Musings on Wargaming and Life

With no games on and suffering from manflu for the best part of a week and a half, still not over it, things have been fairly dismal recently, much like the weather. We came back from my grandson's birthday tea on Saturday having managed to travel to Northumberland and back fairly safely despite the dire warnings, with his birthday so close to Christmas this is the beginning of a few weeks of indulgence for him, with my birthday so close to Christmas I used to get a stick.

I have managed to finish my first phalanx for the Seleucids, it hasn't taken as long as I thought but I am not 100% happy with it. The shield transfers I chose were a red star on white, well not quite white, so I mixed up something to blend it in with the outer rim of the shield, then once varnish was applied this stood out so I had to go over it again with a light wash of white. I don't like painting the linen armour and the pteruges and nearly every figure has them, I have tried giving them a wash then a drybrush over the top, it works to a certain degree. I also possibly made a mistake using so much white with this unit, white is a swine to paint, it always seems to need two or three coats.

Next up is the Guard phalanx, I intend to use far more colour with this one, especially purple, this should be easier to wash than the white. I have also taken delivery of super-superglue as used in model ship building and, according to a gent on FB, should stick instantly even the awkward Aventine Miniatures metal, we shall see.

I swallowed the hype for "Six Minutes in May" which is supposed to be about the bungled Norway Campaign and Churchill's part in it at the beginning of WWII, it is in fact more a political book than a military one but I wanted the latter not the former. I also ended up with two pristine, hardback copies, I tried to send one back but the seller has ignored me, so if anyone wants to send me the postage you can have a copy.

On my return from China, where the Opium War was mentioned more than a couple of times, I bought a book on it, but again it is mainly from the political view, and interesting as it is now that I have put it down I cannot pick it up again.

I jumped in once more last week and to cheer myself up I bought "Rome: A history in seven sackings" I had no sooner read the first page than I knew I had a winner, about time.
 

 I have just finished another few map projects and have been contacted to work on The Spanish-American War for the beginning of 2018 and the the Franco-Prussian War later in the year, both with an author I have already worked with, there is also some work to do on a tome about the Saxon army 1721-1815 and perhaps a start on the AWI Atlas. I have two which I hope to finish the year off with in the next week or so, Gallipoli and Iran-Iraq, the former awaits the authors OK and the other is 50% done. Looking good.