My top ten posts of all time...

Steve the Wargamer has just posted about his all time total page views for his various posts, as he wonders why some score so many more than others.  It is an interesting topic so I thought I would do the same in my, inevitably, more long winded way.  He is also more techie than me so can do a nice neat table, which I cannot!

A quick analysis shows that not confining myself to wargames alone makes for a larger view rate (especially if the post includes pictures of girls), which is not surprising really.  Girls attract many more viewers than model soldiers.  My most viewed post (of Linda Lusardi) in my other incarnation's blog has had 305,797 views.  That's getting on for twice what this entire blog has clocked up since April 2006!

1 Cyclops 27 Feb 2012, 4127 views, 2 comments

I had thought Angus McBride was first but in fact it is my entry on the Cyclops.  Harryhausen power has probably boosted this outside the wargames (have you noticed how Windows doesn't recognise the word wargame as a correct spelling?) community.

2 Something for the weekend...by Angus McBride 1 Sep 2012, 2879 views, 0 comments

This also attracted a fair number of non-wargaming visitors, I suspect.  Can't think why.

3 On the Workbench 6 June 2010, 2781 views, 0 comments

All about Trojans this one but I can't claim it as a sole wargames post because it has a couple of pictures of young ladies in it (incarnations of Helen of Troy) which may have skewed the hit rate.

4 Tales of two tragic ships 12 Oct 2009, 2637 views, 1 comment

This is a history post rather than a wargames one so it doesn't count either.

5 The First Schleswig War 1848-1850  2 February 2009 2329 views, 4 comments

This is more about uniform books than wargaming but is close.

6 Games Worshop Hobbit Figures They cost what? 24 Nov 2012, 2293 views, 10 comments

This is really the only pure wargaming post in my top ten and its a rant.  Who would have thought it?

7 Wars of the Roses 26 May 2009, 2206 views, 1 comment

Pictures I took at a re-enactment at a very hot Loseley Park in 2009.

8 Airfix Westland Whirlwind Stages 1 & 2 6 April 2010 2107 views, 3 comments

I am embarrassed by this one as I couldn't stand not having proper paints so never finished the model and, even worse, threw it away in disgust.

9 Citadel Realm of Battle Gameboard 2088 views, 3 comments

You won't be surprised to hear that although I bought one of these soon afterwards I still have only painted one tile out of six.

10 Cheryl Cole does Warhammer 40,000 2072 views, 1 comment

Ah, the formerly lovely Cheryl,  So cheery and friendly when she lived around the corner from me but now a despoiled husk of her former self who looks more like a Yakuza than a sex object (she was never really a singer).  Tragedy!

So even more time wasted writing a useless post when I should be undercoating my galley mast.  Maybe I'll go and do that now so at least I have achieved something today (although I have had a distracting box of something delivered today.  Clue: It smells like rotting fish).  

It's International Talk like a Pirate day!

Swipe me with a marlinspike if it don't be talk like a pirate day again, me hearties!

I dug out my pirates for this occasion and was rather surprised at how many I have painted over the years.  I tend to paint one or two when doing other things but these have mounted up over time. Nearly all are Foundry ones which I think I bought in one of their deals, so I no doubt have a lot more lurking around somewhere.  They have bucket loads of character and just looking at them makes me want to dig another couple out!

Apart from the Foundry figures I have also done a few Black Scorpion pirate girls which are equally nice to paint but tower over the Foundry figures somewhat.  I also have some of their skeleton pirates and (not very historically accurate) Royal Marines which I got for trying some games based on the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean on-line game which Guy and I used to play a lot.  Ironically (or perhaps not) Disney are closing down this online game today, much to the annoyance of the hundreds of thousands of players worldwide.

Here is the Legatus' online avatar taking a last look at one of the environments as I want to build some pirate buildings based on them.

The set for Port Royal was built in Wallilabou Bay in St Vincent and bits of it are still there today.  You can see the building above which was the inspiration for its digital equivalent in the online game pictured.

Depressingly I haven't played a pirate game since November 2008 but getting some scenery for WW2 Pacific would also work for the Caribbean (pretty much).  I have ordered some palm trees so may get some scenic bases done.

The best laid plans... plus...Banzai and Colours!

The galley so far

Things have not gone very well on the hobby front in the last week or so.  I was making slow but steady progress on my Roman Galley for the Thapsus game at Colours this weekend but work crises got in the way and ate into all my evenings.  I was hoping to have most of Saturday last weekend before taking Charlotte to Edinburgh but various pre-trip issues saw to that.  I had to admit to Big Red Bat that my galley was not going to be ready, about which I feel very guilty.  I sort of lost heart when I realised that one steering oar was missing and the other was broken with a missing bit too.  Fortunately Dave at Grand Manner has promised to sort this out for me.  I am determined to finish it soon!

The Legatus takes the healthy option by having scrambled eggs

Despite booking the tickets back in May I could only get an evening flight to Edinburgh and then the plane was two hours late!  Charlotte and I were very tired when we arrived at the Crowne Plaza at 12.10am only to be told that they had let our room go as we arrived after midnight and they didn't have any others.  Edinburgh was full because something like 15,000 new students at the city's four universities were all arriving that weekend.  The man at the desk said he would try and get us something outside the city.  Now, the Legatus is (on the whole) a placid sort of person who prefers to avoid conflict and tension.  On this occasion, however, I had had enough.  I firmly pointed out that I was an Inter-Continental Hotels group platinum cardholder and nothing like this had ever happened to me in any of the sixty two countries I have visited.  Ever!  The man disappeared into the back and the acting manager appeared within about two minutes.  Within another ten minutes they had got us a room at the Sheraton (a much better hotel) which was only about 200 yards away.  Even better they told me I wouldn't have to pay the bill which, considering the outrageous £220 a night the Crowne Plaza was going to charge, was the least they could do.  Even better than that, when we checked out the next day they didn't charge me for breakfast either so my total bill was £4 for the two diet cokes we had when we arrived.  Actually £2.00 for a coke from a hotel minibar is pretty good.  I think I will stay at the Sheraton again.  The breakfast, complete with haggis and black pudding restored my equanimity somewhat.  Just as well considering the amount of shopping I had to do for Charlotte that day. 

A Salute Troop Transporter was roped in to help get all her stuff up to Edinburgh

Charlotte, cunning as ever, used the fact that I hadn't had to pay for the hotel to extract extras from me which were not on the John Lewis shopping list my wife had prepared.  "Daddy, I don't like the scratchy duvet cover they have given me!"  "Daddy, I think I need a rug!"  "Daddy, I need a clutch handbag to go with my Ted Baker dress for the fresher's James Bond party tonight and here is a Ted Baker bag that is perfect!"  Good job we get 25% discount in John Lewis.  The £220 saved was disappearing very quickly!

Returning to London I had to employ some fancy footwork to avoid being sent to run a training course in Colombia and Brazil the week after next.  Fortunately, I managed to find someone else to do it.  I need a break from long distance travel for a bit.

Really love these!

As I mentioned in a previous post I picked up some of the new Bolt Action plastic Japanese from Warlord Games.  These were not really the Japanese I had intended getting, to be honest, I was expecting to get going with some samurai for Ronin.  While watching the Tour of Spain on TV over the last couple of nights I put together five of them.  Scott, from Middle Earth, commented that he couldn't really be doing with all this plastic assembly nonsense and I have some sympathy for this view.  I reckon it took me well over an hour to put together five figures (I've since done another seven). 

There are five identical sprues of six figures which includes one kneeling and one prone one.  Unlike some people I don't mind prone or kneeling figures, especially for conflicts of the last 100 years and, in fact, I would actually prefer more prone figures for, for example, the British BEF for 1914.  Oddly, although 25mm plastic bases are provided for the standing figures there are no bases for the prone ones.  I don't usually use the supplied bases for plastic sets but am rationing myself on my usual 20mm washers which I use for skirmish figures.  Also, these are the first plastic figures I have bought where the figures don't have the usual base moulded on.  You have to stick the sole of the boot directly onto the bases.  As three figures per sprue have one foot off the ground I decided to use the plastic bases and bond them to the figures with polystyrene cement, which I also rarely use. for strength.  

Arms are separate but fit very well for plastics and there are nine head variants per sprue.  There are various bags, water bottles and such like that can be added and, again, I found these went on easily without looking at all awkward.  Usefully, the instructions identify each piece (Victrix take note) so you know the difference between the mortar bomb bag and the sub-machine gun magazine bag.  I had to have a sword waving figure amongst my first set as a nod to my Airfix armies.  I will do a bugler and a standard bearer too! The poses are rather more active than, perhaps, I would have liked but they work really well for the Japanese and their frightening charges.

My only issue is that I'm really not sure what colour to paint them.  I have ordered the Osprey but it is one of those which they print to order so it will take some time to arrive.  My trusty Blandford has the Japanese in quite a dark green which was certainly the colour I painted my 1/32 Airfix figures.  However I painted my 1/72 figures in a kahki drill.  Books I have seen seem to have them in all sorts of shades. 

Rooting through my DVD pile I found that I had bought the HBO miniseries The Pacific and put the first episode on late one night.  Big mistake, as several hours later I had watched three episodes!  It really was a tremendously well done series and the military aspect of it had obviously been meticulously researched; with the changes in the Marines uniform over time, for example, being accurately reflected.  Now, however, I am getting stressed as to whether the plastic Warlord marines will include early uncovered helmeted heads (for Guadalcanal) or will they all be the later covered helmets.  I wish I could relax about these things and just contemplate games which aren't recreations of actual battles!

My command at Thapsus

Speaking of which I managed to have an afternoon off and took part in a game of Big Red Bat's magnificent Thapsus recreation at Colours today.  I usually go to Colours on a Sunday, the second day, but it seemed particularly quiet today.  I spoke to Mike of Black Hat Miniatures and he said it had been much busier yesterday.  Maybe it will shrink to a day but, it seems, they need the second day to handle the wargames tournament games.  I did buy a a couple of steampunk things for In Her Majesty's Name from Mike which will fit very well with my planned set-up.  Disappointingly, I couldn't find any of the 4Ground Victorian buildings and apart from the IHMN scenic items all I bought were two of the factions for Ronin.  It must be my smallest wargames show haul for years.  Partly this is because I was hunting through my boxes to locate my Boot Hill Mexicans, as I have just bought an interesting, revisionist book on the Alamo.  I couldn't find them anywhere and all the exercise did was make me realise that I have far too many figures for too many periods. No more periods!  As the menopausal actress said to the Bishop.

I had a good look at the Warlord Pegasus Bridge model (which is huge!)  but  didn't photograph anything else except the Thapsus game where I was pitted against a trio of boys aged between about eight and fourteen (I would guess) who were making mincemeat of my command.  They picked up the rules far quicker than I did (needless to say).  Mr Bat's rules, which we were using, were card driven ,which made for quite a dynamic game where units could make a number of successive actions in one turn if the cards fell right.   My cards, needless to say, didn't fall right and I was reminded of the time I played strip poker with three girls from one of the women's college's rowing squads.  Hopefully, I will do better at the next attempt!  I might have had a chance to read the rules by then too!

Fortunately, I had to escape to pick up my wife from work so avoided being present at yet another tragic defeat.  Big Red Bat's armies looked magnificent and defined, for me, what a proper wargame should look like. His recreation of the Mediterranean Sea sorely lacked a galley, of course, but I have a few weeks reprieve to get it done before SELWG, which I haven't attended for more than ten years.    

Something for the weekend: a lady Gulliver?

A couple of strange pictures from Oui magazine's March 1979 issue for this weekend's diversion.  It's an Attack of the Fifty Foot Tall Woman/baton twirler/Gulliver/Peter Laing Marlburian/Trumpton/meets Playboy mash up!

It's on my adults only Legatus' Wargames Ladies blog here.

More thoughts on World War 2...in the Pacific

I have, on occasion on this blog, pondered about doing some World War 2 gaming.  Now that Bolt Action is out there might even be the chance of a game at Guildford.  Apart from my misgivings about gaming such a recent conflict the question has already been which theatre to do.  Most rules and figure ranges seem to go for France 1944 and this was certainly what we played when I wargamed WW2 at school with 20mm Airfix plastics.  We also did North Africa, which has extra resonance for the Legatus as that was where my father fought.

I have had a go at starting the period a number of times in 28mm.  Six years ago, I bought some Artizan Airborne and Germans for Arnhem, where my Uncle Keith fought (the one who left me his whole cellar of claret in his will).  I painted one Airborne soldier but found the camouflage rather tiring!

My BEF figures

I then bought some nice Mike Owen sculpted British figures from BEF Miniatures and thought about doing Norway, France 1940 and Crete.  I had even started painting them when the figures were bought by Warlord Games who, annoyingly, retired them in favour of some new figures which I didn't like nearly so much.  I'd just about given up on the idea of early war when last week an American firm, Gorgon Studios, announced some Owen sculpted British specifically for Norway (they already have some German Gebirgsjäger and Norwegians). Unfortunately, they don't seem to have a distributor in the UK which means massive postal and probably customs charges as well (plus the Post Office's £6 handling charge) but I may just have to get some.

My Eighth Army Artizans

I also bought some of the Artizan North Africa figures and although these are chunkier than I usually like the two I painted were really nice to work on.  However, when I heard about the new Perry plastics I thought that I would prefer these to the Artizans so I didn't buy any more.  I have now heard that the Perry figures are very small, which given my eyesight is not what I want, so am thinking about painting some more Artizan figures again, especially as I bought a lot of second hand ones on eBay a year or so ago.

Recently, however, I have taken a punt on the theatre I played the most when I was at school:  the Pacific. My interest in this came. largely, from the number of World War 2 films that played in the afternoons at the weekend.  Many of them were set in the Pacific and a number of them starred John Wayne (which is why my mother watched them, I suspect - although he always died in his war films, unlike his westerns) such as The Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and The Fighting SeeBees (1944).  I also watched The Halls of Montezuma (1950) and Guadalcanal Diary (1943) plus many others.  When the TV series The Pacific was first shown on TV here one reviewer said that it was "a neglected theatre for screen adaptions".  Well ,the reviewer must have been about twenty one and obviously never saw all the films I did on Sunday afternoons.

I had hundreds of the Airfix plastics, the cover art of the boxes for which were some of the most evocative that they did. Most of my Pacific games were without formal rules and were conducted outside on our rockery which, conveniently overlooked our pond.  The Marines could come across the pond land on the beach and then would spend days or weeks (over the summer holidays) fighting the Japanese back and forth across the rockery.  Just as in the War itself my mother would unearth lost Airfix Japanese soldiers decades later, as she did the weeding.  About fifteen years ago I painted a lot of these Airfix figures with the idea of doing Guadalcanal in 20mm but shortly afterwards I gave up on plastics and started painting 28m metal Darkest Africa and Vikings.  The plastics were forgotten.

The recent release of the Warlord Games plastic Japanese and the preview of their plastic US Marines has got me all nostalgic again, as they really have a great Airfix vibe about them, so I picked up the Bolt Action Armies of Imperial Japan book and bought a box of the infantry in Orc's Nest today.  I'll review them properly when I have more time but they are very small for 28mm figures. However, the average height of a Japanese infantryman was 5'4" I seem to recall.  I haven't got any other Bolt Action figures so don't know if they are all on the small size.  I am wary of different scales in Warlord ranges as we have seen in their Roman figures. The figures, which will need a lot of assembling (something to do during Strictly Come Dancing!) are a bit cartoony in pose, which is my main criticism of Warlord's WW2 figures, but I think I just want them for Airfix style skirmishes with the marines, when they come out.  Also the rather excessive animation works for the Japanese I think.  The key thing is that I will need no tanks and no buildings (which is the problem for the other theatres) but I will need an awful lot of palm trees! Maybe I can pick up some plastic ones at Colours (unless everyone else has had the same idea!).

Something for the weekend: Caroline Munro

Sinbadalicious!

Here, particularly for The Angry Lurker, is Miss Caroline Munro on our Legatus' Wargames Ladies blog.

Have a nice weekend!  The Legatus is off to Edinburgh to deposit the Space Cadet at the university for five years of astrophysics.  How we pack all the shoes she wants to take is proving to be something of a puzzle, however.

Mugs for painting!

Some time ago Big Red Bat posted about the mugs he drank from when he is painting.  I was thinking about this yesterday when, after an invasion of relations, I found I didn't have any of my favourite mugs to hand when re-commencing work on the Roman galley (progress on which went disastrously badly over the weekend due to Guy's rowing activities).  All my favourites were dirty and I found this surprisingly stressful.  With Charlotte off to Edinburgh in less than a week we are all getting stressed as she totally fails to prepare for living away from home for the first time, other than getting out far too may shoes.  Anyway, here are my favourite painting mugs, although very few are wargames related.  

My favourite one at present is also the most recent, which I bought at this year's Salute.  It is very big but is starting to show signs of dishwasher wear (which, to be fair, was pointed out as an issue of the label - but who has time to hand wash crockery?)

I bought this Airfix Spitfire mug in Waterstones and although it isn't that large it always inspires me if I have to glue together anything.  I suspect it will be much employed when my recently ordered Warlord Games WW2 Japanese (oh dear, another period) arrive.

This one was stolen by my particular friend S from the Four Seasons in Vancouver.  We had nipped into the Four Seasons for a cooked breakfast.  Well, I wanted a cooked breakfast one morning but was informed that she didn't cook anything in her apartment as it would mess up her new kitchen.  Her justification was that she spent so much money in the bar at the Four Seasons she had earned a mug (she actually stole two, quite brazenly). I always use this mug if I am painting naked girly figures, such as slavegirls.  I can't think why.

This mug dates from my honeymoon on the Orient Express from the time, twenty years ago, when, as my wife says, "we used to like each other".  This is very good for when I am painting large amounts of one colour as it is bone china and so keeps the tea hot for the longest period of any of my mugs.

This one was a present from one of my more personal personal assistants and features pin-up painting by David Wright from the fifties when he used to provide pictures for The Sketch and Men Only.  I don't use this one that often as it is rather special and lives in a pink box.  It was the one I used yesterday, however.

This is another recent purchase; from October last year.   I bought it in El Dorado airport, Bogota and it is, of course, a coffee cup.  I don't drink coffee, however, as it makes me go strange but you can get an awful lot of tea in it.  The large surface area means that it gets cold quite fast so I tend to use this one when filing and basing figures as you can stop to drink at any point without worrying, for example that your paint will dry on the palette.

This is another coffee cup which I bought in the Bellagio hotel Las Vegas (on the trip that S spent more than $3,000 on one bottle of Californian wine at dinner).  This is probably my second favourite.  It's large but not so large that the tea gets cold.

This is another one from a trip to Las Vegas when I went to see the Titanic exhibition at the Luxor Hotel.  I use this one when making models of doomed ships.

This one was bought for me by my sister last year after I had given a lecture at MIT in Boston.  I think she was being ironic.

So, this is what keeps the Legatus going when he actually has time to paint, which isn't that often at present.  Time to put the kettle on!