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Greetings!

'A gaping silken dragon,/Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God./We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:/A rotten tree lives only in its rind.'

Thursday 23 October 2014

Poor

photography, poor lighting, but a table top encounter nonetheless.

Pick up game, in a box:

 
Rules: Cordery out of Morschauser. Gridded battlefield, 8 x 8, 'Frontier/Modern wargames Rules'.

 
The opening scene: Bolsheviks in the distance, Whites nearest the camera. Twelve units each, Reds with a unit of armour, Whites with a unit of field artillery.




 
First shot! White artillery knocks out Red armour. What an opener!

 
Red commander had to be consoled with a jelly baby. See ! The Bolsheviks do eat babies !!

 
One of the built up areas becomes the focus of heavy fighting, with each side attempting to benefit from the points advantages to be gained from defending a built up zone. This focal point becomes a killing zone, with the fortunes of war in the Whites' favour.

 
Above: this blurred aerial photograph shows the Bolshevik command unit realising that the game is up - they only command an m/g unit. Shortly after the photgraph was taken, the Red machine gunners fell.


Endstate. The Whites hold the field, though sorely depleted.
 
 
 
I can't sign off this post without mentioning the jihadi Islamist terror attack in Ottawa. The murder of Cpl. Cirillo at Canada's National War Memorial was a foul attack not just on Canada but on the West as a whole. The only satisfaction to be gained is that it was the Serjeant at Arms, Kevin Vickers, who killed the terrorist. How fitting that someone charged with the defence of a Parliament - that core institution of democracy - should have carried out his duty so well. 

Sunday 19 October 2014

Update...

Mao would have approved of this:


Karl Marx may also have approved of it, but I have no intention of entering into arcane debate about whether the 'younger Marx' would have done so more, or less, than the 'older Marx'. However, Marx's son-in-law, Paul Lafargue, would not. Some years ago my brother-in-law, Ken MacLeod, bought me a copy of Lafargue's opus magnus, The Right to be Lazy, and gave it to me with the comment that Lafargue seemed to have taken his own advice to heart and wrote nothing else but his little peon to idleness. I, on the other hand, have not been able to take the Froggie socialist's advice these past months, as in the new, fresh, globalised world of higher education, 'LABOUR IS GLORIOUS'. Well, actually, it's been more of a case that I have been kept from modelling/toy soldierly things by the first two thirds of the Petainist slogan, Travail, Famille, Patrie. Mind you, I suppose I was increasingly stressed as the United Kingdom hung, for a tense week or so, on the apparent abyss, while the Scots (or, at least, those of them in Scotland, if not in the UK), decided on how to vote with regard to the end, or the continuation, of the UK. Happily (from this blog's perspective) it was UK OK. But, on with the updates...

Firstly, I was able to paint up the latest unit for my Maltovia vs Lovitznia conflict. The new regiment, in French style, can be seen on manouevres:


It looks as if it's the end of a long, hard exercise for these chaps.



Secondly, after many a mishap, I finally managed to complete the Roden offering of the Albatros II:


I won't bore you with all the horrors associated with this kit bash, but to give you the flavour of things - having fixed the wings, I promptly dropped a rather heavy bottle of wash onto the thing, smashing three struts...


 But, all is complete, although I have put away another Albatros model that I had thought might make a twin.