Failing eyesight...and hope!!

Hmmm... for the past 6 months or so I have been unable to do any painting of note at all. Why? Failing eyesight. Age catches up with us all, and for me the onset of presbyopia a couple of years ago has meant that seeing  anything close up has become more and more of a trial. I finally succumbed to the need for progressive lenses in my glasses in order to cope with daily life, but still found painting to be difficult. I considered getting special magnifying lenses for painting, and then.. a revelation: try painting in daylight!!!

I managed to move my painting table into a position next to a window, and.. fantastic. I have just been able to get back to painting some long suffering figures (some sample HaT WW1 German infantry.. sorry for the delay, HaT.. but at least I'm back!). That's a far cheaper solution than the dollar cost of magnifying lenses. 

The only down-side is that I used to paint in the evenings, after completing work for the next day etc. Now, painting time will be limited, but.. at least I can get back to completing armies.. oh, yes.. and starting new ones.

There's the British VSF army, the Semi-Historical Chinese HotT army (and the equivalent Chinese historical DBA army), the WW1 Russians, and Austro-Hungarians, the French League of Augsberg (they've only been waiting 7 years).. and then there's the...

Oh dear!!! But at least I can paint again.

Morphing DBA into HotT

Good friends Nick and Stan gave me a simple piece of inspiration on morphing my recently completed DBA Early German army into a HotT army.. and a 'gamer from Temuka (a town south of Christchurch here in New Zealand) kindly offered me a GW Dryad figure for a tree man hero (saving me the purchase of an entire box of 12 Dryads).

And so the initial morphing is completed:
9 x Warband
2 x Lurkers
1 x Hero

I think the army might need a little more mobility though (as does the DBA army) so some riders might well find their way onto the painting board sometime soon. The warband composition makes this quite different to any of the other four HotT armies completed so far, and brings with it its share of playing challenges. I think some war dog "beasts" might be suitably barbarian, but finding dogs in 20m is quite a challenge. Still, I'm not one to give up easily..... morphing is fun....

DBA EIR II/56

I added this little lot to my DBA collection a month or two ago, drawn from a larger DBM army (which frankly I don't use that often any more - well not at all, and yes I could use it for FOG, but haven't really taken too well to that either).

So I took the necessary stands from that larger DBM collection, and tidied them up a little. Here they are. Mostly foundry figures (so 25mm rather than 20mm), while the ballista is 20mm Irregular.

They make a nice opponent to the Early Germans I completed a few months ago. The scale difference is ok for us.

The other view of the Somme

All of my previous reading on the Somme (1916) has been totally Anglo-centric. I had read accounts of the British advances against German trenches, the fruitless 'battering' of those German lines with row upon row of British bodies, the allied successes in the south etc. This reading had shaped my entire perception of battles on the western front between 1914 and 1917.

And then I read "The German Army on the Somme, 1914-1916" written by Jack Sheldon. The book (published by Pen and Sword Publishing, 2005, ISBN 978 1 84415 513 2) gives an account of the gargantuan battles of the western front on the Somme from the German perspective, drawing from German unit and personal diaries. The insights that I gained from this book have been profound. The paradigm within which I think about those mammoth battles has been changed forever...

This was not some sort of battle in which fresh German troops emerged unscathed from deep dugouts to mow down row upon row of pristine British infantry. This was a battle of materiel in which human beings of all three nationalities were caught up. All suffered the inhumanity of battle, the inhumanity of man to man.

My enduring image is now not only that of British troops suffering in no-man's land, but also of German troops suffering under the often described British and French 'drum fire', artillery barrages of such intensity that men shivered in fear for day after day. I have wanted to type a quote from the book to show what I mean (despite the publisher's concerns about such activities.. such quotes could do nothing but promote the book to all serious students of the first world war), but I have struggled to decide which to type. I chose the following, knowing that in itself it cannot do justice to the book, nor to the experiences of the men whose words are printed there.

"After dawn, the artillery fire increased, peaking at about 8.00a.m. Enemy airmen flew low over us, machine-gunning the position and giving their hooter signals. One entrance to the dugout was crushed. The artillery fire continued relentlessly, high explosive being mixed with shrapnel fired by the flanking batteries. casualties were already considerable..... At about 1.00p.m. the second entrance to the dug out as crushed, so, for a time, I was cut off from the company. We worked with all our strength to open the entrance and succeeded."

And from another entry dated 12 December:

"The regiment has now been in the line without relief since 26th November. because of the adverse weather all types of colds, chills and gastro-intestinal illnesses have appeared. Despite every effort to improve the lot of the troops, it has proved impossible to counter these illnesses, or to prevent them from spreading. The freezing wet and cold weather, wet dugouts, work in flooded trenches with a mud a metre deep, extremely strenuous carrying duties to transport rations and trench stores......."

and so they go on.

These words from Professor Richard Holmes in thbe forward to the book:

"Jack Sheldon observes that the Allies did not succeed in breaking through on the Somme, nor did they destroy the morale of the German army. But he agrees that it was never the same afterwards, and quotes a Bavarian general who acknowledged that: "The monster of the modern overwhelming machine of war gobbled up our finest men". But in a sense to talk of victory and defeat is to miss the point. as this book makes so very clear. the Somme was a supreme test of human qualities, and the soldiers on both sides displayed them more abundantly than their political leaders deserved, or those who were not there could ever really recognise."

This is the other view of the Somme.

HotT Carnage.. and it certainly was!!!

It was Christchurch's first.. HotT tournament that is, and 8 layers gathered (it was meant to be 10, but 2 were unavoidable detained..). The tournament followed the Berkeley format, with 5 rounds of play during the day. The players and armies fighting it out for the 'Emperor Dragon' trophy were:

* Simon, Dwarves
* Nick, Mountain Indians
* Mark, Lost Worlds
* Kevin, Cavemen
* Gordon, Zulus
* Basil, Mediaeval
* Andre, Republican Indian
* Stan, Wood elf

These two photos from the day: some of the guys at play....



And the Lost Worlds army messing around with some Indians...



The games were exciting, many of them close calls, and the Gods were as fickle as you'd expect, coming and going as they saw fit. Notable for their absence were Dragons.. none to be seen in any army lists (no wonder they didn't appear on the table!!).

The overall winner of the tournament, and so holder of the "Emperor Dragon" trophy, was Basil (club president.. no connection there.. truly!!). The best concept army was won by Gordon with his Zulus (a close one, as Gordon vied with Kevin and his wonderful Cavemen for the prize).

Special mention of Simon who, despite only 3 games before the day, managed to finish first equal on tournament points. He lost to Basil on casualty count back. Well done Simon.

Kevin managed the record for the greatest casualty count in army points.. a hard general, but totally in character with his Caveman army theme. Kevin had also played very few games before the day.

Many thanks to the guys who played... as you'd expect the games were played with a great sense of sportsmanship - what else would you expect with great guys and a few games of HotT. Plenty of mayhem and fantasy worlds murder: HotT Carnage - it certainly was.

Finally thanks to the Christchurch Wargames Club for supporting the event.

You can find a lot more photos of the event here

Indians discover Lost World .. and destroy it!!!

The Indian Emperor's forces discovered a strange Lost World deep in the jungles. What would you do? Attack them of course.

And so it was, in an epic clash that saw a strange ape god (the subject of long lost Indian myth) lead never before seen dinosaur creatures and savage tribes people against Indian elephants and bowmen. The Lost Worlds tribes people invoked their God's presence early in the battle, and he swept down on the Indian flank supported by an oddly screeching flying pterosaur.

However. despite early successes destroying Indian riders, the Indian Hero general took the fight to these savage people and, supported by a behemoth elephant intent on squishing tribes people between his large toes, managed to destroy the very heart of this oddly assorted opposition.

The Lost Worlds right flank, composed of beasts and behemoth, never managed to make contact with the Indian tiger beasts that opposed them, and frantic attempts by the Lost Worlds shaman to cast strange and lurid spells on the Indian hero were to no avail.

Our evening had seen two games played, the first saw the Lost Worlds army decimate the Indians before their God had even deigned to make an appearance, but this second game was a different story.

Squishing spiders....

At last, the Spider army is finished.. a piece of inspiration really.. it needed a God, and who else but .... Spider man himself. So here he is in all his glory.. well, maybe not... as we shall see. Their first full game was against my son's Indian army... complete with beasts (those nice looking tigers), and lurkers (take a look at the amazing snakes further down the page.

The spider army composition for this game was:

* God (Spider man himself)
* A hero general (large spider)
* Another hero to keep him company (a second large spider.. hey. it's lonely work being a hero)
* Two lurkers
* Ten spider Hordes

It all started off well.. a good solid body of spider hordes in the centre, right flank protected by some woods with lurkers ... and the two heroes on the left flank.

Turn 2 the pip die rolled 6 and, guess what.. Spider man appeared. You can see him in the photos, on the left flank, ready to act in support with the two heroes. So the manouvring started.

Unfortunately that's as far as it got. Turn three, the pip die rolled.. ta da!!! .... a 1, and off he went again. It was really downhill from there. I tried to get stuck in, but lost both lurkers (Nick put his own two lurkers into the woods .... spiders versus snakes.. if you'd told me 10 years ago I'd be playing a game with that combination I'd never have believed you!!). I simultaneously tried to manouvre against the Indian left (beasts and behemoth) with the two heroes while pinning these from the front with the hordes, only to have my hero general ensorcelled by the Indian magician. It was just one of those nights.

To cap matters off the beasts and the behemoth managed to destroy more hordes than I could bring back, and that was the game. And by the way, this is not the easiest army to use when you are slightly arachnophobic....he! he!

The Indian behemoth went crazy, .. squishing spiders.. nothing more to say really.. but a great game filled with plenty of wonderful dramatic moments.