Hooptedoodle #127 - The Loft Legacy

Lords of the Nursery wait in a row,

Five on the high wall, and four on the low;

Big Kings and Little Kings, Brown Bears and Black,

All of them waiting till John comes back.

from "Forgotten" - Now We are Six - AA Milne

This post follows from a couple of recent discussions with friends – my apologies if you recognise extracts from a personal email in here – especially if you wrote it…

I’m not feeling particularly unhealthy or anything – in fact it is my intention to live forever – but I’ve had a number of involvements recently with the unmentionable issue of what happens to our toy soldiers when we are finished with them. I mean really finished with them – as in dead or demented. It is a matter worth thinking about, I think.

This is not unique to toy soldier collections – there must be countless model railways, record collections, radio-controlled model aircraft, motor-cycles-in-bits etc etc (make up your own list) which will be a source of puzzlement to our survivors. To some extent this is a time-of-life thing. There is a very large cohort of fellows who were young and enthusiastic (and usually penniless) some 30 to 50 years ago, who have persevered with (or come back to) their hobbies when spare time and money became less of a problem, and when there was a fresh need for something to stimulate their interest. I shall gloss over the social trends which may have influenced this, but the garden shed and the garage and the painting room have become icons of our time distinctive enough to feature in jokes and TV sitcoms.

We might hope that when the time comes our prize collections will be rare and valuable, but it is likely that supply will rapidly outstrip the demand. The nerds are dying out, my friends.

I recently bought a load of secondhand ECW figures - they had belonged to some chap who, sadly, died quite young, and he left an enormous collection of figures - all sorts of periods. You might say he was a dabbler, except that the numbers of soldiers were very large. He clearly had both sides for all the conflicts he was interested in, so - like me - he probably was a solitary kind of fellow - not a club member. After his death, his wife had no interest in, nor understanding of, his hobbies, and the problem of getting some money for them was tricky, so she just gave them all to a charity shop, who stuck them on eBay at cheap prices.

Should he – should I, should any of us – have done a little succession planning?

I also had the sobering experience a couple of years ago of helping a widow make sense of her late husband's vast collection of models and militaria (including a mass of Historex, which I put on eBay) and try to find someone who could help her get rid of it.

The world must be full of elderly guys with attics and cupboards full of painted lead which - ultimately - is just scrap. Collections come on the market occasionally, but it will become more and more common as time passes. An insightful (if irreverent) friend of mine once told me that Hinton Hunt figures may be hard to get and very expensive nowadays, but if you hang around a while there will be more of them than anyone wants; the regulars that buy old figures from each other on eBay are all getting old together. He then went on to point out that I would be long gone by the time this happened (bless him). It is a thought, though – since our toys are likely to be around longer than we are, what will become of them?

Another friend of mine (I must have two, then) was recently at East Fortune Sunday Market, not far from here - a traditional flea-market, where you can get everything from secondhand reading glasses to oak dining tables - and there was a fellow selling hundreds and hundreds of painted metal 54mm knights out of cardboard boxes - I didn't see them, but apparently they were beautiful. The seller knew nothing about them - where did he get them? - he found them in a skip – they were scrap - no-one was interested in them. I wonder how many cherished collections just get thrown out if no-one can be bothered getting expert help to sell them, and how this will develop over the next few years.

I think that is probably quite enough of that.

ECW - New Team Pictures

The armies, posed facing each other - Parliament this side. The grey appearance of
this end of the Parliamentarian line indicates a good Covenanter presence (ready
for Marston Moor?), and the similarly drab far end of the Royalist line shows the
boys from Northumberland, to balance things up 

Since it was wet and cold yesterday, Nick and I replayed the previous day's unpleasantness at Auchinrivoch. Again, it was a vigorous, fast moving game, and we finished - again - in rather less than 2 hours. This time the Covenanters won, though they were a bit lucky with the dice (and they were me, which proves it must be true).

Nick took some of his customary close-ups of the action, and I'll put a couple at the end of this post, since I find them interesting and amusing. Last night, before I put everything away, I decided to dig out all the ECW troops and have some new group photos, at long last.

This is not everyone - even after some crafty flag-switching I still have highland clansmen and a couple of other specialised chaps who only have a role in Montrose's activities, so I've omitted those - they are all, in any case, visible in the pictures included in the previous post. These, then, are my armies for fighting the First Civil War in Lancashire, Yorkshire, Cheshire and North Wales.

It is just two years since I bought my first figures for this period, and it was late Summer of 2012 before I had sorted out my plans and got the first units painted, so I am well satisfied with progress and the way things are looking and shaping up. These armies are bigger than I ever really contemplated - tabletop size limitations suggest that there isn't a lot more to do. I'm still short of leaders - that's a nice job to tinker away at, and I'm pleased with my experiments in custom-building odd personality figures from Tumbling Dice parts, so that can carry on for the foreseeable future. I'm also short of some Scottish cavalry and there is one unpainted Royalist unit of horse still to be painted, plus a couple of almighty siege cannons which can serve both sides.

Once again, I am reminded that my soldiers are deliberately old school (small letters) and toy-like, which is how I likes em, precious, and these pictures are not really an attempt to impress anyone - merely a celebration of the fact that I never dreamed I would get this far so quickly.

Once again, my sincere thanks to Old John, Clive, Lee, Dave Young, Peter V, Dave Gillespie, Iain, Gary and everyone else who has provided inspiration, advice, piles of metal alloy and classy paintwork over the last two years, and my humble appreciation of the scholarship and sweat of the guys whose books have fired me up recently - notably Stuart Reid, John Barratt, Stephen Bull and (I admit it) Nigel Tranter.

Oh - yes - and my deepest respect and reverence to Lord John Byron and Sir William Brereton, whose hoof prints I sloshed around in at Chester in December, and all the many thousands of other poor, nameless sods who marched, starved and fought in the North of England theatre of the Civil War, and whose existence I only really came to appreciate in the last two years.

Here, then, is the current state of the army of Parliament, circa 1644:

And here are the King's men:

Here's a couple of exciting snaps from Auchinrivoch 2, to show that soldiering is not all glamour and parades…

ECW – The Battle of Auchinrivoch (1645)

View from behind the Covenanters' centre as they wheel right from the road
into line of battle

In truth, the forces are not quite ready yet, but I went ahead anyway and staged a wargame employing my new “Campaigns of Montrose” units. The Battle of Auchinrivoch is, of course, fictitious, but represents what the troops involved at the real Battle of Kilsyth might have done on the same ground, on the same date, if they had not been otherwise engaged.

The Marquis of Montrose has available 2 units of regular Scottish foot, being the regiments of Strathbogie and Gordon of Monymore, plus his Irish brigade of 3 regiments, under the command of Major-General MacColla, plus approximately 2500 highland clansmen, 2 regiments of horse and a very small unit of firelocks.

He is opposed by General William Baillie, with a Covenant Army consisting of 7 regiments of foot (mostly from Fife and the Lowlands) and 2 regiments of horse, the cavalry commander being Lord Balcarres.

The rules are the current version of my adaptation of Commands & Colors for the ECW. All regular units count as average, trained troops, all cavalry are Trotters, the highland levies have no firepower and count as “raw” (double retreats). There is no artillery present – Montrose doesn’t have any worthy of mention, and Baillie has left his behind on the march. To reflect his greater flair, Montrose has 6 Command Cards in his hand, Baillie has 5.

7 Victory Points for the win.

Set Up

Montrose took personal command of the (unpredictable) highlanders, on high ground on his right wing. MacColla’s Irish troops were in reserve in the centre, and the regular Scottish Royalist foot were on the left, commanded by Lord Gordon. The firelocks were installed in Auchinrivoch Farm, in the middle of the table.

Baillie’s initial dispositions were generated by dice rolls, since his force (historically) was in column of march, and faced right to form line of battle when he realized that the Royalists had an ambush waiting for him.

Both forces had cavalry on the flanks, but they had no involvement until the very end of the action.

Action

Baillie’s original plan was to attack the highlanders with his main thrust, but the brigade under Colonel Haldane was distracted by the firelocks in the farm, who were causing some loss and annoyance. Haldane swiftly took the farm, but was promptly driven out again by MacColla’s Irish, at which point the highlanders swept down from the hill and routed most of Haldane’s men.

Baillie and Balcarres showed considerable personal courage in taking advantage of a Leadership card to gain some temporary success against the Monymore regiment, but this, too, was swept aside and Montrose won the day in a little over 90 minutes – 7-3 on Victory Points. The Covenanters also lost Colonel Haldane, severely wounded and taken prisoner.

The Pictures

Overview of Baillie's forces, from his right flank

Balcarres' Horse, on the Covenanters' left flank - they did nothing all day

Montrose's initial deployment

MacColla's Irish brigade in the Royalist centre

 

Montrose on the high ground, taking special care of his brave but brittle highlanders

More underemployed horse - this lot are Ogilvy's regiment, on the Royalist right flank

Baillie gets cracking with a "March to Victorye" card - throwing his infantry forward

This is how they would have looked from a helicopter above the Royalist lines

MacColla takes a more belligerent stance

Haldane would have done well to ignore the farm, but couldn't resist driving
the firelocks out of the position

 

Of course, having taken the farm, Haldane's men could not hold it against the Irish...

…and were driven out again with heavy loss...

…which they managed to reduce with some lucky "Rallye" dice...

…after which they got a further seeing-to from the highlanders.

Suddenly there were some very big gaps in the Covenanter line

General Baillie felt decidedly isolated as his men left him to get on with it

When the cards are against you, they are against you all the way. In desperation,
Baillie played a "Hazzard a Chaunce" card, forcing Montrose to take a Chance Card.
Typically, this should not have been in Montrose's best interests, but today it resulted in the
Royalist Gordon Horse suddenly realising that this was, in fact, their day to be
unbeatable, and they became Rash Gallopers on the spot...

…and they duly celebrated by cutting down Loudon's Foot, to give Montrose
his decisive 7th Victory Point. Game over.

ECW - Mac Colla

Alasdair Mac Colla Chiotaich Mac Domhnuill (1610-47)

With some approximation in the tartan trews department, I have painted up the Mac Colla – otherwise known to you and me as Ali MacDonald – yet another figure I have assembled from Tumbling Dice parts. Alasdair was born at Colonsay, in the Inner Hebrides, the son of Col Chiotaich MacDonald – “Col the Left Handed”. Col was known as Colkitto, in Anglicised form, a name by which Nigel Tranter also refers to the son, Alasdair, in the Montrose novels. One would hesitate to suggest that Mr Tranter was mistaken, so let us assume that Alasdair was known as Colkitto as a sort of patronym.

Alasdair spent much of his life in Ireland, and he was appointed to command the Irish brigade which was sent over to Scotland to fight for the Royalist cause in the Civil War, joining forces with the Marquis of Montrose. Mac Colla is a bit nearer to the Warhammer end of things than I am used to – you will find a lot of stuff about him on the internet, frequently (apparently) confused with Conan the Barbarian, and representing a type of superhuman Celtic warrior hero much loved by American chaps with beards, many of whom would not know a Celt if they fell over one. 

The real Alasdair seems to have been a big, strong fellow – brave but sometimes a bit hasty. A head-banger, no doubt. He left Montrose, officially to raise more troops in the western highlands, but became distracted by the pursuit of his family’s traditional feud with the Campbells, who were – needless to say – staunch Covenanters.

My figure is simpler and calmer than most representations of this trusted lieutenant of Montrose.

ECW - The Marquis of Montrose

I'm not sure that Dame CV Wedgwood would fancy my version much

Since my armies for the campaigns of Montrose are pretty close to ready now, I need to provide a few leaders and a few more frame guns to fill in some remaining gaps. Since we are hardly spoiled for choice of specialty figures in 20mm, I'm having to raid the spares boxes for bits and pieces. Here is the Marquis himself, assembled from various Tumbling Dice bits and an SHQ horse.

He looks slightly more Neanderthal than his portrait, but those artists always took pains to flatter their clients, as we know. His personal standard (all right, actually the King of Scotland's flag, but Montrose used it as his personal standard) is carried on a separate base, which is unusually fiddly for me, but gives the advantage that I can use the Marquis's figure as someone else if I do it this way. Cheapskate Productions' corporate strategy in action once again.

Next on the bottle tops will be an improvised Alasdair Mac Colla, also from TD bits, which will require me to attempt some rough approximation to tartan. I failed to find any tartan paint in the Games Workshop catalogue, so I guess I'll have to try it the old fashioned way.

Once the leaders are better advanced, I'll put in a group photo of the new forces in their current state.

Hooptedoodle #126 – Darwin – Further Evidence

Preliminaries

A finger touched the clay, and life began. Good start, thought Babu. But after a while he became impatient with these tiny, ticking, whiskery creatures which he could hardly see, and he ordered a change. 

On this very shore, at the margin of the heaving sea and the shifting land, his will was done. Bewildered encephaloids crawled into the freezing dawn, to begin the work of engineering themselves, through countless generations and mistakes, into reptiles and mammals, and marketing consultants.

Oh well, thought Babu.

From “The Casso Verses” – © Lowgate Publishing 1997

I have to admit that I’ve always had problems with the concepts of evolution. I can sort of understand the principles, but I find the implied numbers mind-blowing. Looking backwards, it looks very orderly - there appears to be a progressive development of the species, in that they became better suited to their environment. Of course, I realise that the theory is that countless other, less successful variants died out, didn’t make it. 

It’s the “countless” bit I have problems with. If genetic variations are just random accidents, and only the odd lucky hits work, then the numbers involved seem improbable – even the existence of the odd lucky hit is a bloody long shot. Anyway, no matter – I am interested in this stuff. I have recently been watching the DVD set of Prof Brian Cox’s Wonders of Life, and have vowed to watch it again, to attempt to understand it more fully. My personal beliefs do not insist that there is some form of conscious will behind this progression, nor do they require that I should be able to understand such a thing if there were one, but I have a lot of trouble accepting that it could work without some form of scripting, without something or someone having had a peek at the answers in the back of the book. I’d like to think I keep an open mind on it, and I also like to think that one day it will make sense to me, but not yet.

To move on from the philosophical to the ridiculous, we may have a little more evidence this morning. In crude terms, my understanding is that some variations and mutations just didn’t work. Birds, for example, which built their nests in dangerous places would be less likely to survive and pass on their instincts and their habits to their offspring. We have one such here, at Chateau Foy.

Yesterday a sparrow fell down our chimney, and ended up in the log stove. This happens very occasionally (though, now I come to think of it, it was blue tits previously), and is not recommended. It is upsetting for the bird, and potentially even worse for the owners of the stove. The stove, of course, was not lit.

We let it out, having opened all the windows, because birds are smart creatures of the wild and can spot the way out of a tight situation (e.g. via an open window) in a flash. The results were disappointing - it flew around, bouncing off the ceiling, for 15 minutes - it left us eventually, but the living room was a disaster area. I was too preoccupied at the time to take a photograph, but here is a picture of a dog which gives the general idea.

You may imagine me, if you will, with my son’s butterfly net, standing on one leg, waving it like a fairy wand about 2 seconds after each time the bird has passed. We should register the film rights. The Contesse performed heroics cleaning up, and about an hour and a half later things were back to normal – a lot of work, and really well done.

Sadly, by this stage the sparrow had once again fallen down the chimney and was back in the stove. Yes – it was the same sparrow; the moron seems to be attempting to build a nest inside our chimney cowl.

Now my instinct at this point was to help speed up evolution and leave the stupid thing there – with luck it would quieten down when it got hungry and would be more amenable to being lifted out. At worst, it might die and we would have strengthened the species as a result. The Contesse, of course, could not contemplate such heartlessness, and we were obliged to let it out again. This time the panic lasted only a couple of minutes – I guess the little chap was tired after the first episode – and the Contesse caught him in the butterfly net before too much damage was done, and took him outside.

I know that you are now nodding, waiting for the next appearance of the idiot sparrow in the stove, and it may still happen, but so far so good. Around 3am - peak thinking hour - I had all sorts of crazed ideas for making a bag out of 10mm plastic mesh and putting it over the chimney pot, even a rough design for a mesh bag which would fit the opening in the stove, so that we had a piece of official kit for rescuing birds from log stoves – maybe both these devices could be patented, and I could make a fortune selling them through Scott’s of Stow, along with the sofa-rug-with-sleeves and their other classic devices for improving the lives of dumb pensioners. Maybe not.

Maybe Scotts of Stow gives us another dark hint about evolution, too.

Here are some photos we took during the second visitation.