My Latest Additions

Hi all,

Well, it's been a turbulent week as two of the five dogs here at Fackham Hall, had a 48 hour virus, which meant that at one stage we had the washer going for ten hours straight. And let me tell you, that until you have seen sadness in the face of a Scottish Terrier, you have not seen sadness...

So, it's been a very busy and very tiring week as I rounded out the working month against what was already a shorter month than the average.

However, I did manage to pick up a few things this week to expand the collection ahead of the return of friends and the commencement of the gaming in a big way (fingers crossed).

Firstly, as you may know, I am not a slave to scale historically. True, I did fall into the 28mm only trap in the mid years of my hobby as it collided with the 'Chequebook Wargaming' crowd I grew up in awe of, but in the last year or so, I've had conversations with Roger, my brother Andy and a few others of a certain vintage and we all agreed that there are (as we already really knew but were to ashamed to admit) scales for certain things that 'just looked right'.

This, along with the rethinking of what made a good looking game if you discounted the simple expedient of cramming as much as possible on a table, led us along interesting paths.

If you take a basic principle that games (unless displays or larger 'weekenders') need to manageable in size whilst giving the feel of having a reasonable command at your fingertips, you have a good starting point. Take a fixed table size as a template of say 8x4 as a benchmark to start with and then consider what you want to play. Fantasy looks best in 28mm  and to be honest, I am a slave to large armies here, but that's because I am odd like that.

I was reminded of a quote from Pete Berry that for every Marston Moor there were many more smaller ECW battles, and as I am a big fan of the ECW (even more than Renaissance) as had Roger, we'd mulled ECW, in 28mm. Then we re-thought it and decided that a couple of brigades of foot per side with horse, guns and dragoons would give a nice sized game, with plenty of options and also acknowledge Mr Berry's 1986 statement.

Now, being me and not really wanting to paint at weekends, I went in search of painted ECW, and was offered 500 or so painted models - BINGO!

Aha, but they were 40mm...

A few chats with Rog' and enquiries as to price and a deal was struck which worked out less than buying 28mm bare metal and almost totally met the stated requirements in one fell swoop.

40mm we feel actually takes ECW to a whole new level of visual spectacle with 800 or so models looking absolutely stunning.

So, here's what I bought:

Later in the week, an online acquaintance of mine, Simon Howard decided to part with hi old school Chaos Warriors, and as the price was around £3 per casting, we cut a deal:




On Friday, I was in Buoyant mood and bagged 20 vintage White Dwarf mags (40-60 in a binder) for £31.99.



And then, I bagged one of the Chaos Warriors which you could only get by collecting tokens from the backs of blister packs. It cost me £15 but as I have only ever seen two of these, I'm happy:



So, all in all, I'm really pleased with the stuff I've acquired, and I am in a much better frame of mind than this time last week thanks to Roger setting me straight and getting a few nights of reasonably good sleep.