Miniature Wargames no 403

The Conundrum Solved?

I've had my copy of MW no 403 for some time. It is John Treadaway's first as Editor. The "new look"  really isn't so new and there is much here that shows John's current policy of "keep on Keeping on" as he put it to me. Nice articles on Ancients- Macedonians and Persians  with what may be a nifty set of simple rules, Building Rorke's Drift- or at least making something out of the rather basic set of lazer cut wooden parts. They look like a lot of work BUT a lot easier than scratchbuilding- which I did back in the day and a nice article on the Battle for Crete in WW2. This is interesting stuff and not based around any given rule set which is very refreshing. Like wise an article on Dreadnaught period Naval warfare which I have not yet studied  but the author seems to know his stuff somewhere I have a fw 1/2400 Dreadnaughts- somewhere .....and  a nice 1980 Cold War goes Hot scenario from Conrad kinch- this WILL get used !   There was even another How to article on pating tanks- but I can do that- not that the piece wouldn't be useful  but the pics were (rather nice0 sci-fi vehicles rather than, well tanks ....
 To all intents and purposed this bit of the Mag has so far hardly changed at all  except for the waste of space that is the club directory- I really hope that appears only once or twice a year and that quite a bit of space is given over to reviews . There was a nagging feeling- hopefully unfounded that  stuff was "spaced out" a little too much to fill the available pages.

 As for the much touted Sci-Fi and Fantasy section well all it does for me is illustrated the  narrow  games only base  of  today's sci -fant  hobby. With "Critical Hits"  no less than 3 infomercials about currently favoured "games" Frostgrave(who cares)  Bushido (nothing really to do with historical Samurai) and something called "Panzerfauste" a sort of WW2 based "game" with orcs and Dwarfs and "magick" basically Flintloque with machine guns - dearie me the 1990s original was bad enough with its awful clumsy models (Yes I had a few)and simplistic rules .  However such nonsense seems pretty popular as it raised most of its brass via Kickstarter. which only goes to show you that there are more kidults  out there than even I thought. I've seen a few pics of the models and actually they are pretty dammed good of their type and made me giggle - but not enough to want to spend actual real money on them.. The joke wears thin pretty quickly with even the cleverest fantasy especially one as derivative as this.. The articles are full of drawings and "artwork"  (but not Art)  but overall none of the articles actually say very much other than to extol the virtues of their product and tell you what stunningly clever chaps the designer are But perhaps that is the way with today's game first everything else nowhere  hobby after all you get the same type of infomercial in  historical wargaming too the "I'm so  awfully clever you must play MY game and no don't you DARE think for yourself" syndrome is not only a sci-fant problem by any means.. .

Frankly for a first mag under new Editor ship It is not half bad and could have been a lot worse. I don't mind a bit of Sci -Fi  so the Critical hits section is not automatically out of court and will bear watching but making it almost entirely reviews and infomercials for this months fashion  hopefully will not last.
 But still worth a read and I await the next issue with interest.

Three More From Moscow.

Nick Bokarev- Owner of Drabant has sent me pictures of his 3 newest  Miniatures- All in 28 mm.
 They are the start of a range of "Persons"- ie Personalities for his growing and deservedly popular Dark Ages range.
 I'll have some of these with my next order from Moscow- which currently Nick is making for me .

Sviatoslav. Grand Prince of Kiev.

Volkhv - Heather Priest. 

A Heather Priest is some kind of pre- Christian priest of the pagan Rus - so I am told. .

William the Conqueror 

The last one of course is well known to us.. William the Bastard !
 All are of course well up to the hight standards set by the rest of the Drabant range.  I await their arrival with intrest
 Prices will be £3.00 for the foot personalities and £5.00 for William.

Dimensionally Challenged.

As regular reader will know I like the painting and modelling side of the hobby. More- in some cases- than the mere dice rolloing. I paint figures because I like 'em not merely because I want a few more pretty counters..
 Thismeans that sometimes I paint figures which don't fit into any armies or projects- just because I like them
 This is especially so when I(very rarely) paint any flats.

Marian Roman legionaries .

 I've had a few flats in the lead pile for years adding too them once in a while because I like their delicacy and the fineness of the detail. I'll never be  in the premier league of flats painters but I like to have a bash as a painting exercise.. It keeps your technique sharp. Remember, these little blokes are "30mm"  so about the same size as most of todays "28mm" but much much finer in proportion.

Robert the Bruce. Painting the double tressure was a right pain. 

I think this one is supposed to be Joan of Arc  but maybe not. 

Some flat painters only paint one side  I paint both as one day I'd like to have 2 small forces  either medieval or 17th century.

Yes I do paint both sides. 

However it is all a matter of "point of View"

But we'll have to see . I paint slowly at the best of times and these take real effort. However I've a couple more on my desk. so this tiny collection will grow albeit at a snails pace.

I just can't stop shining.

Now as you may have gathered I've not been posting much recently- too much work on. I've still managed a little painting almost all of which has ended up being shiny. Currently I'm pretty much into the idea of retro-wargaming.
 The reasons why - well honestly I'm not absolutely sure. Part of it is certainly a reaction to all this  wargaming -lite that is about these days and the often childish appearance of some more recent contributions to our hobby.
 I know I'm banging on about this but I really do think it is a major problem. How can we expect to recruit new people (assuming we do need this) if all we have to show are "bang bang you're dead" games for  12 year old boys- played by overweight badly dressed chaps with builders bum !!
 Yes of course I exaggerate- neither do we need (as recruiters)  over serious  badly dressed blokes who look as if falling under a number 9 bus  would ease their outlook on life !!
 Yes I'm taking the mickey.
 Some of the games at Donnington proved that this need not be so and indeed is not always so.
So why MY current reversion to  older rules including the now often despised WRG ?
 Honestly I prefer to be treated as an adult. I can read long(ish) words without using my fingers. I can do sums (but not always hard sums) and I don't HAVE to look at pictures to understand what a writer is saying to me. I can read whole books and some of them don't have pictures  at all and YES it's FUN.

The finally finishes White Regiment of the London Trained Bands. Figures are almost all Les Higgins 30mm Jason with only 3 interlopers.

 I enjoy the painting and modelling side  at least as much as the playing - possibly more - and the historical part again as much if not more than the others. Again they are FUN. Fun and Triviality are not, despite appearances to some, the same thing.
. For me those who wish to trivialise the hobby in their own image are doing all of us a disservice. By attempting to narrow to the trivial in the name of "simplicity" and "accessibility"  what happens when it is all trivial and simple? Where do you go from there?  What will have happened to diversity- of the intellectual sort ?  Or, perish the thought, will we all be Dwarf- fiddling (but with only 7 a side of course !!) .

The Scots Greys as they currently stand- still a few more to paint. All Stadden 30mm some of which needed a good bit of TLC even before the painting started. 

Now don't get me wrong here I don't mind other chaps doing Fantasy and quite like Sci-Fi in parts It is the lack of imagination I find hard to deal with. How the hobby has  all narrowed down the the mere gaming at least if you read some of the various magazine pieces.  Is it like that at grass roots level. Sometimes yes. I've seen more than 1 club website that lists "The Games We Play"- almost all Fantasy-Sci-Fi skirmish games which all look the same to me.

Sir Thomas Tyldesley's Regiment of Horse. Mostly Hinchliffe/Foremost but with some  Old Glory Horses and a single Old Glory trooper as well as a single Front Rank trooper. Deliberately mixed together for effect.

 Equally many "Games Shops" and "webstores"  advertise the same  comparatively few "games" over and over. So somebody must be buying them (or are they all just sitting on tons on unsellable stock?) and so many of them just seem to be
"GW wannabees" that you do wonder  where all the soldiers go..
 Especially since I'm still selling Farsands of 'em !

The British staff for "Shinyloo" Willie or Stadden figures on Stadden Horses. All 30mm

So overall maybe it is nowhere near as bad as it sometimes feels.

The Frecn Staff for the same"shinyloo" project. All Stadden 30mm models. Except Boney himself who is a Willie !,

 The current "off the shelf and play no brain cells needed  "  attitude of many rules writers/ games designers  really flies in the face of everything I like about this hobby.  Now there are still plenty of blokes who  do still use their brains- Donnington once again proved that- (including a splendid small scale Waterloo game on deliberately contoured terrain to show how that terrain affected the battle- sterling work lads - but I never got a chance to talk to 'em) But even there there were a number of daft looking games which I can't pretend to understand some doubtless infomercials for the games companies that put them on  they all looked so similar .....

So I hope that all of this sub-GW derivative dross  won't swamp us- I don't think it will really but the price of freedom- so they tell us is eternal vigilance ....

The picture on this post were chosen for two reasons- I like them  and they in part illustrate part of my own attempts at a bit of diverseity.
I suppose that is the nub of what I'm droning on about and why - up to a point- I have reverted to

 a time when brain cells were in fashion.

The urge to do something ... a little different.

It has been a good while since my last post . This is simply because real life keeps getting in the way. I've had a very busy work period sorting out what I can do about the nosedive of the Pound and watching while all my costs go up between 10 and 20% simply due to the continual stupidity and prevarication of our cretinous excuse for a Government. This will not of course mean a 20% price rise- perish the thought! but as I noted earlier it will mean rises of between 5 and 10% on many items - but by no means all. As I have said before I hate putting my prices up . Even so it has been 5 years or more since some of these prices rose. Doesn't mean I like it though!
 So we will keep on going keeping price rises to a minimum.
 Also on a much much brighter note the next Blue Moon release in 15/18mm is the start of a massive ECW range. I should have the first packs of Foot with my next shipment which is due around the end of this month or perhaps- hopefully- a little sooner.

However on the nicer things ....

There is no doubt in my mind that wargaming has its boring bits. Different blokes of course find different bits boring. My own "Boring List" has changed more than once over the years. There is no doubt that my wargaming tastes have changed also. I have eschewed Fantasy since the early 90s Yet my  re-awakened interest in Modern Warfare has also - up to a point- re-wakened a desire to have a bash at a bit of "Hard SF" or more likely in our group "Silly Sci -Fi - because of the awful jokes. Hence the recent digging out of "69th M.I.L.F." Now all I have to do is find the box which has Denzil Washington Snipes and his Freedom Fighters of the Armed Revolutionary Socialist Executive not forgetting Fidel  Ernesto Gevara Smith with all his assorted thugs and Henchpersons. It may even be getting close to the time for a little seasonal silliness.
 One of the  minor reasons I started the "shinyloo" project was simply because it was very different from the other stuff I was doing at the time.
 Those wargamers who play the same game week in week out- be it DBA , Lion Rampant, Bolt Action or Star Wars  or whatever must simply have a much higher boredom threshold than I .
 Maybe they are of that type who perceives dice rolling as an intellectual exercise- or these days the idea seems to be to pull dice out of an embroidered little handbag, This apparently is a "game mechanism" .

 I now have a horrible image in my tortured mind of Lady Bracknell  observing tartly "A Games Mechanism!" As she catches Ernest fiddling with his bag !

(Apparently there are now Pokemon embroidered  douche- sorry dice- bags- can this
bloody hobby get any more childish and infantile- probably - Grow up for ***** sake ! ) There is even a bloke claiming that he will be carrying  "an ever increasing range of embroidered bags" !!!!(but probably not by Biba,  Fendi or Stella MacCartney I suspect!) I'd laugh  but I might burst into tears instead !


Mind you back in the day it was- almost WRG or nothing so not much changes really - except.... well except matters of taste. The fashion- started by DBA for tiny tables (or "boards" as they are now called) with tiny numbers of troops for tiny short duration limited scope games as if that is now the norm really gives me the right hump. The ferocious narrowing of the hobby  down to the trivial is not to my taste at all .
 Even the idea of playing every week now palls. There was a time I did so - even as recently as the noughties meeting were on a Thursday evening. However limited time meant that only small games could be staged usually on quite small tables and frankly it all got very samey and rather wearing.(Though the vibrating Guinness was rather drinkable).
 Not until we moved to our current location  in the pub and Saturday meetings did things perk up and differing varieties and styles of wargame were possible.. A larger table space and a few additional members as well as more time made for more variety. even though the actual number of meetings had dropped to around 1 a month or less. So though we were spending a lot LESS time overall playing the Quality of the games i s far far superior.
 This of course is entirely at variance with today's fashion for instant  gratification and speed  but with the  intellectual content of a dead rubber plant BUT repeating yourself more frequently ,on a smaller table - possibly in different hats !  Just like our woeful collection of political leaders then ....

So our watchwords are quality and variety- now we may not always reach those standards but that is what we aim for.
 So Donnington show last weekend had plenty of quality and a good few little bags.......
 There were some fine looking games-
 Teh "Like a Stonewall" groups Hastings was as usual a fine game. This bunch know their stuffand as usual put on a fine display.
Othe games that took my notice included the Siege of Athlone- as featured in WI a couple of issues back- again a good looker with some tasty modelling.
 However my personal favourite this year was Dave Brooks and his mates with their beutiful 30 years War game  I even bagged a couple of pictures.

Dave Brook's game at the recent Donnington show. Those flags are mostly hand painted. 

Another shot of Dave's game. Guns are Old Glory crew various makers. 

 Ilike the way Dave mixes makers in his armies. There were all sorts on the table. Old Glory. Foundry. Essex and some lovely figures by a Czech maker called Emil Horky  which I must get my hands on some examples of /
 On the table all mixed in a treat- non of this sizeist angst for Dave !!

So once again Donnington went some way to restoring my faith in the wider wargaming community that faith which is so often tried when scanning the pages of some of the magazines some of the time. I really really do not get this apparently constant urge to be childish which is now soobvious within some areas of our hobby.