Happy New Year 2020!

Happy New Year, everyone!  I hope you and your friends and families all have a wonderful 2020 and thank you all for following this blog over the past year, and indeed the past decade.

As you'll have seen, over the last year my blogging has become less frequent - which is a great shame as it is something I definitely enjoy.  No doubt it's because - like many of you - I've been more active on Twitter than Blogger.  And the distractions of modern life, family, work and commuting have, again, been, present.

But, all this being said, I looked back at my blog over the past few days and enjoyed re-reading some of the nonsense I've been posting over the past year, a great deal of which has been about the fictional town of Laarden, set in the late seventeenth century Spanish Netherlands.

The good news for 2020 is that I don't intend anything different.  Shock... surprise... bewilderment!  No major announcements, or New Year's resolutions, Sidney?  No suggestions of any new periods, or changes of social media?  No, dear readers, none at all.

OK...OK.... I do promise to try and blog here more often - but that's only the softest of new Year's resolutions, I think.  But apart form that, I'd like to bring you more painting, figures, modelling and fiction from the strange, distant, through-a-glass-darkly world of 1688 Flanders.

So, with that in mind, perhaps this year you might: 

• come face to face with the fearsome Gendarmerie of Le Roi Soleil;
• trudge along the muddy roads of Flanders with a group of straggling soldiers;
• witness the miracle of Sint Jacobus' golden fishing net;
• inhabit the shadows of a town in darkness with a man who cannot be seen;
• trade and negotiate for lucrative tulip contracts on the Laarden bourse;
• discover the strange secret of a Prince of the Blood.

All that, dear readers, and much more nonsense besides...

A degree of this foolishness is being driven by Curt's Tenth Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, but hopefully this year's fun will stretch long past late March when the doors close on what will be another wonderful Challenge.

And, as this Blog has been going for almost a decade, since 26 January 2010 (..I know, how crazy is that?...), I'll be looking back at some of the past nonsense I've been posting here over the last ten years.

So plenty to look forward to in 2020, and (hopefully) something for everyone.

Happy New Year: Flemish Horse 1688, and New Year Plans

I realise that a fair few days have passed since the New Year began, but I’d still like to start this new year of posts on Roundwood’s World by wishing all readers, commentators, bloggers and followers a very happy, healthy and great New Year, 2018!

With that greeting completed, I’ve posted a few pictures below of some painting I’ve been doing over the Christmas and New Year period as part of Curt Campbell's fine Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge VIII, which I am participating in.

This first post covers some Flemish Horse from 1688, being the regiment of Pfilips de Vichet. The figures are mainly 25/28mm figures from Wargames Foundry, with a couple of Dixon Miniatures added (the standard bearer, and the equerry to Count de Vichet). The fine standard is from Flags of War.

I swapped out a number of horses from the Foundry Marlburian range and used Foundry ECW horses, which fit perfectly. I did not undertake much in the way of conversions, although I added green-stuff feathers for the regiment, and gave Count de Vichet a new sword arm which produced a more martial and inspiring pose on his rearing horse.

Although the figures are painted for my fictional Laarden project, set in 1688, I’ve tried to replicate authentic colours for the uniforms where possible. In this regard, I’ve used the paintings of Philips Wouvermans and David Teniers the Younger to try and get the colours and “feel” of the cavalry uniforms correct. Other details can be found in the excellent book, “Spanish Armies in the War of the League of Augsberg, 1688 – 1697”, now published by the Pike & Shot Society, which covers both Spanish armies and the Flemish, German and Walloon forces raised in the Spanish Netherlands.

I normally try and paint my own flags for units, but I decided against that here. This is mainly because the standards produced by Flags of War are so wonderful and easy to use, and partly because I was short of time for the Challenge submission!

As regards what’s going to be here on the blog in 2018, long-term readers will be wary of any of my predictions. Life in the guise of family, work and friends inevitably gets in the way of everyone’s hobby aims, and I’m no different. I am hoping to post a few more figures, research, book reviews and ideas for wargaming the second half of the seventeenth century on this Blog in 2018. I think that the second half of the seventeenth century is a wonderful period for wargaming and, with luck, the material I'm hoping to place here on the blog and in the linked Google Drive folders will be of interest to someone out there. 

There will also be more 2mm Thirty Years War material.  Curt and myself are continuing to play-test the rules, and I'm starting to prepare the additional figures I need to recreate Nordlingen 1634.

There’ll be some more posts in a day or so with some additional 25/28mm Laarden-related figures, so I very much hope you can join me for that.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

After a quiet 2015 on this blog, I’m hoping to offer you all a little bit more in 2016. No hugely ambitious plans (I’ve been there before!), but hopefully some more regular blogging.

After a long period of time wargaming the First World War (almost to the exclusion of other periods), one of the decisions I made in late Autumn last year was to move on to a different period for building up armies and terrain. I say “different” as the period is not really new to me – it’s more a case of returning to one of the periods of my wargaming roots, namely the late seventeenth century in Flanders, France and Germany.

With this in mind, I’ve had fun digging out units and figures over the past month or so, becoming reunited with some battalions I had forgotten about, and re-discovering a seventeenth century lead mountain which has not been added to since 2007!

Getting “back into” a wargaming period is also, I’ve found, a slightly strange experience.

I’ve found a couple of hundred unpainted figures, some old notebooks containing a half-finished campaign, lots of ideas written own and even a set of rules I had written and used just a couple of times.  A bit like walking into a house with the furniture covered in dust-sheets.  Everything is exactly where you left it – good memories, half-finished projects, jewels-in-the-crown, warts and all. 

Looking through what I have for the period is as if everything came to an abrupt stop in 2008, and was simply put away (which is pretty near the truth, as I moved onto other periods).

Picking up the reins again and taking stock of an old period is an interesting process. My main thoughts are - “how can I do it differently this time around”.  More to come on this in due course.

Alongside this transition (from an old period to a newer old period), there’s also the excitement of Curt’s Sixth Painting Challenge. Here’s my first entry, which Curt has entitled “The Satyr”, and is the for the "Nostalgia" themed-round. It looks back to the wonderful times of the 1980s and the “Talisman” board game, but you’ll perhaps also spot just a few hints of the seventeenth century creeping in …

A belated Happy New Year and the Analogue Hobbies Painting Competition

It’s almost, but not quite, too late to wish everyone a happy new year. So….Happy New Year to all the readers of this Blog! 

If Christmas passed quickly, New Year was a complete blur. What with family and friends visiting, entertaining my kids on holiday and a blur of painting for Curt’s Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge, I missed the chance of posting a traditional Happy New Year message on this Blog first of January.

But better late than never! I hope each and every one of you has enjoyed a wonderful start to the year, and that it continues long into the future!

So, with that message out of the way, how was my 2013 wargaming year? Very much the story of two halves, to be honest. Half of the year seemed to be filled with wargaming goodness: trips to wargames shows at Abingdon, Salute, Crisis in Antwerp, Blog-Con in Nottingham and Colours were very much the high points of my wargaming year, giving me the chance to catch up with people and try some new games. 

The other half of the year’s hobby plans were derailed by having the busiest working year for over five years. All good news in many ways, but definitely not great for wargaming.

As all of you will know, it’s difficult keeping a focus on hobbying when you’re very busy at work and family life is pretty hectic. There’s only so many hours in a day, after all. Now that’s not a complaint, although it can be a little frustrating sometimes. Part of the real pleasure of wargaming is planning, envisaging and (sometimes) day-dreaming about ideas and the next project. Not being able to embark on those projects can lead to a sense of frustration when there’s just not the time to start a project, or see it through to completion.

By the early autumn of 2013 I knew that almost all the targets I'd set for myself way back last January were not to going to be met. In a way that made the time I had hobbying, painting, gaming and convention-ing all the more precious, and I’m grateful for that. It also made me realise that instead of making any wild new year’s predictions for 2014, this January I'm just going to carry on where I left off last year before real life and work threw the wargaming train off the railroad.

I ‘m hoping to keep working steadily on the late Great War French project during this year. The Poilu are nearly done - just another 30 to do to make up the hundred I set out to paint at the start of last year. There's some support weapons to paint, then about 60 Tirailleurs Marocains and Tirailleurs Senegalais. And with half a dozen tanks, that's really about it for the French. 

Painting the last of the French figures is hopefully going to combine well with Curt's Painting Challenge. I've posted below the gas-masked Poilu which I finished around New Year’s Eve, and which I'd converted up way back in October. 

I'm now working on some veteran hardened infantry - the sort of grimy, rugged, indefatigable French infantry who utterly refused to be broken at Verdun. 

 
Aspirationally, I’d like to post more hand-outs and supplements on the Blog here. I've a slightly updated painting guide to the late war French as a result of experimenting over Christmas. I've also got a longer hand-out on French “Big Men” (using TooFatLardies' "Through the Mud and the Blood" rules) which I'll try and post here during next week.

One of my long term aims is also to post here a Verdun-related campaign background of the sort I prepared for some games at the St Albans Wargames Club in 2011 for re-fighting Passchendaele engagements. I've quite a bit of material for this, but it's a question of getting the time to put it together and play-test it. Hopefully this will be a post-Challenge project for the Spring of 2014. If that goes well, I'd love to follow that campaign background up with something similar for the Chemin des Dames campaign of April 1917, perhaps better known as the ill-fated “Nivelle Offensive”, taking the starting point the excellent “Prelude to Victory” by Sir Edward Spears. Thanks entirely to a very kind and generous gift from Blogger-Chum and all-round polymath, Jur de Jong (whose excellent blog I thoroughly recommend HERE) I have some superb material on the French tank forces of the Artillerie Speciale. The bravery of both sides in the Chemin des Dames campaign could do with a lot more coverage in English, and a number of the engagements make very game-able scenarios.

Reading the above, you might be puzzled at my earlier resolve not to make any predictions for the year......when I then proceed to set out some predictions and plans. Ah well, old habits die hard!

To finish up this time, I've also posted the pictures of the trio of war reporters that I painted for the first theme of Curt's Painting Challenge, being “non-combatants”. These were fun to do, and the Bicorne Miniatures range of war reporters in 28mm has a wonderful and unique charm. The middle reporter is a conversion from Melton Prior of the Boer War and Egypt, here translated to a French reporter covering front line action. I drew a complete blank trying to locate the names of any French reporters from the First World War who visited close to the front. If anyone has any details, or even ideas of where to look for more details of the French press generally in the Great War, I'd be really interested - feel very free to leave a comment below on this, or indeed any topic.

Next up, I'll post more images, including work-in-progress shots, from the Mata Hari figures which I posted this weekend for the second themed event in Curt’s Painting Challenge. Until then, keep well mes braves!