Next year's challenge .

So I've signed up for the forthcoming year's challenge , I've done 1,170.1 miles this year , was hoping for 1,200 - but Christmas , the weather and a bug has prevented that . It's about 50 miles more than last year (2018) so I'm happy with it . Now Christmas is out of the way I hope to get back to gaming and painting again and have been giving some thoughts on what I want to concentrate on and achieve in the coming months .

A Merry Christmas to you all !

The Seasons Greetings to all my friends in 'Blogland' .

Lookin back , moving forward .

At this time of year I look back on my blog to see what I've done , this year is dominated by the arrival of 'A Gentlemen's War' and my addiction to 'Command and Colors' . AGW has been played a lot and has seen me expand my 40mm armies to fit the organisation used in the rules and also the building of a new one - my 'Army of the Sublime Porte' , it has become my 'go too' set of rules and I like their simplicity and solo adaptability . C&C was a bit of a surprise , I don't do boardgames (especially after loosing ALL of my counters for the Confederate army whilst playing a Gettysburg boardgame against 'B' many years ago !) , but the rules system and the clever use of chunky blocks has entranced me and I love playing the Ancient version and have recently moved on to the Napoleonic one . The games are quick to set up with historical scenarios and play well , even solo. I've also started playing Featherstone's ancient rules using 'flats' , this project has somewhat been put on hold, but I will return to it next year as I do like the challenge of painting flats . My Jacobite project has been more or less finished and I must start playing some more games with them . As for next year I have several things I want to pursue and will be putting these up soon .

Jumping on the Meme bandwagon

Memes one of these "young people's things" shamelessly purloined from Facebook

Nearly done .

Well I've just finished off my last two units of the Government army for my '45' project , above is 'Hamilton's Regiment of Dragoons' (14th) . It's just about a year since I started this collection and I'm somewhat amazed that I've got it done .

Hamilton's was at Prestonpans were it fled with the other British cavalry when the Highlanders charged . It didn't perform much better at Falkirk I'm afraid either . The figures are 1/72nd scale Strelets and were originally 'Dragoons of Peter the Great' from the Great Northern War range . 

The final British Regiment of Foot is 'Thomas Murray's ' (46th) it was at Prestonpans were most of its troops were captured by the Jacobites when the British army routed . I hope to put on a Prestonpans re fight in the New Year . I'm always a bit sad when I come to the end of a project as I've enjoyed painting these up immensely , I have odds and sods to paint up such as dismounted figures for Hamilton's Dragoons and some transport waggons but will get them done in 2020 .

I do like plastic 20mm 1/72nd scale figures (a somewhat forgotten scale I think) . I must now start thinking about next years project !? .

Wargaming humour No. 23

                     Suddenly they realised they had been playing the morale rules all wrong !

Bashi Bazooks of the Sublime Porte .

This is one of the last units I will be doing (for the time being)  for my Balkans War Army of the Sublime Porte , they are the Bashi Bazooks irregular cavalry useful for scouting but perhaps not for front line battle roles - in their first battle they were ordered to charge a fleeing enemy and failed their morale roll and left the table .

Here they leave on a patrol lead by a senior officer . The figures are of course 42mm Irregular Miniatures , the mounted officer is a semi-flat figure bought off eBay , he was snapped off his base and needed pinning to a new one , I think I have managed to hide the repairs quite well and although perhaps originally a Russian figure I have painted him as an officer of the Sublime Porte.

Christmas comes early .

I've been selling things on eBay and when I saw that the  Command & Colors Napoleonic base game was being re-issued I thought I'd better spend some of the money and get a copy quickly when I saw one . The thing I have noticed since I started playing and buying C&C board games is that some of them don't seem to be on sale long and disappear till the next print run which could be in a couple of years or more . Having bought it I was going to save it for Christmas BUT being an adult (I do class myself as an adult ignoring the frequent childish lapses) I decided to open it and start stickering up the wooden blocks ready for 'A' calling round for one of our 'gentlemen that lunch' games this week .