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We will remember them
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Intermission 25e
Well it’s another warmer than usual and sunnier summer which means less time wargaming.
Pond-life proves interesting – we inherited the garden newts and an almost buried pond. The one goldfish in it was actually brown so we did not find it till we tidied the pond up.
He is long departed for fish heaven. In the meantime the newts rule which also means the frogs get a raw deal as newts voraciously eat frog spawn apparently.
That’s pond life – eat or be eaten.
So newts should have laid their eggs by June yet this one was spotted cuddling some floating leaves – looking like egg laying. Who knows. They are fun to watch.
Not so much fun is tidying up the outdoor track although watching the train go by is!
Not much rain or cooler weather in the forecast so wargaming might go a bit thin for a while ……
John@justneedsvarnish over time has kept reminding me that storage cannot be ignored when collecting for wargames. This is even a greater issue when scenery comes into play given it can become a sizeable part of your collection.
So my recent building blitz has a kind of logic.
Over the summer figure painting has dried up just like last year and scenery has come to the fore. This is just as well because the lockdown era seemed to be the time when I fervently collected for my apparent scenery needs but never made any of the kits or used the “recycling”. It was the latter that brought me up short when I looked at my cardboard mountain.
Also I have made some inroads into my figure mountain that led to a right old sort out.
The net result is two scenery drawers created by redistribution of figure boxes/bags/containers.
I am quite pleased with the result and it will probably lead to a scenery rationalisation at some point now they are all more visible and accessible.
Right now some of my recent builds have simply booked themselves a decent storage spot.
Thanks John.
Crikey what’s going on?
Like most wargamers I guess when you stop and reflect upon your hobby, your traits often pop up.
In my case I am more process than creative perhaps more risk averse as well. So that’s the wargaming general who gets his logistics sorted before attacking – and maybe never attacks as a result 😂 queue heap of unpainted figures and of course scenery.
You could of course burrow into all this personality assessment-briggs myers style. Anyway this is a long intro to justify this!
So instead of carefully planning my scenery making I just dug out any thing I could find and started building – note, no painting.
Of course one item is self coloured so it’s done! Dating from the days of the USSR and the DDR it shows there is nothing new under the sun – even back then modellers fed up with the painting step were catered for.
Three years ago I made a tower one summer after discovering Dave Stone’s challenge. Last year it prompted me to trawl my bridges and defences pile to excellent effect. Heck I have even managed to game them!
This year the reaction to July’s starting gun has been a frenzy of building – in fact anything I could find. And especially those “I will make this when I have time to do it justice”.
So I have
An italeri church
An italeri railway station
A warbases church
Two warbases cowboy town buildings
A vero (1980’s) 1/87 scale model railway church ready coloured
A blotz starter pack for 20mm Bronze Age fortress.
No idea when some paint will get sploshed on them……
Thanks Dave 😉
What’s a war gamer to do? No sand for their sandcastles!
My beach offered some nicely rounded pebbles of a certain size in a mix of greys and reds.
As it happened the local town shops included those selling endless varieties of resin chess sets yet surprisingly stone pebble sets.
Queue felt pen and a pleasant half an hour hunting pebbles for shade and shape.
The shop sets came with a cloth chequer board. I have not managed that bit yet.
Still I now have a quirky chess set for those future pebble beach holidays.
You can buy the shop version for around £25!
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Le siège de Rome 537
La production de figurines, malgré les progrès immenses de l’impression 3D, est étrangement en déclin. Cela s’explique évidemment aussi par la guerre…
Le siège de Rome 537
If you need an english version it’s not too much to foto the five text sections which are conveniently sized and then select scan and translate options in your smart phone.
Also Chariobaude has an excellent WordPress blog which I discovered way back in 2017 covering fantastic painting of late Roman miniatures.
Fortunately John over at “just needs varnish” reminded me that Dave Stone’s challenge started at the beginning of July.
Last year I had a very fruitful time in fact my challenge ran into the end of September! It did not do my figure painting any favours though.
Yet I had so much scenery waiting to be done it proved to be a rich vein.
Well this particular ore vein is still rich.
So far that is two churches and a railway station finally out of their boxes and just about built.
Painting may be a stumbling block – I get quite hesitant about colours. Cold north or warm south…..
* Could be I have drawn loads of early pacers who then fade away……..
I wonder what else will come from the pit of scenery?
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One Hour Wargames and 2 more Sneedens
The thing about one hour wargames is it’s genuinely “pick up” attraction. If you want to throw dice, move figures and get that war game with a purpose feeling for minimal preparation, then I find it’s a winner.
Yes, the mechanisms are abstract but you have to compromise somewhere and Neil Thomas rules generally offer that blend of compromises I like.
These battles were prompted by my reading atlas of the civil war and discovering Robert Sneeden – a Union Cartographer. https://thewargamingerratic.home.blog/2025/06/05/a-game-wow/
Rebel forces enter the fray
Rebel victory
So the second battle ends in Royalist defeat. It’s all square and all to play for…..
The royalists needed to escape through the town and up the great road……
And so victory to the rebels in the action and also the short campaign.
Today of course saw the end of 3 days of fighting at Gettysburg – the great Union victory which along with the capture of Vicksburg saw the war finally turn against the Confederate Southern States.
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Fragment May ’25/2 – books
My latest fragment concerns books. Books figure strongly in my wargaming interests and tend to drive what I do more than say the internet in terms of projects. That’s mainly due to my pursuit of decent historical narrative.
In spite of my distracting magazine interests and recently significant book disposals, I am still book reading – it’s a key part of my hobby.
Last year I took several months to read “An Army at Dawn”. It is about the US Army written by an American exploring the impact of Operation Torch – the North Africa landings in 1942. Often overlooked because of its proximity to El Alamein, Stalingrad or Pearl Harbour this (rehearsal) campaign in my view meant that the Normandy landings went a lot smoother? And it enabled the Italian campaign which knocked Italy out of the war.
The author Rick Atkinson, is very readable and frankly for me the subject is very engaging: The ambiguity of the French, the Germans still confident, the Americans with endless resources yet lacking experience and the wily Brits trying to spin the events their way. And of course the Italians now perhaps feeling things were getting too close to home. All the while the native population were caught in the crossfire.
So the very first amphibious landings and combined operations by allied forces – s0me sailing directly across the atlantic ocean to attack the beaches: What could possibly go wrong? Pretty much everything. Fortunately the defenders were at sixes and sevens – Vichy French and later the Germans and Italians.
Mind you the Americans had been here before – about 125 years previously……
In parallel with all this my other book of interest is set in the nineteenth century and deals with the French crown between 1815 and 1850 – nothing happens I hear the cry! It was the long peace after all.
Well I suppose that’s a matter of opinion. Admittedly there are no major European wars between the Napoleonic and Crimean. And perhaps even then the Franco Prussian war is seen as the next big european event after the demise of Napoleon I, given what then followed.
What is fascinating is the continual story of French rule that throws up moments of high tension when events could have turned in different directions. Having read the book it feels like France was really permanently in revolution mode during this period as well.
Perilous Crown is an excellently written story of the events surrounding the successive reigns of Charles X last of the bourbon line then Louis Phillipe and it is his story of somehow surviving the ever volatile French realm that is the primary focus.
Author: Munro Price
Published: MacMillan
A couple of books appeared in a family clear out – not sure how they got there.
And the last book has proved a lucky charity shop find as well.
Spring started with the leftovers of Analogue Hobbies Challenge 15
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2025/02/from-johnb-5th-level-of-abyss-wrath-or.html
and the drift that has followed influenced my book reading.
What’s next I wonder?
I was gifted this seaplane in a poor state. It was found in a clearance box at a car boot sale.
Some minor repairs to the floats struts plus my first ever plane support – magnet and all, then my current favourite background thrown in for good measure.
Fauxterre 1930 is my “nearly mechanised” campaign – long in the planning with little progress on the armies.
Essentially Rugia is under attack and their coastal command have had to draw in naval resources to cover potential invasion activity by their arch enemy Gombardia.
No idea about the kit or the plane modelled. I thought about a repaint but for now it’s fine for my solo campaigning – only my eye is offended if at all.
Who knows I might even actually build another plane after last year’s (2023/24) inaugural camomint 1939 reconnaissance spitfire in AHPC14.
https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2024/01/from-lorenzo-reach-for-sky-camomint.html
Onwards and in this case upwards!
The Wargaming Erratic 