Wishing all my friends in Bloggerland a peaceful and healthy Festive Season and New Year. We will be having our traditional family Christmas dinner, there will be Thirteen of us around the table* including the five Grandchildren, to us it's everything that this time of year is about.
The hostilities in the Crimea have been postponed as I try to work out the solution to my basing problems and thanks to all who helped with suggestions. To be honest I may just bite the bullet and go back to 2mm MDF as the simplest solution, possibly using a finer grit this time but sticking with the 2mm static grass. Going to be a bit time consuming doing this but I have tested several bases and they practically peel off the existing plastic sheet with very little effort and no mess. I know it will be worth it as I'm still very keen on this project. I have plenty of newly painted units to share, but will hold back until all are properly based, just the shot of the 42nd Highlanders that featured half painted in the previous post. There is still much scope for expansion, the Sardinians entered the war in 1855 and the Irregular Miniatures castings look very tempting along with the Turks! The big plan for the New Year though is making terrain boards.
As my wife will be mostly in the kitchen today prepping and cooking I might indulge myself in a re watch of Charge of the Light Brigade** later, possibly with a glass of port. Cheers all.
* Handy thing about being a wargamer is that having 3 sheets of 2 x 3 ply makes a perfect 6 x 4 dining table when covered with suitably festive cloth, and the trusty folding card table also gets pressed into service as a side table!
** This is the 1968 version not the earlier Errol Flynn BW version of course, The early version was Ok but I have only ever seen horses race at that speed in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, let alone a controlled charge. If you fancy a watch its available to rent or buy on YouTube and Amazon.
Best Wishes, enjoy your family day.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks Norm, we did!
DeleteHappy Christmas!
ReplyDeleteAnd to you FMB.
DeleteLee.
Merry Christmas 'Lee and all the very best for the New Year.
ReplyDeleteAnd to you too WM :)
DeleteA great film, I remember seeing it in the cinema as a kid and my mum looking away at the amputation sequence. I really wish they would clean it up digitally and change all the trousers, for other than the 11th, from red to blue or grey. If Peter Jackson can do it to B&W WW1 footage this should be fairly simple.
ReplyDeleteI must watch it again sometime soon as I have a vague recollection of the Heavy Brigade in the background of one scene with blue uniforms as opposed to red.
Hope you enjoyed your Chritsmas and New Year.
ReplyDeleteI must rewatch that film - I recall seeing it in the cinema as a kid and my mum having to look away at the amputation sequence. It's one of the better war films and deserves having a few terrible directorial decisions undone with some computerised jiggery pokery to get all but the 11th out of the red breeches that were considered more cinematic (over the historical advisers' protests). If Peter Jackson (another terrible director) can do it to old B&W WW1 footage it should be a doddle. Also IIRC the Heavy Brigade appears in the background in blue at one point so they could go back into their scarlet!
Cheers Rob. Yes. the film is far from historically perfect I agree! Still very watchable though. I must look out for those heavies in Blue :) I can't quite recall if it was the film that sparked my interest in military history and thus wargaming or seeing the Minifigs early Crimean War range on a school trip to the Imperial War Museum that also took in a visit to 'Soldiers' in Kennington. I clearly recall a newspaper article that featured a Crimean War collection (presumably those Minifigs?), I can still remember the line '(name) has a wife and two children, a job with the Inland Revenue and 1.100 metal toy soldiers' I'd love to be able to see those photos again today for pure nostalgia. All the best.
DeleteA school-trip to 'Soldiers' - No Fair! All we ever did was the Tuntankhamun Exhibition... :o(
DeleteRob, I can still remember the impact of going into that shop and seeing all of those lovely metal soldiers. We were lucky that the teacher also ran the after school wargame club where I first saw painted Airfix figures and the shop was only a few minutes walk from the Museum. As an aside Rob, it was also where I later in life sold my original Hinchliffe ECW's - would have been around 20 then and struggling to pay my bedsit rent. John Tunstill gave me a price over the phone but when he saw them he doubled it, I went away happy. Of course when I popped back to the shop a couple of weeks later the price per figure had doubled again!
Delete