Even More Romans and Daniel Day Lewis

Doing some catching up, the weekend games were large at 3,500 points, if I play larger games I will need to add some troops to my two Roman armies so in the near future I shall interupt my Seven Years War project with the odd unit of Romans. The Patricians need one more Legion, I have lots of troops which can join them as Foederati or simply Barbarians in my Saxon and Romano-British armies so it is the core Romans I need, for the Twelfth I may add two cohorts, one legionary and one auxiliary, oh, and the Patricians need another skirmish unit. The Seleucids are already large, last night I ordered up some of the new line cataphracts, I am not waiting for the Agema, I could probably never field these anyway at 30+ points each even in a large army. This still leaves the Companions to come.

I didn't get the 5th of Foot finished last week as I had too much map work to catch up on and real life has also been hectic over the past few weekends and will continue to be so through August and September but you should be able to see the 5th by this weekend as they are now at the varnish stage.

As well as getting the new cataphracts and some Roman officers I decided to treat myself to a Prime subscription to Wargames Illustrated Online, this means I have access to all the back issues as well as the new ones along with other rewards. The rewards, like my rewards with Emirates are mostly useless to me, I also find it unfriendly to move around in, for instance I have the Spectator Online and you can choose specific pages from the contents and immediately jump to them, you can't with WI, you have to scroll through the whole magazine, it also seems to have a very large advertising content, yes I know it needs that to survive so I will live with it. But with already having the subscription I don't need to have all the offers in front of me again every time I log in. Perhaps I am missing something or not using it correctly, time will tell. I have no trouble with download speeds and the search facility through the back issues is pretty good. It is also nice to dip into it when I have half an hour or so free. There is a lot of inspiration in the articles as well, especially the terrain used, very nice.

I have lost my favourite tape measure, one I have had for some thirty or more years, perhaps I have misplaced it and cannot remember where I put it which is fairly likely as I get older, I was sure I got it out for my wargaming weekend but on the day it simply wasn't there. It is funny how you get attached to certain things without any value whatsoever, I also use an old Confederate First National Flag sticker as a bookmark while having half a dozen others. I may have another look around this afternoon, to hell with the blistering heat.

After the weekend I also consigned my Seleucid dice to the bin, well I gave them to Mike to take away and dispose of in a quiet manner, perhaps a field between here and Leicester, there were simply too many 1's and 2's turning up. It was my own fault, I went cheap, they looked cheap, I am now expecting a gold and green marble effect set today from Postie. My Saxon dice are looking askance at me as they might be next.

Muskets and Tomahawks at the club, Rob was back and put on a scenario once again inspired by the Last of the Mohicans movie although I was unsure which part it was but the rest of the guys got it. We, the British, had to rescue some people from a blockhouse, I was at the wrong end of the table with two units of Scots, natch. I decided to simply go for the nearby French Indians as I was assured of monetary gain for each one I killed, Julian and Ryan could get the civvies out. Despite there not seeming to be very many Scots initiative cards in the deck I gave poor Stuart's Indians a hard time and by the end of the game had knocked them all out, I even managed to send my light troops to help in the main battle around the stockade, too late though, but I had a heap of scalps to take in.

Stuart's less than ferocious Indians.

Daniel Day Lewis ready to make off with the women.

Julian approaches the blockhouse.

The game was a laugh to play and the insults and banter flowed like good wine, particularly memorable was a drummer boy (again) who was the only survivor of his battalion and whom the evil Frenchies of Fran's detachment were determined to kill, he managed to survive and get away. The French leader refused to lower himself and get off his horse and pick up a musket to help kill the lad, considering it more important to wave his hat flamboyantly at the enemy.