Napoleonic & ECW wargaming, with a load of old Hooptedoodle on this & that


Sunday 7 June 2020

Tubs and Jars and Boxes

Today is my last chance to cut the lawns before the gardener comes tomorrow - it's raining. You may wonder why there is some pressure to get this job done if the gardener is coming. Partly this is a matter of self-respect, if I don't do the lawns between his visits, there is just a whiff of smug contempt when he comes; more seriously, I begrudge paying him for time spent doing a job I could (should) have done myself - there is no way I am about to climb up the big hedge with a ladder and a petrol trimmer - that's what I want to be paying him for!

So this morning I am doing a little tidying around the house. I thought I might take some pictures of the various hobby jobs I have around the place this week. The pervading theme seems to be one of storage, but it was ever thus, I guess.

Dragoons in the bath - these should be a very easy refurb job - 1st & 3rd British Dragoons soaking in a very mild detergent wash, to clean off half a century of muck and the remains of the cardboard bases. I'll get them retouched and varnished, and mount them on their new MDF bases, leaving gaps...
...for their officers and trumpeters, who will need a little more work!
Meanwhile, I have been doing some more editing and testing of my (slowly) evolving WSS rules, which are really shaping up nicely. The last big job will be to produce an intelligible leaflet and a decent QRS. You may observe a rather flexible approach to a hex gridded battlefield.
Whiteboards are very useful chaps - this is version 23.5 of the Firing Rules, which is pretty stable now - we are getting somewhere when there are no swear-words in the draft!
War in a Box - this is the current state of the WSS armies, and - yes - the bases are magnetised, and the Really Useful Boxes are lined with Ferro Sheet (the stuff which replaced Steel Paper).
Look, there are soldiers in there!
A jar of Imperialists - there is a delay with the Regt Hasslingen - about 16 or 17 of their number are pickling in the stripper jar; this is Clean Spirit (not so clean), and the fellow at the front looks just about ready for the toothbrush.
This is the next big job on the Refurb front - 3 battalions of French Napoleonic light infantry. I'm not going to start this for a week or two - I have to prepare for a Zoom battle, scheduled for Friday, anyway. You will observe that there are some bare-metal boys in there, and there's a full house of bayonets. Rank and file are 1970s Les Higgins, the command figures are already painted, and mounted on the bases, waiting. Command are a mix of SHQ and Higgins - the eagle bearers are plastic - nothing else available in this scale at present - but their flagpoles are brass, which is a relief all round.

6 comments:

  1. I like the rules mods already ...and that's just from the whiteboard tease.

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    1. Current challenge is getting the interpenetration rules to read less like the Book of Proverbs.

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  2. Your certainly keeping yourself busy Tony...
    It’s nice to see I am not the only one with containers filled with strange liquids and toy soldiers 😁...

    All the best. Aly

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    1. Ye cannae whack it - some evil brews in there - Musketeer Soup is on the menu.

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  3. Hmmm pickling olde figures - to produce a cure gamers urges to create lead mountains! All very industrious I must say

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    1. All I have to do is get on with it. In my studying days, I could spend many evenings sharpening pencils and making cocoa, and putting my papers in the right order.

      One job I have coming up is to repaint my resin Vauban fort bits to make them all the same colour - getting the pencils sharpened and the coffee made for the imminent arrival of Eric Burgess's new siege rules? It looks like I may have lived long enough after all!

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