Musings of a Fool

 

 I have not blogged regularly since 2022, Covid-19 and other things have either sucked away my time and motivation, as well as children growing into teenagers.  Travel and a heavy workload took its toll, as well as purchasing a 100-year-old property to renovate last year.

 Painting has been erratic, with bouts of heavy work and then nothing for months at a time. Gaming-wise, I think I have played 2-3 games a year, mostly 28mm Napoleonic and a single 15mm ACW game. My house has taken a lot of time, though a year in now so I know what needs doing. A developer could easily bowl it and make 5 shitty apartments, but where is the adventure in that.

 I've always enjoyed the painting side of the hobby in truth, I have armies painted that have never seen a game. Too many armies and gears to be honest, as at times the hobby has been an unhealthy one, as it was always easy to buy and paint and ignore the real world. Also having around 20+ projects has not helped, so slowly I am reducing my stocks. I have enjoyed the games over the last few years; I am lucky to have a good group of like-minded players. I did branch out a good few years ago to try new things but found I didn't have time or simply got tired of games being used by players to yell about their latest political or social "expose".

  Over time I have a found a good balance, while PC games can be fun, I'd rather paint, and then mixed with regular life a good way to unwind. I traditionally used to paint as a teen while watching cricket on free TV, not days everything needs a subscription and cash, so I simply listen\watch YouTube.

 Some highlights.

 A 28mm Spanish 1812 army was slowly built, packed with religious undertones. 

 

My lord the eyes on that fellow, he must have been on the holy wine the night before.

A visit to Singapore and their museum, with a replica Type 95 Ha-Go, used in the series "Pacific.

A visit to the Imperial Palace in Tokyo

An exciting Valour and Fortitude game using Warlord Epic battles

 

An exciting adventure under the floor of my house, where the 37cm crawl space allowed me to insulate under a floor. As part of this I stapled the insulation to my finger, hilarity ensued, who needs finger nails anyway. I replaced the floor of the lounge, 100 year old Native Rimu was past its sell by date and I also needed to evict the borer. Only 3 more room floors to go ! Then the walls.

 

 

 Lead paint removal, gib linings, insulation, rewire, house leveling. Why did I do this again ?

Battle of Wavre Refight

 

Looking for a big game, we decided to re-fight Wavre in 28mmm, but with Grouchy starting earlier then expected. The game had around 80 Infantry units, 16 Cav and a 18 batteries, on a large table with 6 players. A fun affair, with the French pushing the Prussians as they did historically but not enough to take the position. 

I felt the French had just done enough, but not enough to stop the result up the road.

Luck and Kampfen prepare to defend Wavre Town

French assaults about to begin.

Gerard streams past Limale to assault Bierges from the west.

 

Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises!

 

As the silence of this blog the past few years has highlighted, motivation has been low and far in-between. 

I've painted and gamed, but when it comes to documenting it all, I have simply not bothered. As such, yesterday's crescendo on an otherwise unremarkable day, was the several boxes of 28mm French hurtling towards the floor as they were tipped over by mistake.

Gravity wins again.

So, now I have made a start on fixing and rebasing something in the order of 200–300 figures. Perry figures are nice, but the light infantry all became amputees, and the front rank figures packed a scrum at one end of their boxes. Lancers broke, standards came off and so on.

So, what a good reason to try and document this all.

 

 

Testing Rules for refights

 

 I will be planning a variety of re-fights over the next year or so, with a target of a very large game. As such, the topic of rules always comes up, so my trusty companions and I will play test some rules over the next few months.

Today was Black Powder, a rule set I have used a few times before in a lot of periods. Some pics from the game below, French defending a crossroads from an Allied attack.

 

 

 

  

 

A French Victory as the Allies ran out of steam at a crucial time and with some excellent dice rolling.

Fantastic Book

 

On  a whim, I recently purchased a secondhand book of an auction site, and it has been a pleasant surprise. Page after page of these excellent examples for many periods I know nothing about but have figures for.

In particular, the Seven Years War which my imagination armies are set. This will be a great resource as I paint the finer details of the figures.

 

Battle of Pleasant Hill, 1864

Some time ago, Archduke Piccolo and I decided to play a 1/72 ACW game, a great set of "old school" rules with lots of dice rolling and very bloody battles. It has been a while so I cannot recall the detail, but a fierce confederate attack was held by the union lines.

The figures are a mix of Airfix, Esci, Italeri, Revell and 20mm pewter.

 

All talk and no trousers.

A full 18 months since my last post, a new record.

Well, despite being in New Zealand, the global epidemic has hit me very hard. My industry destroyed, had a large pay-cut for a year, had to make redundancies and see a lot of clients businesses go under or have at least 90% staff loss. That is the way it sometimes goes, some ends up getting the smelly end of the toilet brush and the alternative was far worse, dead industry and sick community. I have a lot of friends and family globally, so I saw what they went through and wouldn’t wish it any other way. It certainly felt like "going down with the ship" at times, but it did highlight to me the importance of this hobby in my life. However, we are still here and things are looking up for 2022.

Recently there was an excellent mental health YouTube post - I recommend viewing it. 

Despite the extremely stressful times, I found that painting gave me that nice release away from it all.  I have accomplished quite a lot in this time, painting and gaming, but when it came to the blog I simply could not be bothered. A few times to be honest, I have even been tempted to simply exit this hobby, but that is more to do with my accumulation of unfinished project, so I have been sorting those out. 

I hope to document these projects more, as I have completed a vast amount of painting and basing. So below is a small sample of my 2020/2021 results work, and it is almost purely all 1/72 scale from a variety of periods.

I plan to make posts on the completed forces, and you can read all the Colonial Campaigns at Archduke Piccolo