COMMERCIAL PLUG: This is one of the rare times I advertise a product, but it’s one I think you may all find useful. It’s one of my own products too. So without further ado gentlemen, I am proud to announce the start of S.N.A.F.U, my own range of very high quality static grass. SNAFU is the new range of static grass from Conflict In Colour. It comes in sizes from 0.5mm to 4mm and is currently available in 15 varieties. This static grass id high quality and is now used exclusively on all Conflict In Colour painting commissions. If you’ve seen my N gauge layouts and our 6mm and 15mm wargames basing, that's the 2mm and it’s just the ticket. We have ‘tones’ which are straight, single shade fibres and ‘blends’. The tones are great if you want to experiment with your own custom mixes (although we use ‘tones’ on most of our basing) and the blends are ready to go ‘stock flock’ for those of you who like the traditional shades. We have some useful colours such as white in 0.5mm wh...

I'd like to start this little ramble, by thanking those of you who commented on yesterday's post or contacted me privately to offer your thoughts and condolences. Every one was appreciated and helped me through the day, which despite my determination to work as usual, still ended up with my going to pieces a few minutes after I put my brushes away for the day. Anyway, I was mulling over things somewhat and I related to my wife how, at aged 15 I'd completed a complete 15mm army in a single 24 hour period, to a competent standard, and was marvelling at how the hell I managed it. In the mid 80s we had a 'pop up store' run by John Armatys (may his rules ideas and postcards to write them on never dry up) and Roy Gunson as part of the 'Dodo Publications' wargames empire which was a force majeur in Sheffield, I can tell you. Every Monday evening for a few hours, Roy's brother's lawnmower shop (yes that's right) became the Dodo showroom and we co...

How many of us of a certain age, sit back and think about how our parents fitted into the picture as we found this rather arcane pastime. I think there was generally a sense of genuine bamboozlement, curiosity and in some instance a fear that their offspring had stepped into a world of occult peril and were selling there tender young souls to the powers of darkness. My first encounter with gaming (beyond the traditional Airfix soldiers and marbles method of combat resolution) was whilst I was being dragged around town during 1981 by my Mum & Nan, something that kids seem to have to endure much less these days. For the purposes of saving my fingers for the rest of this post, I'll let my book pick up the story for a little while 'In 1981, during one of the school holidays at the cooler end of the thermometer, I was making the weekly pilgrimage to Hopkinson’s, a traditional floor to ceiling type of toy and model shop in the city centre. It was an Aladdin’s Cave for the t...

Egad! It's been a hot day... Still, there was to be no slacking of standards and although my two sets of 3-piece tweeds are with the tailor at present being tweaked after their initial outings, I opted for a smart casual combo of linen button down, dark denims, blue hushpuppies and a rather nice tweed and silk weskit in a a colour I would not normally buy in tweed, a smart blue herringbone with catching pink and ochre check, set off by vintage H L Brown gold Omnicron pocket watch and gold chain, and a rather dandy gold, pink and blue silk pocket square. Casual,cooler than full battledress and fitting for a show such as Partizan... I was on a mission today to crack on with my plans for butting no more figures after my 50th birthday in August, so it was over to the evergreen Dave Thomas for a 150 or so packs of Perry ECW and then over to Foundry for 4 packs of figures. These will form the core of my planned Royalist and New Model forces an another 70 or so packs are on...

SELL/TRADE: Painted 28mm 16th Century collection. 486 infantry 170 cavalry 7 guns 854 piece equivalents - All metal £2100.00 Or I would trade for a painted ECW collection of 600 pieces or more. No plastics! CAN DELIVER TO PARTIZAN, THIS SUNDAY (20th)

Hi ho! I recently purchased a copy of the Judge Dredd board game which, is in my humble opinion, one of the finest boardgames from the Golden Age. I paid a premium for it, but as I said, it's a good game, and I'm not the church mouse I was when I was younger, so a little luxury is not going to case me any guilt. This game and I go back a long way; right back to the day of release in fact, when I ran the game in the Sheffield store where I was something of a permanent fixture. I once had to be broken from the window on a cold October morning as I had my nose pressed up to the glass and my drool froze solid. Now, the modern enthusiast, intent on grabbing themselves some gaming history will buy the game on eBay and then brag how despite being 31 years old, they have had it since it was released in 82 and will proudly present a 2nd edition of the game. The rules are the same, the overall production is as good as the first, but it is different in a glaringly obvious way. Two w...