Well, the Jubilee holiday will see Roger and I face off with our ECW armies in the Rumpus Room.  I'm really looking forward to it, because there will be savage banter, truly gentlemanly dispute resolution, and the genuine pleasure of playing a game in the company of someone whom I respect on so many levels. Of course Roger will be joined by his youngest son, who has been bitten by the bug in what seems like the same way his father and I were in the 80s. He's a well mannered young man, as I would expect, but moreover he is being schooled on how to deal with older gamers - much older gamers - just as we had to learn back in the day. I can tell you from personal experience that this young man can get under your skin to the degree that you could snap a steel ruler over your knee. I approve of this, having been subjected to it at Christmas for 7 or 8 hours. As kids we were surrounded by highly motivated competition players, who didn't cut us any slack. We earned our chops, and

 Good morning, good morning... It's a heavy, heavy week at work and I have been spending 11 hours per day in my studio. It's Wednesday and I am absolutely wiped out. But, it pays the bills and funds the stupidly expensive addiction, I've had for over 40 years. As some of you may know, the man I consider my best friend or brother from another figure company (TM) lives a fair way from me, so we usually communicate through the day via email. But, for all that, the banter and discussions are just like the days when there was no internet, and bus fares were 2p in Sheffield. We discuss plans for armies, and over the last few years, we've increasingly gone along the track of each tackling a given period, with both sides. The other may decide to 'buy in', but it means that we actually cover more periods or, as in the latest round of our miniature military escalation, to cover either end of a given era. One thing that I have noticed, is that whilst we are both gadflies,

 Satanic Panic Miniatures has just announced a new range of Old School inspired Trolls in 28mm. As usual, they will be metal, but in a break from tradition, S.P are using a pre-order system. The first 25 people to place a preorder will be funding the master and production moulds and will get all 15 models for a stonking £85 plus postage. As the range will not be available until the Autumn in the store with a considerably higher price tag, this is a way for the dedicated Satanic Panic fan to grab a bargain. Check out the Satanic Panic Miniatures Facebook page for more details and to get in touch with S.P.  The 25 preorder limit is a firm one as is normal with S.P.  

 The last few days have been spent not working, which has been refreshing to say the least. I began the 4 day Easter break by cleaning out the studio and taking back control from the packages of work from clients which tend to line my benchwork. I've been so busy again this year that I have tended to just pop stuff down and not always in a tidy and ordered manner, which is not how I like to do things. Not at all! The weekend has been a couple of early morning trips to the Peak District, a very good Thai meal, an 80s film, and having three hyperactive grandsons over to watch 'Encanto' on Friday night. Yesterday afternoon and this morning will have been spent crunching numbers and figure codes for the forces at Culloden, but with the added fun of doubling the numbers of Jacobites, to also allow a more even fight. One of my main musings at present is adopting the use of the excellent WoFun perspex flat miniatures. Whilst I am luckily and thankfully able to bankroll pretty much

 I was in a store at the weekend, making one of those rare journeys outside which mean I have cabin fever or the need for a rare delicacy, marinated in obscure oils and spices. Anyway, the store in question stocks just about every paint range you could imagine apart from the classic enamels which were the paints du jour for those of us on the cutting edge of the 70s. I was wandering around and overheard a conversation between two of those flat-capped, skinny-jeaned types with beards, who were looking at several of these modern ranges, but discussing in earnest how they wanted to recreate the feel of old school painting with a handful of product lines which frankly would not have been invented. I mean invented, not just an unknown brand. The amount of bloody pointless materials they had between them, had me sniggering. There was a pointless array of products which promised this and that, but which at the end of the day were the same basic pigments in various dilutions and in some cases

 Good morning all, Following my previous notes on basing, it was pointed out that I had not broached the subject of 'square versus round', a perennial hot potato. Well, I can say conclusively that round is not an option, and that square sided movement trays for the same figures is a double 'no-no'. Argue with me not, because some things are instinctive. If you want to use some of your army for skirmish, then have a few singly based figures mixed into your units. It's cheaper and less faffy. 1. MDF movement trays double the height of your basing. 2. They add expense which could be spent on more toys. 3. They are an absolute pain to put together if like, me, the average army is 400-500+ Round bases really came into vogue with Warhammer 40K, because they were cheaper than the early hex bases they produced for the range (and which were nicer). With round bases you lose the easy identification at a glance of front, flanks and rear. They don't fit as snugly and secure

 Things are going to get very base in this post... Basing, it is something which can get gamers into an advanced state of frothery in short order, but for the life of me, I really don't understand why. When I started out, in the days when Clive Sinclair thought that pocket calculators were something special, I slavishly followed the prescribed base sizes for the various rules commonly played at SWS. In my defense, I was young, and when you are young, the precision and exactitude are one of the things (along with dice and strange shaped templates) that mark you out as different - yes, I know that talking to a girl about cataphracts, well, talking to a girl at all had the same effect, but that's not under debate here. As I got older, I started to realise that I increasingly moved in more circles than just SWS, (and as I have written before, by age 16 I was going to 6 different gaming clubs or groups in a week, playing all sorts of stuff) and so the idea of not being so hung up wi