I got myself a Magnifying Light….

Greetings…

I thought I would see if a magnifying light will be of some help until I get both eye’s sorted and new reading glasses bought…

I been trying it out when cleaning up plastic bits and assembling figures…. It took a bit of getting used to but it does help a bit… I am wondering if a larger lens area make things easier.

I don’t think I will be using it for painting miniatures at the moment… As I have no real depth of field.

I can possibly see me using it in the future…

I know a few people who use magnifiers of some sort… They have said it took them a bit to get used to but now they don’t know what they would do without them…

This is all new to me 😁

All the best.   Aly

Surprise Surprise… More Books.

Greetings…

More books…

I picked these up in Waterstones…

To be honest they are not much what I thought I would find interesting…

But they are indeed….

Classic Osprey…

A good background history about the development of the weapon, Lots of good pictures and Artwork…

Especially stuff from my favourite illustrator and friend Peter Dennis…

There are more books in this series covering different weapons… so very tempting.

My eyesight is definitely improving… The left eye is going to be operated on…on the 27th of the month 

And then hopefully things will start to get back to normal…

Hurrah!

All the best.  Aly

And…. Yet More New Books

Greetings …

Napoleon’s Heavy Cavalry and Napoleon’s Dragoons and Lancers…

Yup!…

It was always going to happen…

And of course they are everything that I’ve come to expect from Mr Dawson…

Loads of pictures and information…I am certainly looking forward to taking a deep dive into the subject of Napoleonic French Cavalry…

And the good thing is that the vision in my eye is loads clearer and I have picked up some half decent reading glasses…

Not good enough to paint with…But I should manage some basing.

All the best.  Aly

So… I bought myself an Airbrush

Greetings….

I decided that I could do with an Airbrush…Yup! This is what happens when you have time on your hands 😆

I have had one before…Many years ago.. So it was interesting to see how the quality and pricing has changed over the years…

I bought a Harder and Steenbeck Ultra… From Element Games…

https://elementgames.co.uk/paints-hobby-and-scenery/Airbrushes-accessories/harder-and-steenbeck/ultra-series/ultra-2024ULTRA 2024 - Ultra Series | Element Games

Along with a Sparmax Air Compressor…

https://elementgames.co.uk/paints-hobby-and-scenery/Airbrushes-accessories/sparmax/sparmax-compressors/sparmax-ac-501x-airbrush-compressorSparmax AC-501X Airbrush Compressor - Sparmax Compressors

And a Cleaning Pot…

https://elementgames.co.uk/dwarfs/paints-hobby-and-scenery/Airbrushes-accessories/airbrush-cleaning-pot1Airbrush Cleaning Pot - Airbrushes Accessories

After reading and watching some reviews….It turns out that this bad boy is the “ Bees knees “ as is the Compressor…

The Airbrush is incredibly well made and is designed with the beginner / Lapsed User in mind…

I am still working out what it can do and hopefully when my vision is back to normal I can have a good deal of fun exploring and investigating….

Everyone I have spoken to who uses an Airbrush says this is an excellent choice…

Oh!…

I also bought something to practice on…

Yup! Why go for something simple 🤣…

The operation on my right eye is on Thursday and hopefully the left eye will be in a couple of weeks down the road…

And then… Lead/Plastic Alp beware….😁

All the best.  Aly

Eight Years Old…

Greetings…

Well there you go… Another year.

Thinking back over the last year I had the feeling that I didn’t do much… But it turns out I have done more than I thought…

A reasonable amount of games… Mostly Lion Rampant.

A bit more painting than I thought…

Of course I could have done a lot more but building work intervened along with various health issues…

Looking back I can now see when my cataracts started to affect my painting output… From late December to January onwards…

With my operation coming up and retirement on the horizon I am hoping there will be a lot more painted toys to show you all in the next year…along with many more games.

So here are a few pictures to show some of the things I did manage to do…

Lion Rampant, Wars of the Roses… 

Our little group have been trying to meet up once a month which means we have had a number of excellent games over the year.

Some ‘Shiny Napoleonics’

I am looking forward to getting back to painting more of these…

More Wars of the Roses…

A few more ‘Shiny Napoleonics’…

Xmas Wars of the Roses…

The Boxing Day game…

Pyrrhus of Epirus…

A new project… 

Alas as this unit was finished I began to notice that my eyes were getting a bit ‘fuzzy’

I do however have another unit cleaned up and undercoated…

At about this time I decided to start ‘Front Loading’ for retirement 😁

My favourite place in the house…

Although that might change when the Wargames Room gets done up next month…

More Wars of the Roses… This time using Midgard.

Napoleon in Egypt round at Alan’s house…

If I can’t see well enough to paint… I can still stick them together.

Partizan… An excellent day out… As always.

The Wild Geese Weekend…

Splendid fun… In splendid company… With lovely toys.

Plans for next year?

I have a few…🤔

Getting on with the Pyrrhic project…

More Shiny Napoleonics…

And getting some of the Plastic 100 Days painted…

And Dads Army…

Of course this is what I am saying now… But I haven’t taken into account what the Butterfly will want…🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋🦋

All the best.  Aly

And Another New Book…

 Napoleon’s  Hussars & Chsseurs…

By Paul L Dawson…

This is another excellent book from Frontline Books…

https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Napoleons-Hussars-and-Chasseurs-Hardback/p/24302Pen and Sword Books: Napoleon’s Hussars and Chasseurs - Hardback

It’s up to the usual very high standard that I’ve gotten used to from this author…

Lots of high quality photos and plenty of information and interesting statistics and information…

This is also part of an on going series which includes Heavy Cavalry ( Already ordered), Lancers and Dragoons, Line Infantry, Light Infantry and Artillery.

Probably not to everyone’s taste but if you want to ‘ go deep’ on the detail of Napoleon’s Armies this is the place to go…

All the best.   Aly

A New Book… The Goths AD200-700

Greetings…

Here is a lovely new book from Osprey that I snatched up as soon as I saw it…

https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/goths-ad-200700-9781472863065/The Goths, AD 200–700: : Elite Raffaele D’Amato Osprey Publishing

It’s a cracker… Full of excellent artwork and information…

All the usual Osprey fair… Easy to digest chapters covering the many phases of the Goth/Ostrogoth / Visigoth history….

It never dawned on me that when the Arab Conquest Armies crossed over from North Africa to Spain it was the Visigoths they fought first…

Now there would be a colourful collection…

The paper work has started to come through about my Cataract Surgery… So hopefully that is an indication that a date will indeed be set sooner rather than later…

I really want to paint toys…

All the best    Aly

Wild Geese 2025… And other Stuff.

Greetings…

Last weekend saw this years gathering of The Wild Geese Wargamers…

As always it was a joy of an event…. Excellent Company, Excellent Food and Excellent Games…

I took part in three games… And much to everyone’s …( Including mine ) surprise… I did quite well 🙀.

Okay….

Here are the pictures…

Off course the first thing I did was go straight into Shiny 42mm Seven Years War…

Steve’s game was based on The Combat of Domstadtl-1758…

I was one of the Austrian ambushers…

Steve produced an impressive amount of wagons… All of which had to get over the bridge and off the table…

Our glorious Austrians attack the convoy… Vigorously.

It was close… But eventually the Austrians block off the bridge from the Prussians and started to cut them up bit by bit.

Hurrah!

Next up…

More Seven Years War…This time from Ken… And more wagons trying to get away over a bridge…

I was on the Austrian side…

The bridge with the wagons in the middle distance…

Prussian hordes move rapidly towards our wagons

They shall not pass…

Yes we will…

Could the wagons move any slower?

Yes!…

The hard pressed Austrians hold out … with high casualties…

And a good number of wagons make it to safety…

And the third game … On the Sunday…

Sepoys and Soldiers…

A lovely colourful game put on by Martin…

I played the Maratha’s….

This is my Rocketeer unit/units… The ones with the red buttons…

These were absolutely the stars of the game…

Their bombardments caused the demise of two British units and one battery destroyed a cavalry unit in hand to hand combat….

Hurrah! Hurrah!…

These guys may look like they are attacking… Nope! This lot were retreating madly…

They did rally…Eventually…

We fought on doggedly… And much to our amazement we managed to wear the British down and cause them to break off the attack…

I say!….

The other games over the weekend were…

The Siege of Bogorovsk!…From Chris and Niall.

And the return of Keith’s French and Indian Wars river romp…

And very much to my surprise…

The Best General…. 🙀

A fantastic weekend indeed.

And so…

Other stuff…

The Trooping of the Colour…

I watch this every year… 

With the commentary turned off as I like to listen to the rattle and drum of all the equipment and the sound of the orders being barked out…

I think the whole thing has a Victorian maybe even Crimean War vibe about it… Certainly old school.

One of my friends tolled me I was a very strange socialist 🤣…

You may have noticed that I haven’t really been doing a lot of painting or that much posting really…

I’ve put it down mainly to the Blepharitis that I have… 

Which I have thought has been improving and in fact it is…

Unfortunately… As I have discovered after an afternoon of scans and tests… What isn’t improving is the Cataracts that I have developed in both eyes…Every thing is very fuzzy in my right eye and the left eye is not as bad but still showing signs of developing further…

It turns out that being on steroids… Which I am… Can cause the little buggers to come on quicker than normal…

I have been registered for the operation… Which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later…

The “Myopic Shift” that you get with Cataracts has been fairly severe… So I am getting new glasses and a new prescription to compensate…

This may actually allow me to get some painting in…Which would be nice.

Fortunately I don’t have too many problems reading… So there might be a few book reviews/recommendations on the way…

Although I have been told not to overdo things…

All the best.   Aly