Always Look On The Bright Side

We were supposed to be away this weekend enjoying ourselves with a picnic somewhere in Northumbria with the grandchildren, however one has been stricken with a mystery illness and as we have a large family gathering next weekend we have decided not to take a chance. Tentatively I broached the subject that if we now had no plans for tomorrow then I could possibly have a game, or not, not that bothered really, what do you think? I got the green light which has depleted my store of brownie points somewhat but hey, three weekends on the trot, now that is worth unloading a few.

I am going to try out that 'Open Range' gunfight scenario I thought up on the hoof a week or so back, if it works I am hoping to also fit in the Dalton gang bank robberies at Coffeyville, Kansas.

As well as drawing maps I also do the odd bit of indexing for Helion if they are stuck, I was too busy so my wife did it. The book however was very intriguing, it looked at attitudes to WWI, the interwar years and WWII and even with a quick look over the missus' shoulder it immediately caught my interest. I am an admirer of modern historians like Gary Sheffield, Gordon Corrigan and John Terraine who look at WWI with their heads and not their hearts. Brian Bond seems to have slipped my net, the book in question is due out on 15th September and is called "Liddell Hart to Joan Littlewood" take a note and look out for it.

I also had to do some research for some 1948 "Jewish War of Independence" maps, a period about which I have not a clue, it was not good reading, one thing led to another and I spent a couple of hours reading up on the subject, admittedly in a general manner, but enough to never feel the need to wargame it. Do you have something you wouldn't wargame? I remember years ago at Claymore seeing a naval game based on the Falklands which had ended the previous year and feeling a bit queasy over it, especially being ex-Navy and having a brother-in-law lose his ship from under him. About the same time I appeared on a BBC Radio Scotland show as they wanted to do a piece on wargaming, not the best thing to showcase on radio where you can't see anything, and a researcher asked me if we wargamed Northern Ireland, needless to say she was put in the picture rather sharpish and the question did not arise. Which is just as well as I 'froze' in front of the mic and can only remember babbling incoherently, but I got a tenner for it. On the other hand I am quite willing to pile up the bodies of my Romano-British, Saxons, Yanks and Rebs without a second thought, it's a funny old world.


I am painting again, albeit at a slow pace, but I am sure things will pick up once I get the horses finished.