Hooptedoodle #141 - Nothing to See Here...

The classic wargaming blog non-post - a description of not much progress, and the uninteresting reasons for this. You have been warned.

I’ve been a bit busy this last week or two. I was, in any case, scheduled to be involved covering for my mum’s carer (who has been on holiday for a fortnight), but things have been further confused by a messy little building job here (which, by the nature of such things, slipped a week or so, so as to maximise the clash with the other distractions) and – most seriously – by my wife’s mother being admitted to hospital with a stroke; she seems to be making some progress, but it will be a lengthy and uncertain period of recovery. For 10 days or so the Contesse has mostly been driving all over the Scottish Borders to make hospital visits, collect clothes, and provide a taxi service to friends and relatives.

So, apart from catching up on my reading of the Lasalle rules between watching football matches on TV at my mum’s house, all wargaming related activity has stopped dead here. I followed and thoroughly enjoyed the World Cup – most exciting, and was sort of aware of Wimbledon and the Tour de France, but it’s all been a bit of a shambles – hearing snippets and seeing newsclips as time permitted.

I thought it was interesting and great fun that the Tour de France started in Yorkshire, and fairly boring that it also had to include London as part of the detour(?) – wouldn’t be a show without Punch, would it, and we can’t have the Provinces making too much of it. Without wishing to appear miserable or unpatriotic, I admit to a small amount of satisfaction over the quick elimination of Britain’s Mr Froome – surely one of the more irritating sporting heroes? – who fell off his bike 3 times in 2 days (or something like that), fortunately without causing himself too much lasting damage. I have been a bit depressed by the shrill melodrama surrounding Team Sky and its line-up of soap queens in the build-up to the event. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but I have followed bicycle road racing for years, and I have a nostalgic, pathetic affection for the days when a domestique was a domestique, road racing was dominated by exotic foreigners and the Tour de France was – well, in France. The picture at the top of this post is of a possible configuration for Mr Froome’s consideration.

It had to happen – some acquaintance took the hysteria surrounding the football World Cup as an opportunity to produce a personal Facebook campaign about the overpaid fairies who play football, pointing out that rugby, on the other hand, is a game played by Real Men. Of course it was all in fun (oh my aching sides), but it isn’t very original and, considering the respective viewing figures worldwide, it is certainly not particularly relevant. It also fails to mention that, at grass roots level, and particularly in the case of the acquaintance who initiated this little  onslaught, rugby is also (arguably) a game played by Real Men who are too heavy and unco-ordinated to play anything more skillful. Anyway, how we larfed.

I heard this morning that the F35 fighter did not appear at Farnborough, which is obviously a bit embarrassing, and is a very sad disappointment for the many enthusiasts who were hoping to see it. I know little or nothing about the plane, though I certainly hope it isn’t another overpaid fairy, but it did occur to me that the Farnborough organisers missed an opportunity – they could have claimed that it was actually there, and was demonstrating its remarkable stealth capability.

Board Extension - Done!

Well it took a bit of fancy timing, with ducking and weaving, watching the World Cup games between coats of paint, but the new 28-inch extension to the battleboards has been duly collected and finished. As an option, I can now play a Commands & Colors game on a 17 hexes x 9 hexes field (over 30% bigger, as they would say in washing powder adverts), or use a similar enhancement in my non-hex plain boards if I deploy them the other way up.

The flank marker is shown as the triple dash marks at the left edge for the normal
13 x 9 game; the single dashes are the flank marker for the 17 x 9 game, with the
three sectors becoming respectively 5, 7 and 5 hexes wide

After 3 coats of the official Crested Moss shade, it became clear that the insert was never going to get to be quite the same colour as the original sections (it's the same paint - it's even the same tin, but the surface texture is slightly different), but it's near enough for jazz. In fact the photos make the difference a little more obvious than it looks when you're in the room with it.

This is just a hurried mock-up to check it works - for a battle, the table stands
in the middle of the room, so there's less space than there appears here

I still have to paint the backside of the new piece, to be honest, but there's no immediate rush for that. My war-games may not be better, but I have the option now of making them bigger.

By the way - in passing - I read that the forthcoming C&C Napoleonics expansion for double-width games is to be called La Grande Battle. What language is this, exactly? I have a good number of American friends, and I know for a fact that as a nation Americans are neither stupid nor ignorant, so why would GMT Games want to try to convince us all otherwise? Why not The Bloody Big Schlacht?

I guess it's a worthy successor to Guard du Corps - Franglais êtranglé strikes again. Come on, GMT - don't blight a good game with a crappy name.

Once More unto the Bleach, Dear Friends

Jock after his second confinement - note matching beard

Jock the Guinea Pig has had a further 6 days in the neat bleach, and his paint will still not come off, though it has changed colour more than somewhat.

Righto – time to move onto further experiments. I have identified a source of Simple Green, as advised, but am greatly impressed by the relative cheapness of Dettol, so that will be the next trial.

Jock has served his time, so will be spared any further suffering. I’ll use one of his mates...

How about Something in a Larger Size, Sir?

Last September I finally took the bull by the wassname and repainted my 40-year-old battleboards. I had some misadventures on the way, but ended up with a much smartened tabletop – one side now having the hexes the correct way round for Commands & Colors (previously I was 90 degrees off, though I could justifiably claim that I was there first), while the other side is now very smart, plain Old School green.

I was so pleased with the results that it started me thinking again of producing an extra section of table, to produce an optional, bigger battlefield. There are a number of drivers for this.

(1) I’ve always fancied a huge tabletop as an occasional variant – the fact that I have nowhere handy to set up such a thing is an issue, of course. I have a secret hankering for a vast battlefield in a marquee in the garden, but that is impractical for a number of reasons. Nice idea though.

(2) I recently read the Black Powder horse and musket rules, which I enjoyed, though it was a bit of a shock when they casually announced that, of course, the game was best played on a table at least 12 feet long. Er – right. Of course, I ignored this, but I kept finding myself thinking, “hmmm, 12 feet long…”

(3) When I repainted the battleboards, I did some thinking and some measuring, and I came up with something, as follows:

My tabletop is 8 feet wide by 5 feet across, cut into 4 sections, each 2 feet x 5 feet, for easy storage and to enable them to be laid out on our (large) dining table, in a dining room whose design, if I am to be honest, was influenced by wargaming needs. The C&C-style hex board is the correct 13 hexes wide by 9 across, and the hexes are 7 inches across the flats. These are big hexes, but they sit well with my 20mm (or so) armies. Since the 4 tabletop sections are symmetrical, the centre line of the table could have a 4-hex-wide fillet inserted, which would give an expanded version of the table which is 28 inches wider, and a revised C&C board of 17 hexes by 9. This would require a couple of MDF hex plates to be painted to allow the C&C flank demarcation line to be shifted one hex in from each end when the long version is in use, but this is a trifling matter.

I estimate that this extended version of the table will still fit in the room, though it will now be necessary to walk around it at one end only – full circumnavigation will not be possible, but – hey – I need the exercise.

At risk of getting really wild, it would be possible to add further, similar slices to the centre of the table in future to produce a Memoir 44 Overlord (or CCA Epic) style giant board – but at this point we really are looking for the marquee in the garden, or a church hall yet to be identified.

Back to the point. The first 28-inch extension fillet is feasible, and I have plenty of paint left over from September. If this is not going to go ahead, I’ll have to come up with some new and better excuses. The most obvious excuse is that the tabletop is made of old-fashioned ½-inch chipboard, which I am not sure is available any more.

That excuse didn’t last long. I phoned my local branch of B&Q, who have masses of 12mm chipboard, and are absolutely itching to use their computer-controlled cutter to produce my new extension for what is really a very small cost.

Well, I don’t have my truck any more, so how will I transport it home? That one didn’t last either; with the back seat folded flat, my car will take a 5 feet x 28 inch panel, no problem.

So I’m going to do it. I measured everything up accurately, and (allowing for inaccuracy in the 1971-vintage cutting of the original boards) I need a perfectly rectangular piece 1531mm x 711mm.

I have a feeling that somehow it can’t be as easy as this, but I’m off to B&Q tomorrow morning to do the deed. There will be a lot of marking up (with my tongue sticking out) and painting and suchlike, but my extension should be coming up shortly.

Mystery Figure - any ideas?

Not a competition, no prizes, but I'd welcome opinions on this chap, if anyone has seen one such before.

In a parcel of figures I was very kindly sent recently, there were a few of these - 20mm, he may be a Napoleonic Spanish cavalryman - double breasted jacket, lapels, he has a carbine hanging at his side, a braided pigtail, and the equipment on his back appears to be a canvas haversack. There is a simple sabretache. I suppose he could be French heavy cavalry from the Revolutionary period.

Sorry my montage photo is not better. The boots have a touch of Hinton Hunt about them, but the face is somehow familiar - I had thoughts of early Warrior, but as far as I know Warrior cavalry always had saddlery attached to the rider. So - just out of interest - I would be grateful for any clues.

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Subsequent Edit (1st July): thanks very much for comments - Old John is correct - the figure is Hinton Hunt BN206 - the British Heavy Dragoon 1801-11 - with his plume removed. I'm not sure if the buttons I can see on the upper right lapel have been added as well

BN206's - picture borrowed from eBay

Back from the Bleach – Sterile but Unbowed

This process is tested on Scotsmen

Stripping time again. I recently applied matt varnish and a lot of touch-up paint to a host of very shiny ECW troops I bought on eBay, and generated almost all of what I need to pursue the adventures of the Marquis of Montrose. Good. Thumbs up.

As with all such bulk purchases, I am left with a pile of figures which failed inspection – the original painting is too awful, they need too much rework, the proportion of cat hairs to varnish offends, they are no use for what I need, whatever. Certainly I have the makings of a couple of decent regiments of horse and a few useful generals, but – alas – I’m going to have to strip these to get the best of them.

The gloss varnish they are finished in – apart from the animal impurities - is far too thick, yellowing, smells dreadful (no, really) and is a source of scientific puzzlement to me. What is it? Why would anyone apply it to model soldiers? Just looking at it, I found the whispered words BLEACH PROOF came into my mind from somewhere.

Now, as discussed here before on numerous occasions, I have mixed experience with using thick household bleach for stripping soldiers. I would like it to work, it is relatively inoffensive compared with the alternatives, it is easy to use, you can see what you’re doing (at least a bit), it is only slightly dangerous and you can safely flush it down your indoor drains. The alternatives, in these parts, really come down to just one thing – Nitromors – which certainly strips paint but can also remove your hands and fails pretty much all the criteria mentioned above as plus points for bleach. I once had the experience of being in a room with a mixture of Nitromors and hot water, and have promised my lungs and my eyeballs I shall not do it again. Also – in this particular instance – many of the figures which require stripping are from Tumbling Dice, which means separate, glued-on heads and weapons, and Nitromors will also strip out the glue. I can think of absolutely nothing less enchanting than sifting through the toxic sludge at the bottom of a bean can containing a Nitromors project, looking for the correct number of missing 20mm scale heads and pistols.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the garage...

So bleach would be a nice alternative if it works, and I’d even saved up some cheeky little, transparent chocolate mousse pots which are ideal for keeping an eye on stripping progress with bleach jobs, but in my heart I knew it wasn’t going to work. The Bold Stryker is a great champion of bleach for this sort of work, but I am beginning to suspect it is partly a question of faith. I have had some good experiences with bleach, and some disappointments, and at the start of each new attempt (I have to confess) I find that I am not as optimistic as I would like.

Since I had a plentiful supply of bleach, the cheeky pots and lots of suitable test samples, I decided to try one out. Definitely the right thing to do. The chap at the top of this post is a Tumbling Dice Covenanter of some sort, and he spent almost 40 hours in bleach – well above the health warning in Stryker’s guidelines. While he was in the bleach, there was no evidence that the varnish was suffering at all – he looked the same as when he started. When I took him out and rinsed and dried him, I’m not so sure. The varnish is still there, but it is a lot less shiny, his hat has faded a bit, but some interesting cracks have appeared in the paintwork.

Hmmm.

The alloy hasn’t started discolouring, or turning into anything undesirable. Do I think that another soaking in the bleach would result in some better progress? Not sure. I could try it, certainly.

After all, anything is better than Nitromors. In this case, with the glued-on head problem, simply ditching the remaining figures and – if necessary – buying new ones might be a sad but wise alternative to Nitromors. I guess I should try another bleach session – I could leave him in for an open-ended trial – the worst that could happen is that I write off a scrap figure, which is a trifling matter indeed.

It is a question of faith – I am beginning to see that. I am, I believe, scared of proving to myself, once and for all, that there is no future in using bleach, and my confidence will suffer. It is difficult.

While I ponder the matter, the picture at the top is of the most germ-free toy soldier you will ever see.

Hooptedoodle #140 - Donkey Award - Barclaycard

Not really another rant, just something which has cropped up which seems daft enough to warrant a Donkey Award. I’ll keep it short and to the point. I shall avoid mentioning the fact that the explosion of unsecured, unrepayable personal debt which caused so much damage to Western economies leading up to 2008 (and which hurt everyone, not just those who had those debts) was largely promoted by the credit card companies, who somehow seem to have escaped the public outrage and recrimination which has hit the banks (for example). I am all in favour of public outrage, and I have never understood how they were missed, though of course I am not going to mention it.

Some years ago I was one of a number of people who were scammed by having credit card details cloned by a tweaked card-reading device. I now know exactly where and when it happened. The perpetrators were, I understand, a Sri Lankan revolutionary organization who had managed to gain a presence in the franchise for Shell petrol stations in the UK. However it was done, I suddenly found that I had purchased a surprising number of one-way flights to Singapore, as a customer of Dragon Airlines. My credit card company’s fraud people were very good, and my loss was refunded and my card was changed, all very quickly. I was lucky. Since then, of course, chip and PIN technology has become much more sophisticated, and we like to think that electronic shopping is more secure than it was, but one lasting result of the Dragon Airlines episode is that I maintain a small Mastercard account alongside my main Visa one, and this Mastercard is intended just for transactions on the Internet, or via the telephone to merchants I do not know. It specifically has a small credit limit, to minimise the damage if there is a security failure.

Did any passengers buy their own tickets…?

This was identified as a good idea in post-Dragon discussions with the card suppliers themselves. It is disappointing, therefore, that they keep writing to me to tell me that they are going to do me the big favour of increasing this small security limit. Presumably I am not getting into enough debt.

This week I got such a letter, telling me that my credit limit on the Mastercard will be automatically increased from £500 to £2000 at the end of July. It also tells me, of course, how I may go about telling them not to do this, but this is now the fifth time we have gone through this rigmarole, and I don’t appreciate it.

I phoned the supplied 0800 number this morning, and spoke to a very nice, helpful chap in India. After we had discussed my wish to keep the headroom on the Mastercard low, and the reasons for this, he cancelled the increase, and (for the fifth time now) assured me that my account is now coded so that I will not get automatic increases in the future. We’ll see, but that's OK so far. He also explained that it might take up to 8 weeks for these changes to take effect on the system, which, of course would take us well past the end of July.

BONG!! This is the 12-month waiting-list for the pre-natal clinic all over again. I believe we have managed to sort it out, and it’s not my Indian friend’s fault anyway, but you can bet that I will be checking my Mastercard account online around the end of July.

Be very afraid - you have not yet seen hacks & viruses

Before we ended our conversation, I was asked would I like to obtain the new smartphone app to enable instant Mastercard shopping (so that I will not be a source of embarrassment to my friends by not having it).

No – I don’t want it. Thanks. If they have a long think about it, they might just come up with some reasons why. Too much enthusiasm, not enough common sense.