Posts
Well it has been a long time since I posted here has it not? It seems that life has rather overtaken me in the last year and with so many pressing matters at hand I have not attended to some of the perhaps less important ones, such as this weblog. Amongst other things the last twelve months has included the rush to finish the experimental work for my PhD, and the heavy burden of getting it written up (my deadline of the 31st of March 2009 is now looming close), but most important of all it has brought the greatest moment of my 28 years, the acceptance of my proposal to enter the union of marriage by my beautiful fiance Dalila Ferreira Da Silva Martins. We intend to cement this Anglo-Portuguese alliance in September in her home city of Porto.
But what of Wargaming, and my various half finished projects?
Rackham Miniatures I painted for D&D 4th Edition (Click to enlarge)
Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition has been a big influence on my gaming for the last 8 months or so, I am running a campaign with a few friends and have painted up about 30 miniatures or so for use in it. D&D 4th edition is great fun and plays much like a tabletop skirmish wargame and so really bridges the gap between roleplaying and my more tradtional background.
More D&D n'ere do wells painted in the last 6 months (click to enlarge)
Apart from D&D I enjoyed doing a short (completed in 2 weeks of painting) colonials project based on an article in Henry Hyde's most excellent Battlegames magazine and the free PDF ruleset available from the Battlegames site. I based my colonials game in the Sudan and painted up 45 British and 60 Beja tribesmen for it. A most enjoyable little project which took no time at all and allowed me to paint something very quickly and to a very acceptable tabletop standard. I have had 3 games now with friends including a 5 player epic and we have had a lot of fun with them. Personally I changed the original rules somewhat including adding officer and NCO traits as playing at this scale it can be fun to include such things. I do urge you to head on over to the Battlegames site and grab the free rules which are at the bottom of the page!
My colonial British, Perry miniatures (click to enlarge)
Most recently I have been undertaking an Old School Wargaming project having become utterly entranced by the writings of Charles Grant, Charles S. Grant, Peter Young, Donald Featherstone and Stewart Asquith. The War Game and it's recently published Companion in particular have really stirred my interest in the simple but fun rules concept and I must admit that being able to stage my own games with those old school big battalions is an exciting goal. Having thought on the project for some time I have decided to go ahead and build 2 armies and in the grand tradition of these things they shall be fictional 18th Century european states; The Hesse-Witten Freie Stadt and the Marquisate of Valerno. I have been painting up Hesse-Witten's first regiment but for now here is a picture of some test models.
Test models, these are Minden Miniatures Prussians, incredible sculpts by Richard Ansell for Frank Hammond (click to enlarge)
I have chosen to use Minden Miniatures figures for this project as they are without doubt some of the nicest figures I have ever come across, just fantastic sculpts. These figures were commisioned by Frank Hammond of Minden Miniatures and were sculpted by Richard Ansell, they are only on limited sale but go to the Minden website to find out more. I shall expand more on this project when I have a little more to show.
