His little chronicle, his memories, his reason

"Have common sense and stick to the point" - W. Somerset Maugham

There has been a request for less introspection fuelled by advancing years and heartache, and more posts about wargaming. Fair enough, although I must mention that I had a really lovely day on my sixtieth birthday, the Misses Epictetus taking me to Whitby, a place where astonishingly I had never been despite living in Yorkshire for the last twenty years.

So, wargaming then. Firstly, there has been some. We finished the Seven Years War battle from the previous week. James may write it up in due course, but I'm not going to report anything further myself, beyond saying that it must be a candidate for the most one-sided game that I've ever played in; quite astonishing. Some of the rules changes are here to stay, some aren't. It seems that James is planning on doing a Seven Years War game at Derby in October, so no doubt everything will be revisited anyway. We reassemble in the wargaming annexe this Wednesday for some To the Strongest!. Tempted though I am to refight Tewkesbury yet again, it's actually going to be a Romans vs Celts game featuring for the first time both the crap chariots and the Hamian archers.

In addition there has actually been quite a lot of progress in the Great War project. Three second hand Ospreys have been received, read and digested:

• The British Army in World War I (2) The Western Front 1916-18
• German Stormtroopers 1914-1918
• The German Army in World War I (3) 1917-18

I enjoyed the first and third of those, but the second is hampered by dull illustrations and dodgy politics. Interestingly it doesn't subscribe to what seems to be the otherwise generally accepted line that German tactics weren't any better than those of the Entente by the end of the war. I also bought the Two Fat Lardies scenario book, Stout Hearts & Iron Troopers. I have already painted three quarters of the British required for the first scenario so have turned my attention to the Germans. I have previously explained the paucity of ordinary German riflemen available in plastic, so I have been having a tour of the available metal options and have placed orders with Lancer Miniatures, Tumbling Dice, IT Miniatures and Early War Miniatures, although not for Germans in the last case. I passed on Irregular Miniatures because they don't do late war and are in any case rather on the small side. The Lancer and Tumbling Dice have arrived and, together with a selection from Emhar and Revell are being painted. The various greys, browns and khakis of the First World War fall smack in the middle of the range in which I am colour blind and I have therefore taken the easy route and gone for Vallejo German Uniform as the main shade. Also acquired have been some British rifle grenadiers and some unpainted shell holes in thermoformed plastic. I'm not sure how I shall present them on the tabletop. They're fairly solid, but could probably do with being based; the question is really whether to put them on hexes or not.