Allow me to introduce Senator Quintus Verilis Varrus ...

Senatorial Roman, Son of a noble father. Father of a hearty family.  Newly elected Magistrate of the Aventine district of Rome itself.  And someday soon an actual member of the Roman Senate. 

15mm Hard Plastic Romans

     Can it be? Somebody has begun a Kickstarter to produce 15mm hard plastic Romans. Plastic Soldier Company has shown the way with multi-scale kits. Finally somebody has looked over the 28mm wall and realized that there are a lot of gamers that prefer 15mm. Take a look at these beauties.

Size comparison QRF M-60 with Plastic Soldier Company M-60

     I imposed on R.U.P. to bring over some of his models so that I could get some side by side photos. He had some QRF kits of the M-60 in his collection and was kind enough to oblige me. R.U.P. had found the QRF models to be less than satisfactory but they were the only ones available when he was assembling his forces for Rock the Casbah.

 

R.U.P. added reactive armor, and extra guns, to his QRF kits

 to produce models of the Israeli Magach version

Side-By-Side the Plastic Soldier Company M-60 and T-55

     I had a moment so I did a side-by-side shot of these two offerings from PSC. I have seen the M-60 in the flesh but never been within eyesight of a T-55. I was struck at how very small the T-55 is in comparison. The grid in the background is 1/4".

None Shall Pass; a Lion Rampant game

     While trying to recover from playing a full-on game of WRG Ancients Fifth Edition I needed a simpler way to think. My eye cast itself across the myriad of books and rules that line the walls of my library and fell upon a  copy of Osprey's Lion Rampant; I thought to myself, "There is a simple set of rules" and began to design the following scenario.

       Arthur (Artorius, or some other Briton with a highly unlikely Roman-sounding name)  has gotten wind of a Saxon plan to march up the Old Roman Road (no, not one of those arrow-straight roads that criss-cross Britain, a road that an Old Roman once lived beside, you can see his hut in the pictures) and commit a bit of invading. Arthur objected to this as he was planning on levying taxes on those same people later this year and a change of title might complicate the book-keeping. Thus he called forth his troops and set himself to stop this affront to his dignity (and Exchequer).

 

Arthur and the boys declare "None Shall Pass!"

An Indulgence

 

the source of all the trouble

     A while back oldSarge mentioned his first wargame, this set me to thinking about mine. After a bit of reminiscing I decided that I would like to attempt to re-create that first game. I know that you can never "go back" but that isn't to say that you can't have a second sip of a fine vintage. I rummaged around in the rules vault and discovered that I still had a copy of the WRG rules and Army Lists. Delighted by the discovery I set about my task. This was made difficult by the fact that the original Gauls and Romans belonged to the fine fellow putting on the game (kudos to you, Bob Webb!) and I have started to build both Romans and Gauls several times but never completed the task. Well, the first sign of a good soldier is that difficulty is met with resourcefulness. No Romans, Later Macedonians will do instead. No Gauls, Franks will have to fill the bill. It still was a small, well-trained force faced with hordes of valiant, if undrilled, warriors.

Great Deal from Helion Books

     Helion Books is offering their "Russian Army In The Great Northern War" book at 1/3 off through The League of Augsburg blog this is a great deal on a truly superb book. If you are at all interested in this subject you really should have this book. Don't miss this deal.

My how the time flies!

     Just over four decades ago I played in my first "real" wargame. I was hooked from the first turn. My first armies were Airfix plastics, long since given away. My first army of metal figures was Byzantines, there was only Hinchliffe available to me at the time and I avidly saved my money and bought a pack every time I had accumulated sufficient cash. They were painted with my Testors model paints and glued to whatever I could find that was roughly the right size for a base. As time passed better figures became available, first the "second generation" Hinchliffes, then Citadel brought a lovely range and just recently I returned to my love of Late Romans because of Gripping Beasts new products.

     Unlike other armies that have come and gone I still have every single Byzantine figure I ever bought. From time to time they still are deployed on the table and they fight as well as ever despite their clearly advancing age. I know I rave a bit about the quality of this or that figure but I think you should understand what we were looking at in the misty dawn of time when I was a new gamer; so I dug out some examples of how things have changed. Behold the sort of progress that upwards of forty years can make!

 

the family photo, time passes from left to right

Size comparison, Old Glory T-55 vs PSC T-55 vs Peter Pig T-55

    Having put a spot of paint on my new T-55 I decided to see how it compares to the venerable Old Glory version that I have in my AK-47 collection. Once again the grid lines are 1/4". Given its age the Old Glory model holds up rather well.

Cold War Workhorse Part II The PSC T-55

   I have had this kit for some time and just now realized that I had not done a review of it. So Here I go...... Plastic Soldier Company has done a great job of bringing affordable, highly-detailed models of the most common tanks to the wargaming community. In this subject they have produced an excellent model of the most common tank in the world; the Russian T-55 (and a good many of its variants). With some estimates running as high as 100,000 models made the T-55 will figure large in any wargaming of the post WW2 era.

 

front box art

     Molded in a medium gray plastic that shows detail well and cast without flash or noticeable mold-lines this kit provides parts to build six variants of this long serving tank.

Photo review of Conquest miniatures 28mm Medieval Knights

   I had the pleasure of reviewing the latest issue from Conquest Miniatures, Medieval Knights for the period mid1100s-1200AD. Don't let the tragically bad box-art fool you, these are really good figures!

A more or less typical Night with Anton

I have been waiting to post this one for a while as I figured I should wait until Anton came back to the land of the living (sober) after his revelries.  I figured posting would be a good sign so now that he has made several I will launch this missive. 


So, for all of you gentle readers who have never had the pleasure of an evening at Anton's I thought I would write this one up to reflect the modus vivendi of the group.