Another Other Partizan Report

Last Sunday I hit the road to sunny Newark, and attended 'The Other Partizan' show. A thoroughly enjoyable day was had, as expected.  Plenty  of interesting and impressive games to see, and I took some photos which I will show here. A great bonus was being  also able to meet my old friend Dave 'St Cyr on Wheels' and his wife; we had not met in person in many months since they moved to darkest Northampton, so really good to see them. Greetings Dave!

Now I have to admit that it's a fair old drive to the show, and I didn't really get going early enough - did not reach the venue until 12:30, and the show finished at 4pm - so it was a bit of a rush around towards the end. As a result, I probably missed quite a few good games, especially in the 'participation zone'. So this is by no means a comprehensive report - but what I did see was all good. I'll show them more or less in the order that we toured the room: 

1st Corps group put on a large game portraying The Defence of Calais, 1940 in 28mm, using Battlegroup rules, I think. Very impressive, the 'teddy bear fur' looked good - it reminded me of real colour pictures of Panzers on the Russian steppe - and the backdrop using printed railway was a lovely piece of work

1st Corps: Calais 1940

 

The Brens are coming..

Panzers on the march

and a rather effective backboard

More 28mm WW2 and 1940 from Chesterfield Old Boys, this time Beda Fomm in the desert :

I always like to see  a nice aircraft model flying over the table, it seems to be rather a trend in fact, and this game had a great example, this CR42 

Newark Irregulars showed their game of Gainsborough, 1643 also in 28mm :

good scenery, and a lovely big cavalry fight!

The 'Anti-Alchemists'  showed their 'Biscotti War, Garibaldi vs. Bourbon in 1860' , a fictional encounter set  during Garibaldi's invasion of Sicily,  using 28mm figures ( Gringo 40s ) and Sharp Practise rules.

Sicily 1860..

 

Garibaldi's Redshirts vs. Bourbons ( and an unfortunate cow )

I especially liked that their information sheet even gave brief historical details of the two types of biscuits! 

Derby Wargmes Society gave us 'Crossing the Berezina 1944' - WW2 in 20mm:

Berezina '44: I liked the forested terrain

 

The Iron Brigade provided more forestry, plus spectacular fortifications in 'Winter is Here' - a Game of Thrones ( sort of ) encounter in 28mm using Dragon Rampant rules. A neat trick was to use mirrors as the backboard, so it looked twice as long!

   

Boondock Sayntes provided probably the most spectacular single terrain piece - a Fortress in their Indian-set game 'Laisot 1785 and the rise of Benoit de Boigne' 

'a mighty fortress...'

and interior - modellers clearly just got a bit carried away!

Equally colourful troops made a beautiful setup

The name de Boigne  interested me, I checked later and realised I have owned  a book about him for at least 20 years ( Fountain of the Elephants by Desmond Young ) and never read it! I must rectify that promptly, from the explanation by the 'Sayntes' he will be well worth reading about.

 Old Pikey's Gaming Group had a very large layout for their 20mm Cold War game 'Operation Resolute' - the obligatory seething mass of Soviet armour, plus some more fun aircraft overhead.  Being at the end of the hall, it also afforded a good view of the whole room, so you can get an idea of the extent of it ( and also the demographic, I'd say. That's one of the Helion chaps on the left, I think.. )

hmmm.. Soviet armour in a bottleneck?

Gothenburg Gamers, who I think had come all the way from Scotland, showed a nice 28mm 'Crimean War' game - but not actually set in Crimea, as this depicted an engagement between Russians and Turks, a reminder that the Crimea was just part of a wider conflict. If I were the Turks here, I wold have been quite nervous facing this Russian column of attack ( and Dave, I think that's you.. )  

Quantity has a quality of its own.. 

 

Bramley Barn Wargames Club put on an interesting game - 28mm Elizabethan period, English vs. Irish.  They used a set of rules, Irregular Wars, which are aimed at re-creating 'smaller actions so common  at the fringes of the European world'.  

    

In this case, the 'irregular' but highly motivated Irish versus the 'regular' English Pike and Shot, whose ranks were likely to be stuffed with 'pressed' ex-convicts, poorly trained and motivated - though the English Demi-Lances shown here  would be the toughest unit on the field. All this very well explained by the Bramley Barn chaps, I thought it  made for an exemplary 'demonstration' game, in an interesting  and unusual period setting. 

Demi-Lances : Tudor England's  Panther Tanks?

Another really good-looking smaller game was from The Legion of Blokes -  'The Race to Caen' , described as 'Epic Scale WW2' , cleverly using 6mm figures with ( I think )  2mm scenery, and the whole thing in a case which folded up for transport! Really neat idea. The 'Epic' part was that it actually depicted a large area of the battlefield - if I remember right, the Blokes said this was all three British/Canadian beaches, and one or two figure stands represented a battalion. This was a great little big game, excellent stuff  ( and prize for top club/group name, which could equally work as the name of a show, perhaps? )

The (very) PortableWargame

 

Grimsby Wargames Society gave us a large WW1 game,  The Battle of Hargicourt featuring the 'Grimsby Chums' , set in August 1918, I think.  A splendid layout featuring another rather nice aircraft in the form of an Albatros DVa ( albeit going down in flames! ). I liked the idea of featuring a unit from their local area - high  time I  researched the history of the Suffolk Regiment?

Grimsby Pals - and Dave photo-bombing me again

 

 

The Rime of the Ancient Aviator?

Having recently visited Shropshire I was interested to see the Shrewsbury Wargames Club's Siege of Stokesay Castle (1645?), ECW in 28mm.  The castle made another 'trophy' piece of scenery to rival the Indian fortress, but I didn't really get  a decent photo. The figures were equally nice, though : 

 

Medway AD43 from Forest Outlaws and Kallistra looked impressive, and perhaps unsurprisingly was a good demonstration of how good Kallistra's Hexon terrain can look when used on a large scale. My own Hexon setup is usually 9 by 9 hexes, which would fit into this table about 6 times - but I can dream!

Medway AD 43 in 15mm

 

Medieval shipping made several appearances at the show :  (1) The Bodkins 28mm Breton War of Succession, Hennebont 1342

and -of course - (2) Andy Callan with 'Never Mind the Boathooks' 

Another minor trend was clearly Zulu Kraals : (1) Cramlington Wargames Group's Battle of Inyzane River 1879  

and (2) The Gentlemen Pensioners 'Death in the Donga - the Prince Imperial in Zululand 1879'

Zulu games, sir - at least two of 'em

Now I'm afraid I'm very old-school in one respect, I am not really bothered with  Sci-Fi or Fantasy games - but how about this for Sci-Fi terrain?  I think it's 'The Invasion of Skaro' by Chesterfield Open Gaming Society,  using Xenos Rampant: I suspect that this featured very ingenious use of 'found objects' and an awful lot of silver spray paint, and it looked great!
 

Invasion of Skaro - ooh, shiny!

And last but very much NOT least,  Nick Hindley's  'Giant Risk' - what a fantastic idea this was! Nick provided the rules  - a 'tweaked' version of the boardgame to add a bit of Napoleonic chrome plus naval elements, ports and forts, all on a single sheet of A4. I took a copy, and hope to be inspired - though perhaps not on such a vast scale.

The terrtitories ( boundaries drawn onto a conventional 'OS' style map of Britain) had been given quirky names - I will forgive him for renaming my bit of East Anglia, as he maintained it was an affectionate term used by his mother, who was born in Ipswich.. 

 

Overall, I think this may just have been  my favourite game of the day! 

All in all, of course a really good lot of games, some really quite spectacular. Maybe a bit  too spectacular? It was interesting to read Neil Patterson's view of the show in his  Aufklarungsabteilung blog - he is of the opinion that these huge showy games with massive trophy terrain pieces have maybe gone too far, in that they are 'demonstration' games demonstrating things that you would be very unlikely to be able to achieve at home or club. I have some sympathy with that view, I admit, and I am rather drawn to the smaller-scale but ingenious games, and those showing an interesting period or foregrounding a particular set of rules - which you might well emulate yourself.  Of course not all the big games are simply static models,  and it's quite inspiring to see large games that are really being played - my favourite example ( albeit not at this show, though they were at May's Partizan ) being the Retired Wargamers Reloaded  Carentan game which I saw at Broadside among other shows, which is clearly being run as a 'real'  game ( using Rapid Fire ) and I think features a different scenario at each outing, on the same basic board.  As long as you keep it simple, large games are entirely possible and quite exciting for a group! Having said that, of course if everyone just brings a bog-standard 'club game', that will be pretty dull -  it's great to see the big games and the amzing terrain, and I was probably guilty of missing a lot of more 'normal' games since I didn't really have time to focus on the 'Participation Zone'  which might have answered a lot of the above questions.Interesting to think about all this,  but I should say emphatically that it was a great show and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the games I saw.

And now the 'retail therapy' side: there were of course, many traders present and pretty much all your hobby needs could be catered for, but I really only had about half an hour to look around them once we'd looked at the games!  Luckily I didn't go along with a particular shopping list, anyway, and maybe the lack of time was good for concentrating the mind.. As a result I made two purchases : 

(i)  From Kallistra, a set of river/stream hexes should  will be pretty useful in my hex terrain setup:  

(ii) from Helion, I finally took the plunge and acquired my own copy of the late Christopher Duffy's By Force of Arms - so now Chris 'Nundanket' can have his splendid Emperor's Press copy ( very kindly loaned, several months ago ) back! 

 

Well worth getting this, I have been very enjoying reading the loan copy, and I am told the Helion version is a straight re-print, Mr Duffy having not been in sufficient health to produce a revised edition.  Hence  I should be able to simply pick up from where I got to.  Autumn/Winter reading sorted..

I think that sums it up fairly well, a great day had, albeit with a bit too much driving! Thinking about it  I broke a personal cardinal rule, as the journey at 2 hours each way exceeded the actual time ( 3.5 hours - and 45 mins of that was lunch!) that I was able to spend at the show. So next time, I most certainly need to get up much earlier and get there promptly!  (never mind,  next weekend is the good old   SELWG show, and that's a much easier journey).  My thanks to all involved be they  organisers, traders, clubs or players, for making The Other Partizan such a grand day out. 

Next time - well, it will probably be SELWG! Until then keep well, everyone.

Macedon wasn't built in a day

Finally, after far too long getting round to the required painting,  I have a more or less complete Alexandrian Macedonian army for DBA rules.  This has taken months - I really don't know where the time goes, but clearly not on painting.  I do have a hunch that for me, painting small numbers of figures is slower than large batches - when you have a 'regiment' of 20-odd it's far easier to do a production line approach and do all the white, then the brown, flesh etc, but with only two or three of each variety of figure there's too much time spent switching between colours, washing brushes etc. That's my excuse, anyway! I noticed that doing the 16 Phalangites did seem quicker and easier than the 2, 3 or 4-strong other elements. Anyway, here they are in all their ( not very much ) glory:

As you can see they are pretty simply ( roughly!) painted; just block painting with a quick wash of 'light tone' for a little bit of shading, and finally matt varnished.  I did the cavalry first which may have been a mistake, I think I was getting a bit better when I did the infantry and I was quite pleased with the Phalanx! I think the bases may need an extra coat of green, some of them look a bit wishy-washy.

The full order of battle is as follows: 

Front Row ( l to r ) :     1 x  2LC Prodromoi  

                                  1 x 2 Ps Agrianians 

                                  1 x 2 Ps Archers

                                  1 x 3 Kn Companions

Back Row ( l to r ) :     1 x 3 Cv Greek Allied Cavalry

                                  1 x 4 Sp Mercenary Hoplites

                                  4 x 4 Pk Phalangites 

                                  1 x 4 Ax Thracian Peltasts ( standing in for Hypaspists )

                                  1 x 3 Cv Thessalian Cavalry

 

One further thing has occurred to me, which is that my Alexandrian Macedonian army is missing an Alexander.. I need to do something about that.  

 

So now, onwards and upwards -  I have a Persian army waiting to be painted. Here they are, in their prime(r) so to speak, after getting sprayed on a sunny day last April. Oh dear, it really has been months:

 

 

I am going to have a hard think about these and try to do more 'batch painting' if I can, as mentioned above - I'll try to do each colour on all figures that need it, rather than just doing 3 or 4 figures at a time. Keeping a very basic simple palette will probably help - although the Persians may not quite lend themselves to that!  we'll see how it goes.   It has occurred that I might commit heresy by playing a game of DBA with the (completed) Macedonians against the (only primed) Persians - though that is perhaps a bit unfair on Darius' chaps, denied their proper warlike finery.  

 

Mention of Darius reminds me that there is another thing missing - The Great King himself.  So we have Alexander vs. Darius, but no Alexander or Darius..  If only there was a large wargames show this weekend,  with loads of tradestands selling nice figures that might include a 20mm scale Alexander the Great and Darius of Persia... oh, hang on a minute, I remember now:

Yes, the aim is to go along to The Other Partizan on Sunday,  I suspect several readers of this blog will also be there.  If so, I'd be happy to chat, do feel free to say hello and slag off my rubbish painting..

 

So obviously if all goes OK,  the next post here  will be a report from The Other Partizan.. Until then keep well, everyone.

In the lap of the Dice Gods

The other week I had the good fortune and great pleasure to take part in another of Jon Freitag's excellent on-line games, being a second go at Ilipa 206BC - as reported brilliantly by Jon on his Palouse Wargaming Journal blog.   It was a thoroughly enjoyable game, of course, but it will stay in my memory particularly, becuase I contrived to have pretty much the most successful winning streak I've ever experienced in a wargame! 

I was commanding the Roman left wing, with Tony 'MS Foy' as C-in-C ( Scipio ) against the Carthaginians Chris 'Nundanket' and Dave 'St Cyr', and the Roman deployment (which reflected historical reality )  was unusual in that the heavy Legionary  infantry was deployed on the wings, leaving the centre deliberately weak - which centre faced the scary-looking Carthaginian heavy spearmen.  Scipio's tactic had been to overwhelm the Carthaginian flanks and thus surround and crush their centre, while his own centre held  their opposite numbers' attention. But we were not convinced that the thin Roman centre was up to the job, and we had good evidence for that, since in  our previous essay at the same game, playing the Carthaginians, we had won by smashing the Roman centre! It looked a bit of tough scenario for the Romans, and Tony and I had been uncertain how to proceed. We had come up with a  compromise 'half and half' plan whereby his right wing would swing in towards the centre, while I tried to push forward on the left wing. It was working, in a way, as Chris' centre was being drawn towards Tony's men on our right - I think partly because my wing was a bit slow to get moving forward! At which point  Chris tried a charge at my Legions with his Celtic warbands and Spanish Scutarii  in the centre, only for a poor die roll to leave the charge stalled and one of the Spanish units  too close to my Legionaries. Only one thing for it - Legionaries, charge!  What happened next is aptly described by Jon Freitag as follows :

The force of the legion bearing down upon the light infantry is too much.  They turn and flee.  Marcius (David B) orders his legion to pursue.  They oblige.  The legionaries plow into the adjacent warband.  They, too, are overpowered and retire.  Bloodlusted by their success, David's Romans press on, catching the retiring warband.  The warband turns and flees.  Still the Romans advance.  Is there no stopping them?  Not yet!  Next victim is a hapless unit of skirmishers.  They are easily overpowered and scatter.  With the Carthaginian Center hollowing out, David's Ever Victorious Legionaries turn to strike the elephant from the rear.  With escape route blocked, the rampaging elephant is dispatched. 

As you see, the Legionaries managed to break no less than four enemy units - and then my second Legionary unit chipped in and scattered a further unit, completing the destruction of the Carthaginian right wing. At the end of the turn, our opponents conceded defeat, judging that although  their heavy forces in the centre were still intact, they  were now vulnerable to a flank attack from my triumphant Legions while pinned by Tony's Legions  to their front. Victory completed in a single move - amazing stuff! I was roundly congratulated, and very pleased with myself. But of course, it wasn't my skill as a commander 'wot won it' - it was all down to the dice.  

Jon's adapted version of 'Basic Impetus' rules has a 'pursuit after combat' mechanism whereby the victor of a melee decides whether they want to pursue, and rolls a die to test whether the troops will actually pursue,  and how far they will move.  If they are able to contact the retreating enemy, or another enemy unit, then a further combat occurs, and if the pursuers win that combat and the enemy retreat again, then they have the option to pursue again, and so on. Obviously all this is decided by the dice, and my die-rolling was good -  Jon tells me that the chance of that sequence of events was 6.25%, or one in 16. So indeed, quite a lucky streak!

Just for local colour, here are the dice I was using : 

Nothing very special - the blue dice came from a 'Pocket Battles' game, appropriately enough Romans vs. Barbarians ( the lid of which makes a handy dice-rolling area) , the red die is of unknown provenance. We've all got a random collection  of dice we have picked-up over the years, I'm, sure. I am the very opposite of a 'must have all the latest kit' guy..

It has set me thinking though, are we representing reality here? Or just pure random chance? Well, I would like to suggest  that the dice were representing not my tactical/leadership genius, but the grit and determination of the little metal ( or plastic? )  legionaries on the table, who in turn represent a historical  'Legion' of flesh-and-blood warriors. In this case, they saw the enemy unit pull up in some confusion a little to close to them, and were 'raring in to go' after them.  I happily ordered them to charge, and they did so with gusto and a shower of Pila, and promptly routed the Scutarii, who fled - but not fast enough. Their blood up, the legionaries pursued and did further slaughter among the unfortunate Iberians. The Spanish unit disintegrated, and the legionaries saw further easy targets, and kept on charging, fighting - and winning. As a commander my only input was to allow them their head,  and not try to reign them in - in other words, keep rolling the dice.  My thought was, let's see how much chaos these guys can cause! And the fighting, winning and pursuing were decided (of course) not by my intelligence and decisiveness, but purely by the fall of the dice.    

So in a way, what happened was simply a result of purely random die rolls, just pure chance. But I do like to think that the randomness does represent something, and I think that 'something' is pretty much all the stuff that is beyond the control of the commander.  The general can give orders, but he can't determine how those orders will be executed ( or even 'if' they will ), and how the enemy will respond, and how his troops will respond to the enemy response,  and that is where the dice come in. And somehow, on occasions the dice just seem to take charge, and deliver a result that no-one expected, but seems to have a sort of poetry of its own.  I'm sure that on this occasion, the dice were telling us how the rank and file of that legion said to themselves 'let's go get 'em!', having decided that their commanders were being a bit too indecisive for their own good.  I'm no expert on Roman military history, but I seem to remember that at this stage of the Republic, generals were in effect elected by the political leadership of Rome, and I  tend to assume that as a result, those generals were not always necessarily the best soldiers. The guys in the ranks of the Legions presumably knew that, and sometimes maybe they would have thought 'this guy will get us all killed, unless we take things into our own hands,,,'  So the result seems like it could be quite appropriate. Alternatively of course, and much more charitably for me, perhaps they thought 'that Marcius is a great guy, we'll go the extra mile for him!' But I think I know which of those two options it  would have been...  

I must of course add one more thing - the randomness comes from the dice, but the outcomes are decided by the rules, and they need to translate the dice scores into plausible effects. So I should give a lot of credit to Jon and the original 'BI'  authors for their rules, which played a big part - not every pursuit goes on through four units, not every purusing unit has the stamina to keep going, and the probability of those outcomes  depends on the rule-writers. I think they got it pretty much right in this case - but I would say that, wouldn't I?   Not sure if  Chris and Dave  would agree! 

Am I ovethinking? Probably! But all part of the fun. We are just playing a game, but I do always like to think, what's the story here, how does this line up with what might have happened in a real battle? That's what we wargamers are all about, isn't it?  

And to finish,  some more of the dice in my life. First is a pair of battered cheap plastic examples, which are all that remains of my copy of Waddingtons' board game 'Campaign' which would have been a birthday/Xmas gift c. 1974,  I would guess. The game is long gone, but I have somehow hung on to these two little chaps ever since - pure sentimental value. I bet you've all got something similar..   

And last but not least, these 'Percentage Dice' we would have called them, though now perhaps 'D10'. Acquired in the late 1970s when swept up in a craze, along with school/club friends, for WW2 aerial combat using Mike Spick's fantastic 'Air Battles in Miniature' book and rules. These have seen some action - massed dogfights of 'cut in half down the middle' 1/72 plastic models, with no historical accuracy whatsoever,  quite possibly a Gloster Gladiator in the same mass brawl as a Messerschmidt Me 262! But oh dear, was it fun, spread over the floor of Rainham village hall.. I still have some of the aircraft, maybe they need to be given a go sometime - I have kept the book, too  More recently, these dice have been used in Jon's on-line ACW games, so they are still coming in handy and adding new chapters to their story, after more than 40 years. 

That's enough cod philosphy for now - but I think it is probably worthwhile thinking about this sort of stuff. 'What are we representing, here?'  always seems a useful question. I'll leave you to ponder, or dismiss, that idea. Until next time, keep well, everyone.

Fnurban #26 : Keeping Up the Tradition

Yesterday was the last day of a (rather damp)  holiday in Shropshire. On the way home we stopped in to have a look around Leominster, Herefordshire, which turned out to have quite a concentration of antiques and bric-a-brac shops. You never know what you might find - and I struck fairly lucky, I think. One of the shops included a bookstall, with a decent 'military' section, and amongst the contents I found four issues of 'Tradition' magazine.  I've never seen this publication 'in real life', and they were not expensive, so I bought them. They are as follows: 

Issue No. 10

Number 47

Number 63

and number 72

They are ( slightly frustratingly ) not dated, but from a little research it seems that publication began in 1964, and 6 issues per year were produced.  Number 10 has an article by veteran wargamer Philip O. Stearns, reporting on the ( clearly recent ) Waterloo Convention, London 1965, so that seems to tie in OK.  Number 47 has an article on an auction of Lead Toy Soldiers,  which refers to Britain's recent General Election Contest  being on the same day, 18th June, which must be 1970 ( Indeed the article ends by saying the next such auction will be on 10th December 1970, so that nails it down ).  Assuming they kept to six per year, I assume that number 63 appeared  in about  Spring 1973,  and number 72 in late 1974.  

 

example layout - from issue 10

The focus is very much on uniforms - what I tend to call 'button-counting', which I admit I am not deeply interested in, but it's still a pleasure to leaf through these vintage magazines and savour the atmosphere of times long gone. The editor is the splendidly-titled Lt-Col J.B.R. Nicholson, and the general manager John Tunstill  (who also published 'Miniature Warfare', I think, around the same time). Contributors include Brigadier Peter Young ( with a snippets column called 'Random Shots' ), Colonel H.C.B. Rogers (on Mercenary Soldiers )  and Philip Haythornthwaite ( The London and Westminster Light Horse Volunteers 1779-1829 ).  There are lovely full-page colour plates in the centre pages,  a few rather discreet advertisements mostly for stockists of Norman Newton or Stadden fgures, and a nice colour ad on each  back cover for the same figures, including a lovely set of 54mm Stadden medieval knights.

 

All available, of course, from Tradition Ltd at their fabled 188 Piccadilly address. I think I have a dim memory of passing their shop in the 80s/90s, though they may have moved around the corner to Shepherd Market by then, and I was more interested in finding my way to the Curzon Mayfair cinema for the latest Eric Rohmer, so sadly, I did not venture inside.

The earliest issue also has a nice bonus - a sample colour print, advertising a volume of 20 such plates depicting 'Infantry Units of the British Army 1660-1790' by one P.H. Smitherman, available by mail order for the princely sum of 75 shillings ( I make that £3.75 - remember this is in 1965 ). Here he is : 

If this is a sample of the plates listed in the description of the book, then I think he is a Grenadier Officer of 1st Guards, 1688 - the clue being  the 'JR' royal monogram, as this is the only one in the list dating from James II's reign.  It's really pleasing that this loose slip of  heavy-grade  paper  has remained  all these years between the pages of the magazine - I get quite  annoyed at advertising  'inserts' in magazines these days, but this is a cut above. I wonder how the book sold? ( it looks like you can buy second-hand copies on Amazon for £25, and this image is on the front cover )

Note the prices of the magazines  -  Number 10 cost 10 shillings and sixpence ( for younger and non-UK readers, that is  52.5p  or about £0.52 ), but by number 47 the price had risen to a serious 17 and six ( 87.5p ), and following decimalization , the two later editions were offered for 90p.  I am impressed by how 'reassuringly expensive' these were - I looked around the web for 'prices adjusted for inflation' and found  a multiple of about 15.5  from 1973 to now.   So that 90p issue of Tradition 50 years ago  would be the equivalent of about £14 now ( current wargame magazines are priced at around £6 per issue) - quite pricey!. Fairly obviously this was well outside my childhood pocket-money price range, even though  I may have been  aware of  its existence thanks to mentions in books by the likes of Featherstone, Grant and Wise.  My early issues of Miniature Wargames, from about ten years later  (hence after the really  big inflation surges of the late 1970s)  cost only 75p. 

All in all, a nice piece of serendipity,  I am very glad to have come across these and will enjoy browsing through them. I should point out that Tradition of London Limited seems to be still going in online shop form, and will even sell you copies of the magazine - for consderably more than I paid! 

Now back from holiday, time to get on with painting and gaming - next time, a rumination on the role (and the roll) of the dice. And a bunch of shows coming up soon! Meanwhile keep well, everyone.

The 'Mighty' Phalanx, and recruits from the Garrison

Last day of the month and only one blog post so far?  Better remedy that! As a result, this will be what  Stew,  of  A Terrible Loss of Lead and Wealth fame calls a 'PB&J' post - just a summary of the (all too little) recent hobby activity.   Which amounts to a 'mighty'  Macedonian Phalanx - at least in DBA terms - and some new recruits to the 7YW garrison, from, ahem,  the Garrison. Plus a brief mention of a fantastic game I was lucky to take part in only yesterday. 

First, the Macedonians. I finally managed to complete painting Alexander's Macedonian Phalangites for a DBA army, and here they are in their massed ranks - all 16 of them!  They will make 4 elements of 4 Pk   in DBA, which should pack quite a decent punch. 

The ground shakes to the tramp of their feet..

 Painted to my usual very middling standard  of course, though I would claim I am slowly getting  a little better, maybe, and they will do fine for me on the table. Simple block painting with a wash of 'light tone' , which did seem to add a little definition to details of armour etc. Three-inch ( 18 feet, to 1:72 scale ) pikes from household brush bristles look suitably impressive, I think. Colour scheme as simple as possible, with the variation in figure poses and dress making sure they are not entirely identical. I was very lucky that my  entirely randomly selected 16 figures just about made up four groups each with a similar pose with the pike -  I did not give a moment's thought to that potential issue at the start! A little variety is nice, but I suspect that the one formation that really could and should be depicted  with identically-posed figures is a Pike Phalanx, which depends crucially on each man conforming to everyone else! 

and from a Persian perspective

 

Now I just have to finish a couple of Prodromoi light horse, and then get round to  an element  each of Peltasts, Hoplites, Agrinians and Archers ( 12  foot figures in all ), and I will have a DBA army, Then, of course, on to the Persians to fight them..

just need to finish these..

 

Jumping forward a matter of 2,000 years, we have some new recruits for the Seven Years War, and they are rather interesting. At  the Salute show in April I attended the 'blogger meet-up' and was very pleased to meet  Rob Young of The Eastern Garrison blog,  and it transpired that he is able to supply some newly-cast figures from the vintage Garrison ranges. Now that is a magic name to me, going back to the days of Charles Grant, Donald Featherstone etc and seeing Garrison figures in their books - I particularly remembered the Persians depicted in ( and maybe on the cover of ) Grant's The Ancient War Game.  So, who could miss the chance to own some - and nice new castings too?  I do fancy replicating those Ancient Persians and Greeks at some point, but for the moment I thought it would be good to reinforce the 7YW armies,  and start by putting together a contingent of French Infantry, to go with the splendid 'night-cap' wearing French Dragoons which I have already and have been wanting an excuse to paint up.  So recently a deal was struck, money ( a very reasonable amount)  changed hands, and I received a batch of 40+ small metal Frenchmen, pictured here ( straight out of the postal package, hence some bent bayonets and a very small amount of mould flash )

 

Rob has generously 'thrown in' a gun and crew as a bonus, he thinks it's not a very good model, but I think it will do just fine, very nice of him! Many thanks indeed to Rob, I am very pleased with these.

They will be organised in 'units' of 8 figures for the Portable Wargame, which can easily be combined into larger formations ( 16 or 24, say ) for use with other rules. 

who let those pikes in at the back?

 

I have enough figures to make 5 Portable Wargame units, one of which is of grenadiers. With the dragoons ( and maybe that gun ),  this will make a nice little PW force. For a painting scheme, where else to start then the Kronoskaf 7YW website, which has masses of information including uniform and flag details for many, many regiments of all armies. And looking at the French Line Infantry pages  there, what could be better than the oldest regiment?  So, Picardie it will be, with their very simple white coat and red waistcoat. I particularly like the old regime 'white cross'  French infantry standards  (yet again, reminders of vintage Charles Grant , Don Featherstone and Young & Lawford books), and Picardie has a simple white cross, red quarters scheme, which  even I should be able to paint... 

( the above copyright Kronsoskaf - if any objection, I will happily remove )

The chaps will soon be getting a coat of spray primer, and then the painting production line will (slowly) crank up - in parallel with those Greeks and Persians, of course. 

Finally,  back to the ancients. Yesterday I was lucky enough to be invited to partake of another 'remote' game run by Jon Freitag of Palouse Wargaming Journal, this time using his 28mm collection to re-fight the Battle of Ilipa, 206 BCE  between Rome (Scipio) and Carthage (Hasdrubal), using his amended version of Basic Impetus rules.  A great time was had by all, and quite a surprising result ensued. I will leave Jon to describe event in his battle report, which should be well worth a read!  Just as a teaser, Jon has provided me with  a picture he took, of the moment the Roman Legions made contact with (retreating) Carthaginian elephants - with interesting results! 

be careful when approaching the rear of an Elephant...

It was a great game, many thanks to all concerned, and of course mainly to Jon for being such a fine host and umpire!

That's enough from me,  I think those Garrison chaps may need a spray of primer next, and a bit of paint on some Macedonians would be good, too.  I'll keep posting my progress - meanwhile thanks for reading, if you have got this far, and keep well, everyone.