Andy Singleton's Bolt Action Featured

My friend Andy Singleton is one of the best Bolt Action professional painters I know so if you are in the market for some BA paint jobs give him a try.

Warlord have featured his work again on their website. The above photo of a Puma is just a taste.

Excitement at Southampton

I have a Visiting Chair at Southampton University.

There has been a little bit of a woopsy out in the solent.

Picture shamelessly nicked from Andrew-Mark Thompson.

IHMN, Life on Venus - Newt Warband

The warband is led by a chief with a native 'sabre' and a witchdoctor with a 'god crystal' - a magic stone that absorbs sunlight and releases it as pulses of intense light and heat . How the witchdoctor controls this is unknown but is assumed to be sorcerous.

The chief has a bodyguard of newt warriors with flint-tipped spears and lizard-hide shields.

The rest of the band consists of natives with blowpipes firing poison-laced darts and native 'knives'.

Homage to Catalonia by Artizan

This wonderful Artizan (North Star) figure features Eric Arthur Blair, better known by the pen-name George Orwell, who fought in the Spanish Civil War for the POUM Militia.

POUM were an anarcho-syndicalist political group  which was attacked by the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party. Blair got out of Catalonia one jump ahead of Stalin's thugs of the NKVD.

He recorded his experiences in Homage to Catalonia, one of the greatest novels in the English language.

The Anarcho-Syndicalist flag.

Eric Blair

Bolt Action - Went The Day Well

It's spring, 1941.

The Bramley Home Guard Platoon are alerted by HQ and told that a German Fallschirmjaeger landing has been reported in their area. Major Cad (played by Terry Thomas), accompanied by Nurse Pilchard who looks after his ration card (played by Joyce Grenfell) is ordered to secure Bramley village and, in particular the important communications centre in the village - to whit, the public phone box.

Our brave lads take up their positions in the churchyard and by the Post Office. The chap with a sixpenny bit is detailed to man the telephone.

None of the villagers will let them inside the houses on account of their muddy boots.

The Bramley Boys are joined by the Eastgate Platoon commanded by Captain Square.

Major Cad orders them to guard the wheatfields on the right flank, remarking to Nurse Pilchard, "Can't trust that Eastgate lot; a complete shower, what? what?"

Private Pinkle cunningly hides on an island in the commemoration duckpond.

Fallschirmjager are spotted advancing each side of the road. Frantic calls for reinforcement, using up all of the sixpence, alert a nearby airfield who send a Rolls Royce armoured car to investigate. It runs straight into smoke fired by the cunning Hun.

A better view of the defences - I use the word in its loosest sense.

A section of crack Home Guard motorised, well mobile, infantry mounted on bicycles follows the armoured car. Unfortunately they got a bit confused in the smoke and cycled right into the German line.

Alas the mobile unit is taken out by a flamethrower - overkill or what?

Gadzooks! the cunning Boche ran a section or paras around the flank of Our Brave Lads and crashed in through the graveyard in a close assault.

"A typical Hunnish trick," Major Cad remarked to Nurse Pilchard.

Astonishingly, a stupid boy with a Thompson cut down half the attackers with a burst when he tripped over his shoelaces and the survivors broke and ran.

The Home Guard victory was short lived unfortunately as a second Fallschirmjaeger section bayoneted the lot of them while they were having a joint hug.

Major Cad took one look at the German paras coming over the ridge and legged it, outpacing Nurse Pilchard who the uncouth Nazis promptly shot.

Cad thought that a damn shame but consoled himself with the thought that the nursing home was full of potential replacements.

The game ended with lone survivors Major Cad and Captain Square standing back to back by the telephone box surrounded by a rather nasty looking bunch of Fallschirmjaege.

Square (Simon E) and I claimed a draw - no really, we did!

 
 Incidentally, 'Went the Day Well' is a 1942  film about a German invasion of an English village which, unusually for a propaganda piece, is still worth a look.


This was my last game of 2014 before a deadly attack of viryons did for me.

Pip, pip.

Afghan War Over

Photo from the Daily Telegraph


Politicians lie, soldiers die, and generals get medals.

CHILDREN OF A LESSER WAR

We are children of a lesser war

A petty skirmish, nothing more,

The bluebirds won’t sing over

The white cliffs of Dover

For us,

There’ll be no fuss

Just a footnote in our history

No Vera Lynn, no mystery

No Nazis in the countryside

Or turning back the evil tide

Just tattered gaps in people’s lives

Grieving wives

No fly-by at the Cenotaph

Sing songs where people laugh

Through the Blitz,

Defying Fritz

We envy them that cause

Not like our wars

No equals in Afghanistan

No tussles man to man

No Luftwaffe in Iraq

No Bletchley Park

Just car bombs and smell

A cut-price hell

No Winston, just windbags

We won’t see waving flags

Just body bags and sad parades

Until a sordid peace is made

Nothing solved

Nothing gained

James Milton - 

Go here for more of his work

A Very Merry Xmas from London

I hope everyone has a great Xmas with their families and also people they like.

And I hope Santa brings you lots of plastic and pewter, preferably cunningly fashioned into toy soldiers.

With all Best Wishes for Next Year

John & Wabbit