Guest Spot: The Mighty Albannach (30mm ECW)

 I'm delighted to feature some photos very kindly sent by my good friend Albannach (Iain). He is a great fan of vintage 30mm - especially the Jason range produced by Les Higgins, back in another century.

He writes: Very happy for you to feature these. The command are two Traditions sculpted by Stadden. There is one Tradition musketeer and one pikeman, interestingly the latter is marked 'Marcus Hinton' on the base. The rest of the foot are Higgins. 

I [also] have nine mounted figures, but need to find a painter to do them justice. 

 

If anyone has any of these figures, or knows of any, or has any interesting information about them, please send a note for Iain to this blog and I'll pass it on.

In the meantime, here are some delightful pictures for your delectation. The big figures certainly have a presence, don't they? Many thanks, Iain!

Be Careful What You Wish For

 A slightly unusual tale.

Here's a photo borrowed from the late Clive Smithers' blog. It is one of a set of pictures he took at my house in June 2010. He brought a stack of his own soldiers with him, and we fought a Peninsular Battle here, using a hex board and my own rules (this was pre-Commands & Colors).

In the right foreground you will see two units of [Hinton Hunt] Portuguese (blue uniforms, dark green bases). They are mounted on borrowed sabots, which adds to the confusion a little, but they were part of Clive's visiting army, and he thought it was a nice touch to bring these particular soldiers on a visit, since he had obtained them from me about 5 years earlier, in a swap deal.

In 2005 I had been in the process of replacing my Portuguese troops with more modern 20mm castings, so the Hinton Hunt boys became surplus to requirements, and Clive was keen to get hold of them. At the time, I had a brief twinge of megalomania, and quite fancied the idea of hanging onto them, so that I would have extra Portuguese [you can never have too many Portuguese]. Anyway, I thought better of it, and happily passed them on. The swap took place in the cafe of the Brocksbushes farm shop, near Corbridge, I recall, accompanied by pie and chips. Clive subsequently rebased the Portuguese and added in a few other castings he had already.

I was pleasantly surprised to meet them again briefly when he brought them on his visit five years later, and then I subsequently forgot all about them. 

Until a couple of weeks ago, when I saw them on eBay. My old hand-drawn flags are just as awful as they were all those years ago, and instantly recognisable. The seller had obviously bought them from the recent auctions of Clive's collections. After some pondering, I made an offer for them, and was surprised to be successful. They have now reached me safely, I have removed them from Clive's replacement bases, and am now thinking what I might do with them. I could put them back into the front line, in which case my new house standards will require some extra command figures and a change of facing colours, or else I could use them as siege troops, in which case they are fine as they are. 

In the meantime, I have to say that they are exactly as they were in 2005, and I shall put them safely in a storage box while I decide what to do. In another context, could this be construed as "getting my own back"? I am pleased to have them, though the circumstances are very sad.

Peter Gouldesbrough - a very late postscript

 I was delighted to receive a very nice email from the daughter of Peter Gouldesbrough, the pioneer Edinburgh wargamer, whom I knew for a while around 1983-85. Peter was the subject of a post in this blog back in December 2017; his daughter had recently come across my post and was pleased with it as a personal recollection [phew!], and she wrote to thank me for my effort.

She also told me that, sadly, he passed away in 1988, at the age of only 70, which goes some way to explain how I lost touch with him so completely. As before, I publish this here only so that anyone who knew Peter can share this information.

Some of Peter's old soldiers came to light in Edinburgh a few years ago; to me, it all just confirms that, when it comes to toy soldiers, we really only get to look after them for a while.

WSS: Pause for a Ponder

 It seems remarkable, given the short timescale, but I'm now giving some thought to the "5th Army" in the Phase One plan for my WSS Project. It was always my intention to have big(gish) armies for France, Bavaria, Britain and Austria, and an additional small army to add to the Alliance forces.

Without thinking about it for too long, I always assumed that it should be a Dutch contingent. I even bought the Robert Hall books on the Dutch forces, and very nice they are, too.

I am basing these Phase One forces on the Schellenberg/Blenheim period - if necessary, to keep Bavaria in the war, they can go on fighting around the Danube area for as many years as I like. Fine. The problem, of course is that the actual Dutch army was a bit committed to the defence of Flanders at the time, therefore the support for Marlborough which they sent along (belatedly) consisted of other nations' troops fighting on the Dutch side.

So, now that I can afford the time to think about this, I decided that Your Actual Dutch may appear in a potential Phase Two, but the exact identity of my 5th Army is up for review.

For a while, the Hanoverians looked like a good bet, but there are a lot of red uniforms in there. In the interests of visual variety, which is important in the world of toy soldiers, I also rejected a couple of other possibilities who were mostly dressed in grey. What else was there?

My latest thinking, and I am quite pleased with this, suggests that Hesse-Kassel would be suitable. They had a nice little army, with the foot resplendent in dark blue. Accordingly, I now have another (rather smaller) Robert Hall book on order. Sadly, their horse seem mostly to have worn grey, but I can make it a rather paler grey than the French. Promising.

The 5th Army is planned at 4 units of foot, 2 of horse and a battery. I'm still tracking down the adventures of the artillery. I think they may not have turned up on the Danube - still reading about this. According to Charles Spencer's large (and flatulent) volume on Blenheim, Francis Hare's journal (another Marlborough fanzine) states that it was arranged with the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel that his artillery should be sent to Mannheim, to meet up with Marlborough on his march to the Danube. Whether they turned up or not I don't know. If not, of course, it would do no harm at all to have an artillery unit from somewhere else. This is, after all, my own version of the war, so I can please myself.

 

Landgrave Karl I, in suitably warlike garb

So that's as far as I've got. Present thinking is my 5th Army will be the forces of the Landgrave, presumably commanded by the Hereditary Prince. I may, of course, change my mind next week.

Anything is possible.  

WSS: Les Higgins - a Little More Figure Paleontology

 I warn you now, this is an extremely nerdy post indeed, so if you like this sort of stuff you should maybe worry a little, but welcome to the gang hut anyway.

My WSS armies mostly consist of Les Higgins 20mm castings, or PMD (Phoenix Model Developments), which is how the company was relaunched after Les died in the early 1970s. As I work through the jobs involved in building up my own forces, I have become familiar with slight variants on the figures as time passed. I'm not referring to conversions added to the range by Old John in recent years, I'm referring to evolution in the original production days.

 

The relevant page from the Les Higgins Miniatures catalogue of 1971

This post (such as it is) was prompted by the realisation that the last few of my original-pattern MP16 castings are about to be painted, and all the MP16s I will have thereafter will be examples of the later PMD figure, which was sculpted entirely by Tim Richards, who succeeded Les as the company's chief designer. There was a sort of landmark period when the range was remastered to show the new PMD logo, and Richards took the opportunity to make some changes - the officer with sword [from pack MP17] was smartened up and given more ornate dress, and a couple of other changes were made; the throwing grenadier [MP3] and the charging grenadier [MP7] were always weak castings, since they stood on one foot, so these were tweaked so that the figures were standing more firmly. For some reason which I've never fathomed, the PMD version of the walking horse has it's head turned to the left, whereas the original was peeking to the right - otherwise the castings appear identical, logos apart. And there was a new, simpler drummer [from MP18], which was all Richards' work

 

The listing, borrowed without permission from the vintage20MIL website

Anyway, to MP16. The original figure is described, at least in the list in Vintage 20 MIL, as "at the ready". After the changeover to PMD, this figure seems to have disappeared and been replaced by a very different chap, who seems to be advancing in a very businesslike manner. I like both castings, personally - it has been suggested to me that the later version looks very similar to a Strelets French fusilier pose - not a bad copy, considering it predated it by 45 years or so.

To commemorate the passing of my last old-style MP16s, I set up a couple of photos, with a choice of lighting. The two figures on the left are Les Higgins' handiwork, and they show traces of white undercoat. The two on the right are the replacement PMD figure by Tim Richards. 

 

I love them all. 

WSS: Déjà Vu (well, sort of)

Case Study No. 1

Some years ago, when I was building up my 20mm ECW armies, I became very interested in the Covenanters of 1643-44. I bought in some useful books, and kind of befriended all those local chaps who had trooped down to Duns Camp, besieged Newcastle and fought at Marston Moor. When I say local, I mean local to where I live; I was especially interested in the adventures of the East Lothian Regiment, for example, who were raised by Sir Ralph Hepburn, whose family seat, Waughton Castle, is about 5 miles from where I'm sitting. Well, it was there before someone nicked all the stone to build dykes and farm steadings.   

I read the life of Alexander Leslie and the history of his army, and there is some wonderful detail of who was who in the Covenanter force. I became very interested in the rather confusing period which is now known as the Bishops' Wars, about 1638-40. I considered whether it would make a satisfactory alternative campaign, and how easily I could fudge armies for it from what I already had planned. I still think about it now, but I quickly decided that the idea was intriguing, but there were some major snags, not the least being that King Charles's on-the-cheap Army of Vengeance was a wash-out. It was a very silly and one-sided conflict. Charles obviously felt that the Divine Right of Kings extended to prohibiting anyone from opposing his army on the battlefield. The point at which I left it is that

(1) it might make an interesting campaign at some point, but not a historical one; it would benefit from the armies being artificially balanced rather a lot.

(2) come to think about it, maybe it would make a nice map game - possibly a boardgame...

Case Study No. 2

Time passes; since the end of 2019 I have been working on refurbishing and extending armies for the War of the Spanish Succession. Once again, I find that I have committed myself to building armies in a long-dead scale, using figures which have been out of production for 45 years or so. It's a rare talent.

In my hunt for alternative figures which would fit, I looked at all sorts, and found that nearly all the plastics and 1/72 metal miniatures were too big. Irregular Miniatures offered some useful variations, but there wasn't much else. Around this time, it occurred to me that Newline, if they made suitable figures, might be just about right for my target 1/76 scale. Of course, they don't. They have some SYW British infantry who obviously have the later uniform. However, they sent me a sample pack of their Jacobites. Hey. Pretty good.

Now I was at the beginning of putting together serious armies for the Blenheim period, and had no wish to get distracted into looking at the 1745 Rebellion. However, I thought that perhaps, as an alternative, The 1715 might be an interesting add-on for my WSS chaps. A period I know very little about, of course, so I made a mental note and shelved the idea for later.

To my amazement, I now estimate I should complete my original Phase One plan for the WSS by Winter this year, ignoring any element of Creeping Elegance which might extend the work. Without wishing to tempt Providence, I spent a little of my current isolation period thinking more about this. I bought a very cheap, pre-owned copy of Stuart Reid's Sheriffmuir on eBay, and it arrived last week. Great book!

I find myself back in the Bishops' Wars situation. What could I do, how rewarding would it be, and how much of a distraction? There are copious lists of regiments, not all of which could have appeared at the same time, but some familiar names from my memory of the old Royalist horse in the days of the Marquis of Newcastle - Widdrington, among others. Maybe some of my ECW cavalry could ride again? A few of the British WSS regiments have the right facings and so on, though of course my flags are hopeless for the years after 1707. And then there are Highland troops - I now know that Newline might work nicely, and I also have some (very scruffily painted) Irregular Highlanders I bought in to help the Marquis of Montrose. Hmmm.

At the moment I am enjoying reading about this, and making up candidate lists of what I could use from what I already have (if I kept my eyes half-shut), and what else I could sensibly add. I'm convinced that I won't do anything for the moment, but it's an interesting possibility. As with my potential cod Bishops' Wars, I think the approach might be a heavily-fictionalised map campaign.

Anyway, whatever happens, I am enjoying reading about yet another unfamiliar bit of history. Learning stuff is fun, provided the old Covid allows one to stay awake long enough to do some reading!

WSS: Getting There - Photos to Date

 I still have a fair amount to do in order to complete the first phase of my 20mm WSS project, but I am pleased with progress to date. I've now smartened up my master list for the collection, including a full set of photos (as at this morning!).

Some of the earlier acquisitions were refurbs which I think I would sniff at now, but overall I'm very satisfied with what has been done thus far - the quality is definitely improving as the proportion of units painted from scratch increases, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank, once again, all those kind souls who have sourced figures, provided consultancy and uniform advice, painted and refurbed figures and generally kept me motivated - I am very grateful. And, of course, I'd like to pay tribute once again to the late Eric Knowles, whose vintage collection got the whole thing going for me, and got me off to a flying start.

 I have stuck a back-up copy of my WSS catalogue on Google Drive - if you would like to have a squint at the photos, you should find them here - if the link doesn't work, please let me know. Just the thing for a slideshow!

I still have to work on general staff, especially for the British and French, the French have 4 infantry battalions, 4 cavalry units and 2 of dragoons to come, I have a few gaps to fill in the Austrian and Bavarian armies, and I haven't even started thinking about the [small, debated] Dutch force. But - importantly, a lot has been done. Enough to keep up my enthusiasm, and the project has helped to keep me at least a little sane during the pandemic!

WSS: The Refurb Factory Chugs On, plus a "Missing Link"

 I'm currently working on a British contingent for my WSS collection - I've been lucky enough to get some figures painted by Goya, but at a more humble level I've been working on refurbing some bought-in troops - these are variously sourced from eBay, from the old Rye Soldier Shop and from that all-round Good Egg, Albannach. The ex-Eric Knowles collection I bought in 2019 did not include much in the way of British troops, since the British were one of the nations which Eric had been in the process of replacing with Hinchliffe.

Anyway, today I've varnished a batch of refurbed musketeers, these are for the regiments of Wm Clifton, Dering and the Earl of Bath, and the grenadiers and the rest of the command, to complete the battalions, will be painted from scratch, from fresh figures. Using this procedure, I also plan to add the Royal Irish and the Buffs, plus (probably) two battalions of the Royal Scots, and I will source the Foot Guards from fresh figures. Still a load of cavalry and artillery needed, but this is shaping up.

The musketeers here are the Les Higgins MP15 "at ease" pose, and the officer is one of the castings from the MP19 pack. With an unusually seamless glide, I shall now move onto my second topic, which is all about this very MP19 pose...

 Collectors of old figures invariably become nerdy about the history of the poses, and the changes and variants (is it all right to say that?) which appeared over the years of production. I am getting into this situation with the Les Higgins/Phoenix Model Developments Marlburians, which I had hardly seen 18 months ago, so nerdism obviously sets in quickly. There are a number of figures in the range which were replaced after the changeover to PMD (early 1970s) - a couple of poses which were standing on one leg (and therefore fragile) were modified, and the drummer figure was completely replaced by a new one, sculpted by Tim Richards (who became chief designer after Les Higgins' death), as was the advancing/charging musketeer (MP16?).

One of the figures which was modified is the charging officer from the MP19 pack (as mentioned above). It was never one of Les's best, to be honest, and at some point it was improved. I have specimens of the original and the improved production castings...

Here you see, from left to right, original (front), improved (front), original (rear) and improved (rear) - you can see that the wig and the ornamentation on his coat have been modified, and his coat has been restyled at the back so that it now drapes over his sword scabbard. OK - that's a nice example of an upgrade, and it probably dates from when the Higgins ranges were re-branded as PMD (with changed logos on the bases).

However, in this particular case I happen to have in my possession the actual altered master figure, with added sculpting in beeswax and Plasticine (or something), which came with an assortment of oddments from Tim Richards' old desk drawer in the old PMD factory at Earls Barton - here it is - the Missing Link - the step between the original and the revised production charging officer in MP19. You can see quite clearly what Tim has done. Notice that the face is still Les' original sculpt, but that the shape of the back of the hat has been tweaked.

 

That's probably enough of that - I've put him back in the official Nerd's Drawer - Box B...

Hooptedoodle #374 - Tales of Shopping during Lockdown

(1) The international parcel saga - as mentioned a few days ago, I made an online purchase in the USA, and it took 12 days for the parcel to travel from somewhere in Massachusetts to the Global Shipping Center at Erlanger KY. I am astounded to relate that, though the scope for detailed tracking rather dropped out of sight thereafter, the package duly arrived on my doorstep in South-East Scotland bang on the promised date, so the international part of the trip took only 5 days, despite the involvement of Pitney-Bowes [who?] and Hermes at this end.

So, as promised, I have to admit that I am very favourably impressed. Credit where credit is due. Well done, everyone.

(2) A happy coincidence - I was pleased to manage to obtain a pre-owned copy of David Chandler's Marlborough as Military Commander online for only £6 plus P&P, and it duly arrived, promptly and tidily, from a bookshop in Bradford. I was very pleased to find that the book was clean and tight, but was especially happy to find a label on the inner cover revealing that it was previously owned by Charlie Wesencraft, no less. Since I read somewhere that Charlie was a close friend of Dr Chandler, I had a mad idea that I might have got an author's signature for my £6 as well, but alas, no!

I now have a number of books which were previously owned by celebs, as it happens - a set of The Dickson Manuscripts and a set of Sauzey's volumes on French Napoleonic allies, both formerly owned by George Nafziger, and a couple of ECW books once owned by Peter Young. These were all just flukes - there are a couple more, but at present I can't remember what they are, or who they came from. I did once buy a book on eBay which had previously been owned by me, but that is another tale, and rather embarrassing.

(3) An unusually fortunate purchase on eBay [UK]. Someone tipped me off that there was an item which looked like the sort of thing I might be interested in (old toy soldiers of an old-fashioned size). I checked it out and, yes, I was interested. The seller was someone I've dealt with before, and he comes up with some very nice old stuff from time to time. Starting bid was £12. The seller was also open to offers - based on past experience of what these figures typically go for, I made an offer of £16. Rejected.

OK - I upped my offer to £21. Also rejected. This was getting a bit steep for me, so I just placed a normal auction bid of £16 - there were 6 days to go. I reckoned I would be happy if I got them for that, and I would have been fairly priced out of the market if I didn't.

I was out this evening, but got home to find that I had won the item for the £12 starting price. No other bids, no other interest. Obviously we win a few and we lose a few, but it demonstrates the risks of making (or not accepting) offers on an auction item - risks both ways, of course, but I'd have happily paid the £21...

English Safari (wet) - Small Game Hunting

Rain in Lincolnshire - just like my last day

I was away for most of last week. I had private business in Lincolnshire, and I combined the trip with a visit to Essex, where I obtained some old soldiers, of which more in a moment.

I travelled in my van, which is actually quite a friendly sort of vehicle - high seating position (and thus a great view), surprisingly comfortable, and it allows me to stooge along steadily, without anyone feeling obliged to cut me up or out-drag me at the traffic lights. As the time approached for my journey, I had been watching the weather forecasts nervously, but my trek down was all in bright sunshine - no problems at all.

In Essex I had the great pleasure of actually meeting DC - he of the Wargaming Odyssey blog. David and I have been on email terms for some years, and have even spoken on the steam telephone, but the old face-to-face bit was a new departure. David was just as jovial and enthusiastic in person as I had expected, and I must express my deep appreciation for his time and for his looking after me during my visit. We had a lot of interesting conversations during my day-and-a-bit in Essex - I got to see his famed man-cave, which is indeed a great honour, and I learned a lot about wargaming. Excellent all round.

Oh yes - the soldiers. I can't really say an awful lot about them at the moment, not least because I am still finding out the details of what I obtained. I bought a load of very old Napoleonic figures, many of which, I understand, were involved in the 1965 "refight" of Waterloo, at the Duke of York's Headquarters. The first job I have (and it's a big one) is to sort them into types, makes and units - they have been stored in some very dilapidated old boxes for a great many years, and have got a bit mixed up as the current owner (and DC) worked on identifying and listing what was there.

After two pretty solid days of effort, I am starting to get the idea of what is here. Some of these can probably be freshened up and rebased, and could be available for active service fairly quickly - some may require rather more work, and some may just go in the spares box for a while, but Goya has been talking of having a bash at Waterloo sometime soon - these should certainly help to fill some gaps!

I'll leave it at that for now, with some photos showing the inevitable chaos which is involved in opening up the boxes and trying to sort things out. I must say that I would like to know a lot more about the 1965 Waterloo game - I'm trying to get some extra information about that. If anyone knows of any write-ups, or has any personal knowledge of the event, I'd be very grateful if you could get in touch. I can certainly state that Hinton Hunt castings from circa 1965 appear to be cleaner and nicer than any I have seen. There are also some very early (small) Lammings, and a number of figures I have never seen before - no idea of the manufacturers - I may put up some more photos later on.

This is the mess in the dining room starting to abate a little - some of the figures are already sorted into boxes, and I have trays and all sorts of containers on all horizontal surfaces

This looks like French foot artillery in the warm water bath, soaking the bases off

Various Guard artillery figures, foot dragoons, miscellaneous generals and staff

Another tray - assorted cavalry - including enough cuirassiers for a very serious charge indeed

This looks like a heap of French line infantry to me...

Dragoons of different nationalities, RHG, Guard sapeurs...

Some highlanders in this lot...

A good number of lancers for Waterloo, including some Alberken Eclaireurs I haven't seen before, plus yet more riflemen - and so it continues. I'll be working on this for a couple of days yet - I've ordered in some more Really Useful Boxes - 4 litre size!

On my return journey I stopped again in Lincolnshire, where, by a complete fluke, my landlord (who knows nothing at all of these matters) recalled seeing a film clip of the 1965 Waterloo game on the Blue Peter TV programme (for kids). I can't find anything on Pathe News or anything, but I'm still looking. On my last day, Saturday, my luck ran out with the weather, and I drove for about 6 hours in a monsoon. No problems. The van just quietly got on with the job, and I was home in time for tea.

A very serious plaque to commemorate the fact that Thomas Paine was very briefly associated with Alford. I am hoping that there will be a plaque one day to say that I had my dinner in the Half Moon Hotel one evening.

Mind you, one of the Alford street names suggests that they may be familiar with my blog already

Yes - this is a picture of Margaret Thatcher, which is a first for me. The event was the opening of the M25, one of my least favourite stretches of highway in Britain. I have a theory - next time you are stuck in a nightmare on the M25, listen carefully - I bet you she is laughing somewhere

 

Janitors of the Guard

Goya very kindly gave me these chaps some weeks ago - three odd figures from the collection of my late Edinburgh friend and erstwhile wargame opponent, Peter Gouldesbrough. They are, as you see, French engineers - Peter converted these from Hinton Hunt French line artillery gunners. I never saw his 20mm armies in their glory, since he had moved on to 5mm by the time I met him.

I have smartened them up a little (I hope you can tell). I guess Peter probably painted these around 1968-70, and he didn't really believe much in varnish, so there was some touching-up required to get them ready for duty. I thought they looked a bit like janitors, with the home-made hammer and shovel - ideally the third fellow should have had a bucket of sawdust. So they are currently known here as les Concierges de la Garde.

Of course, they are nothing of the sort. These are regular line engineers - I also have some more sappers and miners to paint up for the French Siege Train box, but they are all in full cuirass and helmet order - I didn't have any in campaign dress until now.

Peter had something of an Impressionist painting style - I've deliberately tidied them up a bit. I think he might disapprove of my painting, but he would be pleased that his boys are still around to cope with the odd job. Anyway, they're fun and I'm pleased with them. If you need any shrubs planted, please get in touch.

Guest Appearance: ECW Hinton Hunt

Steve Cooney sent me an email, and was kind enough to include some photos, which are definitely worth a look, I think. Steve makes the point that, for devotees of Hinton Hunt, since tabletop Napoleonic battles normally feature large numbers of units, the small matter (literally) of keeping the footprint down, plus the limited availability of figures, mean that there has evolved a standard battalion size of two dozen or so figures. On the other hand, the smaller numbers of units needed for ECW actions have allowed Steve to experiment with larger regiment sizes, with greater emphasis on the look of the thing. His preferred unit size is 42-45 men for foot - you can see the effect in the pictures.

Nice, eh?

Thanks Steve - I for one am now crippled with envy, but I'll be all right...

A Weakness for Dragoons

This is going to be another of those how-high-can-you-pile-it? posts. Never mind the quality, feel the width.

Five years ago, give or take a day, I published a post celebrating (lamenting?) that I had acquired and refurbished another unit of French dragoons, despite the fact that I already had quite enough.

Welcome to the 26eme & 27eme Dragons - you will observe that the trumpeter
for the 27eme has not arrived yet - plans are in hand, and he should be present shortly!

Well, I've done it again - this time a further two such units. I could claim that, as a Peninsular War devotee, I can never have too many dragoons, or merely confess that I have a long history of having my head turned by a pretty regiment of the blighters. It maybe goes deeper than that.

When I was about 12 (or so) I was lucky enough to be granted a private tour of the Musée de l'Armée (my grandfather was a friend of one of the directors), and one of my most vivid memories of a fascinating but confused Sunday morning is suddenly being confronted by a life-size mannikin of a mounted Napoleonic dragoon, and being dumbstruck (you may well know the actual mannikin I mean - he's still there today, still scaring the kids). It had never occurred to me that soldiers were terrifying individually as well as collectively.

When I started building my Peninsular armies - 10 years or so later - I was enchanted by the PMD/Les Higgins French dragoons. My original quota was a brigade of two regiments, the 6eme (red facings) and the 15eme (pink!). Later I added a third - the 25eme (orange) - but that was it for Les Higgins - they went out of business. In the days before eBay, that was as far as things went - if your manufacturer (or scale!!) went OOP then you were well and truly stuck.

When NapoleoN Miniaturas were active I finally obtained the fourth regiment of the Armée de Portugal's Dragoon Division - the 11eme (crimson) - and then I was happy. Job done.

But then eBay took over, and still the new/old toy soldiers are trickling in. Five years after the last "final" recruits, here are two more. And I'm still pleased with them, and still delighted to have an opportunity to dig out that entire section of the army for a group photo.

My French dragoon contingent - a lot of eyes-right going on, to simplify the
mould-lines for PMD! If there are not enough horses in Spain to go around, then the
chaps at the front can jolly well walk.

Very silly, very self-indulgent and - really - what hobbies are all about. It would be a poor kind of a world if you were not allowed to have too many dragoons, would it not?

Steve St Clair and a quarter of a million friends

Someone sent me the link to this video; I hadn't seen it before, though I would guess it is very famous. If you have concerns about the size of your current project, or if you are running out of space for your collection, check this out.

Hooptedoodle #271 - McKeown's Law of Collecting

We've discussed this stuff before, but I was rather taken by McKeown's Law, which comes in 3 parts. Though this law originates in the world of camera enthusiasts and collectors, it definitely has wider application. The picture is borrowed, shamelessly and without permission, from the excellent blog of Arnhem Jim, to set a context. If you have seen the Law before, here it is again - smile and move on.

McKeown's Law of Collecting 

1) The price of an antique or collectable is entirely dependant upon the moods of the buyer and seller at the time of the transaction.

2) If you pass up the chance to buy an item you really want, you will never have that chance again.

3) If you buy an item because you know that you will never have that chance again, a better example of the same item will be offered to you a week later for a much lower price!

This and That

I guess this post is mostly about OCD, and maybe ineptitude - both topics on which I might claim a small amount of expertise.

Topic 1: The Catalogue

Recently, in relaxed conversation, Stryker, having had the mixed pleasure of inspecting my Soldier Cupboard (in semi-darkness, on his knees - it's an architecture thing), asked, as one might, how many units there were in my armies. An innocent enough question, quite appropriate in the context.

The Cupboard - current state; these days it contains only the French and
Anglo-Portuguese cavalry and infantry...

I answered, correctly, that I really didn't know, which surprised him a little, and then the conversation moved on. Afterwards, I found I was actually slightly concerned that I didn't know. Firstly, there is a faint whiff of schoolboy bravado in the implication that I have so many units that I don't know how many there are - I wouldn't like to give that impression - that's a bit like claiming not to know how many yachts one owns. More worryingly, I felt it was more than a little odd that I didn't know - I should know, really, shouldn't I? If I were in control of this silly obsessive hobby thing then I would know.

Now I do maintain a very detailed catalogue of my armies - which unit is which, what all the figure castings are (including known conversions), where they came from, who painted them - all that. I get a lot of value out of that, but one surprising omission is the date when they arrived - I wish I had thought of recording that, but I could probably reconstruct most of that information if I were pressed - at least approximately. Have you ever been approximately pressed, by the way? - no matter.

...everything else is in boxes - the pink boxes are ECW, the remainder are
the rest of the Peninsular War stuff.

The Catalogue is in a dirty great Word table, with hyperlinks to photographs of all the units. Being a table, though, it doesn't lend itself well to proper statistical analysis. So after I had thought about it for a little while I set about linking a spreadsheet to my Catalogue tables, and - of course - the spreadsheet very readily coughed up the numbers. As is always the case with worthy, obsessive jobs like this, after I had studied the numbers and thought about them, I was at a loss what to do with the information.

One obvious thing to do was to send it to Stryker - that'll teach him - but it also occurred to me that I could post it on the blog too; not so much because I think you'll be interested, or even remotely impressed, but because the blog in some ways is a sort of confessional - forgive me, Father, for I have far too many soldiers - in fact I have now quantified how many I have. If you can give me some pointers towards an official algorithm, Father, I could add a column to my spreadsheet giving the appropriate number of Hail Marys.

Situation as at 11:00, 14th June 2017...

Anyway, I'm pleased I have the thing under better control - well, not under control, maybe, but at least more accurately measured. I feel better for it. Cleaner.

Now I'd better have a look at doing one for the ECW, and all the Napoleonic transport items...

Topic 2: The Plastic Forest

This is really just a fleeting mention - I seem to have accumulated what must be one of the world's largest collections of Merit fir trees - the little plastic jobs for HO railways, out of production since about 1970. I didn't set out to achieve this, but people kept selling them on eBay (I guess railway modellers must be dying off too?). In its way it is a fine thing, and I am increasingly concerned about storing and looking after these little trees, because they are very old and fragile, and the plastic is rotting - they are very like me, in fact. I have a new solution to the storage, which I shall share with you when it is ready. You will be impressed - you may not wish to copy it, but you will be relieved to learn that someone else is as weird as this.

Anyway - more soon. Oh - and, yes, I do know how many fir trees I have, but I'm not saying.

Topic 3: Plonk

I do enjoy a glass of wine now and then. My wife drinks almost no alcohol these days, so opening a bottle of wine means either:

(a) I drink the whole bottle, which is not a great idea, or

(b) I try to recork it and make the bottle last a few days, which - let's be honest here - doesn't work very well - the stuff really doesn't keep, despite all the patent air-pumps and sealing stoppers we have accumulated - or

(c) I can drink some of the bottle, and then pour the remainder down the sink, which is maybe the worst idea of the lot.

Recently, someone jokingly suggested that I should buy wine that I didn't like, so that I wouldn't feel bad about wasting it. As is often the case, there is a germ of commonsense in that daft thought.

What I have been doing for a year or two now is buying a box of wine. You can have a single glass, and it will still be drinkable for a week or two. OK - that's a working solution (the issue of sticking to a single glass is important, but a separate problem). However, on the general subject of wine...

There are some excellent wines available now - I don't know how Brexit might affect that, but at the moment our local supermarket has some splendid wine. I find that I am having to be a bit choosey - this comes down to personal taste, of course, and my taste is no better than anyone else's, but it's me I'm making the choices for. A large proportion of the good wine on sale comes from the sunny countries of the world - Australia, Chile, California, South Africa and so on; it's good stuff, much of it, and its ancestry is from the classic vintners of Old Europe, but it is often too strong for me now. Too much sunshine? I can buy an excellent 3 litre pack of Australian Shiraz for about £15 - super stuff - but too serious, too fiery, too intense - I can't casually sip a glass of this (13.5% alcohol by volume) while reading or watching a film - too much Marmite in the taste, too many headaches.

I find I'm moving down-market a bit. Nothing new - I always used to like French Table Red - Chateau Plonko - vin ordinaire - you can't buy it now, as far as I can tell. No demand, I guess. I prefer simple red wines - Tesco do a good Sicilian red which is not too beefy, I like Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, Corbières - things which are soft and friendly.

Quick digression. I was listening to the radio a week or two ago, and there was a chap on from the British wine-growers' association. I might have overlooked that there was such a thing as a British wine industry, but it seems they have been having a tricky year. The mild, wet winter produced brisk budding activity early on, and then the frosts of April did a lot of damage. I made a mental note that there was a British wine industry capable of being damaged, and promptly forgot about it.

Last week, in Tesco, I spotted a box of British wine! Never seen one of those before. It was very cheap, 8% strength and described as "refreshingly fruity". It is a poor life that does not extend to a little research, so I bought a box - I expected little and - as you expected - that's what I got.

The box suggests they have the neck to sell this stuff in bottles, too.

The stuff is awful. It tastes like a cross between Ribena and boot polish, to be honest. I could, I suppose, grin and bear it in a spirit of Good Old Patriotism, but the final straw is it isn't actually British. The box says that it is made from imported grape juice. Good grief. My dad used to produce home-made wine like that years ago, and it was all crap and it all tasted mostly of sulphites. A long and honourable tradition, then, of putting a brave face on things. Personally, I feel I humoured my dad for quite long enough, I want no more of this. I mention this only as a gentle warning - if Brexit requires you to change your drinking habits, don't be tempted to change in this direction, lest you, too, get to rinse out your kitchen drains with it. 

The small print.