Just a quickie

Occasionally, one gets inspired to just throw something together, and today was just such a day.

My godson Edward is six years old, son to a father who has been a medieval re-enactor for many years, and he already owns a rather lovely wooden castle that I bought him for Christmas when he was just four and a growing collection of Papo 90mm plastic medieval knights and footsoldiers.

Needless to say, I haven’t needed much prompting to start introducing him to the joys of wargaming, and over the last month or so, I have had a couple of games with him, played on the dining room table with rudimentary rules thrown together on the spot, assisted by the dice from the family’s backgammon set.

Well, young Edward has taken to these like a duck to water (though he does insist upon the solitary toy dragon being included, with obviously devastating results; I managed to persuade him that the addition of a rather large brontosaurus would be pushing things too far) and so the time has come to start bringing in some scenery that bears rather better resemblance to the European countryside than a check tablecloth.

To this end, and inspired by Rob dean and Ross MacFarlane’s article in Battlegames issue 6, I decided to create some rudimentary trees, hedges and bushes to match the figures. A quick rummage produced a piece of pale blue upholstery foam, about 50mm thick. For the trees, I cut three discs per tree, of descending diameters of about 6″, 4½” and 3″. As I cut them out with a long-bladed craft knife, I titled the blade so that the result was a series of truncated cones, so they would form something resembling a conifer tree. I also plucked and chopped the edges and sides to make them more irregular. For the trunks, I found some bits of 16mm dowelling, which I cut to lengths of between 12 and 14 inches. For the bases, a quick rummage turned up a section of half inch thick by three inch wide plank, which I cut into squares and then drilled a recess in each to fit and glue the dowelling.

The hedges were made from a length of the same foam, sliced in half to make it thinner, and then the top edges and ends were hacked about to make an irregular top. The bushes were simply some small offcuts of the foam, shaped with scissors.

Then came the really messy part! I have a cubby-hole in our attic that I use as a spray painting booth, with a face mask as extra protection and a large fan turned on to blow the fumes and residue out of the attic! I undercoated everything with GW Chaos Black first (it required two whole cans!), and then used up a can of Forest Green car spray paint that had been lying around for years to give everything a nice dark green colour. The hedges and bushes got a swish of Tundra car spray paint to break up the colour, and then some dabs and drybrushing of a slightly sagey green emulsion helped to give some relief to the whole lot. The tree trunks were sprayed with a chocolatey brown spray that I’d picked up from somewhere, and then the tree bases finished off with some of the green emulsion.

Once the paint was dry, I cut holes in the centre of the discs, applied Bostik (UHU is the same) to the trunk, and slid the discs into position, with a small gap between each. Job done.

Total cost? Well, just the couple of cans of Chaos Black, really, since everything else was just lying around, so let’s call it a tenner at the most. The look I expect to see on my godson’s face? Priceless. Total time taken? About four, very messy and smelly, hours. Fun factor? 10/10.

Highlighting flesh… in 6mm?

Yes, I know I said I was going to move on to the clothing, but when I decided to grab an hour this evening to move things a bit further forward, I picked up the first strip and thought, “hmmm, I wonder…”

So, this is one of those little detours that could have proved fruitless in this scale, but I’m in the mood to experiment, and since this is the only time I’m ever going to be painting Greek and Persian armies in this diminutive size, I might as well make the effort to make them as good as I can make them.

To begin with, let me say that this is where mounting the figures on wooden strips and working in production-line method pays dividends. Highlighting at this scale needs a steady hand, calm breathing and often constitutes the merest touch of the brush tip on the figure. Practice makes perfect, and having gone boggle-eyed on the first few, I was dabbing at speed by the last, taking only a second or two per figure.

In this first picture you can see the tremendous benefits afforded by mounting thse tiny critters on a strip of wood. When it comes to highlighting, we are generally talking about the merest touch of the tip of a size 1 or 0 brush on the figure, so a steady hand and calm breathing are imperative! Here, you can see that I’m minimising hand and brush shake by using the edge of the table as a support, with the light from the anglepoise coming from above and to the left front. Another anglepoise is directed from the right rear.

The second picture is very similar to the first, but shows how different areas of the figures can be accessed by a simple rotation and tilting of the strip of wood, leaving the brush hand in the same, comfortable and stable position. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the colour I’m using is Citadel/GW’s Elf Flesh, diluted about 50/50. I’m simply running the brush along the upper surfaces of arms that would be lit by sunlight from above, putting a wee dab on shoulders, thighs, calf muscles and so on. For faces, where I can identify a nose or forehead, that gets a dab too. Do not get stressed about accidents: “paint the unit, not the man”!

Here you can see the finished results, with the hoplites closest to the camera. Yes, okay, okay, it’s subtle, but when you consider how tiny these fellers are, I’m pretty gobsmacked that it’s worked at all, but there is undeniably a shading effect happening here, and my Athenian and Theban finest are coming to life. When I start on the Persians, I’m making a ‘note to self’ about trying a slightly different flesh tone to reflect the different origins of the men who served the King of Kings.

And finally, a macro close-up showing the archers closest to the camera, and the effect of brushing along the uppermost surfaces of the flesh clearly visible. As to whether it’s been worth it – we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we? But since this little exercise took less than an hour, I’m happy. In essence, of course, it’s the Dallimore two-colour method writ small. Umm, make that “very small”.

So, next time, I really shall be moving on to other bits! (Darn, Henry, don’t forget about all those tiny toenails…) And I mustn’t forget, of course, that this is just the first of my hoplite phalanxes, with another nine to follow – and that’s before I order some more! (Oh dear, I had a sudden urge to cackle in a maniacal fashion there. Perhaps it’s just that it’s very late again…)

Getting the Greeks going again

Yes, yes, “where have you been?”, I hear you cry. Well, what with getting issue 10 out the door and having the usual seasonal commitments, it’s been a while since I’ve been able to find the peace and seclusion to wield a paintbrush in anger, but here I am, raring to go.

You may recall that I had undertaken the basic prepping of my Baccus 6mm Greeks, and the time had come to start bringing these diminutive little critters to life. The interlude had also given me the opportunity to take some advice on tackling microscopic miniatures, as a result of which I was certain that the black undercoat method was the way to go. The first picture, therefore, shows me at my painting desk examining the results of a spray of Games Workshop Chaos Black, followed by a dilute wash of the same colour from the pot with a brush. The reason for this is that I almost invariably find that no matter how thoroughly I think I’ve sprayed, it seems that within 24 hours I spot little chinks of bare metal that inexplicably seem to have escaped coverage. As a matter of course, therefore, I go over with quick brushstrokes loaded with a thinnish wash of the same colour.

The next stage was to apply a drybrush of mid-tone grey to bring out the detail on the castings, in order to give my fuzzy eyes a better chance of seeing where subsequent paint should be applied! Pure black has a way of making me go cross-eyed when I’m focusing on the tip of a small brush, so this is a variation of the suggestion made a while ago by Tyler Provick. I loaded my large-ish soft brush with Citadel Codex Grey, wiped most of it off on some kitchen towel, and applied lightly in broad side-to-side sweeps as shown here. this is also where mounting the figures on strips of wood really comes into its own!

The next shot shows you a close-up of the effect achieved. You can see how the raised detail suddenly leaps out in relief and the areas to be left as shadow are easy to identify.

I always like to work from the inside out, as it were, starting with the flesh tones. So, once the grey had dried (which really didn’t take very long under the anglepoise lamps that I use – the first strip was dry before I finished the last one), I loaded my brush with Citadel Dwarf Flesh, diluted about 50/50 with water. I did wonder about going straight to the paler Elf Flesh, but I want my chaps to have that suntanned, Mediterranean look, so I’m happy to start with the slightly darker tone, adding a highlight if I think it necessary later.

Already at this stage, I had Pete (owner of Baccus) Berry’s advice ringing in my ears: “At this scale, paint the unit, not the man.” My eyesight’s pretty good, but even with a small brush, it’s virtually impossible not to get paint on areas other than those you are aiming for. The grey drybrush definitely helped, though, making it far easier to identify what should be arms, legs, bits of equipment and so on. So, on went the paint, and before I knew it, I was sploshing the last bit of flesh on the last of the archers. Here’s a close-up on the result: hardly the neatest paint job I’ve ever done at this stage, but of course the effect will be cleaned up as each subsequent colour is added. A good time to take a break. This whole stage took probably no more than an hour and a bit, and that was with tea breaks!

Next time, I’ll concentrate on the clothing elements of the miniatures, before adding equipment and armour, so those Ospreys you can see around the painting table will come into their own.

Apologies for inaction

I know it’s been very quiet lately, but I’m afraid a combination of real-life factors, culminating most recently with a dose of bronchitis, have kept me away from life online. The need to generate income and nurture our health is something common to us all, so I’m sure you’ll understand that such imperatives must take precedence from time to time, even over the requirement to field miniature armies. (Shock! Horror!) Any self-employed readers will no doubt be completely familiar with the situation I am describing.

The time has also come to de-clutter Battlegames HQ, so I shall soon be selling off a selection of books, figures and other  miscellanea. I shall be posting details here  and elsewhere when this happens.

In the meantime, thanks for your support and I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Henry

Prepping the Greeks

Okay, another short session tonight to start preparing the 6mm Greeks for painting. I have taken a trio of photos to show you precisely what I’ve done.

In the first picture, I’ve laid out the tools and materials I’m using next to the first completed unit (noble cavalry). There are some 12″ strips of 1/4″ square softwood for mounting the figures, and a roll of double-sided sticky tape which I’ve sliced along its length whilst still on the roll using a very sharp scalpel. Keep your fingers well out of the way! I decided to try the tape as I get fed up with stringy glue like UHU and Bostik leaving spider webs everywhere, and I have had a couple of unfortunate incidents where PVA (white) glue has attached figures so securely that getting them off again has been a devil of a job! The tape is just a bit wider than the wood, so I can do twice as many figures by halving the width of the tape.

Also in the equipment shot you can see the big file I use to level the underside of the bases (I just run each strip from side to side along the flat side a dozen or so times), and a pair of GW clippers for separating individual figures from the strips where necessary, as in the case of cavalry and skirmishing troops. The hoplites will stay in their groups of four. I also have a penknife/multitool close at hand, and a pair of scissors for cutting the sticky tape into lengths. The little cardboard box is used as a containment device when clipping the figures from their strips — without it, the little blighters sail into orbit!

Pictures two and three show this evening’s completed batch, ready for priming. There’s the unit of noble cavalry, a unit of light cavalry (Thessalians, I imagine), a unit each of javelin skirmishers and archers, and the first unit of hoplites, 24 stands of four, making 96 tiny warriors. And there are another 11 units to go after this one!

I’m already thinking about the Persians too, and feeling that I may not have bought enough…

Okay, next step will be undercoating, and my thanks to Tyler Provick whose comment has given me some interesting ideas.

A change of pace and scale

After a mad couple of weeks finishing issue 9 of Battlegames (currently at the printers — see the main site for details), I feel ready for yet another change to keep me sane and make me feel as though my personal wargaming targets are being achieved. That may sound like Olleyspeak, but the fact is that I have come to realise that his methods are really quite effective, and as someone who is by nature deadline-driven anyway, I might as well resign myself to the fact that I need to plan and organise my wargaming projects with something like his level of military precision.

I can’t necessarily commit to a certain number of painting points per month — my life is way too unpredictable for that — but I can plan ahead and visualise certain projects bearing fruit within a reasonable timescale, and one of these is the Warmaster Ancients collection that I have been promising myself for some time.

I’m shocked to discover that it was back in March that I first posted pictures of those lovely Baccus 6mm hoplites, fresh out of their box, all shiny, new and densely-packed. So, the first thing I needed to do this evening was just spend a little time re-familiarising myself both with the figures and with the rules, which I also haven’t picked up in months.

So, tonight I spent a very pleasant 90 minutes or so skimming through the rulebook (made all the more interesting as a result of having spent some time with Rick Priestley at GW headquarters during a recent visit) and  sorting out  all those figures again. Greeks first, I decided, and so out came the big file that I use for  the underside of figure bases, and the small clippers for taking off the few tiny tags of metal that were, to be honest, the only blemishes on the figures I could find.  For example, the command strips appeared to have a ‘fifth leg’ running from the belly of the horses to the bases, and the bows on the archers were connected to the bases by another wee sliver, but all these came off neatly and easily.

I must say that I’m really impressed with the Baccus castings. There appears to be no flash whatsoever, the detail is crisp, the figures themselves are extremely well-proportioned (rather better than some recent additions to their ranges, in my opinion), and I find myself looking forward to getting paint onto that bare metal.

Anyway, I got all the cavalry and light troops done tonight, and just one base-worth of eight strips of hoplites (32 figures). Oh, yes, in case you’d forgotten, each of my hoplite units will  be 96 figures strong.

Right, time for bed now, but if you want some inkling of how things might look when I’m done, I came across a very nice article in Wargames Soldiers and Strategy issue 21 about Greek armies, and some of the photos alongside feature some lovely big Baccus units of Greeks and Persians that have the kind of look I’m aiming for.

Of course, I’ll be back soon with photos, as I want to document the painting and basing process, to aid my own memory in the future as well as to inform you. I think I’m going to use a white undercoat for a change, followed by a thinned black wash to shade and bring out the detail in one fell swoop. I think that working from  a solid black undercoat at this scale may just bring about the end for my eyesight! I have also bought a mass of shield transfers from Pete Berry for these fellas, another potentially blinding task that, at this scale, can be done very effectively using modern aids.

A Whiff of Grapeshot

Held at the Royal Artillery Museum, branded these days as ‘Firepower!’, this show takes place in premises within spitting distance of the River Thames in Woolwich, London. The venue itself is tremendous, rather like the tank museum in Bovington, with stunning displays of artiller dating from the earliest medieval pieces, through a collection of exquisite horse-and-musket era cannon, right up to the latest mechanised giants that have just rolled out of the deserts of Iraq. There are also a number of exquisite uniforms and some clever interactive displays. The sheer scale and power of some of the guns has to be seen to be truly appreciated.

For a small show, there was a healthy leavening of traders, some of whom (like David Pengilley of Pendraken and Dave Thomas) had travelled long distances to be there. There were also some very nice games on offer, ranging from the conventional to the highly unconventional, such as Gary Mitchell’s “Space Vixens from Mars” or The Old Guard’s “Scramble for Mowabel”, which included squadrons of flying carpets! Overall, any visiting members of the general public would have gone away with a very pleasing impression, and the friendly way in which the gamers and traders conducted themselves was a credit to the hobby.

From the point of view of a trader, ‘Whiff’ hardly rates as one of the big moneyspinners, but it is certainly an extremely worthy event in support of a good cause, the preservation of a vital part of our military heritage. It also happens to have one of the better catering facilities available at any wargames show – I was able to quaff good espressos and caffe lattes, and my partner Annie was delighted to discover that they even had Earl Grey tea!

So, despite starting the day with a puncture on the M23 at 8.00 am, we had a thoroughly pleasant day, with plenty of opportunities to chat with other traders, Battlegames subscribers and other wargamers. The entire atmosphere was extremely friendly and positive. These are just a general selection of pictures taken at the show for your delectation. See you there next year!

Building Whitewash City: foundations

Guy sprang a little surprise on me this week. He had asked me a while ago whether I’d be interested in taking my Tombstone stuff along to the Brighton & Clayton Warlords monthly meeting to show the lads something a bit different from their standard Warhammer Fantasy Battles fare, and of course, I said “sure”. However, owing to a cock-up by their webmaster (that’ll be Guy, then) I didn’t receive the newsletter in which it was announced that I would be doing it this coming weekend!

So, with time at a premium, I decided to whack something together that would at least be presentable for a game of Legends of the Old West, but which would also serve my own gaming in the future. Many Legends games are played over a small, square area, so a quick trip to the local Homebase store led to me acquiring a couple of 3mm thick 4′ x 2′ MDF boards, which you can see here adorned with a quick paint job. I used a textured exterior wall paint in a creamy/beige colour as the basecoat, followed by a series of three aerosol spray paints in patches: Plasti-Kote super satin chocolate brown first, followed by grey beige from the same company; and finally a Holts Auto Spray in Nevada Beige. By spraying from different heights and directions, and with more or less pressure on the nozzle, I obtained the patchy, mottled look you can see. Not bad for about an hour’s work from start to finish.

I did this up here in the Loftwaffe with all the windows wide open, which helped the textured acrylic paint to dry very quickly and get rid of the stench of the aerosols!

The buildings are the first of Eric Hotz’s “Whitewash City” set that I bought a while ago. I got the ‘Pioneer’ starter set, which will set you back all of a mere $15.99, which for a UK gamer makes just £8 for 15 structures at current exchange rates, and of course you can print them out and alter them as many times as you like. These downloadable PDF buildings were first printed onto normal A4 paper, then spray-mounted (using PhotoMount, in fact, which is somewhat stronger) onto old breakfast cereal packets before cutting out and folding as instructed. Take your time, score all the folds, and the result is really quite impressive, as you can see. I would say that those uprights on the porches need reinforcement, so I’m going to cut some thin strips of either very thin plywood or stiff card and glue them behind the facades to add rigidity. The final task will be to run a bit of paint down the edges where you can see the white card along the folds and edges of cutout pieces. One other thing you might like to consider is substituting short lengths of thin dowel for the stove pipes, rather than using the rolled artwork provided, which proved to be a tad tricky. Job done!

I’ve also got black fingers from undercoating a load of barrels, crates, log piles and horse troughs that I picked up from Frontline Wargaming at the Redoubt show in Eastbourne last weekend. These are resin jobs, very light and extremely competitively priced. A few of the barrels in my batch suffered from quite a lot of flash and air bubbles, but a bit of filing and filling and they’re as good as new. I’ll put up pictures of these once they’re done.

Objects like these are really useful in any Wild West game, both to make the game look more attractive and to create hiding places and cover for the characters in the game: they become things ‘in the way’ of shooting, making for greater tactical interest.

I shall also be taking along bits of wall, lichen and so on to add to the scene. The one thing I haven’t got yet is fences — I can see this being a major balsa wood project unless I manage to find some commercially-made ones!

Anyhow, there’s enough stuff now to make for an exciting scenario that can be run several times on the day with different players and, as it happens, there will be some Wild West stuff in the next issue of Battlegames, so this stuff is coming together just in time for a photoshoot.

I’ll let you know how it goes on Sunday.

Whitewash City project part 1 complete

Good grief! This doesn’t happen very often! I’ve actually completed painting my first couple of sets of Black Scorpion Tombstone figures. This was prompted by Guy coming round on Saturday for his first game of Legends of the Old West. I had done a very late shift on Friday night in an attempt to get the minis finished in time for the game; alas, it was not to be, but they were certainly looking good enough for the session, which turned out to be tremendous fun.

We did a simple ‘jailbreak’ scenario. Billy the Kid was locked up in a central building, with the remaining scenery as described in the Legends book, a few town buildings to the west, a wood to the north east, and a stream running across the southeastern table corner. Guy was playing the sheriff and his chums, whilst I had a small band of baddies who were attempting to free the kid.

The game was fast, furious and funny. With only three of the sheriff’s men on the table at the outset (and no reinforcements arrived until about move 6!), I was confident that my guys would be able to take out the opposition in short order, free the Kid and ride off into the sunset. However, I had not reckoned on Guy’s ability to jinx my men. Time after time, I drew the high card for getting ‘the drop’ on him (i.e. taking the initiative in the move), but my men’s ability to shoot straight appeared to have deserted them. Most humiliating of all, having finally managed to kill one of the jail’s guardians, I rushed the building, and one of my shotgun-armed men kicked open the door and loosed a blast — completely missing his target! Next move, justice was served on this useless tough, and I actually thought “good riddance!”

Once Guy’s sheriff and other helpers arrived on the scene, it was only a matter of time before my merry men were reduced to the solitary John Chisum wielding his Winchester, and though he hung on longer than was decent against four defenders, even his Pluck gave out in the end, and he skedaddled, with Billy the Kid’s furious insults rining in his ears.

We didn’t take any photos of this game, but there will be more, so in the meantime, here are a few pics of the figures now that they are completely finished and I’ve done the bases.

These figures were painted using a Dallimore-style method, working up from a black undercoat. I mostly used Foundry colours for this, with GW metallics. The bases are a mixture of sand, with Woodland Scenics talus for bigger rocks. This layer was then painted in GW Scorched Brown, over which I added successively drier-brushed layers of Foundry Base Sand shade, Base Sand, and then a very dry brush of Base Sand light on the rocks. Vegetation is Woodland Scenics: natural lichen for the tumbleweed/parched bushes, coarse Burnt Grass in patches, then a few bases have some sprigs of that damn fiddly fine horsehair grass stuff! Nearly drove me nuts.

I’ve bought another of the Tombstone sets, and one of Mexican bandidos, and some unridden horses. I would be really happy if Black Scorpion got around to making riding equivalents of all their figures on foot, which seems glaringly obvious to me as a requirement! I’d also like to see them creating many more non-combatant characters, civilian bystanders and so on. I admire their human sculpts enormouosly, and whilst their horses could do with some improvement in the head department, they are extremely characterful.

I’m very pleased with the results so far, especially considering the fact that this is the most detailed painting I’ve done in a long time, which has also led to me realising that I’m suffering from precisely the syndrome that Mike Siggins described in one of his Forward Observer columns in BG a while ago . It’s as though, at times, I’ve borrowed someone else’s eyes, and they don’t quite work properly! This may be a side effect of painting dark colours over a black undercoat as well, and I may have to revert to a paler undercoat. There are moments when the tip of the brush just seems to simply disappear completely, which is rather unnerving.

Oh dear, I’m getting old!

No rest for the wicked

It’s always a temptation, whenever another issue comes back from the printers, to think “Aah, I can put my feet up for a week or two now and take a well-deserved break.” Well, issue 8 is right here next to me as I type and, whilst I think you’re going to enjoy it, the last thing I can afford to do is put my feet up.

Quite apart from the obvious duties of ensuring that it reaches all our retailers, distributors and subscribers in double-quick time, I am also planning the next stage of Battlegames’ development, both in terms of its distribution and availability to the world at large, and the products we can offer. I don’t want to say too much at this stage, but it’s evident to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that the time has come for us to head for the high street and broaden our offering.

It would be a perfectly reasonable suggestion for anyone to make that Battlegames should continue as merely a ‘niche’ publication, and that part of its cachet is that it is the exclusive preserve of the wargaming cognoscenti, particularly those members of the online community who have supported it since those heady days in 1998 when I first launched the Battlegames website and the notion of it ever becoming a ‘real’ magazine was barely a twinkle in my eye. Sadly, staying quite so exclusive is not going to pay the bills!

But there is something else too, a pledge I made to myself a long time ago — to help bring the hobby to a wider audience. And the only way to do that is for the magazine to be seen in places beyond those locations normally frequented by existing wargamers.

Some would ask, perhaps even correctly, “what’s the point?” Well, my simple answer is that I believe that wargaming is a wonderful hobby that deserves to be more widely known and that participation in it has distinct benefits, particularly for a younger generation that is currently being brainwashed by media that lead them to believe that everything they ever need in life can be provided by the elusive fame of reality TV or a degree in Media Studies.

Those of us who already wargame know very well how satisfying the multiple facets of our hobby can be: researching, painting, modelmaking, planning, designing, building terrain, collecting and, of course, the sheer joy of moving our toy soldiers around the tabletop in response to a satisying tactical challenge. And don’t get me started on campaigns of which, of course, you know I’m a huge fan.

I’m also a firm believer that the hobby has a genuine role to play in helping people to understand our history. As the saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are destined to repeat it, and with the current state of world affairs, peace in many parts of the globe hangs by a mere thread. Would any of us pretend that a campaign in a place like Afghanistan, for example, would be anything other than long, bloody and bitter? A wargamer with even a merely cursory reading of history would know that any conflict which treads on differences in race or religion must be handled extremely delicately, and that ‘hearts and minds’ are the key to any possible solution.

Moreover, the current flashpoints in the globe happen to be places where the British, in particular, have several generations of military experience to call upon although, tragically, it would appear that the advice of veteran commanders often goes unheeded by politicians. If lives are to be saved on all sides, I feel strongly that politicians need to do more listening and less talking.

But these are Big Subjects about which I may froth from time to time, but should not divert us from the honourable and delightful pastime that we, as gamers, pursue with passion, and the fact that in order to ensure that wargaming exists as a thriving hobby until I’m well into my dotage and even after I’m dead and buried, we need to continually reach out to each new generation that comes along, and rise to the challenges offered by whatever technogizmos that may currently be holding their attention.

I’ve played more than a few computer games myself over the years. As someone considered by my friends to be ‘a bit of a Mac nut’, I have been suitably evangelical about the advances in computer power and the software that is available both to the public and the professional designer. The increase in complexity of computer games, especially since it became possible to combine them with the Internet, has been staggering, and games like World of Warcraft have created entire online universes, fuelled by the huge hike in processor power in the average PC on the one hand, and the exponential increase in Internet connection speeds, allowing real-time, virtual reality interaction across the globe.

But the one thing that all these games have in common, as far as I’m concerned, is that they leave me feeling empty, unsatisfied — even depressed. I have spent entire days wading through online slaughter or trading, but come away with nothing tangible to show for it.

Compare this with our gentle hobby. If I were to spend an entire day wargaming, as I have indeed done on many occasions, I would emerge with a smile on my face and the feeling that, whether I won or lost, I had had a great deal of fun and social interaction along the way. In addition, our efforts in research and modelling and painting are rewarded with real miniature works of art to add to our collection, to give as gifts to valued friends, or from which to earn an income by selling to those who also appreciate the time, effort and artistry that has gone into their completion.

If you’re someone who shares this passion and has something to share about your own experiences or ideas to promote the hobby, I’d love to hear from you. And don’t forget that I offer an automatic 25% discount off our normal ad rates to all organisers of wargame shows that are open to the general public..

My evangelism for the hobby needs no further explanation, so lets turn instead to what little time I’ve had in recent weeks to progress my own collection, and give you a glimpse of what’s on the table at Battlegames HQ, and we’ll wrap up with a few photos taken earlier this evening. Click on the images for enlargements. Goodnight!

Bibby (left) and Chuffy are singularly unimpressed by the first boxes of issue 8 to arrive!

What’s on the painting tray tonight? A selection of GW Empire troops (pistoliers, greatswords, artillery, captain on foot and general on warhorse), Newline Napoleonic British Peninsular infantry and Black Scorpion Tombstone cowboys.

I really love these beautifully-proportioned and highly expressive Black Scorpion figures. At 32mm, they’re quite big, but well worth looking out for. So far, I’ve only done the flesh and eyes, but I hope to have them finished for a game with Guy at the weekend.

Sample hills sent by the folks at GW, after I’ve given them the full works. Note the two-part hill that can be assembled like this, or as a ridge. I started by spraying these plastic hills with Chaos Black, then used artists’ acrylics to build up colour. I used Raw Umber and Raw Sienna in varying combinations, starting with an overall wash, then gradually drier dry-brush runs. I finished with a dry brush of an emulsion colour I had mixed at our local Homebase, a green close to GW Goblin Green. Then flock: Woodland Scenics fine Burnt Grass in patches, followed by a home-made mix of dark brown and straw yellow around the rocky bits and scree, and finally another mix of a brighter grassy green to finish. It all looks a bit fresh at the moment, and needs gaming over so that it sheds a bit.

This shows the ridge permutation for the two-part hill and another view of the small hill. These are very nice pieces, sculpted by Dave Andrews at GW. For some reason, I just frown slightly at having to buy plastic, vac-formed hills instead of making them at home from scratch, but they are well-crafted and very useful pieces that I’m sure will see many years of action. I especially like the big hill that can sit along a table edge — or you can buy two, and make an extremely large centre-piece hill!