Lovely paint jobs...

 Here are some more examples of Jez 'sWork- not  turned into comic strips  by me this time.

Taliban 107mm RCL Painted by Shakespear Studios. Figures are of course from my Fireforce15 range.

Rhodesian Firforce- again in 15mm , again painted by Jes of Shakespear. Once again the figures are from my Fireforce15 range.

I do like Jez's work  Not only that unlike more than one painting service I could name he delivers when he SAYS he'll deliver. I'm sure many chaps have waited days. weeks , Months  even years for stuff from some of the less scupulous dudes out there- even after you've paid deposits  so I'm happy to endorse Jez as he's not like that at all.  Find his blog http://shakespearestudios.wordpress.com/ for more info.

Sometimes you just have to....

Jez Griffin of Shakespears Studios sent me these Bluemoon 15mm figures from the Horror range that he had painted for me to photograph.  As always  Jez did some cracking brushwork and just to be clear Shakespear Studios have my heartiest recommendation as a painting service . Good work delivered in  good time - can't say better than that.
 Right back to the plot, any how there am I with these tasty 15mm chaps before me thinking just basic snapshots do not do them justice. so hence the above. Remember if you can't take a joke you shouldn't have joined.
 Enjoy.

Knight after Knight...

 Reading MW recently I noticed that the editor opined  that the Medieval was a bit of a left behind period. Now he may be right . Many wargamers really don't seem to get Medicals- not least because its not one single period. The armies from the Battle of Hastings to the End of the Wars of the Roses or more roughly 1100-1500 are at least as diverse as those of the "Ancient" period. At one end we have Norman Knights and at the other Landsknects. However the  next time I see 13th century troops on the same table as 15th century-"cos they are all medieval "  would not be the first.
 Also the middle ages is cursed by - in some ways- being thought of as "good for skirmish games"  which is often the kiss of death as far as historical accuracy goes.
 For myself I've had an interest in the period since my earliest wargaming days but of later have not owned any medieval armies- the 40mm Wars of the Roses are not yet table ready- since the 1990s.
 Nevertless I still have the books- from basic Army lists to Froissart and Jean le Bel  taking in deVries and Verbruggen, I even have a few odd painted units.

French Kinight - all of whom actually existed and fought at either Crecy or Poitiers- some at both . All the heraldry is hand painted as I can't abide transfers as they never fit and you can't get the arms you want.

Close up of the above- shoing King John of Bohemis- red flag- and his standard bearer.

I think part of the problem witn Medievals is of course Heraldry some chaps just can't face painting individual knights and so make it up rather than use the many books of rolls of arms that are out there. Personally I'd rather face a dozen quarterly coats than  the endless tedium of Napoleonic French line Infantry(always my personal bete noir)  and there is no arguing medievals ARE pretty.

Early Handgunners- yes the Middle Ages saw the birth of gunpowder weapons.

Now my problem here is deciding where to go  I have lots of bits and pieces- painted for the show display case over the years. We have an exstensive Medieval range covering a lot of different armiesand sub-periods . All the obvious ones- Hundred Years War, Wars of the Roses, Crusades Scots English French  but also Flemish Hungarians Irish Turkish Imperialist, Hussites, Italians  Poles Russians and even Transylvanian  can come from the Old Glory ranges. .
 All of these armies have characteristics of their own  so you know I can't decide.

Bowmen of England. The lads to sort out the French of the first picture.

So will I expand my few Scots and add to the small English army I have or perhaps add to the few Italians.

 Decisions decisions....

The Primacy of Idiot Books.

 This morning , Gentle Readers, I noticed a piece on TMP advertising some new Idiot Book - or Army list if you like-  for Flames of War-. No problem with that especially as I use Command Decision  for WW2 anyhow. Nevertheless amongst the associated comments were several lamenting the fact that their currently owned idiot books were now "not current" and therefore presumably useless to their owners.
 Now up to a point I get this but only for regular tournament players- after all the Laws of Rugby Football get changed every so often and so therefore presumably do lesser sports., therefore why not competion based wargames rules?

Is this ME110 supporting the panzers or dropping a new copy of the latest Army list to the confused commander??

 However it struck me that as a non tournament player why the hell would you care unless your brain was in fact made of porridge or as one chap once put it to me in some heat
 "I don't need to read about WW2 I play Flames of War" - still trying to work that one out....
 Not that the primacy of the Idiot Book  is confined to FOW or indeed is all that new- Older chaps will remember the occasionally  unsavoury debates in Battle and still more in Slingshot  concerning the relative merits of sundry WRG Army lists however in those days of Yore much of the debate did seem to centre more on historical grounds - at least on the surface-  I wonder if this is still the case?
 Now I haven't seen a copy of Slingshot for years so I've no idea how it is today but it does seem to me that Joe Wargamer is far more willing to have his rules handed down to him from On High (or perhaps Nottingham)  by some latter day Corporate Moses than the lads of the 70s and 80s were.
 For myself I've never been an uncritical  fan of Army lists- not that they don't come in handy from time to time especially for the "pre-regimental" periods  or those in which I have only a passing  or  newly formed interest.
 However I could never imagine myself using such things for say the ECW or the Hundred Years War or Napoleonic or indeed any period where I've actually read more than a passing Osprey. I suppose that once again it comes down to the difference between "playing to period " and  "playing to ruleset"

Ach so! Hans Ve are playing Ze Pike und Shotte rules Ya?

Gott in Himmel !!.

I sort Ivas in ze 16th Century !!

Now I do have some army lists- but even here there has been a change over the years.WRG's Rennaissence  set had one slim volume of lists FOGR has a good half a dozen or more.FOW gawd knows how many and these are far from the only ones. It now seems to be the thing to publish as many wallet catchers as you can -perhaps these chaps resent you dear Gamer spending your cash on actual soldiers....  or perhaps the plot is even more sinister- stop 'em reading actual books then once we have them by the parts we can feed 'em any kind of exspensive tripe and they won't know the difference...  but THAT IS just plain SILLY....

Mystery Curassier...

A while back I aquired a Job lot of assorted 30mm figures- Stadden AWI mostly but a couple of odd WIILIES and this chap.

I've no idea what make he is. Thats he's of a certain age is pretty certain. The Sword is a pin and the scabbard a ppiece of tin sheet.  He is a three part model Horse Saddle cloth and rider- with the Carbine and picket pole making a 4 th small part..
 The Horse remainds me of Gammage or Rose but I didn't think Gammage at least did any 30mm or Rose any SYW. The base is too thicj for a Stadden. He arrived painted but I did re-touch and re-base him. Maybe he's the start of a retro SYW project....

Limitations....

I often wonder as I sit idly contemplating the universe how our hobby has changed in the 40 or so years I've been doing it.
The OFW lobby will tell you that it was far far better in 1972 when - other than airfix- soldiers were rare and expensive things. I could buy a BOX of airfix for the price of 1 metal casting back in those days  but that doesn't tell you how much blood and skin I lost making thiose Afghans out of Arabs or those Indian Lancers out of US cavalry  or countless others I've forgotten.. Oh yes we had FUN - but we had wounds too I still bear a couple of scars from Stanley knives. The point here of course is that there was no other way open to me or the chaps I knew at the time. We had pretty severe limitations upon what we knew and what was possible- even if our imaginations were not so limited . 1970s pocket money didn't stretch to Staddens. My metal troops- until 1977 or so  consisted of a few Hincliffe some Garrison and a couple of units of Les Higgins- all Napoleonic  Oh and 3 Stadden 30mm riflemen my Dad bought me - simply because he liked them.
 Now it may have been far better in the 70s if you were well heeled- part of the Elite one of those who could AFFORD your Willies or Staddens or  even those 'orrible plastic Spencer Smiths which chaps seem to rave about but I never got the lust for (saw some in the 80s for the first time and immediately preferred Airfix.- even though by that time most of my plastics had gone the journey).
 You do- or at least I do- wonder how much of the OFW stuff is actually merely elitism rearing its ugly  and often supecilious head .

3 pictures of soldiers I couldn't afford for most of the last century. All are Les Higgins "Jason" 30mm and were 24p when Hincliffe  were 7 1/2pand Airfix were 15p for a box of 40 or so ... Ah yes it was better then... Sure...

 Fie upon it.
 It shouldn't be like that now...  but of course it is- there are merely different elites with different sets of supecilious gits. each thinking they are better than somebody else. Needless to say its all Twaddle - I'd go further and say its b""""""s.
 However  many things are much better now than they were then and the only obvious limitation is the thickness of your wad of bunce . Or so it would seem, yet despite the foregoing I'd assert that perhaps one thing was better in "Ye Olden Tymes" and that would be the imagination of the average wargamer.
 If you think about it why this should be so is pretty obvious we had less stuff to play with back then so we had to make it ourselves- and pretty crappy it was sometimes. When I think of some of the truly shyte model I made in the past my artists soul whithers ... but I digress. There has  possibly been a price to pay  for the  current Cornucopia and as ever its an unintended consequence- Joe Wargamer has, at least in part become a lazy git.
 Hold on there chaps... ..  put down the torches and pitchforks and think about it- I didn't say it was all bad. For a start but the mass of stuff we have to enlighten our hobby  hours have made some of us intellectually lazy  all of the time or perhaps all of us intellectually lazy some of the time. Think of the HUGE number of different rulesets out there- no need to do your own thinking anymore merely follow the  instruction book- likewise with idiot books... sorry army lists no brain cells required. Painting schemes- follow the 3 colur method  no need to actually know anything - just painting by numbers (  I  had an aunt who always bought me a painting by numbers set when I was a kid... never finished "Monarch of the Glen " yet bored me witless - used the paints for figures instead)
 Now I'm not suggesting for a minute that we go back to entirely homegrown rules I'm merely pondering as it were the consequences of our embarrassment of riches  "Did we get tired or did we just get lazy " to paraphrase the Eagles. Lazy thinks I no contest.
 It seems to me that many "games"  ( perhaps a better title than rule sets for some of the  supposedly self contain corporate wallet catchers out there) are simply convenienve first. Though whose is a matter for conjecture...
 DBA was the first of these "convenince games" to hit my conciousness a 2 foot square playing area and tiny armies no braincells required. Ther are now others Saga seems to be flavour of the month- a massivly overpriced Dark Age skirmish game where- so I'm told - each  tiny force has its own dice set and measuring sticks which -more fool you-  you are suposed to buy... apparently chaps do  agsain on a tiny table space. Now there is a place for such convenience games just as there is a place for convenience food but you wouldn't want to live off it.. From what little I've seen its much the same with "Muskets and Tomahawks- which purports to be French and Indian war. Now to me both of these give a misleading idea of how combats in their chosen eras were conducted- the "Battle for Convenience " rather than for Canada. Yet they appear to be popular judging by the amount of FIW stuff I shift- and once again merely because they are not to my taste has nothing to do with it- I merely observe and sometime take the p***.
 Nevertheless it does seem that these games and others are helping toimpose limitations on the minds of their
  exponents so which came first.. the lazy git or the lazy gits game....

Further thoughts on Al- Kahol

Well I could do with a pint for a start.... So here are a few more picture of the game - placed at random.

Obviously I need a pint - this pic is sideways... Hmmmmm.

As I metioned previously we use Combined Arms for our modern games with the appropriate amendments and weapons stats from CPQ magazine. - though I've heard good reports about a set called Cold War Commader - never had my hands on a copy though and never seen a copy at shows- mind you I havn't really looked.

The Jungly bits are by the "Tree Fellas". I've mentioned them before and  can't  reccommend their stuff  too highly. Its the business and won't cost you and arm or leg

The final pic is an aerila shot near the end of the action . There will be more modern games perhaps I may even paint up some stuff for 1980s Inner German Border....