Saturday, March 21, 2009

Back In the Breech





Recently having finished the final novel (number 20!) in the wonderful Patrick O'Brian series of Age of Sail stories (the Aubrey Marturin series). I finally got around to starting Bernard Cornwell's "Sharpe" series on the Peninsular War. I know I'm a late-comer to these stories but I had been saving them for when the time was right to plunge in. So to help jump-start my Napoleonic collection I started the first Sharpe book....and of course it starts right out as advertised...a cracking great read and lots of scenario ideas right off the bat. So my Naps got some real momentum in the past couple of days with the assembly and mounting of a second British line battalion and a good start on a Light battalion. I was even keen enough to purchase some Foundry Brit riflemen for skirmishes so they are on their way from The War Store as well. So the combination of novel and a new set of Citadel washes to try out, —and... though a martini is not recommended if you are trying to paint, it surprisingly helps with the tedious process of assembly on those plastics! ;)— ...the formidable painting task has gotten a nice push forward.

...and finally I just had to put up a pic of my little guy's latest pirate island. For any dads out there, if you ever get a chance to read "Floor Games" by H.G. Wells (available free from Project Gutenberg) its probably the best advice for how to really play with children, a short read but really a classic. Be warned, that after you read it you will probably start buying any toy that contains decent terrain (trees mountains etc) no matter what else is in the box...not that us gamers don't already do that by nature!

4 comments:

Bluebear Jeff said...

Here is a link to "Floor Games":

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/flrgm10.txt

Be warned that you have to scroll down about 40% of the way before the actual text starts . . . the first part is all Project Gutenberg legalese.


-- Jeff

Fraxinus said...

Sharpe great books read the lot....the TV series was good if a little underpopulated in the battle scenes! the new Perry 95th Rifles look good and some nice new figs from Companion miniatures http://www.companionminiatures.com/product.asp?P_ID=33

old-tidders said...

Looks like you had a lot of fiddly cutting and gluing to do to make the figs up - but they do look really good. Seeing these units coming together is getting me interested in Napoleonics again.

Hhm, perhaps I can have an 18C Sharpe equivalent - a valiant jager officer, fighting scenarios out using my 40mm figs - food for thought

-- Allan

littlejohn said...

Thanks for the links and ideas guys!