they never really got to be formal Imagi-Nations as such.  

The folder that held the following images was labelled Mediochia, which kind of summed up some things.

This project featured a mix of 18th and 19th Century soldiers, and some of these figures were brought out of retirement for the recent Red/Blue Campaign.

Defending a village

View across a ploughed field

Attack!

Army Blue Line Infantry

Triumphal parade of Blue's Guards

The (very) Old Guard

An Unfortunate Oversight leads to defeat

 

The next game on my One Hour Wargames blog - click this link https://btohw.blogspot.com/2020/08/scenario-12-unfortunate-oversight.html