Due to the marriage of some very good friends, this week has very much been devoted to getting the clan ready for the occasion.  For most of the family the question is, “do I look good in this?” to which I answer “Absolutely fantastic!” for me it is “Can I fit in this?” and if the answer is yes then I am good to go!  I can report that we had a fantastic time indeed even though we were by no means in the centre of any attention. Being in the vicinity of Twickenham I wanted to go to the Twickenham Museum and the “Footballer of Loos exhibition”.

Footballer of Loos

From the museums webpage: The first Big Push of World War One took place on 25^thSeptember outside the small mining town of Loos in northern France. It was kicked off with a football by rifleman Frank Edwards. After the war Frank came to live in Twickenham and died in Whitton in 1964. During his lifetime he was known as The Footballer of Loos. The story of Frank’s exploit is told by way of an action tableau accompanied by artefacts and information about the Battle of Loos and is set against a striking backdrop painted by local children.  Our community audio drama The Greater Game about Football on the Front in First World War …. To listen or download go to The Greater Game.

The actual football that was kicked about by the London British Rifles appeared on the Antiques Roadshow a few years back. Here is a short article about the programme.

Anyway, I was prepare and ready for it, but we ran out of time so perhaps another time.

French Indian War further thoughts

Inspired by the skirmish based 6mm miniatures I did last week I ordered some more miniatures from Baccus for my FIW project (again from the SYW and AWI ranges):

• SFR09 – French Artillery. I need this to make an artillery piece for each side but also to use some of the artillery crews to make some of the supporting miniatures options, like the physic and the holy man.
• SYG – Generals; to have the option of fielding a senior officer on horse and perhaps some characters for scenarios.
• AWI01 – Indians – Bare Chested, to get some more variety of
• AWL02Loyalist Infantry – Skirmish; these may be a better option to use for Rangers?AWB05 – Highlanders – Formed;  just because I would like to have a unit of formed highlanders and the officer in the command strip just looks brilliant, and
• AWB10 – British Light Infantry- Round hat, Campaign, Skirmish. To give some line infantry options, and.
• ECW23 – Scots Dismounted Dragoons, from the English Civil War range!. I may get away with these as firing Rangers. But let me verify this after I get them from Baccus.

I also ordered some buildings from Leven miniatures that I thought could be useful for doing farmsteads, small fort and village, including ACW03 – Blacksmith’s Forge, ACW06 – Blockhouse, ACW26 – Shiloh Church, ACW25 – Brotherton Cabin, ACW07 – Timber Shack, WES04 – Livery Stable and WES18 – Outbuildings.  I mainly used Leven miniatures for my Saga project and I really like their products.  I have included pictures from these items from Leven’s catalogue, you can find Leven’s webpage here. I sense some spaghetti is being required again for fencing and palisades.

6mm Blacksmiths Forge

6mm Blockhouse

6mm Timber Shack

I also need to dig out some horses/mules and carts I have lying around to make the other support options, including water cart, ammunition cart, mule train and the engineering groups with cart. I also need to build some barricades and breastworks I have ordered a few items that would be useful for this purpose from perfect six (including their Black powder civilians including Barricade 20mm, cannonball stacks, 2no carts complete with famers cart horses and a dog and  wooden Barrels).

I like minimal battlefield clutter and for the recent Saga game I used casualty markers to represent fatigue that blended in on the battle board (See an earlier post here). I did not make these as casualty dials but as individual markers due to the fatigue markers being actively used as part of the game itself – as the fatigue markers can be spent by the opponent.  I believe I would need the following markers for Sharp Practice – with my current thoughts:

• Present markers – I think I will use markers similar in shape to the overwatch markers used for Chain of Command or a marker with an arrow. These will be based and with some static grass on top to blend in.
• Uncontrolled markers – again I will make a shape to represent this, perhaps a simplified “chaos” symbol with arrows in four directions.
• Shock markers – I will try to make some casualty markers with a dial inspired by this 10mm Napoleonic’s blog.  My concept sketch for this is included below – I just need to ask Peter Berry if he can do some Parrots in 6mm. This parrot is lead! Of course you could get away without using parrots and although Baccus does not do SYW or AWI casualty packs they do them for WSS (with Tricornes) and ACW (with hats and kepis that can be made to look the part I believe).

• Ammo markers for artillery – I though I make small bases with cannon ball stacks (I have ordered these from Perfectsix) and place 3 (or more if the option have been bought) next to the artillery and take one away each time it fires.
• Out of ammo markers – this is in the instances that a unit runs out of ammo as this is the exception and not the norm. Not sure what I will do for these. But I will figure something out. Perhaps you could give me an idea (as the norm is that there is ammo for the unit the marker is only useful for the “out of” situation).

I better get on with it, so we can have game and see how it goes…

Next time, if things goes to plan, I will be picking up on the Towards Moscow Trilogy (TMT) project again as I have been in some discussion with Nick Dorrell on how we do this and we also have some other plans.

However things may be temporary suppressed by a promise to the little one. I had words from Wayland games that the delayed Halo Ground Command pre-order was shipped, so I may need to clean my brushes and get on with that. He has been waiting for this since he play tested it with Spartan Derek at Salute this year.

/ All the very best