Recent purchases + honeymoon

Hi folks,

While my painting time has taken a bit of a hit in the last few weeks, I have been busy this week finishing off a load of 3mm Soviet stuff for my 3mm Team Yankee project. Pics of that to follow, once everything is based.

In the mean time, I thought I'd share some pics of my recent purchases and visits to historic sites!

Our honeymoon consisted of a week (well, 5 nights) in an apartment in Kenmore, which is beside Loch Tay in Scotland. 

Unfortunatley on our first night, after arrival, my wife took ill and we had a 1 hour journey to the nearest hospital (in Perth) at 3am. It was Wednesday afternoon before she was discharged, so the first week was mostly gone! Still, she was fine and we did get to do a little in the remaining time.

We visited the National Cranog Centre in Kenmore, just along from where we were staying:

 Where we had a lovely afternoon sitting in the Cranog in front of a wood fire hearing about the building of the structures, theories surrounding their purpose and what we know of the lives of those who lived in them. There were also some fantastic demonstrations of various ancient crafts - such as wood turning, flour making, fire starting, etc. There was also an area dedicated to weaving and dyeing. I took a picture of some of the colours that volunteers had made using locally available ingredients.

While in Kenmore we also travelled to the Enchanted Forest at Pitlochry. This is a seasonal show put on in autumn in a large section of forest, featuring light and sound displays - and a fantastic 3d holographic light show using the water from a fountain that really was spectacular. All I've got to show here is one odd photo!

After our first week we moved to a small cottage just outside Dunblane. This turned out to be a fantastic location, not far from Perth, Stirling, Glasgow and a host of other places.

Using this as a base I got to visit Stirling Castle - which features the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders Regimental Museum. I took loads of photos, but there was very little WW2 stuff on display - much more was given over to regimental silver and things like the Crimea and WW1. Here's a picture of 'the thin red line' - the Argylls deployed in line beating off a Russian cavalry charge.

As well as being a spectacular castle, it has a host of interesting displays. One I found touching was these toy soldiers, found during renovations:

The castle itself has seen a lot of change over the centuries, and as such currently has a look of an almost Napoleonic defense, rather than a medieval castle. I was particularly interested in the cannon shot damage to some of the walls, mainly from the Jacobean period.

We also visited the Battle of Bannockburn visitors centre, which was really good. Not so much a museum as an interactive experience - included a walk through of the tactics employed in a room where you stand with 3d glasses in the middle of a heavy cavalry charge and archers firing - as well as a chance to take control of part of the English or Scots army on a 3d contoured holographic battle map (akin to the Total War series of games, on a simpler basis and with you giving verbal commands).

Outside, you get to visit the Bannockburn monument:

At the shop here I picked up an Osprey book on the battle - perhaps the start of an interest that might expand to the table top!

We also visited the Wallace Monument, which was built in the 18th Century to honor William Wallace and other important Scots. From the top, you can see the site of the Battle of Stirling Bridge (Stirling Castle is spotted by the gold coloured building on top of the hill on the right - the Great Hall returned to the original colour of lime wash):

After all this, I got to visit the Black Watch Regimental Museum in Perth. This was a really really good museum, much better than the Argylls museum with a lot more display space and a lot of really interesting artifacts. Again, not a huge amount of space given over to WW2, but more than the previous museum. With this visit I had also managed to visit every Regiment in 154 Brigade over my honeymoon (and all it cost me was a days clothes shopping in Glasgow!).

We also spent a day in Glasgow, where we met Paul Alba and his wife for dinner, a visit to Falkirk to see the Kelpies and a renovated defensive tower we had free entry to (and a ice cream dairy and fudge shop):

The Kelpies - dedicated to the horses who worked the various Scottish Canals

So a very touristy honeymoon with lots of visits to historic sites. If anyone is looking to visit Scotland on a holiday, I can really recommend the Stirling area. Lots to do, really friendly locals, good places to eat and really central for a lot of historic sites.

So, purchases. I was really pleased to get a couple of badges linked to my Flames of War collection:

Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders badge

Black Watch badge

I also managed to visit a games shop in Stirling and make a start on my planned Canadian Shermans. A visit to a local show last weekend also got me some Fireflys for the same list. 

 

At the same show, I got some Osprey books - and ordered a book online which also arrived this week. This might give a clue as to a possible project I am looking at for next year (hint, the book about Sherman Crabs was just cos it was cheap and I had change to use up!). 

Not forgetting my 15mm WW2 collection, I also put an order in for some Royal Engineer vehicles (as I've been threatening for a while). A Churchill SBG conversion kit and a Churchill Fascine conversion kit for some PSC Churchill hulls I have. As well as a Cromwell ARV conversion kit and plastic hull. All from S&S Models and the Churchill kits were only released last month. I can't actually remember if I previously bought a ARV Cromwell for my Poles, but I suspect not. 

Hopefully, I will get the AVsRE built and painted during the MMM 'Novelty November' challenge. This challenge basically involved picking something unusual from your painting pile and trying to get it finished in one month. As these are 'funnies', they qualify for me! Also on the table will probably be a 'Katy' ambulance and a British Radio truck I picked up from QRF. 

Lastly, I picked up a copy of the newest Team Yankee book, Iron Maiden. Really interesting book that has made me think I should skip the 6mm GHQ Americans I was planning and go straight to Brits. Yesterday a surprise package arrived containing some 6mm US Marines - courtesy of Des in Scotland. These will be getting used to do some cold war US marines in advance of a Team Yankee book for them!

Hopefully, thats not bored everyone to tears! More updates coming soon on my 3mm Soviets, then back to my polish Shermans before the Novelty November challenge starts!

YD's Napoleonics

Just a quick link to a post with some of my regular gaming buddy David's (known as YD - for Young David - in my blog) 15mm painted Swiss, Croat and French Napoleonic figures.

Swiss soldiers

French command

More pictures can be found over at Paul's excellent blog here.

As I've said before Paul, David and Davey have been the ones (along with the visitors to my blog and the guys at the club) to really inspire me to not just paint my figures but to try and improve my own painting quality.

Their positive and generous feedback combined with their help in offering tips, tools and advice have really played a massive part in getting me back into the hobby in the last few years. And they managed to find space in their cars to take me to all the main Scottish Wargame shows last year! I think you will all agree that YD's figures are outstanding - and his FoW stuff is equally fantastic.

Thanks again guys!

Painted Naps link!

Just a quick shout out to one of my painting guru's!

Paul has been a massive influence on my painting. He's helped provide me with motivation, support, tools and techniques - as well as being a great font of knowledge about WW2 vehicles. He's lent me books and provided models for some of the big games of 15mm Naps I have played in over the years.

He has recently tried a little experiment with some video blogging showing off some of his work in progress. If you don't follow his blog already, you should!

http://napoleonicsinminiature.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/hussar-command-wip.html

He painted 6mm Naps recently and I thought they were 15mm until the pictures of the two scales side by side!

Thanks Paul - and good luck with the video blogging!

Carluke Wargames club 16/8/14

During my Flames of War game yesterday I took some time out to quickly check in with the other two tables that were running.

The first was a 15mm Sci Fi game - I think called 'Fast and Dirty'. The guys playing it seemed to have fun and it's something I have thought about getting into myself in the past.

The second was a 10mm Napoleonic game pitching Russians against British using the Black Powder rules. These seem to be a lot faster playing than the usual General De Brigade - but the game ended early due to some sort of disagreement over something in the rules. Bit of silliness really as it's just toy soldiers - if you don't agree with a rule interpretation, roll a dice to decide the matter and move on. If you don't agree with the rules, don't start the game and argue all the way through it! If you disagree with a rule that's in the rulebook, bite your tongue till the games finished then talk about it! Simple!

Some nice looking figures and a nicely set up tables and just goes to show that the club plays everything from Naps to WW2 to Sci Fi.

Carronade (Falkirk) 2014

Today I was allowed out for a few hours to play (!!) and headed off with Paul, Davey and Young David to Carronade. This is one of the (if not the) biggest Wargames shows in Scotland and this year seemed very busy.

I only took a couple of shots of games as I went around. One of the big attractions at Carronade is the 'bring and buy' - and one of the nice things they do here is switch over the tables at the bring and buy every few hours. This means that there are new stalls to look at every so often and your not just looking at the same stuff over and over again.

There was also two large gym halls with traders and demo/participation games, as well as the entry forum area and an upstairs smaller hall with games and one traders stall.

So, some pictures of games:

This was a game titles something like 'Anarchy in Nelsons Square' and had civilian anarchists in the middle with Soviet forces (seen here) and British Army forces (seen below).

Next up was a large scale Napoleonic game of some type. The figures were (I think) 1:56?

Then we have a naval game called 'Channel Dash', with German ships defended by German planes against Swordfish and Blenheim's.

And a 28mm ACW game:

And another (although this might be 20mm?)

Next up - what I got!

Carluke Wargames club Napoleonic battle, 7/12/13

Today at the club we had a large battle of General de Brigade with YD's 15mm French and Paul's 15mm Prussians (also to be seen here).

I'm basically stealing blog hits by posting pics of Pauls superbly painted minis!

The battle was a hectic affair with both sides fighting over two villages. It quickly became apparent that on our side of the table there was a bit of a knowledge gap with regards to the rules, so we were running very slowly. In the end the two ends of the table basically became two different battles.

On our side the French infantry brigade on the far right (led by John P) was pinned in place by my light cavalry while my horse artillery wheeled up and started battering at the infantry squares. This resulted in one square being shattered later in the game and my cavalry routing one full battalion from the table.

In the centre Bill's French brigade took the village only to be assaulted by my and Pauls infantry. This fight saw my infantry grab the village and then hold it for the rest of the game, repulsing all attempts to eject them. To the right of our village a cavalry duel developed with the Prussians getting the upper hand.

So a nice game with some amazing mini's. Really nice to see all this stuff on the table.