Pot98apouri

 Fingers have been pointed at the lack of wargaming content hereabouts. The natural response to that would be to publish (yet) another post on some random other subject, but I shall not stoop to that. (Although stay tuned for an entirely non-wargaming Question and frankly not many Answers session tomorrow.) Instead, let us consider developments in what, you will recall, the Economist described as 'a good hobby for an anxious time'.

Well, and obviously, I haven't got any myself, otherwise I would have written about it already. In common with a number of other bloggers I posted to say that I had received my copy of 'Infamy, Infamy' and implied that I would try it out and/or review it and then post again. In common with many of those other bloggers, I haven't done either. I therefore broke my recent habit and bought a copy of the July/August issue of Wargames Soldiers and Strategy, which carries a review therein. I haven't read it yet, but when I do you know that you can rely on me to post about it here.

Not reading wargames magazines and the lack of shows to attend means that I am sadly off the pace in understanding what's hip and happening. It would be nice if I could rely on the blogs which I read to keep me abreast of things, but disappointingly they do tend to wander off topic rather a lot, writing about walking, swimming, cycling and suchlike nonsense. In any event, I was surprised, but intrigued, to come across a reference to Wofun Games. Firstly, that's a terrible name, and the full name - World of Fun Games - is even worse. However, I did find the concept interesting. What they do, as you probably already know, is produce plexiglass flats for a number of different periods. For at least some of those periods the figures are based on drawings from the range of Peter Dennis Paper Soldiers books published by Helion. It may be that, like me, you have looked at those books and asked yourself "Can I be arsed to photocopy, cut out and mount all these?" and then, also like me, replied in the negative. Well, now you don't have to, all you have to do is put your hand in your pocket. I confess to being tempted by one of the periods available, although not tempted enough to actually do anything about it.

A mere seven years ago, I heralded the imminent arrival of new set of rules for horse and musket sieges, called Vauban's Wars. Following an astonishingly short development programme they are to be published next month. I am quietly confident that a set will find its way to Ilkley, hypocentre of wargaming in the lower Wharfe valley, and the Peninsular war would appear to be an obvious setting for giving them a try. From what I have seen so far, I would imagine that there will be many elements which will be transferable to other periods. And, as regular readers will know, I have a shedload of equipment for medieval sieges. All I need is something to besiege.

Which seems an appropriate place to put a photo showing current progress on what is turning into the most expensive toy castle in the world. Spraying is slow at the moment, because being the English summer it rains most days. However, designs are in place for the castle which will sit in one corner of the town above (you can see one piece of wall towards the top right of the picture), so the project is still very much moving forward.