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 ...