New Books…

Greetings…

“Hells Teeth! What’s gotten into the man?” I hear you exclaim… 😁

This time is about a couple of books I’ve just finished reading…

First up…

The Men of Warre from Helion Books by Jenn Scott…

https://www.helion.co.uk/military-history-books/the-men-of-warre-the-clothes-weapons-and-accoutrements-of-the-scots-at-war-1460-1600.php

I thoroughly enjoyed this book… It was informative and very easy to read.

The content is broken down as you see above… And is supported by lots of marvellous quotes and references all entertainingly (for the modern eye) phonetically spelled…

I think this is one of the things that really ticked my boxes for this book… I am fascinated by the development of the English/British language… It is worth noting that the sometimes weird spelling does not reflect a lack of intelligence in the Medieval to Early Renaissance writers…It displays a desire to reflect what they were saying/writing phonetically…” Correct” spelling only really comes along with the increased spread of the printed word…

My favourite phonetically spelled word from this book is… QUHYTE.

Run it round in your mind and see what you think it means…

If you are at all interested in this period of Scottish history I would wholeheartedly recommend this book.

Will I be buying toys to wargame the  Marian Civil War… Not yet…

I will leave the to my friend Stuart Insch for the moment…

https://stuartinschwargames.blogspot.com/search/label/Marian%20Civil%20War

Next up…

Byzantine Cavalryman versus Vandal Warrior from Osprey Publishing by Murray Dahm.

https://ospreypublishing.com/uk/byzantine-cavalryman-vs-vandal-warrior-9781472853714/

Splendid stuff …Up to the usual standard from Osprey and again an easy and informative read.

The contents as above… What you would expect from this series…

A good clear breakdown of the opposing forces followed by a couple of battles (actually all the battles… it was a short campaign) and analysis…

I really enjoyed this book …I’ve always been fascinated by Ancient Rome and Byzantium…With this you  also get Germanic ‘barbarian ‘ Vandal Empire in North Africa… And battles involving just cavalry.

Why has no one made a film about Belisarius ? An infinitely more interesting character than anyone on Game of Thrones.

I highly recommend this book if you are interested in Late Rome/Early Byzantine history.

So did I rush out and buy lots of Early Byzantines from Aventine Miniatures…

https://www.aventineminiatures.org/store

No of course not…

I’ve already got a bucket load in the ‘ Things to do in my retirement box’ 😂🤣😂.

All the best   Aly

QUHYTE = White… Give it a try… You will sound vaguely Scottish or Northumbrian .

Late Romans… Rebasing… Huns.

Greetings…

Yup! Another post and it is still July 😁.

Here is one more rebased unit for this project…

Hun Light Cavalry… Depending on what rules I use these could be one normal sized unit or two small ones…

These fellows took a bit more sprucing than the previous units , mainly because I decided to brighten up the tunic colours a bit and hand paint the shields.

There is another unit like this one waiting to be worked on and I might pick up some castings to do a few more…I think Huns work better in Hordes.

All the best.  Aly

15mm Carolingians… Medium Infantry.

Greetings…

I seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment post wise…

This is mostly down to me finishing things that have sat on the painting desk for a while…

Painted a while ago but only just based we have another 15mm Carolingian unit…

This time some Medium/Unarmored infantry …

As always these are really lovely figures to paint…

I have continued the red theme for the Carolingians… This time going for rust and ochre shades.

Trousers and Leggings… Foundry… Drab 12B.

Officer Tunics and Rank and File Sleeves… Citadel… Evil Sunz Scarlet.

Cloaks… Citadel… Mephiston Red.

Leather… Citadel… Deathclaw.

Shoes… Citadel… Mournfang Brown.

Shields… AK11118 Ochre and 11103 Medium Rust.

Scabbards… Citadel… Mournfang Brown.

As always everything was given a coat of Aly’s Brown Liquid and then highlighted with the original colours.

The figures are from Forged in Battle.

https://www.forgedinbattle.com/

The paints are Wargames Foundry, AK Interactive and Citadel...

https://www.wargamesfoundry.com/collections/paint

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Painting-Modelling

https://ak-interactive.com/product-category/paints/paints-acrylics/3rd-acrylics/

The bases are as always…

https://warbases.co.uk/

I have to admit if I wasn’t such a butterfly I would get a lot more of these toys painted… Maybe once my life and wargames room has a bit more structure in it I will expand this collection a bit faster… Maybe 😁.

All the best.  Aly

Late Romans… More rebasing.

Greetings …

Here are another couple of units from the Great Rebasing project….

Some archers… I will probably treat these as two small units if I use Hail Caesar…

I will most likely use these as Limitanie Medium Infantry…

I have a few more of these to come…And I am waiting for some Little Big Men Studios shield transfers to add to some others…

I think this is going to be a very attractive collection when there is enough to have a game with… I was going to type ‘finished ‘…. But my fingers wouldn’t let me 😁.

All the best.  Aly

The War of 1812… A test game.

Greetings…

The other week Steven, Israel and Adam came over for a little Rebels and Patriots, War of 1812 test game…

I thought it would be better to roll bad dice with company rather than solo…

We had a simple ‘Control’ the crossroads scenario with both sides having the same more or less average stats and points…

Adam and I played the plucky British/Canadians and Steven and Israel the American interlopers…

As with the previous Lion Rampant game the chaps picked up the rules really fast… And I gave a master class in truly terrible dice throwing… Most of my units and my general… Dead or routed…😳.

I was so involved in getting thrashed that I didn’t take many photos and the ones I did take were not that useful…

Both sides made a headlong dash to the crossroads… The Americans had the good luck and found some speed… The British/Canadian’s did not have good luck and found some incoming bullets 😳.

However a local Canadian artist was in the area and managed to get a few rough sketches of some of the troops on the field of battle…

The rather dodgy photos have been transformed by the artist known as Mr My Sketch App.

Really quite pleasing…

All the best   Aly

Six years old… Another year of blogging.

Greetings….

My little blog is now six years old….

It’s now well into primary school/education… A bit of a late starter and still developing but I’m sure when it grows up it will be a wonderful intelligent thing…😁

It’s been a busy and varied year…

The house still looks a complete mess as many things are still in boxes awaiting work on my cellar…

I now know that concrete isn’t that expensive….But the hire of the mixer and the pump to get the stuff into where you want it is… And that leak we all thought was fixed….Wasn’t 😳.

Work is crazy… But I am getting to make some splendid toys… I am celebrating 40 years at Games Workshop this year and it is still not boring…

I am however turning my thoughts towards retirement…Not right now… But not too far away… The lead mountain sadly isn’t going to paint itself  so I will need to make time for it.

On the subject of the mountain… It’s really more like an Alp…Hence the need to get the cellar sorted out.

I honestly didn’t think I had done much over the last year… But the truth is my butterfly has been everywhere 🤣🦋🦋🦋.

Shiny Napoleonics….

Still ticking away….  I have some Hanoverians that are starting to look threatening… They are so close to being finished… But keep getting pushed to the back of the queue…

40mm Peninsular War…

I have actually painted up every single figure I acquired for this project… A first for me… I will be getting more soon.

A new painting desk… 

It certainly doesn’t look like that now 😂… What do you think of the shutters?… I’ve got them on all the windows now.

DBA… Who would have thunk it…

And… It was the youngsters at work who suggested it… This has lead to a number of excellent games… Including 3rd Century Rome… War of 1812… and we also have a What a Tanker game lined up.

Dads Army… It’s a bit of a slow burner at the moment… But I’ve got all the toys I need and there is more heading for the painting queue.

15mm Carolingians…

I have a big old box of these…They are an absolute joy to paint… So expect more…

Remember this… Well… I’ve got some Byzantines now…

More to follow… As I intend this to be for Lion Rampant the project should be done before the next birthday…

I love these figures and they are so easy to paint…

The War of Austrian Succession…

This one is very high on my list…I have a few units in the mountain, every time I go to a show I buy some more…I love the uniforms, I love the figures and I love the flags.

1836 And All That… Well that’s what I’m calling it 😂… This is still an itch that I want to scratch…

I painted up another test figure… I like how this one is looking.

Okay I am going to call this bit… 

What the Butterfly Saw…

54mm and shiny…

Come on! There is no way your surprised…

Mark Copplestone’s Little Soldiers … Of course I’ve got a boxful to paint…

Seven Years War Flats… I blame my chum Paul… 

I definitely haven’t bought any from Berliner Zinnfiguren… Honest.

This….  I blame the youngsters from work… I can’t cope with all that peer pressured 😂

Something will be happening later in the year.

On top of all that silliness there is still the great re-basing project…

Romans at the Baths….

And of course I’ve had a few games here and there… I want to try and have lots more.

Well there you have it… Another year of butterflying , playing and painting.

The world is sadly still a mad place… But it is made a lot better having your company and support over the last year… 

I thank you.

All the best.  Aly

Late Romans… Rebasing.

Greetings…

Last year my friend and fellow blogger David Bickley let it be know that he wished to reduce the size of his Late Roman collection…

I quite naturally jumped at the chance to help him… Thats what friends are for 😁.

A deal was done and an exchange agreed upon…  10:15… Warhammer World car park… Try and look natural etc…

Once David had made a clean getaway I checked out my loot…

A lovely collection of Wargames Foundry Late Romans…

Once I got home I examined my purchases… Given the amount of action these chaps have had they were/are in very good condition.

After some consideration I decided to give them a little bit of sprucing up…

The main thing I wanted to do was rebase them… This was initially because over time some of bases had started to warp slightly but also I felt it would … For want of a better term… Put my stamp on them (I know artistic egos get everywhere 🤣)

I decided to use a couple of 2mm bases laminated together to hopefully stop any future distortion.

While the figures were awaiting their new homes I also gave them new plastic spears (The rather useful ones from Fireforge Games), new standards , removed and spruced up the shields and brightened up any paint that was starting to look a bit worn…

The shields were either repainted , tidied up or given new transfers… 

The standards were simply replaced with fresh versions of what was originally there but on plastic poles.

My method for brightening up the paint was to match up the colours the best I could and simply give the area in question a thin glaze of  50% colour and 50% Citadel Lahmian Medium.

None of this titivating took very long… The thing I didn’t want to do was to start fully repainting anything.

The final thing I decided to do was to place the figures more or less in the positions that they originally were.

Here are a couple of finished units…

These fellows with most likely be used as Goths… 

These chaps will be used as Roman Medium Cavalry or possibly Romano-British… 

More to come…

The bases are from Warbases…

https://warbases.co.uk/

The plastic spears are from Fireforge Games…

https://fireforge-games.com/weapons/274-spears-5cm-24pcs.html

All the best   Aly

From my side of the table… The Battle of Zamora.

Greetings …

Alan Perry has started posting an account of the recent Salamanca campaign that I took part in…

The Battle of Zamora was the first of only two battles that I took part in…

As I recall General Ricleau and myself would have clearly won this action had the English and their allies not used unfair tactics… such as having more men and rolling much better dice.😳

Alan has posted a relatively accurate account of the battle here…

https://en-gb.facebook.com/perryminiatures

Here are some of my own images… Which show how truly beautiful and glorious our army was and how immense the English hordes were… 😁

This was an excellent and enjoyable game in the company of good friends…

The miniatures, terrain and all the hard work were /are Alan Perry’s.

All the best   Aly

Alan will be regularly posting all the actions and adventures from the campaign on the Perry Miniatures Facebook site…

https://en-gb.facebook.com/perryminiatures