Bye Hitch!

We lost Christopher Hitchens today and the world is a lesser place.  

In memoriam here's another chance to see my model of the prophet Mohammed.  Some would say I must not depict him for fear of offending Moslems.  Well guess what; you don't have a right not to be offended and your religious strictures don't come close to trumping my freedom of speech.

  

I'm off to enjoy a whisky (not, alas, Johnny Walker Black Label) in Hitch's memory.

Random Picture

I did one last Friday so let's have another.

It's an 1896 Nordenfeldt machine gun on a naval mounting.  Theoretically capable of firing a thousand 0.45" calibre rounds per minute.  This one's in the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds.

Grrr!

Remind me never to buy Tamiya acrylics again!

I bought a couple of jars when I couldn't make time at lunchtime to get to Wargames Emporium and knew I needed some dark blue to replace my old, dried out tube of artist's Ultramarine.  

All I need it to do is act as the shade coat for the cobalt blue I tend to use for French uniform jackets and suchlike.  Unfortunately, as I've just found again when painting some 6mm Arab light horse for Polemos GNW, it's got a horrible slimy texture that tends to slide off even the most grease-free of surfaces.  Trying to get it on in thin coats is soul-destroying.

Back to Vallejo and Games Workshop paints for me!

British Author Uses British English Shock!

In researching for our planned Cold War Commander Big Game I've been reading up on sources relating to General Sir John Hackett's The Third World War.  I've just come across one review (written in 1983) that I just have to share.

http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1983/mar-apr/cady.htm

In this review a Major Steven Cady of the US Air Force manages to criticise the book because it uses lots of abbreviations and doesn't explain them.  In a technical book on military matters? Never!  Major Cady presumably didn't think to look them up in the index, where he would have found them. In alphabetical order no less.  

A second criticism is that Hackett uses unfamiliar words like exiguous, rapprochement, and Taoiseach.  As well as unfamiliar place names.  Of course, how silly of him not to have set the book in New England!

Perhaps the most bizarre objection is that Hackett's narrative of the events of 1985 is mathematically unlikely given the multitude of possible events that could occur between his writing it in 1979 and the events of 1985.  Indeed some events had already occurred by the time Cady was writing in 1983 that Hackett had not foreseen!  

And finally we come to the ultimate sin: Hackett uses British spellings like programme, gaol, and manoeuvre and gives measurements in (whisper it) metric!  It's all so damned unAmerican!

Weakening...

For many years my Rules have stood me well when it comes to not buying too much wargaming stuff that I won't get around to using.  They are:

1. 20mm is skirmish scale.  If you do 20mm gaming it's with individually based figures in skirmish games.  If you do skirmish gaming then you do it in 20mm.

2. 6mm is massed battle scale.  If you massed battles, do them in 6mm scale.

3. Rules 1 and 2 are waived when building Hordes of the Things armies.

These rules, as I say, have helped keep me focussed.  They are, of course, very personal.  However, I've already broken them pretty solidly of late by rebasing all of my WOTR stuff for Impetus and now I'm weakening further.

I've been reading reviews of Black Powder and thinking "that sounds like the kind of game I'd like".

I also have loads of unpainted plastic Napoleonics lying around and this morning I found myself putting them on 40x40mm bases and going, "Hmmmm...".

Random Photo

I thought I'd share a random picture from my collection.  This is an experimental German vehicle the EXF 8x8 Radkampfwagen 90.

I photographed it in 2008 at the Wehrtechnische Sammlung in Koblenz.

Sore Throat!

After a little over two yours of constant talking I'm feeling a little rough.  The Song of Blades and Heroes session at the school Christmas fair was fun but hard work.  Seven year-olds have butterfly attention spans and keeping them focussed on the game was sometimes a struggle.

However, in the end we got five or six of them playing for most of the two hours available.

The scenario was the Plains of Chaos - a fairly simple get-in-grab-some-treasure-and-get-out scenario.  The problem was that the dimensional gateways people had to get in an out through would move around the perimeter of the battlefield!

I provided six or seven warbands varying in complexity so players could use a set of rules that would suit their abilities.  The Pirates of Pan Tang, for example, were a force of fairly low complexity.  Below the picture is the information I provided to the player.

The Pirates of Pan Tang are renowned for their fearsomeness and for the vicious tigers they train.  This gang are searching for the legendary rune-sword Tempestbringer.

Three Pirates 

Quality 2+

Combat 4

Special Rules: none

Two Tigers

Quality 3+

Combat 5

Special Rules: Animal, Savage, Long move

Special Rules

Animal

Animals  automatically rout when the last non-animal model in their warband is killed. 

Long Move

Models with the Long Move rule use the Long measuring stick when moving. 

Savage

A Savage model inflicts a gruesome kill just by doubling the opponent’s score (i.e. they don’t need to treble it - every kill counts as gruesome).