An Irregular Wargaming Blog

  Sons of the Desert... My butterfly mind recently got bored with what I was doing (Napoleonic Russians to play against my Swedes) and wondered whether there was a project I could do fairly quickly all in one go. So my good friend Richard generously gave me a bunch of figures last Xmas, and knowing my penchant for all things French he got me some Artizan figures from Nick at North Star . These are mostly French Foreign Legion (Legion Etrangere), but also include some of their Goumier allies too. Enough for a small game probably, so I dug them out and started on the FFL figures. It probably helps that they are a long way from Napoleonics as far as palette and complexity is concerned! They're lovely figures, very characterful and easy to paint, always a bonus for me, and the results are quite pleasing, given my limited artistic skills. The first dozen represent the legionnaires of the first three small sections. Richard has some Italians for this period, so we will probably get a gam

  This is based on a few words I said at the gathering at the Sir John Borlase Warren following Duncan's funeral last week. Others were more eloquent, Dan Faulconbridge and Richard Tyndall both spoke movingly at the funeral itself, John Stallard quoted Bryan Ansell in saying that Duncan's magazines had probably been instrumental in saving the historical side of the bobby during the 80s and early 90s and making it what it is today. Rich Clarke and Peter Dennis also paid tribute to the influence he has had on the modern wargames scene, both here and internationally. But these are my personal thoughts and memories: Duncan was a man in many ways set firmly in the past, his knowledge of history, particularly military history, was both deep and diverse, but I believe he was also a very modern man, being what we would nowadays call a great networker, a facilitator, and an influencer. In the days since his sudden death (and we now know it was from heart failure) many have paid tribute

  Battle of Dieg 1804. Second Mahratta War. General Lake sent General Fraser with most of his infantry and 700 cavalry to take the fortress if Dieg and defeat the covering Mahratta army.  The Mahratta had deployed huge numbers of guns and infantry to cover Dieg. Fraser accomplished a night march to outflank them, appearing to the rear of of the defensive line, with just a small garrisoned village to cover this route. This garrison has to check Fraser's advance and buy time for the confused Mahratta guns and infantry to redeploy and face them to prevent the historical loss of 87 guns and 2000 casualties. Ian Cluskey (Boondock Sayntes) Haut la tête, messieurs, la mitraille ce n'est pas de la merde !

I've been having some much needed Annual Leave the last couple of weeks, and finished off a few more bits for the Egyptian 1973 army. I'd made a conscious decision to concentrate on these for a while, so had managed to get the infantry elements (with their BMP-1s), plus some Sagger ATGW units done, and because it is for 1973 added some of the T62s  I had waiting. As a bit of a change from tanks I also finished off the BRDM-2 recce unit. The idea was to get enough together to have a run through of the rules with a small force to oppose my IDF which I'd done a while ago. So I was really looking at roughly even points, and a variety of different units so I could walk myself solo through the rules and start to get to know what worked, and from that what I needed to work on for later. This was the first tome I had set up either of the two forces that I had finished on a tabletop, and the result rather took me by surprise, I could probably have stopped a while ago! So, what I hav

  My New Year's resolution this year (and that seems a VERY long time ago now!) was to 'Finish Things', and by inference not get distracted by new and shiny projects. Those of you who know me well will be laughing already, as my list of projects is long, and largely unfinished, hence the resolution... And I had been doing quite well, despite various temptations along the way. When I first heard of 'Never Mind the Billhooks' a few months ago I consoled myself that I already had a lot of 'Wars of the Roses' stuff form way back when, and the worst that could happen would be that I needed to rebase them. NMTB does use an unusual basing system, so when the rules were published I got out my old, largely Foundry, army and started having a look. And I even got some spare castings and painted them up - these are partly Foundry and partly Citadel IIRC... But times have moved on, and the quality of sculpting has moved on, and more importantly I've got a bit better

 My fascination with the Swedish Napoleonic army goes back to the early 80's with the publication of WJ Rawkin's book on the subject. At the time I thought it was the most obscure thing I had ever come across, but I was also fascinated by how different the illustrations looked from the other uniforms of the time, and I soon determined that eventually I would have a wargames army to represent this proud group of men. I also got the Rawkins book on the Neapolitan army, but although that was also pretty fascinating, they were pretty much chocolate box soldiers and a Prince's plaything, whilst the Swedes has actually fought an entire war against the Russians during this period that I'd also never heard of.  The Swedish - Russian War 1808-9 Actually this is only really obscure to those of us who have been brought up in the English education system, which continues to pretty much ignore the rest of the world, unless we were invading or colonising it. I suppose this is true of