Hooptedoodle #128 - Nose-stalgia? - not what it used to be

When I was a young chap, my grandfather (who lived in Paris at the time) once sent me a bottle of Chevalier d'Orsay after-shave lotion as a Christmas gift, and a fine big bottle it was, too.

In those days, Paris was a lot further away and a lot more exotic than it seems now, and this after-shave was fantastic stuff. Maybe fantastic isn't the word - maybe fantastic is not what we (or the copy writers) are looking for in after-shave - but it was the best after-shave I ever had, anyway. It was a very fresh, lemony scent, with sort of herbal things in it - don't expect me to start using words like "notes"…

Anyway, I was as frugal as possible with this, my very-best No.1 after-shave, and it lasted for years, but eventually it was gone, as was my grandfather, and I never managed to get any more. So I moved on, and I forgot all about it.

After that I suppose I must have gone through the Brut years, the Lynx years, the Ralph Lauren years, the Calvin Klein years and eventually found myself back at the Boots'-own-brand, £5.99-a-bottle years, as one does. Not having thought about it for decades, one day recently I suddenly remembered Chevalier d'Orsay, the Contesse looked it up online, and - merveilleux! - found that it is still made, and someone in the UK sells the stuff by mail order.

Not a big deal, admittedly, but my life is less glamorous than it once was, and the prospect of having the postman deliver an instant trip back to my 20s was at least a little bit exciting. There is nothing, I contend, more capable of firing up memories than one's sense of smell, so I invested in a little olfactory time travel - black magic and wicked spices, just for the hell of it.

The package arrived, and I have been using it since that day. It is, of course, eau de toilette in a modern sprayer rather than splash-on after-shave, and it really is very pleasant, but - you know what? - it doesn't smell the same. I did a bit of poking around online, and I understand that Parfums d'Orsay withdrew the old stuff, and relaunched it in 1995, using more modern ingredients (I quote from their website).

Using what? Why in Purple Hades did they change the ingredients? If they wanted to change the ingredients, they should have changed the name, you would think, in case they disappointed some ancient former customer who had been hoping for an authentic, soul-tugging whiff of his long-dead past. Even the world of pongs, gentlemen, appears not to be what it was.

Anyway, it's very pleasant, so one mustn't grumble.

Regimiento de Africa

And so it starts. The first 2-battalion regiment of the new 1809 extension to my Spanish army for the Guerra de la Independencia is based up and fitted with magnets, and waiting for its colonels and flags. Super paint job by Lee, as ever.

I'll set up some better pictures of this army as it develops. I hope to have mounted colonels ready in a few weeks.

An odd moment occurred as I was putting these chaps away in one of my box files (light blue for Spain). I have more files on order, so they are temporarily housed with the irregular cavalry, which may cause some outrage in the ranks. When I put them in this file, I was astonished to see that the magnets didn't work. A slow motion film would show me, stupidly, trying a few times to see if the properties of physics would suddenly start working again - like Eeyore putting his burst balloon in the honey pot. I even started to have some wild ideas that it wasn't working because it was the wrong box, and somehow the magnets knew. Eventually, of course, I realised that I must have run out of steel paper at some time, and this particular file was only half floored with the stuff, so all I had proved was that magnets don't stick to cardboard, which the world already knows. Except maybe Rod (private joke)...

In my own defence, I have to point out that it was pretty early in the morning, and I now have the kettle on for some coffee. It's good to have these experiences from time to time.

Anyway - Regto de Africa. I think the next up will be De la Reina. Thanks again, Lee. Oh yes, the figures are by NapoleoN (now OOP), and the colonels will be conversions.

As a complete digression, I was intrigued by this photo - does anyone understand this?

Help! - World Flag Paper Shortage

This is a sort of cry for help (possibly more of a bleat?). I print my own flags, and for some years I’ve been happily using a single-coated, photographic quality printer paper in 80gsm weight, which is heavy enough to take glue but light enough to be shaped a bit. Because it is single coated (i.e. on one side only) it is distinctively cream on the reverse side. The single coating keeps the weight down.

Anyway, I’ve run out of the stuff. The people in the shop I got it from last time look at me as though I were insane if I ask for it – they have no idea what I’m on about. Even my local print shop – who have done a lot of work for me in the past – can’t get any.

Time, once again, appears to have moved on and left me stranded. Anyone got any brilliant suggestions? All advice will be most welcome…

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.