Vampire Counts - Black Knights

This unit of skeleton cavalry is the third complete unit for my Vampire Counts fantasy army. They were completed a month or so ago but I never posted a picture. I have enough figures to make another unit of these, and will paint those in a much darker color scheme. I like the way these turned out; I was going for more of an ethereal and ghostly look rather than a dark and forbidding look. The next batch will go for dark, dingy and dirty.

The completed part of this army now includes 10 crypt ghouls, 5 dire wolves (pics coming soon) and these 5 black knight cavalry.

A few more units and individual figures are in process, including a unit each of zombies and skeletons, another unit of dire wolves, a vampire lord to lead them, and a wight king special character. I have figures stockpiled after that...

Warhammer - Empire Knights

I have been painting a lot recently, but not posting much. I'll try to fix that over the next few days and post some pictures of what I have been working on.

Last night I put the last highlights on this small unit of 5 Empire knights for Warhammer fantasy. As I've said before, I like to mix in some different things beyond my normal historicals, and painting Games Workshop figures is enjoyable because of the tremendous detail on the figures. These obviously aren't painted as any particular unit as shown in the Empire army book, but I felt like doing a blue scheme with yellow and red details for interest, so this is what I ended up with. They were a lot of fun. I assembled these a long time ago and did the first stage of base coating and then stuck them in a box. During that time I apparently forgot something that I didn't notice until it was too late for me to want to do anything about it. They come with shields that I was supposed to glue on at some point in the process (after I had done the basic painting in the areas that the shields would make inaccessible). By the time I remembered it didn't seem worth the trouble.

Looking at the pictures, I will probably go back and add some highlighting to the flag, which I am not happy with yet, and maybe highlight the visible parts of the horses a little better. It's funny how the brutal honesty of a high resolution close up photo makes me want to paint better, or put in just a little more effort.

My next Empire unit will probably be 5 Pistoliers. I should do a block of foot, but I like painting the small units of mounted troops better. Or maybe a great cannon and crew. Or maybe the mounted general. Or maybe...

Rodeo Weekend

Friday night, I did something I had never done before. And then Saturday night, I did it again.

Julia's teen group was going on an outing Friday night, and this time around they were going down to the Flyers' arena to see Professional Bull Riding on tour. When Julia was little, she used to love bull riding on TV, and there used to be one channel where she could find it fairly regularly, so she was very excited at the prospect of seeing it in person. Grace liked the idea as well, so we picked up three tickets cheap on Stub Hub and decided we would go separately. While I can't say as though this is something that has any real interest for me, any chance to get out with the family and do something different is always nice.

We dropped Julia off at 6, and grabbed a quick dinner on the way down for the 8pm show. In the car on the way, we laughed when we got a text message from our good friends across the street asking whether we thought our kids would like a cowboy hat. We texted back something to the effect of "we know where you are going tonight!" When we got there and got to our seats, there were maybe only 5,000 people in the 20,000 seat arena, and we could see Julia a few sections to our left and our friends directly across from us. We all had a good laugh at that, waving at each other like little kids.

As for the event itself, it was different, but fun. The bulls were amazing, and the riders were impressive. The riders were from the expected parts of the US (TX, OK, CO and NC), with many others from Brazil and Australia. I can't imagine how hard it must be to do what they do. They are the best in the world at this, and the vast majority couldn't stay on the the full eight seconds to register a score. There was one bull toward the end that was astounding. Most bulls seemed to fall into two general categories, at least to the untrained eye; the "buckers" and the "spinners." The bull at the end that had the crowd gasping did something I wouldn't have thought possible. It came out of the chute, bucked once or twice, and then jumped straight up in the air several feet off the ground. Vertical. Straight up like on a pogo stick. I still can't believe it. That was Grace's favorite (and mine!). She also like the rodeo clown.

We all had a good time. The music was loud, everything seemed pretty informal, and the crowd was treating it more like a party than anything, and most importantly the girls had fun.

Saturday ended up being something similar. The neighbors were going the Unionville country fair, not far from us, and we decided to go as well. The highlight of that show was to be the second annual Willowdale pro rodeo circuit event at 6pm. Unlike Friday, this event had 7 different kinds of things, including steer wrestling, calf roping, bucking broncos, team roping, women's barrel riding and bull riding (again). As the announcer kept reminding us, these were the best in the northeast US at these events, but on this particular night, the animals came out on top by a very wide margin. Steers wouldn't go down, calves wouldn't get roped, barrels wouldn't stay up, and riders couldn't stay on anything that was moving fast or unpredictably. It was still fun, although it was chilly and the sight lines at the temporary arena weren't very good. If anything, it made me appreciate how good the guys on Friday night had been after not a single rider in this event could stay on for the full eight seconds.

So... Forty plus years of my life with no rodeo, and then two rodeo events in two days. I can't say as though I am a convert by any means, but it was nice to do something completely different. The kids had fun and have asked if we can go again when they come back next year. I guess that a year from now, I just might be ready.

Guitar Lessons

Dave and I have been wanting to get together and play for a while now (since immediately after the last time really), and schedules worked out such that I could get over to his house for a couple hours this afternoon and goof around. I was anxious to get together with him for a couple reasons; first, he hadn't seen my new baby in person yet and I was anxious to see what he had to say about it, and second, the last time we got together he was able to teach me a lot (that stuck) in a fairly short period of time. I was also hoping that he would be able to make a couple of minor adjustments that I felt the new guitar needed.

I will preface my comments on today's session by admitting that I have been happy with the new guitar, but that there are a few things I have had minor reservations about. I expected the tone to be warm, bright and clear. At home it sort of was, but seemed to be missing a little something. This might have been a case of burdening one "copy guitar" with a lifetime of musical expectation that perhaps even the real $2500 version couldn't meet, but I couldn't help feeling that something was missing. String bending was a little difficult, and there seemed to be a lack smoothness, for lack of a better term. I'm not sure how else to describe it, but something just didn't feel as wonderful as I expected it to feel. Not that it was bad, but it was good and not "wow". I kinda had my heart set on "wow".

Prior to showing up at Dave's, I asked for a good general purpose string recommendation, and he said to buy D'Addario "tens", which I did. When I got to Dave's, I proudly unveiled the new purchase and he was suitably impressed (good brother that he is). The first thing he did was plug it into his Bugera tube amp, and I had my first "a-ha" moment. My baby did NOT sound like that at home! Same guitar, same strings, same cabling, nothing changed... but when he plugged in and strummed a few chords... I heard "wow!". I love the amp I have at home (a Line 6 Spider IV hand me down courtesy of Dave) that has all sorts of cool modelling effects (phasing, delay, drive, etc), but for pure clean sound I am now convinced that a nice simple (high quality) tube amp has a special something in terms of sound. This has the very likely possibility of turning into an "oops I did it again" moment in the not-too-distant future...

The remaining hour and a half or so that we spent together today was a combination of a lesson on chords and some pointers on different chord shapes and their use up and down the fretboard, and a chance for Dave to polish his guitar maintenance skills. The strings that came with the 335 looked discolored in places, which is a sign of age and exposure, and I had some questions about the action of the 5th and 6th strings. Dave had no issues with the action (just relax and don't strum so hard!), but the strings did need replacing, which he did. He also raised the low side of the bridge a little just in case, but it probably didn't need it. Before he replaced the strings, he also cleaned and oiled the fretboard, which was surprisingly dirty. After doing so the feel was much smoother, and closer to what I had hoped for and expected.

While Dave worked on my 335, I had the chance to noodle around on a couple of guitars - his Casino and the newly arrived Epiphone SG, which he recently picked up on eBay. The Casino is a true hollow body that is otherwise similar to the 335, and the SG is the signature guitar of Derek Trucks (among others), a fairly recent musical man-crush. The Casino is warm and rich, and I loved the SG. As Dave had mentioned to me earlier, it is incredibly neck-heavy, but sounded wonderful. And an absolute steal at the price he was able to get it for.

All in all, a fun couple of hours. Productive in terms of learning and also a revelation about what a tube amp can sound like. By the end of the session, I had learned some valuable things, but more importantly, Dave had put the "wow" back in my holy grail guitar. Not bad for two hours on a Saturday afternoon...

The Holy Grail... Sort of...

Epiphone ES-335 Pro

I did a very very silly thing today. In a moment of weakness (or was it strength?) I took the plunge and checked a holy grail item off the list. As I mentioned in a recent post, I have been playing a lot more guitar recently and have made some strides toward actually being able to play some things passably well.

One of my favorite bands growing up was the Moody Blues (still is for that matter), and Justin Hayward has always been one of my favorite singer/songwriter/guitarists. His signature guitar is a Gibson ES-335 semi-hollow body. In cherry red. The guitar of Nights in White Satin, Tuesday Afternoon and most other classic Moodies tunes. The guitar that I have seen live in concert at least a dozen times. The guitar that probably more than any other made me want to learn how to play the guitar, or at the very least make me wish I could.

Since a very early age, that guitar (along with Eric Clapton's black Fender Stratocaster "Blackie") has been on the short list of "someday I need to own a guitar like that, even if it's just decoration". It's a very short list, perhaps including only those two plus a Jimmy Page classic sunburst Les Paul and (much more recently) a Derek Trucks red Gibson SG.

Before kids, I checked the black Strat off the list in 1993. Today, after some eBay watching, I went to the local Guitar Center store and bought a little piece of my adolescence. Specifically, an Epiphone Custom Shop Limited Edition ES-335 Pro. Epiphone is Gibson's second brand, and the usual Epiphone version of the ES-335 is referred to as "the Dot" because of the distinctive dot pattern on the fret board. The ES-335 Pro is a limited edition of the Dot with upgraded volume knobs that allow push-pull switching of the pickups from single coil to double coil mode (and rectangular fret inlays, not dots). This has the effect of making the guitar sound more like a Gibson or more like a Fender depending on the setting. The difference is substantial, and a tribute to modern electronics.

The Whole (electric) Gang

I haven't had much of a chance to play around with it yet, but it has a wonderful warm rich tone that is very different from both the Strat and from the Les Paul copy. It could use a minor 5th and 6th string action adjustment to remove a tiny "fret buzz" on the middle of the fretboard, but that is a simple adjustment that Dave can help me make.

Do I need a third guitar (four if you count the hand-me-down Yamaha acoustic)? Of course not. I barely play well enough to justify one nice one, let alone three. And the Strat from twenty years ago is still qualitatively the best of the three instruments, probably by a fairly wide margin. But that misses the point for the most part. Or misses the point entirely. Life is short. Love of music can manifest itself in many ways, not the least of which I suppose is a middle aged guy with a small guitar collection. So I see nothing wrong with indulging a fan-boy moment. Does owning this make me Justin Hayward? Sadly, no. That takes talent, ability, hard work, dedication, luck, a voice, songwriting ability and a time machine. But it sure does put a smile on my face, and there is something to be said for that.

Given that a real Gibson ES-335 goes for $2,200 rock bottom minimum, this is almost certainly as close as I will ever get to my dream guitar. But it's close enough for me.

All the Comforts of Home

Matching Living Room Set

Ever since I made a doll bed for Grace's first American Girl doll last year, I have gotten periodic requests to make something else. Actually, to be honest, I get bombarded with requests to make more things ranging from the simple ("Daddy, make them a remote for their TV"... i.e. a little rectangular block) to the utterly ridiculous ("Daddy, let's build them their own house"), and everything in between. Ever since she figured out that I could do a pretty nice job of building things for her, she seems to like the idea of homemade better than buying store bought pieces. Which is fun, because it is something that she and I can work on together. She helps draw/design what she wants, I figure out how to engineer things, and then she helps me as much as she can with the construction.

The gang making themselves comfortable

While on vacation this week, Grace requested seating for her ever-growing collection of American Girl dolls, now numbering four (and staying at four...). So over a few hours yesterday and today, we whipped up the sofa and pair of chairs shown here. Grace wants them painted, which we haven't done yet, but the construction is finished.

Our pieces tend to be angular and blocky, but I'm not breaking out the router and other assorted goodies for doll furniture. Not yet anyway. That being said, it's pretty cool what the two of us are able to accomplish with a bunch of 1" clear pine boards of various widths and a compound miter saw.

The matching coffee table, entertainment center and flat screen TV are in progress. Yep, I'm serious.

A New Family Member

As brother Dave's guitar playing has flourished, the urge to upgrade and expand his collection of instruments and equipment has obviously been strong. I have been the beneficiary of this in the past, with a beginner Yamaha acoustic and a Line-6 modelling amp to show for it. Dave's most recent purchase was a very nice Epiphone Casino hollow body electric (Gibson's second brand version of the Gibson ES330). The Casino is perhaps best known as the guitar used by all of the Beatles at different points, and by John Lennon for most of his time with them. The Casino is a true hollow body, and very light, but otherwise similar to my "holy grail guitar", the Gibson ES335 semi-hollow body (in Justin Hayward cherry red of course...). But I digress...

Apparently, a strong request made around Dave's household was that if a new electric guitar came into the house, one of the existing ones should leave, therefore maintaining... balance... shall we say. Dave mentioned to me that he was going to keep the Fender Telecaster and put his Epiphone Les Paul copy on Craig's List.

At that point, it seemed an awful shame to lose a member of the extended family, so I purchased the guitar from Dave, and now it will live with me. In a way, this is a bit of silliness, but I can say that I have been fooling around on my guitar more than I ever have, and have gotten myself one step above total hack status, so what the heck. At the very least, it gives my Strat someone to commiserate with; the two guitars can hang out in the basement and bemoan the fact that they were not blessed with a more talented owner.

Dave brought the Les Paul over this past weekend and I played it for a while with Dave using my Strat. He taught me some things, and a few of them actually clicked. It was very productive and energizing.

So between the two of us, we now have a Statocaster, a Telecaster, a Casino and a Les Paul copy. Plus a bass. And three acoustics. And amps. And electronics. Oh well, so much for balance (but it is a lot of fun!).

My Little Sous Chef

Dredge... dip... fry...

One of my favorite things, but something I rarely blog about here, is my love of cooking and good food and drink (there is a separate cooking link...). Far removed from my day job, the things that interest me the most in my spare time are almost all outlets for creativity; wargaming (the building things part...), cooking, writing and music.

With that in mind, it gives me great pleasure that Grace has very much taken to the idea of cooking. She watches Food Network and its spin off The Cooking Channel. She will also go out of her way to help me in the kitchen with whatever she can. Even as an elementary school kid, I have relished getting her involved in the kitchen. As we say, everything tastes better when you cook it yourself. I am on vacation this week, burning some time off with the family before the kids go back to school next week, which means I have time to cook. Yesterday, shopping for dinner at Whole Foods, Julia noticed some beautiful locally grown eggplant in the produce section and requested one of her favorites, eggplant parm, for dinner tonight. I shopped for the ingredients today, and Grace and I made it for dinner.

...and turn when properly browned

Grace has gotten pretty good at basic kitchen tasks like stirring and whisking, and has developed good knife skills for someone her age (or any age for that matter). She knows to flatten one side of something she is cutting to make it stable on the cutting board, and can do a large dice, medium dice, fine dice or rough chop without too much guidance. But the most important thing is that she enjoys it and it is something that we can do together.

Tonight, I was in charge of prepping the eggplant so that she could be the one to fry the slices in the skillet prior to assembling everything in the baking dish. I prepped and sliced. She dredged, dipped and fried. Her attention to detail on the safety aspects was good to see; not splattering hot oil by turning the slices the proper way and other details that make for a safe cooking experience. We had a blast.

Oh... and it was delicious.

Julia Meets Ryan Howard

Ryan throws out the first pitch

Julia had a special treat today, and I was fortunate to be able to take a day off from work to see it; she met Phillies superstar slugger 1st baseman Ryan Howard.

We had gotten an email a couple weeks ago that Ryan Howard (or the Phillies, or someone...) had been  put in touch with the Challenger League, a group of special needs kids playing little league softball, and that Ryan Howard would be coming to a special game there were organizing. The plan was that he would show up, take some pictures, say a few words, and then hang around for an hour or so while the kids played.

Julia was excited, and concerned that it would be rained out, but we got lucky with a nice warm but not overly hot day, and it was somewhat overcast which made it not seem too bad under the sun for a few hours. Ryan was on time, the event went off in a pretty organized fashion, notwithstanding all the extra people that had come out of the woodwork for this particular game. He came out, said a few words, threw out the opening pitch, and then stood around on the field chatting with and encouraging the kids.

Julia leads off the game

The challenger league games are non-competitive, with each player on each team getting to bat once in each of the three innings. Everybody gets to run the bases, and everybody scores. Obviously, they don't keep score and it has nothing to do with winning and losing, but just having fun and being active with their peers.

Julia - pleased to be at third base

This special occasion was a one inning game. Julia was the very first batter, and grounded a sharp single to right field. She had a blast. Somehow in and around all the adults taking pictures, they actually managed to finish the one inning, and then there was some time for pictures before Ryan had to leave.

It was a very nice day for Julia (and the rest of us). Ryan is a big big man. And very nice with the kids. It is often overlooked how much time some of these guys spend in the community doing things like this, and it is nice to be able to recognize those who do. I also have to admit that Ryan has been my favorite Phillie for years now, and while I think my days of hero-worshipping athletes are long since past, it was still nice to get to say hi to him. Thanks, Ryan, for coming out to the game!

Julia with Ryan Howard

As an aside, the Phillies are playing the Braves tonight at home, and Ryan crushed a two-run home run in the bottom of the first inning... He is coming off a ruptured achilles tendon last fall, and missed much of the season this year, but he is back playing now. He doesn't look great yet, but he's getting there. He did have a very noticeable limp at the event today. Hopefully that gets better with time.

Smithsonian Air and Space Museum

Selected Pictures, July 28, 2012

Mercury 7 capsule

Apollo 11 command module

Me262

SBD Dauntless

F4F Wildcat

Spitfire Mark VII

P51-D Mustang

bf 109 G-6

A6M5 Zero

It's good for the rest of us that there are those select few crazy enough to ride a tiny hunk of metal into outer space, perched atop enough combustible material to blow up a small city...

Smithsonian American History Museum

Selected Pictures - Saturday July 28, 2012

Regimental Colors - 84th US Colored Infantry

Gunboat Philadelphia

Italianate Renaissance armor

British Grenadier bearskin - American Revolution

French 4 lb Cannon

ACW - 6 lb cannon bored out for 12 lb shell

I took many more pictures than this, but these were some of the nicer items.

Washington DC - Day 2

Sunday July 29, 2012

Day 2 of our DC trip began with a free breakfast at the hotel, after which we made our way back out into the early morning heat. Having stopped at Ford's Theatre to try to gather the relevant information for the virtual cache the day before, we had decided that we would come back this morning and take the whole tour. I am very glad we did. We got tickets and had a short wait before filing into the theater itself and listening to a talk by a park service guide. It was very interesting, as it is a subject I don't know a whole lot about, and it was very surreal to be sitting in the front row facing the stage with the President's box just off to the right. I'm not sure the kids were all that impressed, but the adults liked it.

Ford's Theatre - Lincoln's box

We had 10:30am tickets for the Spy Museum, so we decided to come back and see the Petersen House (the Lincoln Death House), which is across the street from the theater, after doing the other for the kids.

I had no idea what we were getting ourselves into with this spy museum, as it sounded incredibly cheesy and touristy to me. It turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. It was a museum dedicated to the history of spying and espionage throughout history. There were displays on all sorts of different time periods, as well as ciphers, gadgets, famous events in history, etc. The very large section on Cold War spying between the Soviet bloc and the West was fascinating. They had a very impressive collection of all the different things that cameras and listening devices have been hidden in over the years, as well as hidden weapons, poison pills and disguises. What I thought was going to be something just for the kids ended up being one of the highlights of the trip.

By the time we got done in the spy museum everyone was hungry, so we had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe nearby. The memorabilia in these places is always nice, but the food was pretty bad, and slow. The low light of the trip for sure.

Petersen House - Lincoln's death bedroom

The Petersen House was interesting. The wasn't too much to see, but once again it was an experience to see the bedroom in which Lincoln spent his final hours and then died. After having been shot in the theater, it was deemed too far to move Lincoln back to the White House (which isn't all that far away), so he was moved into this private house across the street.

An unexpected addition to the day was a side trip to the American Girl store in McLean VA. Grace has been very much into her American Girl dolls recently, and there isn't an AG store in our area. Since we were in another major city, she asked Mom to look up whether there was a store in DC, and the one in VA was not that far out of our way for the drive home, so we made the stop. We ended up getting McKenna (the gymnast doll) because of Grace's interest in gymnastics, especially now that the Summer Olympics are on. This was probably the highlight of the trip for her.

After getting the doll, we were back on the road, and home by about 6:30 after an uneventful drive.

DC really is a great place to visit, and something we have neglected over the years. There is so much to see, and we barely even scratched the surface. With kids in tow, I don't think we even did a comprehensive visit to the sites we went to, but that is to be expected I guess. Going in the heat of the summer is not the best time, but it is when the kids are out of school and is easier to manage. With so much left to see, I wouldn't mind going back next year, and I hope we will.

Washington DC - Day 1

Saturday July 28, 2012

My wife and I have been trying to decide on some things we could do over the remainder of this summer to get out of the house with the kids for a couple of days here or there. One of the things we had discussed was sightseeing in Washington DC. I was a little put off by the idea of it being about a thousand degrees and humid there at this time of year, but that was balanced by being anxious to get back and see some of the sights. I don't think I have been there in about 30 years, other than driving through (or around) on the way to somewhere else. We decided that it was close enough to do a simple weekend trip, leaving Saturday morning and coming back Sunday afternoon. This had the advantage of both not requiring a vacation day as well as being a cheap trip, requiring only one night in a hotel.

Capitol and torn-up Mall

We left home at 8:45am after a leisurely wake up, and hit very little traffic on the way south. We did 95 south as far as Baltimore and then the Baltimore Washington parkway between Baltimore and Washington. We crossed into DC on 50 west almost exactly two hours after leaving home, and pulled into the Grand Hyatt at 10th and H street at 11:20. Check in was 3pm but they had a room ready for us, so we dumped our luggage and went up the Grand Club on the top floor for a quick snack. Part of the overnight package that Amp had signed us up for was use of the Club, and the kids thought the idea of free snacks/drinks/desserts, etc, whenever they wanted them was one of the highlights of the trip.

The three main things that we wanted to see were the Smithsonian American History museum (for all but especially me), the Smithsonian National Air and Space museum (for all of us), and the International Spy museum (for the kids). The hotel was in a terrific location, being only about a 10 minute walk from everything (Capitol, Mall, White House, and all the museums). The American History museum was picked as first up, as it was a short walk south, and shouldn't be too bad a walk despite the mid 90's temperatures and awful humidity. The national museums are all free, so it was just a question of showing up and getting in line to get in.

Another thing that I had looked at before leaving home was where there might be easily do-able geocaches in the area we would be in, and there were many, with the Mall being littered with Virtuals. I would be happy if I could get just a couple. The first attempt at one would be as we walked past Ford's Theatre (the site of the Lincoln assassination). Ford's Theatre turned out to be just around the corner from our hotel, but we couldn't get the required information, as we would need to get into the building or do more investigating than we wanted to take the time for then.

There was a brief wait in the heat outside the American History museum, but it was well worth it. This was a place I could have spent much more time in than we did, with the kids' patience wearing a little thin by the end. Among the highlights for me were the actual Star Spangled Banner flag, and a wide variety of American Revolution and Civil War artifacts.

We then took a cab back to the hotel to freshen up and get a snack before heading back out to the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. I had been to this museum a couple times before, but it is still fun to see, and the planes and space artifacts were of more interest to the kids than the previous museum had been. I am still amazed that people would have gone into space in those tiny little capsules with such primitive looking controls and electronics. [Favorite pics from these two museums will be in following posts]

Dinner at Cure

I got my first DC cache, a virtual right outside the Air and Space museum door, and then we planned to walk the Mall a little for some sightseeing, but they were doing construction and the whole area around where we were was torn up and fenced off. Instead, we hailed a cab and had ourselves driven around past the White House on the way back to the hotel.

Dinner was at a restaurant called Cure Bar and Bistro in the hotel, and it was absolutely fantastic.

The kids wanted to get the dessert at the Grand Club rather than at the restaraunt, so we did that, and then made our way back to our room to watch some of the Summer Olympics on TV before calling it a night. It was a long and busy (and hot!) day, but a very good one. Tomorrow's plan is to see Ford's Theatre and the International Spy Museum for the kids before heading home.

Warlord Games - A Minor Rant

I'm not sure if this is a minor rant, or more of an observation...

Warlord Games have certainly made their presence felt in the wargaming community over the last year or so, with the release of rules books Black Powder, Hail Caesar, and most recently Pike and Shotte. Being the unrepentant rules collector that I am, I had bought the first two, read through them and thought they sounded interesting (without ever having actually played them). I didn't yet own P&S, and when my friendly local game store (FLGS) sold the copy they had, I decided to order one directly from Warlord Games. They are based in England, and the shipping time of "four weeks to the rest of the world" didn't really scare me, as they are setting a low expectation that I fully expected them to exceed. Which they did, taking about 2 weeks to get the rules here along with a box of plastic English Civil War Royalist infantry. And that's where the rant/observation comes in...

I have always had an interest in the English Civil War (the 1640's one...) but have never collected any figures for it. With the rules on the way, I decided to buy some of the Warlord Games ECW plastic figure sets to work on as the mood strikes. The FLGS stocks some plastic historical stuff amongst the mountains of Games Workshop and Flames of War, and some boxes of WG ECW were on the shelf. So I pretty much bought them out, buying one each of Royalist and Parliamentarian cavalry, as well as a Parliamentarian infantry box to go with the Royalist one that would be arriving in the mail. I thought it impressive that they had a pretty good range of plastic kits for Royalists, Parliamentarians (and Scots Covenanters), and supplemented the plastic kits with a wide range of metal figs as well.

Then I began assembling the figures.

I did one of the cavalry boxes first, and they were nice. Then I began assembling the other cavalry box, and everything looked really familiar. Upon closer inspection, it turns out that they looked familiar because they are exactly the same kit. They are the same exact sprues in different boxes with a different one page insert. At this point I was slightly disappointed.

Then I took a closer look at the two infantry boxes. And it's the same thing. Identical kits in different packaging with a different one page insert. At this point I was kinda annoyed.

I completely understand that in this period, the only real difference would be in how you paint the figures, so there is no real need to have separate kits... but packaging them as if they are different seems misleading to me. After seeing this with the cavalry and infantry, I went back and looked at pictures in the P&S rulebook and on Warlord's own website, and it seems obvious that the Scots Covenanter range is also not a separate range - as far as I can tell from the various pictures, the only difference in the Scots plastic kits is making sure you use the classic Scots-looking hats when building the figures.

So as far as the plastic kits goes, it doesn't seem like Warlord has an extensive range, it seems like Warlord has one range that they slap in a bunch of different packaging.

At the end of the day, does it really matter? No. Does it affect whether I will continue to support their products in the future? Of course not. But I think they would be better served if they followed the lead of other figure makers (i.e. the Perry's American Civil War kits) and simply label their product as "English Civil War Cavalry", "English Civil War Infantry", etc..., and note that they contain the components necessary to build whatever army you choose.

That would seem more honest to me. Don't pretend to be something you aren't. There's no need for it...

English Civil War - Royalist Cavalry

Royalist "blue coat" cavalry - front

This is the first unit of English Civil War troops I have painted, and the first Warlord Games product unit that I have completed. As noted in an earlier post, there are advantages to plastic kits, and in this case, that is mainly in the variety of heads and hats that you can put on the 12 cavalry figs that come in the box. For a basic assortment of horses and bodies, the various sword and pistol arms, along with the heads, give a good variety of different poses. The figures themselves are good quality, with adequate detail, and are easy to paint.

To paint this unit, I did a slight variation on the method described earlier on my experiment with painting a "Rider of Rohan" Lord of the Rings fantasy figure. Without going into great detail, this was to block out the basic colors, wash the figure with a brushed-on coat of Army Painter "strong tone" (aka Minwax), spray it with matte varnish to knock down the gloss, and then do some simple highlighting to brighten the colors back up. Much of my painting over the last bunch of years has been medievals, so much so that I always really enjoy working on something that has some uniformity to it and can be at least somewhat assembly-lined.

Royalist "blue coat" cavalry - rear

As usual, basing still to be completed...

Ottomans

This picture shows a few odds and ends for my medieval Ottomans; a unit of heavy infantry, a mounted leader and a mounted flag bearer. More of these are on the painting table at the moment. These were easy figures to paint as they are covered mostly in armor.

The opponents for these will be my Hundred Years War armies, which can serve as western Europeans circa the battle of Nicopolis. I have plenty enough of those.

Desert Scenery - Buildings

Another simple project that I was able to get through quickly was to paint the accumulated backlog of 15mm desert buildings I have picked up here and there at conventions over the past couple of years. I think every con recently has had me come home with a few more of these, and I finally reached the tipping point to get them done. These were a satisfying little project as painting buildings is a quick dry brushing exercise. A brown or black undercoat and a few increasingly lighter dry brushed layers over top, and these were all done in about an hour. (The figures and palm trees were just thrown down around the town for the picture)

Italian Wars - Gendarmes

My early renaissance armies for the Italian Wars at this point consist of half a dozen units of landsknechts (pike, halberd and arquebuss) and four artillery bases. Painting the beginnings of some cavalry to go with them has been fun. You can really go over the top with these figures, which I have not done here, but may get more adventurous in the future with the colors and patterns. The figures are Old Glory 25's.

Vampire Counts - Crypt Ghouls

I've been painting a pretty good amount over the last month or so, but I have been very lax about posting anything. I took a handful of pictures of samples of what I have been working on, and will put up a few separate posts today.

First up - fantasy stuff. This is somewhat rare for me, but as I indicated previously, I admire the Games Workshop / Citadel miniatures for what they are, and like painting something completely different every now and then. This is a unit of 10 crypt ghouls for my probably-never-to-be-completed-or-used-for-anything Vampire Counts army. These were also an opportunity for me to try some different techniques. Because of the sickly green tone I was going for, I primed these with "necrotic flesh" light green spray primer, washed them with several different shades of darker greens and browns, and then painted some detail over top of that (mainly the white bone). These went quickly, and proved to be a very efficient way to plow through this unit. I like the result very much for these rank-and-file troops. After taking the picture I cleaned up a few more details, and still need to finish the bases, but these are substantially done.

One comment on plastic kits in general, versus the metal that has been standard in our hobby for a very long time: these things take a lot of time to prep for painting. Metal figs hold fine detail much better, are quicker to prep, and have that "heft" in the hand that I miss with plastic. The plastic takes a lot more time to clean the mold lines properly, and there is more assembly. The upside is that with a relatively small range of starting components, the ability to interchange heads, arms, legs, weapons and accessories means that a wider variety of figures can be made compared to metal. Good, bad or indifferent, more and more manufacturers and ranges are moving this way, so I guess I'd better get used to it.

July 3rd

3:45pm...

149 years ago at this moment, the last shattered survivors of the failed Pickett-Pettigrew-Trimble charge would have been making their way back across this open field, singly and in small groups, effectively ending the Battle of Gettysburg. Many thousands of their comrades would be dead, wounded or captured, ending the 3 bloodiest days in American history.

It is good to remember.