It's pretty well known, that I embrace the 'go big or go home' ethos when it comes to wargaming. I'm also not the kind of person who buys armies incrementally. No, I go into it full-on and buy all the lead in one fell swoop, so a project will average £2500 for the figures alone. Now, let me say that several companies I deal with are generous , offering discounts for bulk (not to mention that fact that I am a bona fide business) and I will, where practicable poay them by the least cost-incurring method. Now, this week, I proposed an order with a weel known company at the 'boutique' price bracket and was informed that some of the 3rd party items they stock were going out of stock but if I was willing to accept some substitutions the order would be no problem. I agreed. Now, some 3 days later, I was contacted to be told that it was not possible to fulfil the order in full, it being about 20% less than I needed, and could I get back to them as to whether I would li...

    It's been a while, but I finally think I'm coming out of a fog of indifference if not denial regarding pike & shot gaming. It's old news about the causes of my decision to turn my back on the first period I ever really got my teeth into, so I'll not belabour you with a recap, but I really, really never thought I'd rediscover that love. So, now I find myself like a dog returning to it's own vomit (a wise action in my opinion - always check what's come up or gone down) throwing myself ever more enthusiastically into the pike and shot era. But why? I hear you say... Well, there we were schlepping and schmoozing around The Other Partizan the other week, I being focussed on looking at AWI stuff and the Memsahib collecting the usual tariff of cuddles from old friends. But then, disaster struck... Firstly, I ambled over to my fellow countryman and wargaming standard bearer, Ken Reilly, A.K.A 'The Yarkshire Gamer' who had his Great Italian Wars stuff...

 Well, this week has been a busy, busy one workwise, but it's also seen me get some serious lead added to the collection. Firstly, I received the first of what will be many, many figures from the hands of Neil Shearwood, in the shape of 2 squadrons of Oxford Blues and a couple of generic brigade command stands for my Williamite Wars collection. Although I show them here in their gloss state (something I always do) they are destined to to be matte to match the rest of the collection: Once the memsahib bases them, they wil join the ranks out in the games room. My plan is to periodically add to this collection as broadly speaking, it's plenty large enough for a 6 player game, already. I'm commissioning Neil to paint around 800 AWI next, and they will be gloss varnished as I think they'll really 'pop' and have a wonderfully old school vibe to them, like the stuff I saw in the magazines and at shows in my youth. Then, yesterday, my sworfd & sorcery painter 'B...

 A few years ago, I was taking an interest in railway modelling, to give me a break from wargames miniature painting at weekend, and I noticed that you'd find 'serious' (are there any other type?) railway buffs, running trains which were totally inappropriate for the layout they were on. Now without boring you as to reasons why this was sometimes OK, the general statement was 'RULE 1 applies": RULE 1 My Layout My Money My Toys Now this was a surprising yet excellent sentiment to have. Alas, it seems to be a standard we 'serious' wargamers often fail to grasp firmly by the staff and wave enthusiastically. Alas, we are generally more likely to become so focussed on button counting, that we lose sight of those things which drew so many of us. Our collective functional autism kicks in and we often build a collection which in most cases will never be used for a display game, depicting a specific battle, during which time period, some of the more aestheticaly sat...