Personal update

The best laid plans, as they say...

Currently 100 miles from home looking after mum because her full-time carer (dad) is in hospital. Wandering the labyrinth of NHS, carers, occupational therapy etc. If you don't support the NHS' right to work to rule (it's not actually a strike) for better pay and conditions, come live my life for the last week and then see what you say.

Starting the year with the best intentions re blogging, Dux etc, but... evidently the world is conspiring against me.

Pro tip for those of you with elderly relatives - when they say "there's no need to visit, we're fine, and anyway, COVID"? Don't necessarily believe them. We could have prevented this if we'd done so six months ago.

Still chairman...

...as no bigger mugs have turned up.

15mm Mediterranean village

I fell over this just after Christmas, which is the reason for the question as to whether anyone would be willing to ship it from the US for me, as for Brexit reasons (spit) they won’t ship to the Uk. 

From Things From The Basement, LLC - https://www.thingsfromthebasement.com/store/p807/15mm_Mediterranean_Village_-_Complete_Set.html

Books! ACW books to be precise.

Had a wee binge in the surprisingly cheap end of eBay for some light reading; these three plus an Osprey that’s still in the post came in at under £30 total. 

And our son and heir was awake enough to catch the postman while we were up at my parents in Hull, so they were waiting on my armchair when we got back, along with some freshly lasered MDF from Empires of War and Sarissa. Of which more when I’m not so damn tired. 

ACW related listening

As I have a stack of Warlord Games Epic ACW for later in 2023, I've been listening to assorted podcasts on the historical aspects of the conflict, its causes and aftermath. Current listening is a series of Yale lectures on the subject...

Back from Biggleswade...

...where I have met up with Martin from Cheshunt Wargames Club, and exchanged drinking vouchers for many pieces of metal and plastic, as well as 12 TSS tiles.

The most important bits of this are four Jeff Wayne style Martian tripods in reasonably large scale.

The club (well, it's stored in my workshop) have a 18' roll of 2m wide blue lino.

Guess what we're planning for a show game :D

Today's update and a favour...

First Wednesday of 2023, so it's a paint and natter session at the Mill House. Major bit of progress for today was acquiring four lengths of 8'x1' shelving, and having AndyM (who is much better with power tools than I) fit two of them over the workshop bench and hot wire cutter. 

(The other two are awaiting being cut to add six more shelves to two of the bookcases in the studio.)

The favour - is anyone I know coming over from the US soonish and would be willing to take delivery of and bring a smallish parcel (a bunch of MDF buildings) over with them? (I have a supplier who won't deliver to the UK, and the likes of Shipito are a bit pricey.)

First club night of 2023

An interesting mix of games down the club last night. I wound up playing “Terraforming Mars“, AndyM being one of the two club members who acquired it over Christmas (in addition, DanR has merely borrowed my copy for a week to see if his family like it). It’s all Adie’s fault, who has had it and several expansions for a while and encouraged people to play it  

We also had Bolt Action, Star Wars Legion, some 20mm ww2, Pikeman’s Lament, Warlords of Erewhon and Battlegames In Middle-Earth. Not a bad mix for a relatively under attended (by 2022 standards anyway) evening. 

In other news, my hobby spending for the year currently runs to 4 assorted books off eBay (more of those when they arrive), and an agreement to meet up and buy a not insignificant collection of painted stuff on Thursday lunchtime. Some of the latter will wind up in a club show game probably not until 2024, but it was an opportunity not to be passed by (honest, dear). 

There's less here to do than I thought...

It's probably a sad indictment of how long this has taken that my regular process when picking up the Dux Compendium after a break is to read right the way through the current draft and take notes/make a todo list. Kind of fresh eyes probably don't hurt, to be fair.

It both amuses me greatly and pains me that this is the first time I've added the words "Britanniarum", "playtest" and "Lardies" to my spellchecker on this Mac (which, admittedly, I've only had for 2 years). I suspect there'll be more to come. [Ed: "warband", "foederati", "wargame" (!!!), "Cartimandua", "shieldwall"]

<wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey dissolve effect>

OK. Some minor "how did that ever get past" fixes done, as well as once again curing the inevitable yet inexplicable way the document formatting mysteriously changes when left alone. 

I have a to-do list. It's not actually that long, and only one of the bits is scary :D

ACW Rules. Which do you prefer?

I'm resisting the temptation to actually count the pile of shame (or as Jeffrey Knudsen puts it, the Cabinet of Temporal Insufficiency), but I have just done the maths on the two ACW starter sets - that's 12 Union and 12 Confederate sprues in each box, each of which has one commander, 4 gun crew and a gun and ten stands of 10 infantry (which double ranks 2 to a base) That's not counting the box of metal cavalry, ditto of zouaves and dismounted cavalry. That's over 5000 figures, by my reckoning. 

Eep!

I console myself with the thought that a smallish action probably needs about 150-200 on a side, and they are easy to block paint - after all they come in blocks! It's less scary if you call it 500 stands of infantry, I suppose :D

Anyway. A question for my readers: what are your preferred ACW rules? Particularly looking for things around Black Powder scale, so 3 bases per unit (they're 60x20mm bases), and with some measure of friction. I know Epic ACW is intended for 5 bases/regiment, but that gets kind of big on a 6' x 4'.

Currently I have:

• Black Powder
• Altar of Freedom (on its way)
• Pickett's Charge (just arrived)
• On to Richmond

I know there's Fire and Fury, and Longstreet, out there. Any other thoughts?