Influential books 1

 Inspired by Nunkadent over at Horse and Musket wargaming, I thought I might share an influential book and it's background, so no painted figures I'm afraid as I'm just prepping and priming before the Analogue hobbies painting challenge starts on the 20th of this month. 

I ended up with this book, Military Uniforms, the splendor of the past,when I was about 3,it's a hardback colour coffee table book of original prints and paintings of uniforms, thinking about it I suppose in all probability it wasn't given to me,even in the 1970s you wouldn't have given this to a 3 year old ! But as far as I was concerned at the time it was mine and I'd never really thought about it until now, no one ever disagreed about it!

The book really came into it's own because I had a  really nasty skin disease on my hands, if I  put a plaster on my hand it would come off with a layer of skin, eventually I lost all the skin off my hands and one of my earliest  memories is of my mum pulling  my fingernails one by one " it's not going to hurt,okay mum aàah! It's not going to hurt,....." it was for my own good as they were only just hanging on but boy did it hurt! So I couldn't play with any toys(because it would hurt!) but I had a melamine covered board and plasticine which was nice and cooling  and I started making figures based on the images in the book  I was particularly taken by the first page , Lejunes' battle of Borodino,especially the grenadier kicking the live shell into the water and wanted to know who everyone was! It covered uniforms from the French revolution to the start of the first world war. The page of French cavalry and officers also made a big impression on my tiny mind!

Eventually my hands recovered after getting a prescription from a  doctor in the town in Ireland that my mum came from but I was, as my dad pointed out ,cack handed and clumsy. I was taught piano as a way of improving my motor skills, after passing a grade I managed to give that up ! I was also encouraged to make models, my first airfix spitfires and me 109s both ended up in the bin but I persevered (it was more fun than learning piano!) and managed to build an airfix stug 3. I  didn't learn to read until I was 9 but once I did I became a voracious reader and in many ways my wargaming hobby exists to justify my book collection. Purnells history of world war two helped me to read as I flicked through its pages wondering what it all meant. 

Too many books as my wife has pointed out, at one point I had every book Osprey had in print, but I'm better now. It's always interesting to see other people's book collections so I thought I'd post mine,you have to excuse the additional kit that's been moved out of the house for Christmas. 

I hope to have some painted figures on the blog soon,  in the meantime here's some being primed!

All the best Iain 

Dux Bellorum 11 More Pict cavalry and home made sabot bases

 Here are two more tiny mounted skirmish units for  my Pict force and also my mounted leader and companions and a unit of mounted nobles.

Once again the skirmish types are wargames factory with some Perry and gripping beast plastic additions .

The companions and nobles are a mix of dark age and late Roman Gripping beast plastic cavalry with the odd anachronistic Saxon helmet thrown in for good measure together with some Perry Ansar shields and some Black tree design shields to try and tie them in with the infantry. I enjoyed painting these chaps and they went together well, I would have preferred that you had full arms, rather than half arms but its a minor quibble on my part.The leader is a  metal Gripping beast figure. 

This completes the Pictish army ,giving me three Dux Bellorum forces, I'm moving onto the shieldwall armies next, so it will be Romano British and Late Romans over the winter, which should be fun!

They're all sabot based onto 120mm wide MDF bases with balsa cut outs. I've also included the previous mounted Pict skirmishers on their sabot bases and the ordinary Irish riders. 

That was strange, the pictures uploaded in the reverse order! Still better quit while I'm ahead!

All the best Iain 

Dux Bellorum 10 Pictish mounted skirmishers

 So here we have three mounted Pictish skirmishers for Dux Bellorum, forming a unit. They're made up of the wargames factory Celtic cavalry box and I can safely say that they are the worst multi part plastic set I've assembled so far. I've swapped out the heads and arms for Perry and gripping beast plastics from the Ansar and dark age warriors respectively.  

The horses are particularly weird, especially the heads, I've got a  couple more units and I need to sabot base them at some point, they work alright as highland ponies I guess? 

The detail on the human heads as supplied is also really soft,I've kept them in the bits box, so maybe I'll find some sort of use for them!

That's it for now,next up more Pictish cavalry of one kind or another or maybe some basing, I'm spending lots of time prepping figures at the moment. 

All the best Iain 

Medieval buildings from UK open air museums

 So this post is a little different, there are no pictures of miniatures or terrain in this post. What I have got is a number of photos I've taken of various medieval buildings at open air museums I have visited and as I have accumulated them as reference for terrain building I thought they might be of interest to others thinking of further builds.

15th century barn at Chiltern open air museum 

Iron age Roundhouse interior Chiltern open air museum 

Iron age roundhouse Celtic Harmony camp

Tudor outbuilding Weald and downland open air museum 



Man powered well

High street W&D various timber framed buildings 

Iron age roundhouses Buster open air museum 

Saxon longhouse Buster open air museum 

Iron age roundhouse Buster 

14th century flint cottage W&D 

Saxon longhouse W&D above,15th century Wealdon house below W&D

Period beehives 

High Street W&D various timber framed buildings 

Tudor barn W&D 

I hope this is of interest to some, I'm doing this partly because I was going through theseon my phone as I get ready to start on some dark age buildings.  Legacy blogger hasn't lasted long, so this has been painfully put together in the new format which seems to delight in deleting images left right and centre! I'm afraid there is still a  few lost titles in the post but if I were to try and delete them I would no doubt lose more images, I guess I will preserve but it's much less intuitive on the phone, which I understood was one of the reasons for the change? Next up? Probably cavalry, probably dark ages. 

All the best 

Iain