Christmas Goodness

The holidays may well be mainly about spending time with family and friends, but no matter how old you get, you can still appreciate a few nice Christmas gifts, and the family treated me well again this year.

We are fortunate that gifts are about wants and not needs, and the following will certainly bear that out. All nice to have; none particularly necessary.

First is a pair of 25mm European village buildings from Miniature Building Authority. I have as many of these as I realistically need, but adding one or two interesting ones every now and then is a treat. "Postern gate II" is on the left, and "Alleygate #1" is on the right. Both are different enough from the townhouse and castle pieces that I already have to make them very nice additions to the collection.

Miniature Building Authority buildings (25mm)

Next are a trio of books on widely varied subjects: an 1862-63 scenario book for the Regimental Fire and Fury miniatures ruleset, and a pair of classic books on lost treasures of the southwest by J. Frank Dobie, Coronado's Children (1930) and Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver (1939?), covering some of the most famous legends and tales of the region.

Some Fun Reading

Lastly, there is a trio of books on musical subjects from brother Dave and his family: Springsteen's autobiography, a book on Yes, and a book on Emerson, Lake and Palmer. The ELP book is especially timely in that I saw the Carl Palmer Band last summer performing ELP music, in the same year that Keith Emerson died earlier in the year and Greg Lake died at the very end. As has been well documented elsewhere, it is hard to believe the number of musicians we lost in 2016. Included on that list are some very high profile ones that didn't mean all that much to me (David Bowie and Prince), and some other names that did (Keith Emerson, Greg Lake and of course Glenn Frey of the Eagles).

Music books

Thanks to all for the wonderful gifts and the hours of reading enjoyment they will certainly give me.

Crusades Project - Plans

I have been inactive in my wargaming for far too long. Now that we have gotten some family things straightened out that had things in a state of flux, I am ready to dive back into something.

First, I need to get an order out the Fernando Enterprises for painting. I don't have the time to paint quantity, so some of my figure stock needs to get on an airplane and go overseas. This will end up being 25mm Ottomans, 25mm Seven Years War, or 25mm Renaissance.

Second, I need to get back to work on helping Chris Parker out with his ideas for Day of Battle IV. In conjunction with this, I plan to rebase my 15mm Crusader and Saracen armies using the Impetus style basing that Chris is using. There is no real risk in doing this, as I have never really used these armies the way they are based now, and I have been anxious to base something on the kind of diorama-style bases that Impetus uses. I will try to use these newly rebased armies to do some playtesting of DoB4 as part of a small solo campaign.

Hopefully, between these little projects and the fact that Cold Wars is coming up in less than a month, I will get back on the hobby track.

Painting Totals - 2010

Tallying up my miniatures painting totals for 2010 was a brief and comical exercise. I post this for no other reason than to perhaps shame myself into doing a little bit better this year. Although it would be hard to do worse. To the best of my recollection, all I managed to get done was this:

• 12 medieval cavalry (25mm)
• 3 medieval mounted leader figures (25 mm)
• 1 French Napoleonic divisional general (25mm)
• 1 French 12 lb Napoleonic cannon and 3 line foot artillery crew (25mm)
• Mostly done 16 Ottoman heavy infantry (25mm)
• Mostly done 16 Ottoman janissary archers (25mm)
• Painted and flocked a bunch of bases
• Based and Re-based a host of 15mm Napoleonics

Yep. That's it. Ugh. Pretty dismal. But you know what? For some reason it doesn't bother me all that much...

Day of Battle 4 - Playtest Game

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving (11/27), Dave, Ryan, Leo and I got together to push some figures around. Our intent was to spend some time working through some of Chris Parker's draft rules and ideas for a new version of Day of Battle. This post isn't going to be a review of those ideas, but is just an excuse to post some pictures from our game with a minimum of verbage. At this point the game was three weeks ago, and I doubt I could write a detailed battle report, seeing as how my main memory of it at this point is being unceremoniously driven from the field. Oh well. It happens...

For this game we used figs from my Hundred Years War collection to set up a French-ish medieval force and an English-ish force, but set in the decades prior to the full-fledged ascendency of the longbow. To be able to get a feel for our impressions of some of the core parts of the new rules, we went light on missile troops and hoped to concentrate on the melee and morale sections, which contain a lot of new material.

The set up: French on the left and English on the right. Three battles (commands) per side. Mixed infantry and cavalry in the center and far flank. Infantry near the town.


French and English cavalry mixing it up in the center. The English (me) held on for a while, but the tide would turn against me...


Infantry advancing into the village. This bogged down into an inconclusive pushing and shoving match.


The cavalry battle turns against the English. French weight of numbers grinds down my horsemen.


Oops. The French are in front of me... beside me... and behind me. The "behind" part is especially bad. At this point, the new battle line morale rules that Chris is proposing really came into effect and had the English battleline begin to fade away.


A good game, a fun evening, and a solid run-through of Chris' new ideas. After a few months of very little in the way of gaming other than the occasional bit of painting, it was very refreshing to get a few friends and family together to push some figures around.

Fall In 2010 - Lancaster, PA

I always look forward to the three big area wargaming conventions, Cold Wars in the spring, Historicon in the summer, and Fall In in the fall. Since Historicon had been moved from Lancaster to Valley Forge this year, Fall In was moved from Gettysburg to Lancaster to fill the void. Lancaster is within an hour of my house, so it is much closer, but I had gotten used to the idea of a yearly pilgrimage out to Gettysburg to see the show and stop at some of my favorite spots on the battlefield. Perhaps that's why I wasn't looking forward to the show quite as much this year, or perhaps it's just because I have been in a lull period as far as miniatures goes.

I couldn't get away from work on Friday to go this year, but I planned on putting in at least a token appearance on Saturday. I left bright and early to go on a geocaching barnstorm through part of Lancaster county on the way out (the subject of another post), and arrived at the convention before noon. I paid my daily admission fee, wandered around for a while, saw some decent looking games, but for the most part... felt nothing. The usual surge of gaming adrenaline I get just wasn't there. I'm not sure if it was the sparse turnout (not a ton of games, and not a large crowd by any means), or what, but it felt hollow.

Even wandering the dealers' area in search of new toys turned up nothing that struck my fancy. All told, I didn't spend two hours at the show, and didn't spend a penny other than my admission fee. That's definitely a first.

One effect that these conventions always have on me is the desire to paint something, and I do feel a little of that. Progress on my Ottoman army is creeping along at a glacial pace, but I did dig out a unit of janissary archers and put them on the painting table. We'll see if anything happens to them anytime soon.

Painting Table - Medieval cavalry

One way to help clear the backlog off of the gaming table is to actually finish some of those little painting projects that have been started but never finished. With an hour or so of free time last night, I was able to put the last few touches on two more bases of medieval cavalry. These are Old Glory 25mm Teutonic sergeants from the Mongols in Europe range. They are excellent figures to use as generic heavy or medium cavalry over a fairly wide time period; just what I need more of. Bases still need flocking and finishing...

The new boys are the two stands on the right, joining their previously completed comrades on the left. This block will make either a 3-stand unit for Day of Battle 3, a 4-stand unit for the draft of DoB 4, or two units of 2 stands each for Medieval Warfare. Nice and flexible.

Next up...if I am ever going to be able to do Nicopolis (1396, western Europeans vs Ottomans), I am going to need more mounted knights. I have a bunch of stock figs of various nationalities from Old Glory's Hundred Years War range, and these can function as almost any western European army I would want them to stand in as. Time to prep and prime.

Wargaming Gridlock

I have done very little hobby-related work recently, and the picture here shows part of the reason why.

Little projects have gotten started, then tabled (literally).

We had house guests, which necessitated the temporary dismantling of my painting table in order to protect the contents from small children and vice versa. So that all ended up on the gaming table and hasn't made its way back to where it belongs yet.

I have also been making sporadic progress on the ton of basing that I have gotten behind on. Not great progress, but a little bit. All of that work in progress is here too, represented by trays containing large parts of my Hundred Years War and Wars of the Roses collections.

Lastly, the game of LaSalle that we played back in the summer energized me on 15mm Napoleonics, so I pulled out all my stuff. Rebased some. Finished others. Inventoried everything. Bought a few packs of painted stuff from Gajo. Sent a bunch of stock to Fernando Enterprises to have painted, which have since returned. All of this is now heaped on the table as well, in disarray, since I do not have the proper base sizes to base the figs. I have grown accustomed to Litko bases, and no longer have the desire to cut my own, so these have sat while waiting for me to figure out what I need and place an order.

Hopefully, I will be able to begin breaking down the backlog soon. I placed the order with Litko a couple days ago, which will make it easy to finish up the Napoleonics and get them out of the way. A little more organizing after that and I should be able to use the near half of the table to set up a small game, which I am very anxious to do since I have Chris Parker's new rules draft for a revised edition of Day of Battle. He has some great ideas and I am excited at the prospect of playing around with them. But first I need to find the space, and maybe posting this picture will motivate (or shame) me into doing so.

Landsknechts

Having gotten through most (or at least a lot) of my unpainted lead piles for the Hundred Years War and the Wars of the Roses, I need to figure out what to tackle next. The two periods for which I have sufficient figure stock to keep me going for a while are the Seven Years War and the Great Italian Wars of the Renaissance (1494-1529).

I am strongly leaning towards the Renaissance at this point, as I have a good number of beautifully painted Landsknechts that need company. I have stands of pikes, halberds and arquebusses, but nobody for them to play with. No friends and no enemies, other than 4 or 5 stands of artillery. I can send most of the foot overseas, and can play around with painting the cavalry myself. That should be fun. As colorful as the period is, you can pretty much go completely bonkers and still not have gone over the top.

I'll make a final decision soon.

And yes, these figs are some of the many that need proper basing.

French Napoleonic General

Just to dispel the popular notion that I never paint anything any more, here is a 25mm Old Glory French Napoleonic General, commanding a 12 lb cannon and crew of line foot artillery.

I have no plans to do Napoleonics in 25mm, but I do enjoy painting the odd figure every now and then. I love the Napoleonic period, but I game it in 15mm and dont like painting 15mm figs. Oh well... As can be seen, these are two more of the many many bases of figures that need to be finished properly.

Wargaming Entropy

My miniatures stuff is a mess. Disorganized clutter. Half finished projects. An abundance of partially painted figures. And it has gotten to the point that it is difficult to sit down and accomplish anything because of the mess.

Going to Historicon a couple of weeks ago was energizing, as it always is, and I came home wanting the dive into some painting. But with all the clutter, it's been hard to get started. So I have made a commitment to myself - I need to spend as much time as required between now and the end of July clearing the decks and getting organized. The single biggest thing I need to do is base figures. I have a couple of orders back from Sri Lanka that have been mounted on bases, but the bases are either not painted at all (bare wood) or have been painted but not flocked and finished. I also just got a batch of 15mm Napoleonics back that are still in baggies. And a bunch of 15mm Napoleonics from GAJO that I bought at Cold Wars and glued to bases but never finished. If I can get these all based properly and then packed away neatly, then maybe all the horizontal surfaces on my gaming table and painting table won't be covered by boxes and trays of "in process" figs. Then I can get back to something fun.

I really don't enjoy basing figs, but they aren't going to finish themselves. At least it doesn't look like they will; I've been waiting for months and it hasn't happened yet...

Historicon 2010 - Hundred Years War game, Part 2

Continued from Part 1.

Having been playing in part of the game, and therefore focusing on a smaller piece of the battle, I don't have a great memory or overview of parts of the game, and so it is difficult to do a very good battle report. The English position stabilized quickly after Warwick's initial disaster, and Chris did a very good job of putting Clermont back onto his heels. In the center, Edward's attacks against the Dauphin were largely ineffective. On the French right, the Captal de Buch did a better than expected job of holding their own against Audrehem's qualitatively superior knights.

On the right, English and Gascon knights bring the fight to the French, pushing them back up the hill. Cheshire longbowmen in their green and white tunics can be seen at far right.

Edward and the Dauphin go at it in the foreground while Clermont and Warwick continue their fight in the background.

Situation toward the end of the game. The English have made some headway, but not nearly enough.

Edward is held back in the center. Warwick rallies and holds off Clermont.

Captal de Buch continues to do well against the French nobles on the right, driving them further up the hill.

I think that every figure on the table was Old Glory. Flags are by The Flag Dude (the nicer ones) or by me off the internet. Painting was split between myself and Fernando Enterprises in Sri Lanka. I did every mounted figure and maybe half the foot figures. The Pros did the rest.

The game was a success insofar as it went, and everyone who played in it had a good time. I committed to running the same scenario again at Fall In in Lancaster over the Halloween weekend. Maybe we'll see you there!

Historicon 2010 - Hundred Years War game, Part 1

Day of Battle, 1356
King Jean II vs Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince

I ran one game at Historicon this year with the assistance of my nephew Ryan and Chris Parker, author of the Day of Battle rules. 3rd edition Day of Battle were the rules we were using, and the battle was a "Poitiers-ish" 1356 battle between the French and English in the Hundred Years War. The game was published incorrectly in the Event Listing book, saying it was 90mm instead of 25mm, and this error probably scared away some people who look at the very large scale figures as toys. (Yes, even in a niche hobby, we still have snobs). As a result, we were expecting few if any people to show up for the six player slots for a game that was scheduled to start at 8pm and run until midnight. As a result, Chris, Ryan and I began the game just the three of us playing, and were joined a bit later by two players. So it ended up being an enjoyable game with all three gamemasters playing.

The overall situation was a different spin on the historical battle of Poitiers, but a "what if" that had a reasonable basis in the realm of possibility. In our version of the game, part of the French army under command of the Duc de Normandie (the Dauphin - the eldest son of the King of France), was able to get in front of the English army as it headed south to get back to friendly territory. Also in the Dauphin's army were two cavalry wings commanded by the two Marshals of France, Clermont and Audrehem. In our scenario, the entire English army would fall upon the French force, and would have to try to drive them off and get across the river safely before the remainder of the French army, under the King himself and the Duc d'Orleans arrived. Because of the shortage of players, we played with a partial English army and no French reinforcements. Chris played the Duke of Warwick's battle, Ryan played Prince Edward, I commanded the French (and was joined by 2 players who would each take control of one of the Marshals).

Initial dispositions. Marshal Clermont is on the French (near) left, with the Dauphin's large battle in the middle, and Audrehem's cavalry was on the right flank. The Duke of Warwick has begun advancing in the left distance, with Edward advancing in the center and right distance.

Edward (Ryan) boldly surges forward, attempting to get his longbowmen into range as quickly as possible. The French wait, with Genoese mercenary crossbowmen sheltered behind their pavises manning the front line.

The English are coming! The English are coming! A small English mounted wing under the Captal de Buch, a Gascon noble, advance on the right in the distance, facing off against Audrehem's elite knights.

The battle lines, after trading missile fire for a while, are about to clash. On the French left, Warwick's men have advanced very close to Clermont's knights. The French Marshal spurs his horse forward and sounds the charge.

Clermont's first charge was devastating, breaking through the first line of longbowmen and crashing into the English dismounted knights behind them. As a result of the flight of the first English line, two supporting units broke and fled as well. The three fleeing English units can be seen in the distance, milling about in the farm fields in confusion. In one charge, fully half of Warwick's battle had fled the field. Not an auspicious start for the English...

...to be continued.

Historicon 2010 - Duke Seifried's Display Games

One of the venerable and colorful characters in the miniatures gaming community is apparently in poor health and chose Historicon 2010 as a last hurrah to bring together many of his famous display games from throughout the years together in one place. These games are typically on tables that must be about 6 feet wide and 20 feet long with thousands of figures. It was impressive to see a life's hobby work on display. There were 14 such games. Pictures of them could fill a book by themselves, but here are a few of my favorites.

British vs Zulus at Isandlwana and Rorke's Drift.

British and Sepoys vs Afghans and Pathans on the Northwest Frontier.

Romans and Carthaginians.

Inspirational stuff to say the least, and the pictures barely do them justice.

Lasalle Rules - First Impressions

Having had a chance to push some figures around using these rules for the first time last Saturday evening, it makes sense to post some first impressions. So, without too much editing or structure, here are some random thoughts and comments.

First of all, it was an enjoyable evening, which to me is honestly the most important thing. It was a little bit frustrating not knowing the rules as well as I like to, but we got through it without too much trouble. And with some subsequent reviewing of the rules, we didn't mess things up too badly. Mostly minor things here and there.

Obvious point: it is a "buckets of dice" game. It was not uncommon to be rolling 10, 12 or even 15 dice at a time in combats. While I don't necessarily think this is the most elegant way to deal with probability ranges, it works well enough, and should be familiar to anyone used to Flames of War or any Games Workshop games. And at least every combat wasn't a sequential process of rolling buckets of dice several different times to get to the result.

I also want to go back and look at the time scales these rules are supposed to represent. I didn't have an issue with the way units degrade over time until you simply pick them up and remove them from the table, but given that a unit that loses a melee combat decisively breaks and is removed, we had a number of instances where a large fresh unit lost a melee and disappeared immediately. It felt odd at times. Also, in instances where the French were able to throw more than one attacking column at a British line, it was difficult for the British line to hold. Perhaps more difficult than it should have been. I would also like to take a few minutes at some point and work out the probability of this kind of attack winning decisively to see if the math matches up with our experiences.

Movement seemed reasonable. The way units recover hits, but cannot do so while close to the enemy felt right.

Once again, all in all a good first experience, and we will be coming back to these rules for more.

Lasalle Rules - First Playing

Well, as planned, Leo, Dave, Ryan and myself got together Saturday evening for our first stumbling attempts at Lasalle. I threw together a straight forward Peninsula game pitting 3 brigades of French infantry and one light cavalry brigade against a similar force of English composed of two British infantry brigades, one Portugese infantry brigade and a brigade of British light dragoons. We did fumble with the rules quite a bit, easy as they are, but had a good time. It was a promising beginning. I am still mulling over various things in my head, re-reading the rules in light of a session, and figuring out what I did and did not like.

First, a few pictures.

The action begins with a clash of light cavalry in the foreground. The British (me) push the issue early, charging the 12th light dragoons into the leading French chasseur a cheval regiment. The dice favor me (6 rolls of 5+ on 8 dice) winning decisively and vaporizing the chasseurs, killing their tactically superior brigade commander in the process. It turns out this would be the high point for the British cavalry, but we didn't know it yet.

Tide turns against the British in the cavalry clash. The remaining French hussar regiment would maul the two British light dragoon regiments in sequence, opening up the British right flank to a massed combined arms attack in later turns.

French infantry advances on a broad front. The Portugese brigade makes a wide sweeping move to the far flank, but ends up bottling itself in and not being particularly aggressive, effectively taking itself out of the fight.

French attack columns moving up the hill in the distance.

French attack columns stalling and coming back down the hill...

Observations to follow in the next post.

A Day in the Life - April 2, 2010

Pictures from today. At one point, I realized that there were a lot of different things going on over the course of the day, so I thought I would document them. The result is a glimpse into how someone with the attention span of a flea attempts to juggle family, household chores, hobbies and other interests with varying degrees of success.

What better way to start the day than with a roller skating session in the driveway with Grace.


Of course, Grace needs to play with the camera too, so here's me.


One of the things I have been working on (but not finishing) was a paint rack for my new painting table set up in the basement. It has been almost complete for a week or so, but I was one 18-inch piece of wood short of finishing. When at Home Depot the other day, I remembered to grab what I needed, so 10 minutes with a compound miter saw and a hammer completed it. Dropping it into place and organizing my paints was a simple little chore, and now I have better use of the space, ready access to all the paints, and most importantly I can see which is which.


Last year we were given a bunch of day lily and iris bulbs by a friend of Amparo's. They have been dormant in pots over the winter but every single one of them is sprouting this year, so we need to get them into the ground somewhere. We didn't really have a place in existing beds where we wanted to put them, but thought new beds at the base of the stairs down off the deck would be a good place. Carving out this little bed was more work than it looks like, being only about three feet on a side, but digging out turf, turning the dirt and all that takes a bit of effort. Day lilies are in an mulched and looking good. Irises will go into another new bed on the other side of the stairs this weekend.


Spring = deck time


Game tomorrow. Leo, Dave and Ryan are coming over to have a first run-through of the Lasalle rules for tactical Napoleonics. We expect this to be a fumble-through, as I have read the rules but don't know them very well, Leo has played once, and the others are brand new to it. I will takes some pictures and post my impressions after the game. In the meantime, sometime between now and then, I need to turn at least half of this table from a mess into a game board with troops set up. Hmm, I wonder when that will happen in advance of 7pm Saturday? (maybe 6pm Saturday...). First things first, these hundreds of Hundred Years War figs need to go away, or at least out of the way. I suspect they will line up in back and watch the new game...


Spring in southeastern Pennsylvania. The maples bloom early.


Re-basing 15mm Napoleonics. In order to try to be more flexible with my Napoleonic figs and yet not need to invest a huge amount of money in buying more, I am re-basing what I have in a format that is flexible enough to be used for Lasalle, Napoleonic Warfare, or From Valmy to Waterloo. The old stands on the right are turning into the new stands on the left. This may be an interim solution until I do have more that can be put onto denser bases for better visual appeal, but I want to be able to use them now and I need more stands.


Lastly, at the end of a busy day, this is where I can often be found in the warmer months.

Seven Years War Prussians

Well, I guess every new project must start from humble beginnings. So this is the seed from which I hope a Prussian Seven Years War army will sprout. At this point I have painted a sample of a few different things.


The mounted general is (I think) an Essex Frederick the Great figure.

His fledgling army is composed of one battalion of the 18th infantry regiment, the grenadiers from the 10th regiment, and a foot battery.


These were all painted a few years ago actually, and the faces could use touching up, but they aren't too bad. It's a start anyway - something to build around...

Convention Report - Cold Wars 2010

HMGS East's spring convention, Cold Wars 2010, was held in Lancaster Pennsylvania (USA) beginning Thursday and ending today (Sunday). The most glaring thing that struck me, having been attending these shows faithfully for well over ten years, is that attendance was way off this year. There were less people in general, the dealer area was not crowded, some of the people I always see weren't there, and from a game mastering perspective, there were many less games being run and therefore less for attendees to do. Wandering through the main ballroom gaming area, I have never seen so many empty tables with nothing going on. The same was true of all the smaller side rooms, where around half the tables were inactive at any point in time. It was sad and disturbing.

The reasons for the lack of attendance are hard to pin down, but are probably a combination of the economy, a very rainy forecast for the weekend (Saturday was an all day downpour), and possibly some dissatisfaction with HMGS over their repeatedly botched handling of the moving of the upcoming Historicon flagship summer con away from Lancaster to another location. But that's a whole different story.

What did I do? Not too much I suppose, when I think back on it. I live about an hour away from Lancaster, a little more with traffic, so I drove up and back Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I played in a couple medieval games, bought a bunch of stuff (more on that in a moment), met and caught up with a bunch of friends that I only see occasionally, and did a lot of wandering and watching. More wandering and watching than anything, really.

As for the spending, I certainly did my part to revive the economy this time around. Having had the bug to get out of the medieval period(s) for a while, my next project will be Seven Years War in 25mm, and to that end I added 10 more bags of Old Glory figs to the small pile of SYW that I already have. The short term plan is that most of the infantry will be packed off to Sri Lanka in short order, and I will begin working on some guns and cavalry, with a few other odds and ends like Prussian grenadiers mixed in.

Other purchases included 3 rules sets: LaSalle, Impetus and Saga's Lace Warfare. Eight feet of JR Miniatures one-inch streams to expand my two-inch river set. A few bags of bases of various sizes from the nice folks at Litko. A few 25mm Ottoman flags from Rick O'Brien (the Flag Dude). Three Conflix brand painted buildings good for anything from early medieval through 1800's. And last but not least, in the effort to get back into playing Napoleonics, enough painted 15mm figs from Gajo to make a small Spanish division and a Portugese brigade. Adding these figures to the French and Brits I already have gives me enough to run a modest sized game on a 6 x 8 table with some troop variability.

Wow, I bought more than I thought...

While talking to Chris Parker (Day of Battle author) I committed to running some 25mm Day of Battle games at Historicon. King of Prussia PA is even closer than Lancaster, and I have been lazy about running games over the last couple of years. So I will sign up for a few games to run. Games that require little or no work beyond what I already have completed, which is the nice thing about being virtually done a few periods. Really the only thing I need is to mail order a few specific flags from the Flag Dude, and then I am done.

As always, going to these shows gets the fire burning again, so I expect that this will trigger a burst of activity on my part. Let's hope. At the very least, I expect to be able to post pictures of the new painted figs that I bought from GAJO, as well as some of the other Napoleonics that I am re-basing.

Hobby Times Ahead

For those unfortunate souls who may wander here from time to time looking for something wargaming related (as advertised, or false-advertised as the case may be), there should be some activity on the horizon. I just got an email that my Sri Lanka order is winging its way back to me, and with Cold Wars coming up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in mid-March, that should be plenty to get the fires rekindled.

Painting Table - Medieval Cavalry

We are housebound in the midst of our second major blizzard of the year, with about 20 inches on the ground and still falling. If nothing else, this gives me the chance to catch up on odds and ends for the blog. Here are a couple of pictures of two finished stands of the generic medieval cavalry I have been slowly working on. After seeing the pictures I touched up a few minor blemishes, and they are now complete. The other two stands should be finished in a few days.