Soooo we are all sent to our room for 4 weeks. Hmmm what to paint?

1st 3Div figures

Greetings Gamers

Work has commenced

These are the Warlord Games 8th Army figures with Greenstuff  trousers and some heads from the USMC box. Its a long time since I used Green Stuff which means a/its not in the best condition and b/ I am a bit rubbish at it. However with practice and investment in new supplies I am sure my putty-fu will improve.

I have also been adding Brit equipment to USMC bodies.

The Boyes Antitank Rife team have the Scots heads from the 8th Army with the pompom replace with a blob of greenstuff in the hope of simulating NZ bush hats. They don't look so great here but perhaps will improve on painting!

So here is a rifle squad, artillery FOO, ATR, light mortar, Officer and spare Bren Gun team undercoated and ready for the next step!

I will post a list of reference material soon, but I want to acknowledge the assistance of my old (old old) chum David Brasting who has done more research on 3Div than any sane person should.

Pacific Kiwis

Wotcha gamers.

I have embarked on a new project.

A few years ago I started playing Bolt Action with my two oldest boys. I made US 1st Armored and Panzer Lehr forces from the Warlord D-Day set and added a few odds and sods. Last year the youngest (who had been fascinated by it all) turned 7 and announced a: he was old enough to play and b: he should have Japanese. Since he had been playing this tune for over twelve months I took him at his word and made an IJA force for him.

He has been on at me for a year since to make a force of my own to fight the Japanese. I remembered reading Matt Wright's excellent book  Pacific War – New Zealand and Japan 1941-1945 (Reed, Auckland 2003, republished by Intruder Books, Wellington, 2015) which is principally about NZ 3rd Division's short lived existence and campaigns in the Pacific, and thought that would be a good opposition.

Due to the specific requirements of the environment in which the division would fight, the uniforms and some other equipment were quite different from standard NZ issue to the troops in the western desert and Italy. This combined with frequent supply difficulties and the need to tap into US supplies led to the men wearing a wide range of kit that looked like a hybrid of NZ and USMC clothing.

Naturally no one makes figures for this formation it seemed like a good project to convert the figures from Warlord's USMC for most of the bodies and 8th army for helmets and weapons. I will also try some scalpel and green stuff work to convert 8th army figures.

Its a big project, and I need some fortification....

Projects- War of the Spanish Succession

David Billinghurst and I have been building substantial forces for the War of the Spanish Succession in 10mm. This scale allows quite grand looking battles while still providing recognisable figures.

David is recruiting the Allies of Marlborough's army, while I am Louis XIV.

ECW uniforms and regiments

A useful link for building ECW armies
http://wiki.bcw-project.org/start

PoP is back - to open or theme?

After a break of a year, Push of Pike was back in action last weekend. Last year's break was due in part to the stealth tactics of the Becroft Scout Group's facilities booking folk, compounded by an attack of the real world into my gaming attention.

Anyhoo the North Shore Wargames Club is in shiny new (or at least, less awful) premises and Philip Abela organised the revived PoP just he did in the olde times.

It was all good fun, as always. There was no theme, so my 1580's Dutch faced Swiss of 1515, Swedes of 1630 and Tibetans of GodKnowsWhen. I took a right old slapping from the first two, and took it out on the latter.

Next year's theme is European armies before 1600AD.

I have to say I have a great preference for themes. This pairs armies that did or could have fought each other, using similar technology or reflecting the changes in technology and social movements that caused them to be different. They also allow armies like German Minor States from Bk1 to be competitive instead of just roadkill for Sh(O).

However I have armies from every decade in the army lists, and ranging from Denmark to Egypt (or indeed Japan if we count 25mm!) and I acknowledge that for the casual Renaissancer with one army, themes may feel exclusionary.

Whats your preference?

Monday 25 April 2016 marks the centenary of the first ever ANZAC day commemorations and service.

While the there was a half day holiday declared and services held on 30 April 1915 when news of the landings reached New Zealand and Australia, the character of that event would have been triumphal and hopeful. The headlines of the time certainly reflect this. This would be the knockout blow that brought the Central Powers to their knees and a swift end to the war. The boys fought gallantly. The boys are pressing the enemy back. The boys will be home by Christmas.

Over a million men of the Allied forces were already dead or seriously wounded, but they were French and British and Irish and Indian and a long way away. New Zealanders and Australians knew of the human cost of war but did not yet feel it.

By 25 April 1916 the Gallipoli campaign was a failure, the troops had been evacuated. Over 8,000 New Zealanders had been seriously wounded, including over 2,700 who lost their lives. Almost everyone in our population of c 1 million was related to or knew someone who was dead or ruined on that bleak peninsula. In addition to the published casualty lists, the public in towns great and small would see both outpourings of grief and the living spectacle of maimed men home from the front. We were not yet hardened to loss the way we would be when the death notices started to come in from the Western Front in the next great blood-letting on the Somme.

The commemoration in 1916 may have included speeches and publications that echoed  the triumphalist jingoism of April 1915, but the hearts of those gathered would have been touched by a sense of tragedy and awful waste for our society as a whole and for the .

From this arose the two phrases we associate most with ANZAC day: Lest we forget, and We will remember them. Superficially they appear to be different renderings of the same sentiment, but are quite distinct. Lest we forget is a directive, an admonishment- lest we forget that we put our sons’ and brothers’ lives in the hands of generals over who we have no control, that we are not inherently militarily superior to men of another culture and we must respect our enemies’ willingness to fight, that a war may be just but no war is good, that sacrifice is not just a word. These are ideas, important but essentially insubstantial.

We remember faces, voices, touch. We remember formerly strong men wrecked, moving painfully on crutches or twitching and quivering in our streets as the gas damage slowly claims them in the years following return. We remember old men who would never talk about what happened ‘over there’.  We remember parents and grandparents who, as children, lived in the shadow of the telegram delivery boy. And who will remember their own father forever through the eyes of a six-year-old. We remember people, even if only through the memories of others.

So whatever noble words are said at dawn on Monday about what we must not forget, I will think of brothers Sergeant Cecil Walter Riley and Lieutenant Harry Bolton Riley of Collingwood, Tasman. Killed at Sari Bair in August 1915 and the Somme October 1916 respectively. I will remember them.