Sunday 29 January 2012

Making Your Game Your Own

I didn't make it for a game at the club.

I had offered a game of General Quarters, but there were no takers and as I had a hangover I didn't fancy going on the off chance. On the positive side two people have expressed interest, and I know there is one other regular who played the game - so that all looks very positive.

Therefore I spent the day pressing on with various projects.

I finished the commissar's transport...




The slogan on the side of the van reads, "Workers of the World Unite." Well it sort of does as I had to miss a few letters out of the first word to get it to fit into the space. Meh... noone will know, if you don't tell.

Another battalion of French Napoleonics is now assembled and awaiting paint. And I have started working on my latest matchstick construction project, a church. The inspiration for the building comes from this remarkable set of photographs taken by the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, between 1909 and 1912. It's a heartbreaking set, when you consider how many of these people would probably be dead within twenty years.

In the past few days I have come to the realisation that this period of history has inspired me more than anything that I can remember in years. It's partly because I am constantly discovering new figure ranges, from manufacturers I have either never heard of or had forgotten. A case in point is Scheltrum who I remember from wayback for their range of Medieval ships. Recently they have released figures and vehicles for the German November Revolution of 1918. I stumbled across this information and have for the past few days been searching for pictures. They are not on the website due to problem with their website designer and the ISP - or something like that. It's rather charmingly old skool wargaming, and takes me back to the good old days when you bought stuff based on a list in Miniature Wargames without any real idea of what it was you were buying.

Still in an effort to discover what the Scheltrum lorries look like I have found all manner of interesting things. And all kinds of people playing games based on conflicts that are barely mentioned today relating to the chaos at the end of the First World War.

Which is rather splendid. Since I originally started getting into the period because of Back of Beyond, though I was never that keen on the Central Asian focus.However applying the notion of Back of Beyond, to the nationalist and political struggles in Western Russia and Eastern Europe is rather appealing - Latvian Nationalists, Polish Anarchists, Russian Feminist Royalists, Capitalist Adventurers Religious Cultists etc, in the course of my searches I have come across figures to play all of these and many more factions besides.

Basically, you find the figures you like, make up a setting for them and away you go. Not unlike what happens in Very British Civil War. Speaking of which I rather liked these chaps,
Totleigh-in-the-Wold Cricket Club Volunteer Grenadiers.

peace:)

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