Black Monday

I have mentioned before that one of the things I like about the War and Conquest players I have met is their attention to detail, instead of plonking dice or whatever down next to units and generals they use small vignettes as rally points, Roman coins, monks, civilians or whatever suits the army as Strategy point markers and lately a nice mix of ideas for shieldwalls, I have shields held up against spears stuck in the ground. On my last outing I noticed Phil's, at least I think they were Phil's, markers for wounds to his generals and I liked them so much I have turned out some of my own.

As I await the tsunami of presents coming my way in December for birthday and christmas I have been tidying up odds and ends so that the decks are clear for the new army, no I can't do two things at once, I can't even read two books, it is one thing or another, no interruptions. I was given some palm trees a while back by Matt from the excellent Wargames Table blog and decided it was time to tart them up. I simply gave them a dry brush with a suitable colour in order to take off the plastic sheen and stuck them on to some bases I had in my bases bag, which up until recently was much larger than my lead mountain. Once dry I painted them desert yellow and glued some sharp sand to them, this is in keeping with the basing of my Romans, popped on some left over desert like tufts and hey presto. I was going to spray some matt varnish on the tops but decided to leave them as they were as they look lush and healthy.

I looked around on Friday to see if I could jump on the big sale price bandwagon and found nothing I wanted was discounted, so I spent some money today. I have topped up my paints, ordered metal spears and the figures for a Late Roman Auxilia unit from Footsore, this will be one of two, the shield transfers should be here shortly this only leaves the bases to get. In order for the missus not to give me grief I withdrew my royalties from the sale of my booklets this morning from Wargame Vault and they cover my purchases with a bit extra for more goodies.

More good news is that I have finished a 60 map project for a book called 'Lost Opportunity' dealing with the southern front in 1914 where the French Third and Fourth armies met the German Fourth and Fifth. I am now back on the Eastern Front in WWII with ten maps for an area I am unsure of as I have yet to look at the translations from the original Russian.