'Manning Up' And Doing The Worthy.

There are some units that never get painted , you keep looking at the silver figures and put them back into the 'corner of shame' (under my gaming table where all the unpainted and unloved figures hide) . One of these has been my last unit of Austrian Napoleonic Hussars , I've painted two units of these already years ago (24 figures) and they were heavy going ! - I like Hussars in the Napoleonic period - so colourful ! , but are they a pain to paint ! , they are so 'busy', lots of different colours but sooooo complicated to paint ! . So when I pledged to finish off my Napoleonic lead pile I felt I had to 'man up' and get them done . It started badly - I sprayed the horses and because of the temperature/moisture they went grey ! as seen above , a bad omen !.

However I pressed on , I painted the the horses in batches of threes and then stuck the riders onto them (having painted the trousers / lower bodies) then did the top halves . I've got half the figures done so far - much to my surprise and delight and they await a coat of gloss varnish to finish them . Will post again when the unit is finally finished .

To Whom It May Concern.

Once more Blogger 'helping'

AN UPDATE ON GOOGLE FRIEND CONNECT
December 21, 2015
In 2011, we announced the retirement of Google Friend Connect for all non-Blogger sites. We made an exception for Blogger to give readers an easy way to follow blogs using a variety of accounts. Yet over time, we've seen that most people sign into Friend Connect with a Google Account. So, in an effort to streamline, in the next few weeks we'll be making some changes that will eventually require readers to have a Google Account to sign into Friend Connect and follow blogs.
As part of this plan, starting the week of January 11, we'll remove the ability for people with Twitter, Yahoo, Orkut or other OpenId providers to sign in to Google Friend Connect and follow blogs. At the same time, we'll remove non-Google Account profiles so you may see a decrease in your blog follower count.
We encourage you to tell affected readers (perhaps via a blog post), that if they use a non-Google Account to follow your blog, they need to sign up for a Google Account, and re-follow your blog. With a Google Account, they'll get blogs added to their Reading List, making it easier for them to see the latest posts and activity of the blogs they follow.
We know how important followers are to all bloggers, but we believe this change will improve the experience for both you and your readers.

A Plethora Of Austrians.

Well I've started painting my remaining Austrian Napoleonic figures , I must have had these at least 10 years - so it is about time they got paint on them !. The first unit I've got done is a Styrian  Landwehr battalion - one of the problems of photographing such a large unit is getting them all in the photo .

A close up of the commander - (Hmm ? a similar build to my good self !) .

Another command group - this chap looks a bit grumpy - probably thinks he should be in charge . I had to draft in several officer figures to get this unit up to the full strength of 36. 

I then started on the mammoth task of the three battalions of Grenadiers - each of 24 figures .

A Grenadier battalion was made up of three companies each from a different regiment , so there will be three different facing colours to break up the monotony .

Having got several figures left I decided to do a head swap to give them their own special Brigadier . Well that's 24 done only another 48 to go !. (click on photos to enlarge)

A Random Find.

In the distant past I was involved in archaeology and helping on excavations in the Lake District and on Hadrian's Wall and I still have an interest in it . So the other day I took the dog for a walk to our local Roman fort, the site of which is surrounded on three sides by the river, to see if the recent floods had washed any Roman pottery out of the banks .

There is very little to see of the fort on the ground and it was partially dug about 40 years ago. Several hundred yards down stream from the fort the river regularly washes part of the banking away and I believe it was the site of a rubbish tip for the fort as I've found broken pottery and lots of charcoal  there and the field is known locally as 'Pot Field' because of the amount of pottery found when it is ploughed. It is probably also the site of the civilian settlement or 'vicus' .

As it was, the only piece of pot of any size I found was the above one , It's a piece red Samian ware imported from Gaul and was probably from a wide (12") shallowish bowl , being imported it would have been relatively expensive ,although readily available and somebody would have sworn when it got broken ! . It has no value monetary or archaeological - the local museum has boxes of the stuff and because it was not found in a archaeological context it  can tell us nothing other than about 1700 years ago somebody dropped and broke one of their better pieces of tableware .

Ha Ha !

To good to miss , and so true in my case !( pinched from #warmongers on Twitter )

TSATF North West Frontier.

I had started a TSATF game  last posting and here we see the Borsetshires attempting to storm the Afghan held village , in the background reinforcements are arriving for the Afghans in the shape of the 'Highland Guard' .

Unfortunately before they could fire they drew a 'Halt' card which halted the firing sequence .

Afghan tribesmen moved onto the table - but !.....

They drew an 'Incident Card' which meant they did not cooperate with the Afghan General and just sat there and refused to move !.

The attacking Borsetshires took heavy casualties and retired behind a wall carrying their wounded with them (if wounded fall into the hands of the enemy it has a minus effect to their morale).

The other company of the Borsetshires had better luck and 'crowned the heights' driving off the attacking tribesmen .

Then the game took a different direction and ended suddenly when the above card was drawn and the Afghan forces left the field in response to it !, so the British won by default . The use of events does add uncertainty to the game !  Once more an interesting and unusual game TSATF delivers again !.

Doing The Worthy Again & The First Game Of The Year.

Been away to my wife's family for the Christmas season and on returning decided to paint up some more Napoleonic figures as a worthy thing to do . So I picked out the first couple of boxes from the 'corner of shame' and these turned out to be the remaining guns and crews for my French and Austrians .

I'd taken my camera to immortalise the festivities and people have been fiddling with it and I'm not sure I've returned it properly to the original settings hence the less than brilliant photos of these guns and crews . I must say I rather enjoyed painting the four guns and accompanying figures so this bodes well for getting the rest of the figures done this year .

I then pondered what game was going to be the first of the New Year and decided on my old favourite of TSATF and the setting of the NWF . The scenario is for a couple of companies of the Borsetshires and a company of Gurkha's plus a Gatling gun to capture the Pathan village which is on a important cross roads , the opposition initially are a couple of Regular Afghan companies and a gun with further tribal reinforcements coming onto the table  .

The Regular Afghans in the village put up a stout resistance .

An action shot from behind the Gurkha's skirmish line .

The feared Afghan 'Highland Guards'  and artillery move up the road to the village.

A colour shot of them , the figures are by Foundry and shortly after painting these I found out that maybe the tunics should have been a dark green (sigh!)

The Borsetshires advance on the village in skirmish order under heavy fire  (the figures are a mixture of Foundry and Old Glory). I will post an update of this action later in the week.