So well into first month of scenery season and yep – zero progress….
However my late Romans are moving along nicely and not only have I started rereading some great books but I have added to the book mountain.
Heathers better book – the other one is technically fascinating but hard work. JJ’s trilogy remains my all time Byzantine favourite and of these the first book is brilliant. Hearder’s Italian sprint is just simply an enjoyable read.
I already have some useful material for later Roman armies.
My Byzantine leanings have always caused a problem
However I happened to search for 4/5th century eastern Roman books and lo and behold there was an osprey on provincial forces and specifically units.
The book I found was only available to order……
I took a punt on the western publication instead that came out in 2024.
Initially I was dissatisfied as a quick flick through showed no shield detail discussion in the text or contents.
A second detailed read revealed a more interesting approach in this MAA. The book illustrations are composites of western empire wide discoveries carefully matched to recreate a likely dressed soldier. And the image notes are brief because the whole book is dedicated to the illustrations with its content referenced to the illustrations.
So no generalised text padding – it’s straight in and descriptive. In fact Latin terms are only partially explained with no appendix so you need to get online if they are not tripping off your tongue already.
So I actually like this offering – maybe not for all subjects but it (they) will complement my other books.
2024 publication whose Eastern compliment is due out in August It’s always good to buy loads of flat pack furniture for the season of scenery challenge…….
Trouble is what do you do with the furniture left over……..
I do hope to get going on my scenery but before embarking on scratch build items I think this small bridge might be in order.
My beloved first small stone bridge by Bellona has long gone to scenery heaven along with its larger sibling. So this EWM item caught my eye when I was shopping for Fauxterre 1930 kit.
Right now I am meant to be in scenery mode – it’s summer and Dave stones season of scenery has monopolised summer wargaming in recent years.
However the late late very very late Late Roman show landed and so I am painting forces for Rome and Sassanid Empires instead.
This project started a long time ago which of course is another story.
Yet my recent excursion into medieval May painting did drag me off the 19/20th century theme that has dominated my gaming since Norman’s in the south collided with Covid and the Schleswig Holstein Wars about five years ago.
The net result is I have been drifting back in wargames time and that’s why I read up a bit more on various blogs about dominion of the spear rules.
The author has referenced quite a few other rules authors – notably bob corderoy of portable wargame fame not to mention lots of army lists.
Essentially the ruleset is what I would describe as a stripped down version of DBA which I think if it had been offered in the nineties would have been ridiculed given DBA was the stripped down rules of the day.
I was sceptical about these rules but the various comments and blog posts were well reasoned and so I had a bit more of a dig and then took the plunge.
Wargames Vault is the online shop to get them from.
In fact I went for two of the pdf’s – the core rules and the 36 ancient battles set. With the former you can play anything historical or fantasy etc. with the latter the author presents structured refights from history as scenarios.
On the face of it if you like campaigning (tick) solo wargaming (tick) quick narrative gaming (tick) then these rules might just be worth a look.
My own reference point for these rules is kingmaker which I played back in the late seventies and early eighties. The advanced rules included a three “battles” (left, right and centre) a side option to replace the simple card turn battle result of the basic rules.
Over the years I used it with various simple rules in my solo ancient and medieval campaigns.
Then it got dumped in favour of DBA either using 15mm figures or card token armies on a 60cm square board.
The requirement was a quick game to add some flavour and inform the narrative – usually around character development.
It was always intended to keep the campaign at a certain pace which made bigger wargames impractical.
These rules absolutely fit that bill. Perhaps better than DBA.
What’s interesting is that they’re so stripped down you would think there is limited opportunity other than repetition of outcomes and that vanilla is the only constant flavour.
Now I have yet to play them but the read through is encouraging. They look to contain sufficient detail/variety whilst absolutely delivering a fast game.
Suffice to say I have the itch to campaign which is a very dangerous distraction from painting late Romans or creating 1/72 scenery.
Well it’s a short break after my medieval may frenzy followed by forgotten hero’s challenge. While forgotten heroes was great, medieval may left me with a huge pile of primed figures and only the odd bit of paint on some. hey ho.
I am aiming to join in the season of scenery challenge run by Dave Stone. As it runs from July to September I am hoping for some success.
In the meantime time I have been sideswiped a few days ago by Later Romans. That’s a longtime project from lockdown years purchases and even before that in terms of ideas……
Who will win out in July remains to be seen.
Usual splendid muted colours – greys and orangesA relative found this Belgian museum V1/V2 launch site targeting London While I found these again – always cheers up that visit Some great sunsetsColour range is fantastic as are the shapesGolden but fearsome sunset
Well ok, I am an occasional sci fi gamer – I own five parsecs from home solo rules – have some figures – even scratch built space ships courtesy of AHPC. However it is very hit and miss.
Alas I have few sci fi heroes as such unlike all those American comic characters. In fact this sends me back to my childhood. You will need a cup of tea…….
Back well before Wargames entered my brain (courtesy of my local library), my mum not only made me airfix kits – biplanes and railway wagons on her ironing board!! But she bought my Ranger magazine which very quickly got absorbed by look and learn. You can still get the old annuals but they are full of serious kids learning stuff.
It was fun to learn through these magazines all sorts of stuff – even historical battles which did have a big impact on me, but every week there was one half page that got all my attention.
A real mix of sci fi and ancient/medievals
It was all about the Trigan Empire. And it was fantasy history told in a comic strip style with a literal colour bomb compared to most of the magazines black and white text, illustrations and photos. Later on colour invaded most of look and learns column inches, indeed it’s massive archive is still well used popping up all over the place on the net.
So what did trigan land do to me? Well it meant my giant plastic castle for 54mm – plastics, in my case, saw ancient Romans, Greeks, knights in armour fighting acw and ww2 soldiers. I never had any pike and shot or napoleonic or seven years wars 54mm toys – and they were toys some with ring hands so the ancients could be armed with guns just like in the comic strip.
Mixed up history telling set me up for a life of imaginations narrative Wargames. Either absolutely no regrets.
I had no paints at this time so figures came as they were.
I had a lot of fun and as it happened even though my American relatives and my sisters pen friend sent marvel comics I was unshaken except for those 1 dollar giant 20mm plastic armies advertised on the back pages. I think I asked my ever helpful mum to buy me some but to no avail: Airfix kits were liberally bought and I then got a secondhand model railway … …..Wargames would have to wait.
And all those now rare comics were just binned…
What a carve up – of genres?
I distinctly remember the lokans who were the nasty guys always fighting the trigans who were really Romans armed with ray guns but usually preferred cold steel. Mind you everyone seemed to prefer cold steel if they got in a close fight – Ray guns for distance only of course – no cheating!
Anyway although I eventually discovered wargames and straight up historicals at that, I retained this rather period feel sci fi memory even through all the Star Wars, aliens and other film eras as well as my copious reading of sci fi books in the seventies – Asimov etc. I even read all 27? books of the Perry Rhodan series…in which the global stock markets were manipulated using clever computers, there was the space station in orbit of course – more like a space airport and agriculture comprising automated harvesters working across land untouched by humans – all proper early seventies make believe founded on real science of the time – algorithms and heuristics and robotics were just getting going back then.
Anyway unlike Roger I rarely modify let alone build figures so lacking a Trigan hero (yes I know I could hunt down a Roman but…) I have opted to celebrate their existence by a paint mod using some modern toys for those anti heroes – the lokans.
I tried to emulate the colour palette if nothing else…
These were 100 for a fiver type of sell if I remember from the bovington tank museum online of all places – never been though.
My nasty lokans posing in front of my sci fi AHPC scratchbuilds – how many discarded household items can you spot? Of course you know one is a Klim class space trader ship….
One thing you get from sci fi plus challenges is the freedom to play around with colours and paint types. I feel obligated to paint historical figures based on all that flimsy yet absolutely accurate historical evidence to be found in books and online.
Not so my sci fi guys but of course I needed to use the comic strip as it was my jumping off point. So these guys got some contrast paint treatment alongside the usual Vallejo and citadel colours.
So there you have it a few bad lokans 2026 style to celebrate the heroically forgotten trigans.
You can buy bound books of the comic strips for what it’s worth.
Back in the nineties? I picked up this selected compilation book. Not necessarily my favourite remembered stories but the artwork is from the early days pre 1975 which is the best. It’s the artwork that makes the comic strip work of course.
After several painting challenges where I intended to illustrate Flora Sandes things combined to make it happen.
First I joined Forgotten Heroes for a June painting challenge. I intended to paint some ACW figures.
Then I happened upon some freebie Russians in 28mm and I suddenly remembered my much failed 1:72 ideas about a Flora Sandes figure.
The result is basically a build from the multipart sprue which have some female head options.
The basing grit material is from an old pot from games workshop which seems to be lasting forever as you can see
Ok so this is all Russian World War Two kit while Flora Sandes is a heroine from World War One where she uniquely served in the armed forces of Serbia.
I say unique because she was the ONLY British woman commissioned to serve as a soldier in the whole war.
Born in Poppleton near York, Yorkshire, Flora volunteered as a Red Cross medical orderly in the Royal Serbian Army fighting the Austrian Empire.
She transferred into the military arm and eventually achieved the rank of sergeant major and then after the war ended senior captain.
She died in 1956 having lived in Suffolk after the end of World War Two.
Her Wikipedia page reveals an amazing story – wounded in action, decorated with the highest Serbian military award, marrying a White Russian general, detained by the Germans in WW2, global speaker between the wars……go read it.
For this figure I chose to go with white primer
Painting wise I used Vallejo yellow green for the uniform with a wash using citadel contrast plaguebearer flesh.
Usual Vallejo colours for boots and belts etc. although I used 021 dark flesh tone for once instead of 018 flat flesh. Seraphim sepia goes on top.
My main miniature scale is 1/72 or 20 to 25mm (because scale creep has a very long history). So I am not in the current mainstream 28mm (whatever that height that means anyway) or 15mm (another much varied war gamers scale).
28mm dominates the supply chain these days while 6-15mm seems to be prospering as a counterpoint – skirmish versus mass battles?
The ubiquitous 1/72 “do it all” scale is now largely unloved by gamers although the modelling fraternity still love it for aeroplanes, ships, vehicles and railways.
I have a soft spot for the “ubiquitous” scale and therefore trawl the supply chain accordingly.
Sadly metallics in the 20mm to sub 25mm are in decline – quite simply sculpting and casting in metal is an art and craft which you don’t start doing at the drop of a hat.
The mainstay of this production industry is not getting any younger and of course 3d printing from digital models inevitably looks the modern progressive thing to do if your starting out as a maker in this hobby
Many of the 20-25mm small metal casting businesses revolve around one of two key people and when they stop working there is often no one else to take on the business.
My current figure collection includes
B and B miniatures
SHQ
Irregular Miniatures
Warrior Miniatures
Frontline
B and B miniatures shut up shop a couple of years ago. They had one of the few extensive ranges for Franco Prussian forces in 20mm.
I should have bought more when I did but did not see the writing on the wall.
SHQ sold out to grubbies tanks who will cast some ranges to order – notably for me Kennington although I always liked the WW2 ranges.
Ian Kay at Irregular hung up his working gear this spring after 45 years. His vast range of figures in so many scales will be a loss to many gamers. I believe the 2/6mm ranges live on through a former employee taking the plunge.
Warrior miniatures run out of Glasgow by John in his 80’s has been on hold due to poor health but he did restart in 2025 only to find he needed to rework his manufacturing to make things possible. Since the June announcement I think things have gone quiet again.
Frontline and IT UK closed its doors this spring as well. I have some of their very nice ww2 vehicles.
As I have a broad tolerance on scale and indeed figure matches I can still access ranges to support my gaming, notably using injection moulded plastics sold as toys back in the fifties and sixties.
Yet today they produce some outstanding miniatures for gaming. Even so this industry has seen rocky times with Hat Miniatures seemingly stopping production at one point – think warlord just stopping – you get the picture.
Right now I am painting 1/72 metal medievals from Tumbling Dice. They come with separate shield and some separate heads. Casting is crisp with no flash and minimal mould lines – a fiver gets you 8 foot but I buy the discount packs where you get an army for 70 quid.
In the pic are some SHQ crusaders mounted in the middle and foot in foreground while some Caesar 1/72 plastics are at the right rear of the picture. Tumbling dice 1250 era mounted blue/yellow plus foot with large kite shields are to be seen middle left.
This image and nick kershaw are from Wikipedia entries for riddle and the riddle
Clearly my riddle is not as critical as Oedipus’ circumstances, more a bit of fun triggered by the Roger and Jez show.
I am thinking of a soldier who served in two conflicts on two continents and rose to become a Union brigadier in the ACW volunteering at the beginning of the war and sticking around till the end.
He was successively Colonel of two regiments.
And he had a goatee beard and tash.
Maybe if someone gets the name then he is not forgotten after all?
The Wargaming Erratic 