ECW - As You Were - Switchable FLAGS

Low-tech, cheap solution - job done!

Very many thanks to Steve and Gary and Martin for the advice. I had a go at making up some flags on the plastic tubing which forms the stem (stalk?) of a standard Cotton Bud - just to see how it went - and it went well enough to be the answer, I believe.

Above you see the pikemen from the (Royalist) Regiment of Foot of Gordon of Monymore, with their colonel's colour mounted in this new way. Since the flag swings around like a weather vane, I think I'll introduce a sliver of BluTak to hold it still. If I wish to switch them to the other side, to become a Covenanter regiment for Marston Moor or the Siege of York, for example, it is necessary only to slip on a suitable replacement flag.

A sample cotton bud is included in the picture - we also had some with blue stems, but they are a little thicker. All in all, one of the easier DIY jobs I've attempted recently - thanks again, gentlemen.

ECW - Switchable Standard-Bearers

…and other cunning stuff.

The man himself - in Montrose High Street

Work on my windfall acquisition of second-hand ECW troops is going ahead – there is quite a lot to do, but it’s a factory process, and it’s mostly a matter of making time to sit down and get on with it, ensuring I have plenty of music to listen to.

This is figure painting of a style I haven’t done much of for many years – the previous owner was a doctor, I understand; sadly, he passed away recently and his widow arranged for his enormous collection of figures to be presented to a local charity shop, who raised a considerable sum on eBay. I believe that there were over a hundred boxes of stuff, representing a huge range of periods and styles of warfare. I bought some of his ECW figures – mostly Scots and Irish type figures – and found, to my surprise, that they were flagged and organized to suit the campaigns of the Marquis of Montrose, which – by a complete coincidence – is exactly what I had in mind myself when I bought them.

The figures are mostly SHQ and Tumbling Dice, which fits right in with my existing armies, but they are painted in a way which I used to employ myself in the days when my main concern was to get as many soldiers ready for battle as I could, in the shortest time possible. They are, to use what I think is Mr Featherstone’s phrase, “effective in the mass” rather than individually exquisite. That is not to dismiss them as crude, you understand, but recently I have grown accustomed to commissioned paint jobs on my ECW chaps which make each man a little personality, and these new troops for the Montrose unpleasantness are not like that. The painting is OK, though I have a lot of rebasing to get on with, and the acreage of Humbrol gloss varnish is astonishing, but the overall impression is of a major invasion by a faceless horde which you wouldn’t wish to meet up with.

Somehow this fits quite well with my feelings about the Covenanters and their opponents – masses of rather dour, businesslike fellows in “hodden grey”, with blue bonnets. The Scots army, we must remember, was a national army, not a collection of individual units raised by wealthy or prominent individuals, so a mass-production approach is maybe appropriate.

The task in hand is to identify the figures I can use, organize them into sensible units, clean off the remains of the old basing, get the old tweezers busy removing the cat hairs which are tacked onto the old varnish (not embedded in the stuff, fortunately), wash everything, touch up any chips or outstandingly poor bits of painting, give a thorough application of Galeria acrylic matt varnish, paint the figure bases in the house Crested Moss #1 shade, stick them on new 60 x 60 MDF stands and prepare flags. When you get within tweezer range of someone else’s figures, it all gets very personal. While I’m tinkering away I find myself chatting idly to The Doc, as I refer to the previous owner, and Whiskers, as I have christened his cat.

A box of Scots - just the first of a big new contingent - no flags yet

I have already produced a unit of Scots horse, and I have enough figures for 6 regiments of bonneted Scottish foot, plus 5 of non-Scottish chaps of generally northern (grey/brown) appearance. The plan is that Montrose will get two of the first group (Strathbogie and Gordon of Monymore) plus three of the second (who will be his Irish Brigade), and the balance will be available to his opponents, as will my three existing Covenanter units. There are also 4 small units of highland levies, who are up for grabs to either side, depending on scenario.

Almost certainly not Whiskers

Flags are interesting. Those of Strathbogie and Gordon of Monymore, and of the Irish Brigade, are distinctively Royalist, but I do not wish to disqualify these units from being called up to pitch in on the other side in the Bishop Wars, or against the Marquis of Newcastle, or at Marston Moor, if need be, so I have come up with a Cunning Plan for flags. Montrose’s foot regiments will have their standard bearers elegantly tacked onto the bases with BluTak, and spare officers will be available with alternative flags, such that they may switch allegiance as required. The Scottish fellows (including the spares for Montrose’s people) are to have general-purpose Covenanter style colours, and the non-Scots (including the spares for Montrose’s Irish) will have generic English (Northumbrian) colours, appropriate to their faceless-mass role.

One of my generic Scots units will, of course, have a colour very similar to that of the Duke of Argyll, the cross-eyed, craven, dastardly villain of Dame Veronica Wedgwood’s very readable but extremely biased life of Montrose.

Booo! - Argyll, the Pantomime Villain

I have much work to do, but at least I now know what it is. It is a comfort to have plans to dovetail these new forces with North-of-England scenarios, since otherwise they might be seen as a distraction from my main effort, for which I haven’t yet produced a proper campaign in my intended Lancashire theatre.

What fun, what fun! More pictures will appear in due course.

Hooptedoodle #124 - Zero Tolerance

The Aggressor - Jeff now has the tank to himself

Domestic violence - nobody expected that. One day my son's goldfish were happily loafing around in their Biorb, and the next day it was chaos. The big yellow fish was chasing the little orange fish round and round the tank, biting his fins, nibbling his scales off, and banging him into the scenery - never seen such a thing before.

It is actually rather worrying - the small fish is really looking very poorly as a result, and it doesn't look like any kind of happy ending is imminent.

Some kind of expert thread on the internet says that the only thing you can do is separate them until everything calms down. It might be the sunnier days, or the onset of the mating season, or it is not unknown for goldfish to attack one which is ailing. Whatever, this was a lot more drama than we are set up for, so we are in an uneasy period of calm while Steve, the small fish, is in his isolation tank.

Victim - Steve in his isolation tank, feeling very sorry for himself, note the case notes

What happens next is anyone's guess - if we have to replace Steve, for whatever reason, I think I might go for a better size match with the next one.

Late edit (Sunday 16th March): Steve has gone back into the main tank - a moment we've all been dreading - and thus far things seem to be fairly calm...

Hooptedoodle #123 - The Stockdales

Though it sometimes still surprises me, my son attends a private school. Politically I am not awfully comfortable with private schools for a number of reasons, the most obvious being the cost and the fact that I’ve already paid enough taxes to provide a number of state educations. I am also aware that the Merchant schools in Edinburgh used to teach their children to believe that they were better than other kids because they could afford a private education, which I find pretty disgusting.

Whatever, given our rural location and the class sizes in the local schools, we opted to send Nick to a little private school in a neighbouring town, and we don’t really have many regrets – he has been happy and has done well. On the other hand, we have met some people there that normally we would have gone some distance to avoid.

In other circumstances, I would never have come across the Stockdales, for example. Mr Stockdale and his brother inherited a very successful business from their father, and – despite what you might think about the general state of the economy at present – they are rolling in money – can’t find enough ways to spend it.

Mrs S delivers her kids to school in her choice of some half-dozen or so SUVs they have – all Mercs and Lexuses and similar, with vanity plates – showing more jewellery than the average coronation. Mr S collects golf equipment and cars. Cars and more cars. He has (or had, I can’t keep track – in any case, keeping track might suggest that I am interested…) a Bentley and a couple of Ferraris, and he has recently purchased a Lamborghini (pictured), which retails in this part of the world at a cool £265,000. The reason I know about this is because young Stockdale has been bragging about it to his classmates. Young Stockdale brags about his parents’ wealth a great deal, apparently – this is uncomfortable. First of all, we have to handle the problem of explaining to our lad why we don’t have that kind of purchasing power. Then there is the matter of Young Stockdale himself – he spent the last couple of years telling his chums that they had better be careful with the school library books, since his dad had donated them. Now Young S is school captain, which – for a while – he interpreted as a licence to bully the rest of the kids and shout at them. That seems to have calmed down a bit now, so I guess that someone on the school staff managed to summon the tact to address the matter without compromising the donations.

We should all be grateful, I can see that. I also see that I have to be very careful that I do not appear envious, and – dammit – that I am sure in my heart that I am not actually envious. We have to take the opportunity to explain to Nick that, in a world where the economy is broken – largely as a result of greed – and where the price of a Lamborghini would feed a Sudanese village for years, it is maybe not such a glamorous thing to throw money around in this way. We laugh about the Stockdales’ latest exploits. Privately, I look forward to Young Stockdale moving on to secondary school after the summer, where he will become a rather smaller fish and will, with luck, get kicked into shape. After the summer I shall probably never hear about his family again – in an odd way, I shall miss them a little. Like a weekly cartoon strip.   

Unsung Heroes of Wargaming - Tony Barr

Apart from the high-profile master makers and rule writers, and the great names of Old School wargaming, there are a lot of chaps in the hobby who don't get the credit they are due, I think.

One such is Tony Barr, at East Riding Miniatures, who supplies me with a lot of laser-cut MDF bases, sabots and scenic tiles. His pieces are more accurately made than those of some of his more expensive competitors, his prices are very reasonable, his website is easy to use and well maintained and - above all else - he is helpful and personable and prepared to indulge all the oddballs like me who want weird shapes and custom sizes.

Such a faultless service becomes an easy thing to take for granted, and I am very sorry to learn that Tony has been unwell and in hospital, and will be convalescing for a while. I'm ashamed to say that it is at such times that we remember to appreciate properly the amount of help and support we get from our regular suppliers - I hope you will join me in wishing Tony all the very best for a full recovery.

Fiddling Around – Trenches and Varnish

Abstract representation of Siegeworks

You may recognise the objects in the picture – they are wooden blocks from a game which goes by various names – the very big garden version is called (I think) Jenga – I only played it once, and I wasn’t very good at it, though the beer was good, I recall. I subsequently bought four miniature sets, very cheaply, from a local general store, just to get my hands on the blocks.

You see, what these are really is siege trench sections. Yes, I know they don’t look very realistic, but they are what I have available. I am reminded of a very old schoolboy joke about survivors of a plane crash in the Tunisian desert searching for food; the bad news was that the only organic material they found was camel dung – the good news was that there was a lot of it. So my trench sections might look rubbish, but I have more than you would believe.

Since my siege gaming is still in its extended prototyping stage, and since I am a lazy beggar, I have stuck with these dreadful lumps of wood on the grounds that it wasn’t worth splashing out money or effort on anything better until I have a game which works. Disadvantages, of course, are multiple – for a start:

(a) It’s not very motivating or interesting to build trenches which look this ridiculous

(b) Recruited players – particularly younger ones – may find themselves building odd shapes with the blocks during the game, to create a welcome distraction

(c) Etc

I am starting to think seriously about more acceptable trenches. Whatever I do has to be cheap, simple, and easily stored. There are some splendid looking resin castings around, but that is hardly a cheap option. I could scratch build something, but I fear I am not very skilled at such things, and it would take me ages to produce enough – and then I have to remember that all the scenery I ever scratch built fell to pieces very quickly.

Somewhere, in an old book, there is a suggestion for the use of triangular section hardwood strip, cut and mitred to provide proper lengths and angles. That’s cheap and storable, and would paint up OK, but it’s only a small step up from the Jenga blocks. What else is there?

Well, the bold Mr Kinch mentioned dado rail recently, and I had previously thought myself of picture frame mouldings, so I have been having a bit of a look at what is on the market, studying the websites of Wickes and a few specialist picture framing suppliers. Some exotic stuff out there – nothing jumps out at me yet, and I am starting to realize that I don’t even know very much about what a real trench looked like, so I’ve started reading up on that, and I’m heading backwards at a decent rate. If anyone would like to come round for a very large game of miniature Jenga, I might be interested.

More on this subject soon, I hope.

Subject 2 – Varnish

Moss Troopers and friends, waiting to be de-shined

I have become the owner of a collection of ECW figures of the correct size – SHQ and Tumbling Dice, mostly, plus some others I haven’t identified yet – which are painted up and should be capable of being worked into my armies without a life-changing effort. They were part of the (vast) collection of a chap in Belfast who died recently, and my interest was kindled by the fact that they contained numerous Scottish and Irish figures, which might give me an easy way to expand my armies in such a way that I could have a bash at the campaigns of Montrose.

I’ve received about half of the new arrivals so far, and am somewhat shaken to see that the flags and the organization of the units suggest that the previous owner had them set up for – that’s right – the campaigns of Montrose. I’ll have to see what comes in the second box, and there will be a lot of re-organising and rebasing needed, but this is quite an exciting little development.

Only slight fly in the ointment is that the figures are finished with a very heavy gloss varnish – almost certainly an enamel-type varnish rather than an acrylic one, so I’ll have some work to do calming this down a bit to match the rest of my forces. I’ve been trying some pilot figures, to see how a wash in detergent followed by a coat of matt acrylic works, and it looks promising. I was afraid that the acrylic would just form into blobs, or wouldn’t cover properly, but it is looking good. I’ll have to do a bit of extra detailing on the horses once they are dulled down, but I am reassured that it is feasible.

So I’m busily reading Start Reid’s booklets on the Scots armies, and am quite enthusiastic about the potential of this little exercise. Again, you should hear more of this in due course.

Hooptedoodle #122a - a more fitting tribute to the 1980s

Following on from my attempted non-rant about Margaret Thatcher Day, someone reminded me of this clip.

I was never a big fan of Spitting Image, to be honest - there were some funny bits, but they aimed low and dumbed it down to promote the viewing figures, and - for me - the inherent paradox of satire looms overall:

If you mock everything, and do not stand for anything yourself, then your criticism carries no weight; if you invariably poke fun at the Establishment, then that is just what we expect you to do - it becomes meaningless - a sort of Establishment job.

MSFoy   2014

Whatever, here is Sting's own parody version of his hit record, over the credits at the end of the last show in the first series (1984) - I  found it powerful at the time, despite the trivial context, and I think I still do. In amongst all the silliness - in both world affairs and the smaller world of rubber puppets - here is something sincere. That was the Eighties, my friends, and it wasn't all bad, but there's some old friends in the gallery…