Friday, December 30, 2016

Goodies That I Got For Christmas

     I have a wonderful daughter-in-law. She got me two very interesting books for Christmas this year, they embrace two of my favorite historical themes. First they both cover conflicts of extreme obscurity. Second, they cover Pre-Dreadnought naval conflicts. Needless to say I was excited the moment I saw them.

   Taking them in chronological order I will look at the  Sino-French Naval War 1884-1885 by Piotr Olender, published by Mushroom Model Publications out of the U.K. ISBN 978-83-61421-53-5. This covers the "almost" war that lead to France taking over Indochina (and thus to the U.S. involvement in the Viet Nam War eighty years later) from the decadent Chinese Empire. It gives an overview of the conflict to place the naval operations into perspective but keeps to the main focus of the narrative firmly on the naval operations. The book provides complete fleet lists and data on each vessel. Heavily illustrated with period drawings, photos, scale drawings of some of the ships and perspective sketches it will fire the imagination. I found the modern maps left a bit to be desired but I am very demanding that way. Lots of material for wargaming, highly recommended.




Wednesday, December 28, 2016

The Return of the Giant Ships, Naval Gaming in 28mm (more or less)

     The redoubtable Ray Braemer has prevailed upon me to run a game at SpartaCon this January. Given that this is the one venue with enough square footage to allow a game of 28mm Pre-Dreadnoughts I offered to haul my fleets down to the Lansing Center and run a game.

     To put myself in the right state of mind I scrolled through the previous posts on the building and use of these giant models. In doing so I noticed a pattern that occurred in the games; the French lost. Stop your snickering! We are talking about the French Navy, not the army. The French Navy was one of the benchmarks used by the British for fleet comparison purposes, no Royal Navy, but they were pretty darned good! The Imperial Prussian Navy certainly didn't have the reputation that the French did.

      To redress this problem I have decided to add a few boats to the French Fleet. A brace of gunboats to be exact. See my initial ideas below.

as usual I don't really have a plan, I just start cutting foam

Wednesday, December 21, 2016

DONE! Danish Garden til Fods finished at last

     I discovered that I had all of my Christmas shopping done and nothing to distract myself from this project, so I sat myself down and finished the buttons and skin highlights then applied a final sealing coat of Armory Matte Finish spray.  Here they are in all their glory; The Danish Foot Guards.

I really must get over to Warflag.com and find some banners for these units I have been painting


3D scans of real forts (and other stuff too)

      The folks at Sketchfab are doing some amazing things with 3-d scanning, check out Fort St. Jago in Ghana.......now all I need is a REALLY big 3-d printer and I'm off to the races!



you can manipulate the 3D image on their site, it is amazing!


28mm Laser-cut stuff

         OK, OK I know that laser cut MDF isn't a big story anymore.


         But this guy is making some truly lovely stuff at very reasonable prices and I feel that he deserves some recognition, take a look. And the prices are very reasonable!




I love the furniture........
I have to get some for the tavern we built out of foamcore ages ago

the windmill is delightful too


Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Danish Foot Guards near completion!

I have almost completed the washes and detailing, I pushed one figure all the way through to finished, just to keep my morale up. You see him below.

still a little shiny from the washes, he will get his matte spray soon enough

Friday, December 16, 2016

Lace Wars continues; Danish Garden til Fods

     I have gotten back to the workbench and have been laboring away at the next to last foot unit, the Danish Garden til Fods ( Foot Guards in plain English). They are happily clad in a straw colored coat with carmine facings, a delightful change form the grey/red/blue cycle that seemed to dominate coat colors of the period. I have the larger blocking done and some of the detail as well, next is washes and highlights.......another week at least.

the contrasting coats of the officers stags out in this color scheme rather boldly 

Thoughts on History


and we didn't really hate the Hessians

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Lace Wars, Grenadiers at last

I finally got back to the workbench for a bit and got a battalion of Grenadiers painted. They are in green and red to go with the musketeers I finished a while back. Two battalions of foot and I can get started on the cavalry (and then, the artillery).

the mitre hats make them look very large next to the other figures

Sunday, December 4, 2016

Blood Bowl Revival!

Since GW has rereleased Blood Bowl, RUP and I were thinking of giving the whole League thing a second try.  As the last time kind of fell apart really quickly, we were hoping to have a bit more dedication to the cause this time.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Meanwhile, in other news.....

I have started a separate blog to cover out upcoming VSF campaign. You can find it here.

(JnR Edit: The link now works. :-) )

Everyone interested in participating in the campaign can email me at daftrica 8 9 at yahoo dot com. with their choice of nation and I will reward them with the access so that they can post their own entries on the new blog.

If this takes off like the last campaign I will make a page for it in the header and permanently link to it for everyone's edification.

Thursday, December 1, 2016

Old Sarge has been busy again

Take a glance at my always resourceful buddy, Old Sarge's blog, he has been researching Boer War blockhouses and working on his miniatures for our up coming campaign. It is worth a visit, Old Sarge is a WAY better modeler and painter than I am, his stuff is simply beautiful.


Now I have to get to work on a blockhouse or two :)