ALERT! Saturday 21SEP19 1900hrs ALERT!

This Saturday 21SEP19 at 1900hrs at my house

Be there!

Pro or Con Gaming Convention 28SEP19 in Livonia

Another one that is trying to get past me unnoticed!
Not to be missed, always a good time and usually a few treasures to be found in the Flea Market

Pro or Con returns to the Elk's Lodge in Plymouth on 28SEP19  follow this link to get to the website

Pro or Con
Saturday, Sept 28, 2019
8am – 11pm
Elks Lodge, 31117 Plymouth Rd, Livonia, MI 48150

K.E.G.S. Wargame Convention this weekend

Sorry about the short notice but I just got the reminder from Andy the other day. A jovial bunch of fellows and some darned good-looking games, well worth the trip!

KEGSCon VII
21 Sep at 09:00 – 22 Sep at 17:00
The Retro Suites Hotel
2 King Street West, Chatham, Ontario

TMP link to the Schedule of Events

Meet the Rulers; Clauz IV of Framboise, "The Unfortunate"

     The fifth child and third son of Ferdinand II de Flamboise, Clauz was an unattractive baby and grew uglier with age. Oddly his personality is the exact inverse of his visage; he was quiet, thoughtful, industrious, polite, kind, intelligent, perceptive, strong-minded, ethical, honest, decent, energetic, obedient, tidy, generous, healthy, wise and overall a rather nice fellow. As a fifth child among eight he was sometimes overlooked by his mother and his nannies. Of Ferdinand's four sons he is the only clearly sane one (the youngest, Mikail XII, being but three it is too early to guess) and it has been whispered in hallways that the Emperor wished to have his two oldest sons declared unfit so that he could elevate Clauz to the Imperial Throne only to be dissuaded by his wife at the last moment before he went off to war.

Rebasing Woes

 

the army of the Lord High Constable of Boozonia

it would also equally serve as a Scots army from the ECW period

     

  This is turning into a year of Firsts.

      This is the first year in forty that I haven't painted a single figure (so far, but I still have hopes!), the first year that I tiled a roof using individual hand-cut tiles and now, for the first time EVER in my wargaming life I rebased an army, or any portion thereof. I find painting tedious, basing is worse. Rebasing means undoing the work only to repeat it, madness!

Meet the Rulers (almost) Hanz and Franz of the House Flamboise

     The Troublesome Twins, it is an unusual thing that the king of a land having three sons could cause a crisis in the line of succession but the presence of Franz and Hanz de Flamboise has brought about just that situation. Truth be told Ferdinand had doubts about his two oldest sons from early in their lives. The constant lying and deception that they practiced, paired with their very unusual view of how the world works, caused poor Ferdinand many a sleepless night. At his wife's insistence he refrained from having their names tattooed onto to them to prevent their endless shenanigans.

Hanz de Flamboise

 

Franz de Flamboise (I think)

      Hanz always displayed a casual disdain for the thoughts and feeling of others that seemed to have no limits, while Franz was slavishly deferential to the opinions and feelings of everyone about him. Hanz would break a glass to see it shatter and Franz would buy a set to replace it.

Meet the Ruler; Gordon Ramsey, Lord High Constable of Boozonia

 

the right honorable Lord High Constable of Boozonia, Gordon Ramsey

      Alone among the leaders of nations in Epicurea Gordon Ramsey did not inherit his position. Boozonia developed a national consciousness six centuries ago. Four hundred years of intermittent conflict continued until the House of Flamboise finally gave up and granted Boozonia its independence. The lengthy struggle against the Imperial power sharpened the already intense feeling of individual freedoms and God-given rights. The Boozonians have enshrined these rights in The Covenant which forms the basis for their form of government. 

Meet the Ruler; Peter II "The Famished" of King of Ferndalia

 

His Most Esteemed Royal Majesty Peter II

      The Whey dynasty has ruled Ferndalia off and on (mostly on) since time immemorial. It is only since shedding their pagan ways that they began to enumerate their kings, whom they name in strict alphabetical order. Peter has ruled for the past fifteen years succeeding his very long-lived grandfather Nathan II. Widely respected, if little loved, Peter holds sway over the largest kingdom in Epicurea running the realm with the attention to detail normally found only in the finest of chefs. His cold demeanor and excessive devotion to his cause have not engendered any love from his citizens but they do appreciate the order that he has brought to the realm following the chaos of Nathan's too-lengthy rule.

Meet the Ruler; His Most Caloric Majesty, Louis XIII "The Ravenous"

 

tell me, honestly now, does this wig make my head look fat?

       The House of Bon-Bon has ruled Freedonia for the past five hundred years; compared to the House of Flamboise they are like a rambunctious child with all the inferiority issues that come with being a younger sibling. The Bon-Bon dynasty has always felt the need to exceed all the other royal houses in every definable way; more extravagant clothing, food, palaces, uniforms, navies, entertainments....the list goes on and on. In large part they have succeeded in this ambition due to the discovery of vast silver deposits in their colonies which have lifted the burden of the monarch's vision off of the long-suffering peasants. 

Meet the Ruler, The recently deceased Ferdinand de Flamboise III

 

his Most Exalted Majesty riding off to battle

       For the past two decades Gluttonia had flourished under the careful management of Ferdinand the III. It is only recently that the Small Plate heresy has been upsetting the peace and calm of the prosperous countryside that is blessed with a fertile landscape and a diligent, hardworking populous. Ferdinand, known affectionately as "Fat Ferddy" to his subjects, saw to the maintenance of peace within and without his lands. 

The Thirty Course War, an ImagiNation campaign

The Origins of the Thirty Course War

The continent of Epicurea had long known peace. Certainly there were the occasional uprising, riot, food fight or revolt along with the odd dynastic squabble or border conflict but, on the whole, the land had known peace for the better part of a century. That was before the Great Debate had degenerated into the Grand Conflict which, as everyone knows, brought about the the Irredeemable Disagreement. The humble origin of this continent shattering cataclysm was the issue of The Small Plate; more specifically whether one could legitimately replace lunch with a selection of Small Plates as a proper form of repast if one was considering a larger meal later that day. Not that anyone had ever done such a thing, just whether, as a point of philosophy and practicality, it would be proper to do so.

Making Places

the one that started it all; Daftrica

     Ever since I was a child I have been fascinated by maps. The visual display of information that had been carefully compiled and the ability to plan activities from that information, the instantly obvious relationship between places and the artistry involved in the creation of them absorbed my young mind. I have collected maps from every place that I have been, bought maps of places I hope to go, culled maps from old issues of National Geographic. It approaches a disorder.

     Maps of mythical places were not exempt from this collection. Howard's Hyboria, Tolkien's Middle Earth, or Burrows' Barsoom all had a place in my imagination. I enjoyed making maps of my own, recording places that I had been in my child's hand and then comparing the map I had drawn to a real map. My father explained that because it felt that I had "walked a hundred miles" didn't mean that the distance was really that far. He taught me how surveyors had made made maps in the past and befuddled my young mind with the maths involved calculating distances and heights.

     When I got into wargaming I readily accepted that the maps in the Avalon Hill games of the 1970s were exact and accurate. Only later did I come to realize the compromises that graphic designers had to make to create a playable game surface. 

     This long-winded lead-in  is just to lay the groundwork for a post on my way of making maps for the campaigns I run. A while back (twenty years or so) I drew up a map of a mythical continent that I made my loyal friends fight battles set in the period known as Pike& Shot. I ran this as a semi-solo campaign wherein I did all the bookkeeping and strategic planning and they took the place of the battlefield generals. They suffered through many games using George Gush's detailed and slow-moving rules until they finally rebelled and stopped showing up on evenings when such a game was scheduled. Not wishing to lose friends I set the campaign aside. 

     That is until now, having found the Liber Militum Tercio rules I am now going to re-launch the campaign. I went looking in my files and found that I no longer possessed the map (I think it was taken and destroyed by one of my disgruntled friends). Faced with this sad development I resolved to recreate the map. And just to show you how I do it I decided to document the process.