View From The WIndow

It's early and nothing stirs, not even the wind, no, there goes Irvine off to the church to commence his duties, Irvine has lived in the village all his life and is a local character, he was once one of my paperboys albeit he was in his 70's at the time. Even on a holiday he would be outside waiting from 6.15 which basically meant I had to get up early, it took several years before he changed to 6.30. Every now and then he brings us three boxes of eggs, I have no idea where he gets them but they are twice as big as the 'large' eggs you get in the supermarket and on many occasions they have two yolks in them. He takes nothing in return but now and again we give him a donation for the church, he has collected thousands of pounds over the years for the church.

Washington House is getting a make over, two ceilings are being replaced and of course once they were removed it was found the joists were rotten, so another job, and the damp problem which caused the damage to the ceilings has also to be fixed. On top of that the builder has to check with whoever has the last say on historic houses to make sure the work is certified. I believe the price has now come way down from the original, I suspect it will be a long time before I have new neighbours there.

Here in the UK you can sign an online petition and Parliament has to debate it if it gets so many signatures, 100,000 I think, anyway like everything to do with government seemingly that is not true, they can still make a decision not to debate if they really don't want to, it is only a promise to maybe debate the issue. I signed up for them to look again at having ring fenced 0.7% of our national wealth for overseas aid, I could say here that I have no problem with overseas aid but I do, I have read Private Eye, I also know that we give money to countries with nuclear weapons and space programmes, I also know that some of that money ends up in the hands of people who hate us. Anyway the upshot is that I got an email about the 'debate' sent to me and I popped on to see who had been standing up for me and the other 99,999 people who signed up. No one, every single person on the debate (not many it would seem from the transcript) was gushing in how magnanimous, kind and unselfish Britain is and how our standing in the world depended on giving money away willy nilly. Only one person complained and she was not against stopping the 0.7% just about where some part of it went, having been blanked several times she accused the man in charge that he "wilfully will not look at this" and that about sums up the 'debate'. Oh, and the 0.7% was not just plucked out of the blue in case you did not know, it is a UN figure which we have signed up to.

Once again the missus has decided not to watch the news with me because of my running commentary, but this time it was my fury at the man delivering the sports news. Normally I have switched off at that point but because the football is deemed more important than the normal schedule I have to suffer Granada Reports before the real news comes on, hence I am still in front of the box when the sports guy is there. And what is the problem which has caused uproar in the Anderson household, he holds a tablet! He stands there night after night clutching a tablet which he never looks at, why has he got that when he is reading off an autocue, is it to show Granada News is hip and with it and technologically savvy because there can be no other reason to hold the thing. The two at the desk also have abandoned their dust gathering laptops in favour of two more tablets, one each to ignore. Real newsreaders use ..... paper, they always end the night gathering it together, hitting the desk and arranging it in neat rectangles, you watch.

I am on Facebook, there I said it, but as usual I would like to add that I only ever look at wargame pages and of them there is only one I am interested in, the others are standby until an event happens. It really means I can look at nice photos of other peoples wee sojers and be .... wait ...... I'll get it ..... inspired, inspired to paint my stuff. But you get this rubbish on the side from Facebook and one intrigued me the other day, Bindi Irwin shared a photo of self wearing tank top. Who the hell is Bindi Irwin and what was she doing with a self wearing tank top, and why would anyone be interested, I just had to click. Bindi is the daughter of the late, annoying Steve Irwin and her job is TV Personality and she wore a tank top, when will this madness end.

This is Bindi Irwin.

Have you ever been pulled up for pronouncing food incorrectly, this is the latest fad to allow people to feel superior to you, do we really have so much spare time we have to take lessons in pronouncing espresso, Sriracha (?), Chipotle or Quinoa correctly. If I ask the girl at the deli to give me a piece of choreezo she and I both know what it is and I have no fear of being sent to the corner with a pointy hat on.

The big news this week of course was the murder of MP Joe Cox. The only thing more disgusting than the vile murder of Jox Cox is the frenzy surrounding the motive of the madman who perpetrated the act.

So, it is fathers day, I have opened my cards from my sons and enjoyed the well wishes from my grandchildren, my wife has promised to make me a fry up and you cannot beat a fry up to start the day. There are several gardens open to the public in the village today, and if the rain stays away I might pop around to look at a neighbours, I am not a gardener but I can appreciate a nice garden and it will also get me out of the house, that is if the rain stays away.

Phalanx 2016

I set off early this morning to Phalanx at St. Helens run by the local wargame club, the St. Helens Spartans, this is the third time I have been there and despite having the Satnav I still found it a chore to get to. I took the logical routes the last twice and got lost, this time I knew that if I went to J21A and turned right I would just be about there, I ignored the Satnav which told me to get off at J24 because I knew better, but I didn't. J24 she screamed, nope 21A then you can pick up from there, J23, no, J22 bloody well no, J21A off and took wrong turn, oops, although a Satnav cannot say "I told you so" I knew what she was implying. I obeyed her instructions on the way back.

I have some photos of the show, not many and they are rubbish, partly due to the lighting and partly due to me not being David Bailey, the lighting was bad, so bad I checked to see if I had on the right glasses when I walked through the door. I also think my camera needs resetting, I am sure I touched something at some point. Anyway first stop was The Last Valley, I got the long hedges I wanted but he had not brought any half lengths, so a tad disappointed I got some small tree's which will be perfect for an orchard, he knocked a couple of quid off the trees so fair enough. My last hope now is that my friend Matt will pick them up for me next month.

That done I decided to do the rounds of the traders before going any further, I got some bits and pieces and talked myself into getting that Marder and Achilles, I was lucky on the latter as they only had one as it is usually a mail order only piece, so a win there, but it was pricey.

I then stopped by to talk to Michael and Simon Curtis of 1st Corps and Curtey's miniatures, the lads should be at the next WAC gaming weekend and we may even cross swords. I saw some beautifully painted medieval archers on the stand along with some excellent Airborne jeeps and lo and behold they do squad packs of late war Germans and British, these too were nicely painted and had a lot of character. The Germans particularly intrigued me as they were late war and in shirt sleeves, so I bought a pack, a bit chunkier than the Artizan Germans, more akin to Black Tree, but perfect for the summer of '44, they are also working on adding more to their WWII range so I shall be keeping an eye on these. I will get a British squad later as well.

The games, there were quite a few but all looked more or less what you would expect on a club night, only the Sudan game stuck out for me. Only one person engaged me in conversation while I took my mostly useless photos and he was doing some weird modern game akin to Nato meets Chaos, not my thing but he was hard to get away from. I did another quick swoop at 11.15 hrs, I had been there an hour at that point and even then several tables had been abandoned or left with one uninterested punter sitting on the corner head buried in a new purchase.

Sudan 1

Sudan 2

Yes, brrrrr, Frostgrave again.

Ronin Hood.

This was beautiful

I keep promising myself to have a word with my next door neighbour as he is a photographer or at least get him to look at my camera, the array of settings just dazzles me.

My haul.

 Apart from the terrain and vehicles, the haul includes the 1st Corps German squad, more summer grass, pin markers and green paint for bases.

I decided to build my last building this weekend and set to with a will, I have made a hash of it and it is taking twice as long as it should. Not Charlie Foxtrot's fault I must add, but mine, I did not heed the instructions or warnings but just went ahead as I knew better. My building is the wrong way around as I put the wallpaper on the wrong sides, and because of this I then had to put the nice etched wood floor in the wrong way around, so I then had to print off a new wood floor and stick it in. I have put it all to the side while I cool down and take out my frustrations on the keyboard.

Aaaaargh!

Taxi!

I have ticked off several things on my project list over the last few days, the new building, the Bren gun team and now my latest vehicles for Bolt Action, this leaves one building and the other half of the reflocking to do.

These two transports are Father's Day presents from my sons, one each, this helps enormously as I have a large list of vehicles I want, nay, need. First up is the iconic SdKfz 251 Ausf. D, I went for another take on late war camouflage, so nothing is standardised with my Germans, and after checking things out online this is pretty much realistic. I have added some stowage and was toying with adding some greenery as it was popular on armoured vehicles in Normandy but for the moment I am leaving it as it is. The rear machine gun points up as this was the best angle to glue it to the rear mount, there is no decent connection on the top of it and I think this way it will be safer or not as easy to knock off. There is just something about this machine, it is undeniably cool and I like its little brother the 250 even more.

For the British it should have been an M5, but after seeing some pictures of the only one available and the shoddy work on the metal parts I decided on the plastic M3. The first thing you will notice is the lack of weapons, British practice was to use these only to transport the infantry to the battle, not to use the vehicle in a support role so in the main these, unlike the American versions, have no guns. I have also been sparing with the transfers as most photographs of the real thing do not show a lot of markings, especially the stars, so I will put the air identification star with the circle on and go easy on the others.

These were very easy kits to put together and paint, I had a slight problem with the M3 body but nothing a bit of pressure couldn't put right. I have an urge for a couple of tank destroyers next, maybe a Marder and an Achilles.

The X-Factor

Club night last night and as usual I left everything to the last minute, I did however manage to knock a list up for our X-Wing game before leaving the house. We were fairly early as Dan was opening up as we arrived, however over the next half hour or so we ended up with almost a full house and a newcomer. One boardgame, one card game, a Warmaster ancients do a demo of Sharpe Practice for Julian the new guy, and of course our four way X-Wing game.
 

Full house.

It was Andrew and son Alfred vs Simon and myself, we had Rebels and the opposition were 'Pirates' for want of a better name, a mix of Scum and Rebel ships. Simon and Andrew can tell you how many rivets are on each ship, Alfred might also know a bit about the Star Wars Universe but as I gave up when the Teddy Bears arrived I just like the little starships. Because Simon and Andrew know more than me they tool up their ships with all sorts of upgrades, I on the other hand prefer to keep things simple that way I don't buy upgrades and then completely forget to use them. Which is why I always feel frightened when I see the opposition.

It was a straight up dogfight and I went for a B-Wing with a decent pilot, a heavy laser cannon and a hull upgrade to keep her alive, I think it's a her as you never know with these names. The escort was three Rookie X-Wings, these were meat shields and I did not expect them to last long, Simon took his new ship, the Ghost, a nice looking thing with a small shuttle which when docked allows him to fire to the rear or it can detach and become a small fighter on its own account, with a pile of upgrades this only left enough points for two bog standard A-Wings as escorts. Andrew and Alfred had a selection of large ships a Hounds Tooth,YT-2400, Punishing One along with a Y-Wing, Z95 and an X-Wing.

We gang up on poor Alfred.

As we deployed it was obvious we had an opportunity to gang up on on the enemy as they had a large gap between their forces, Alfred was the weakest so we decided to hit him first, he was up against my squadron and the Ghost, a tough challenge. Even so I thought my boys were in for a hard time, but no as the range closed Alfred's small fighters bit the dust, I set them up and the Ghost with the ability to deal four hits without fear of saving rolls, finished them off. This is an astonishing trait and means that if you are fighting this thing you have to hit it with everything you have to kill it quickly. Andrew nearly managed this at one point but it limped along with one or two hull points left.

The enemy about to receive a lot of hurt.

We lost an A-Wing very quickly in the fight but Andrew then spent a lot of time trying to hunt down his mate while Alfred struggled against our main forces, the Pirates were feeding their ships in piecemeal. It was at this point I pulled off a neat piece of flying and doubled back to take out the Y-Wing, I was so chuffed I took a photo.

X-Wings on the Port Bow captain.

The YT-2400 also bit the dust and I had only lost one X-Wing. The Hound had decided to come my way while the Punishing was now annoyed by the remaining A-Wing, the badly injured Ghost was also over in that area and the little shuttle had detached and was also worrying the Punishing. What a strange name for a starship.

I had to make a decision and brave the asteroids in order to despatch the Hound, I was lucky and took no damage, however I did lose another X-wing as the Punishing fired from long range, but the Hound could not escape and went up in pieces. The writing was on the wall my remaining two ships were hardly touched and the Punishing had only two hull points left as it headed for hyperspace.

My squadron had performed brilliantly, the Rookies more than held their own and the firepower of the B-Wing's heavy laser cannon was the real punisher. A great game which at the mid point despite my write up looked like turning against us, however the enemy could not concentrate enough firepower were separated and picked off one by one. My thanks to everyone for an exciting game.

From a wargaming point of view I started off a bit ropy with the dice but this picked up in the latter half of the game and I dealt out a lot of damage with that cannon, the concentrated fire of my squadron backed up by the Ghost was a formidable challenge for Andrew and Alfred. It is no fun taking those four hits each turn, on the other hand the ship has only one saving die and despite shields and a large number of hull points can be taken down quickly if picked on, ours only managed to stay alive by the skin of its teeth.

Next week it is American Civil War with Johnny Reb, I last managed an outing with this last summer when my mate Billy came down from Scotland, so I am looking forward to it.

Affordable Homes

I may have built more homes recently than the British construction industry, and here is my latest, a rather grand edifice for a well to do Norman farmer. It is another Charlie Foxtrot model but this time I also bought a 'tiled' base for the building which also had space for an outhouse. I am very pleased with it although you might notice I did not stick the paper tiles on this model, I deduced it would be a faff with the dormer windows and yesterday I did not have any patience reserves. I also realised once I had stuck the dormers on to the roof it would have been easier to tile before sticking them, but I am more than happy the way it has turned out. There is room for more weathering but that will have to wait.

I will be on the lookout at St. Helens next week for some suitable farmyard bits and pieces or some other such bric a brac for the courtyard, maybe an old tractor. This leaves one more building to do, a burnt out shell, this will take more effort as I need to do at least one exposed floor with wallpaper and I want piles more debris lying around, to this end I have bought some large plastic sheets for bases. I am told Colin is going to do a church at some point so I shall get that then call a halt.

I want to do a series of linked games, a mini campaign if you like in the near future and am bouncing some ideas off my friend Matt who is already involved in just such an exercise in the Italian theatre in '43. I hope to get something off the ground by the end of the month.

I mentioned St. Helens before, the Phalanx show is on next Saturday and the Last Valley will be there, I am hoping to pick up the last of my hedges from him, I may also be tempted by another couple of models, not sure.

I have completed yet another map project, well it is at the stage where the author now checks my work and comments on corrections, mistakes or amendments if there are any before I send it to the publisher. Not a very exciting book map wise but one with forty years of research behind it and I suspect many more volumes to come. What is it, it is a history of the Luftwaffe from its beginnings until the end. Tomorrow will find me back on the Somme and after that galloping across the steppes with Genghis Khan.

The Spanish Civil War and the Condor Legion

View From The Window

Summer continues, it is muggy and warm, slightly damp outside but I am sure that will dry up shortly, I am looking at the garage in the 'gap' and there is now so much greenery on the roof it looks like a bunch of eco-warriors have built one of those environmentally friendly (and hugely expensive) big huts in order to feel superior, dress like a tramp and point a finger at those of us destroying the planet. That aside the other houses in the village are selling but not Washington House, which kind of proves my point that it is an ugly building and requires a lot of work.

I take it you have been watching the BBC's unbiased reporting of the EU Referendum, or like me have you been reaching for the remote and waiting for Channel 4 news, no, that won't do either they want in as well. The BBC cannot even do biased in a clever way, no matter what the subject is they hit you over the head with a shovel, immigration, they find a well heeled business man or woman, normally with a foreign accent who is in favour then hop round to the local betting shop or Post Office and find a toothless wino or old crone to put the opposite argument.

Big Brother?

I have been bombarded, OK, I have been told twice to watch Question Time to see the wonderful, marathon running, clever, modern Eddie Izzard trounce Nigel Farage. Well he didn't trounce Nigel, he didn't actually come up with a proper answer to anything Farage said, he did steer the conversation away from the moot points and make personal attacks. How many times has Farage to say he doesn't want a halt to immigration he wants checks, which is a perfectly reasonable stand point. The number of MP's of other parties who are deluded, mad, unreasonable, shifty and corrupt are all forgotten, they are paragons of virtue when put alongside the lunatic, racist, fascist Farage. Give me a break.

God saves Nigel.

It is all moot at the end of the day, my mind was made up years ago and no amount of hot air by either side will change it.

We have almost two weeks of lovely hot weather and what happens, every other customer who comes in tells me we need some rain! The plants need water, what on earth did the plants do before we turned up and put them in nice neat rows and hanging baskets, are there Neanderthal watering cans still to be unearthed, did they fret that the Peonies at the cave mouth were drying up and sitting wishing someone would invent not the wheel but the Garden Centre. The garden is for sitting in with a floppy hat a cold drink and a good book.


I have a guy who comes in about once every three months and asks for a stamp, he watches me peel the sticky stamp from the sheet, and sees that it is sticking to the end of my finger as I proffer it through the opening. He takes it and moves it around several times on his own fingers to get it into a position where he can ...... lick it. I am not heartless, I have told him they are sticky and there is no need to lick it, but it's a stamp and stamps get licked.

Many of you are no doubt watching the football, if you are English, Welsh or Irish you will be, but not if you are Scottish, once again we are not part of an international competition despite most of us knowing we are one of the worlds greatest football nations who for reasons unfathomable have never actually won anything or these days even get the chance to play. I don't like sport but I do have a hang over from my young days and despite the pain it usually causes I would watch Scotland play, at least until the enemy, for that is who they are, score their first couple of goals.

There we go, a small fry up will be served in about thirty minutes, egg, bacon and fried bread with the obligatory beans and cuppa Rosy.

Shooting Is Too Good For 'im

Fairly quiet weekend coming up although I have a lot to catch up on if I am allowed, no gardening because we have rain showers although it is still hot and muggy.

I have got about 50% of my Dark Age forces reflocked, I am doing this in between other projects, mainly at night in front of the PC watching TV Shows, due to the wonders of technology I am now able to catch up on all those shows which I was suffering withdrawal symptoms from, The Veep, Daredevil, Silicon Valley etc. I have started with the Peaky Blinders now after hearing good things about it.

I should have finished my BA British but my order was mucked up and I still need a Bren Team which has not arrived yet, my flocking might also take a back seat as I got the wrong grass sent to me as well. Perhaps I might get those new buildings and my transports built this weekend, so much to do so little time. The good news is that the Germans are complete, or as complete as I want for now.

I also have to find a couple of hours this weekend to get my head around a small WWII campaign and convert something from Chain of Command for Bolt Action, I have the main idea but I now have to get it all to work.

I have managed to track down The Last Valley, the excellent but elusive terrain maker, according to the blurb he will be at Phalanx (St. Helens) next week, a more than half decent show so I am going to pop down and hopefully get the rest of the hedges I need and maybe a few other odds and sods.

Now, who needs shooting, Kim Philby needs shooting that's who, mind you he is already dead, I have just completed 'A Spy Among Friends' by Ben McIntyre. I bought it after watching a documentary on the subject and I have to say the book is even more of a revelation on how gut-wrenchingly easy it was for an upper class toff to steal Britain's secrets for over thirty years than the programme. Philby was responsible for hundreds of people being tortured and killed by the Soviets, and he never showed one iota of remorse. Despite everything pointing to the man as a spy MI6 first defended him, sacked him and then took him back on as an agent because he was of the 'right class' and obviously as such would never betray his country, not the type you see old boy. No one comes out of this affair well, his friends, MI6, MI5 the politicians, no one. I highly recommend this book.

Weird Wars

Like the rest of you I have been chilling and enjoying the lovely weather, although I believe it is not quite as nice in other parts of the country or Europe, but that is a welcome change for us here in the Northwest. I have dabbled in the garden, twice now, cleaned the outhouse of primer dust, washed the car and sat in the shade with a cold drink to hand, today we are heading off to Kendal as the missus wants to go shopping. Fair enough as there is an excellent fish shop in Kendal and I want a paint pallet, I might even have a look at some books although I don't really need any at the moment.

The club, Simon volunteered to bring his Dystopian War stuff on Tuesday, he must have almost everything for this game but he settled on another naval action, we have done one before. I of course was British being an Imperialist and he was the Russians, the British have longer range guns but the Russians have a special armour which you have to get rid of before you can damage them, this is a big advantage. My force was a mix of large ships, cruisers and destroyers with a couple of squadrons of 'tiny flyers' I love that phrase, Simon had two big ships and six slightly less bigger ships with some attendant destroyers which looked like UFO's.

The Dystopian universe as you might expect has some fantastic design for all manners of things and Simon has complemented these with some conversion work of his own, the carrier is one example.

The carrier.

Simon split his forces into two groups so I decided to feint against the left hand one and then make a run for the other, I advanced slowly as I outranged his guns but it didn't really make much difference as the nearer you are obviously the more effective (or the more dice you have) your shooting is. This actually made no difference for me as I only managed one really good salvo all night. I threw a squadron of destroyers and a group of tiny flyers against the left squadron and they were very successful and their torpedo salvoes took the special armour off one of his big cruisers but as so often happens, I could not actually sink it. On the other side I closed the range and threw everything including the kitchen sink at the Russkies but failed miserably to inflict any damage. Meanwhile I lost a squadron of destroyers and several cruisers along with damage to my carrier.

British battleship and destroyers.

At this point I hoisted the signal to flee, it was every ship for itself, those that were left that is. When you get down to it the game is a pretty good naval action despite the weird looking vessels and there is a great depth to the mechanics which will take time to learn, we played a fairly basic version as I am a beginner. The game can be very involved as you can also bring in land and air forces.

Boo, hiss, Russians.

My feint is over and we head for the right hand group.

 My Bolt Action forces are only literally a couple of figures off being complete, a Bren gun team in fact. I want to get a little mini campaign up and running, a series of linked battles which give a point to each encounter. To this end I bought the Chain of Command campaign booklet and a campaign aptly named 'The Scottish Corridor' for my Normandy forces, I have given the former a quick look and there are some really good ideas for this type of mini campaign in there. However, and here's the snag, my opponent in the first such game will probably be Simon and he has Russians, I have pulled back from the brink of buying Eastern Front buildings and suitable terrain and covering everything in all the new snow products. I will therefore do an 'Into the Reich' set of games with the Russians bulldozing their way through Germany in late '44 or early '45, my poor British will have to wait their turn, hopefully my son will join me in Normandy.

So I have given myself quite a bit to do in the near future, I have all those troops to reflock, a couple of kits to assemble, new buildings to build and the others to 'tart up' and a campaign to sort out. I am also thinking aloud about the end of the year and this possible Byzantine or Pyrrhic army.

View From The Window

Beautiful morning yet again, we are thoroughly spoiled up here at the moment, London is miserable according to my son and France and Germany are under water, this latter was a shock to me the other night as once again I am not sitting looking at the news when the shop closes. A lot of interruptions in the village this week of a morning, not only have the usual bus jams being going on but Claire and John up the road a little have been getting concrete delivered for their house project. The trucks have been arriving early and causing havoc with the early morning traffic, it doesn't help when their neighbours move the cones to park at night so there is no space for the lorry apart from on the pavement, but parking is at a premium here. James' roof is finished and very nice it is too. As far as I know Live Ale went well and the weather was fine for it, although they did clash with the long standing music bash at another local pub, The Nib, which used to put on Nibworth (geddit?), but which is now Nibfest.

Muhammad Ali is dead and already we are being deluged with praise for the man and my particular favourite "the world has stopped", no, it really hasn't. I am not interested in sport in any shape or form apart from the odd England/Scotland match which despite everything to the contrary I thought we might win now and again, this hoped for repeat of Bannockburn usually turned into Culloden within the first ten minutes and I retreated back to the real world. My only memories of Ali was when he was Cassius Clay with a big mouth and a high opinion of himself, I do remember watching him fight Sonny Liston and Liston throwing the match, well that's what it looked like to me, no doubt I missed the finer points of two men bashing each other. None of these people have had any impact on my life, Ali, Bowie, Prince or others, it's a shame but it's also a shame for Mrs Smith up the road to die.

You have to hand it to the Japanese, one set of parents leave their kid at the side of the road to teach him a lesson instead of half beating him to death, and off he trots into the jungle for a week, how inconsiderate of the little monster. I watched the father on the news the other night and not a tear showed on his face as he gave his apology, not even a false one, watch it and convince me he is sorry. One thing will come out of all this, family trips in the car will be a lot quieter in future.

I managed to catch Angela Merkel's warning to the country if we deign to leave the EU and I went all Little Britain, out went reason and considered debate and in flooded a rant. This is a woman whose country stamped on Denmark because they wanted Schleswig-Holstien, fought amongst themselves to force unification, who crushed France in 1870, took Europe to Armegeddon twice in two world wars and now has the gall to threaten us with consequences if we leave. The irony of it all is that all they needed to do was buy Europe. The historians among you will already be heading for your keyboards to remind me that France had a slight hiccup with the Napoleonic Wars, fair enough, but you get the idea.

Is Peter Kay running Germany?

How would you like to be sitting enjoying a pint or a coffee with your mates bad mouthing someone who wasn't there or who had peaked your interest and suddenly a note is delivered to you admonishing you for your behaviour by someone you had never met or were ever likely to meet. Not too chuffed I would think. But in America a self-righteous, self appointed 'parenting expert' did just that to three girls enjoying a drink because she couldn't stand them being mean. She could simply have confronted them face to face but she took the time to buy a card, write it out, photograph if for her Facebook page and then get someone else to deliver it. Who hasn't been mean at some point, which one of us hasn't voiced our discontent with someone else, it is not a perfect world and none of us are perfect. If she sat in our local on a Wednesday afternoon and took umbrage with things she did not agree with she would need to have a Hallmark store next door. Oh, and guess who has become a minor celeb on the back of the card incident, yeah, you guessed.

Just when I think I have seen it all, did you see the programme a week or so ago about the men who dress up in doggie suits, leather or latex usually and become 'dogs' for the night or weekend or whatever, thankfully I only saw the trailer and was totally sickened by it. I know there are wierdo's out there, and I know we are not meant to call them that these days but sitting on the couch towering over your girlfriend pretending to be the 102nd Dalmatian, well words fail me.

You gotta laugh?

Blowing the Trumpet

The Parcelforce guy arrived this morning and lo and behold he had something for me this time, he is the opposite of the Postman, he is always happy and you can hear him whistling away as he approaches the shop, yes that can get on my nerves as well. But he seems a decent chap and as I said he had something for me.

The box contained the two volume history of the Scots Guards during WWI which I had the pleasure to draw the maps for, the author Randall Nicol, is the only author I have yet met face to face as most of my communications are done online or occasionally on the phone. I had hoped to go to the book launch but because my wife was absent I could not make the journey, I would dearly have loved to have been there.

My friend Charles Singleton was running the event for Helion and was tasked with getting the two volumes for me and having them signed by Randall, a mission which is now complete

The books are a joy to hold and the work on the dust jackets by Paul at Battlefield Design is extremely elegant. I only tend to buy a very few of the books which I produce maps for although obviously I would like them all but that is not practicable, so I restrict myself to books which have a good number of maps in them and which peak my interest.

I could not resist blowing the trumpet on this one as I am very pleased with the books and my involvement with them.

The Arrows and Arrows of Outrageous Misfortune

If you are a proper, dyed in the wool wargamer who has been at it since you were in short pants then you will have several pet theories, these will normally fly in the face of accepted knowledge and if voiced will mark you out as deluded at best and a lunatic at worst. I have several.

One of my first is that Alexander the Great was not a great general but a very lucky one, there that may be the worst out of the way. Another which has bugged me through the years is that all medieval wargame rules or lists downgrade Scottish knights simply because they live beyond Hadrian's Wall. These men came originally from the same Norman families which took over England, they had the same culture and they knew a decent warhorse from a milk man's nag, so why on earth would they suddenly lose all their faculties and become worse on the battlefield than their English counterparts, yes I know there were not as many but that does not necessarily mean they were amateurs.

Moving on I inwardly smile when I read that the rifled musket was a game changer during the American Civil War and it caused horrendous casualties as a result. The weapon was a game changer but not during this particular war, where, despite the increase in range and accuracy most fire fights took place at 100 - 150 yards where even the old smoothbore musket was happy, which is why many units retained such weapons. The only general on either side who tried to get his men to use the rifled musket properly was Confederate Patrick Cleburne who was ex-British Army.

All this brings me neatly to the 'Slings and Arrows', I cannot believe that Dark Age armies in Northern Europe, not Spanish or any the of the other louche Mediterranean or Eastern peoples you understand, used skirmishers in the way classical armies did, particularly slingers. There is not one piece of evidence that the Anglo Saxons used the sling militarily and hardly any mention of it otherwise. These particular armies and warriors were not known for their patience, they took great pride in being first to attack the enemy, their shieldwall tactics and discipline were not conducive to letting a horde of skirmishers run through them as the enemy approached, raiders took the best and bravest, they didn't load up with herd boys who brought along a piece of leather or a bow for that matter and nothing else.

So there you go, a few of my pet theories, I have some others but that is enough for now, I mentioned my skirmish theory at the recent gaming weekend and have been suffering the slings and arrows ever since (in a good natured and oft times comical way). I of course kind of scuttled myself by using said slingers in my Saxon army but hey, when in Rome, needs must, good for the goose etc.

My theories won't change anything but they are mine and I like them. Oh, and I never, ever subscribed to the popular view of Bosworth and where it was fought, and look how that turned out.

I have now just about finished my Bolt Action stuff, I added some figures last night and boxed them up, I have about half a dozen or so to complete once my North Star order turns up, along with my Father's day halftracks but to all intents and purposes they are done. So I have now gone and given myself a rather painstaking new job.

 I am not a big fan of basing my armies on stony or hard ground as again I believe they were walking on grass almost exclusively (Northern Europe again), so my Dark Age armies are mainly grass, but I have had this niggle at the back of my mind for ages that the grass I originally chose was too green. Since basing my BA troops with Late Summer grass this has bothered me even more. So last night I brought out a Saxon cavalry unit and re-flocked it, it does look a lot better, so I am now committed, the long summer evenings just got longer.

After and before.

Dark Ages at the Club

Club night once again, Simon asked if we could to a War and Conquest game, I could be wrong but he might be thinking of bumping up his Saga Vikings to play this, we have had two games before and each time I try to make sure the game is enjoyable.

As it was a club night I wrote up two armies for 2,000 points but also sent him the lists so if he had time he could build his own, much better for the game. I had the Saxons and although I could have taken two companion units of Gedriht that would have left me with four men and a dog to hold the flanks, also I thought it was a bit much to bring two to the battlefield for a casual game. I know what you are thinking, decent chap, yes sure.

We set up and had to, Simon, who was Romano-British was fairly cautious at first and was trying out his mounted troops as skirmishers, this takes some doing to pull off correctly and it is not something I can usually manage which is why I prefer just to kill the enemy skirmishers and then get on with the real battle. I therefore managed to get my cavalry on Simon's left flank and hit a battle formation from the front with infantry and on the flank with the cavalry, first blood to me. Simon had gone into shieldwall as had I with most of my men.

Battle commences.

  It was now my turn to do something stupid, my only defense being that it was a club night and time was of the essence and I also wanted to ensure Simon had a proper game, so hanging back wasn't an option. I also thought that my elites would thump their opposite numbers, I was wrong, they took a bashing in the first round, oh, oh. By now I had put my cavalry into skirmish while I reorganised my right for the killing blow, but Simon charged his newly reformed cavalry and mine were on nags so they were caught and dispersed. I just needed my Gedriht to hold on until my Franks, yes, I had decided to give them their umpteenth chance to change my mind about them, hit their opponents in the rear, game over.

I ask too much of the Gedriht (White Horse).

But no, although my brave boys rallied somewhat they could not overcome the defensive power of Simon's Comitatus in shieldwall and they ran just as the Franks were ready to charge. As time was now fast running out Simon charged two more units at my shieldwalls, I think he won one fight while I won the other, but it needed at least a couple of turns to play out which we did not have.

Neither of us got their objective but Simon was one unit up on me, a winning draw. Elsewhere there was the usual boardgame, two this week actually and a Warmaster Biblical game I think, there were chariots involved. Not a full complement but it was a lovely day and evening so perhaps the sun gods were otherwise engaged. Perhaps we will see more of the Franks anon.