Prussians Step Forward

HAVE completed my second batch of Prussian line infantry for my 54mm toy-soldier Project Kaiser refight of the Franco-Prussian War..

Sixteen Prussian foot advancing across my sitting-room carpet

History Today January 2020

ISSUE 1 of volume 70 of History Today is also the first issue of my new six-for-£12 subscription to the magazine.

I would not say any article stood out for me, but I  at least skimmed though everything, so I got my £2-worth even though signs of political correctness - "With the coming of Christianity, all balance was lost," "[Marie-Antoinette's] initial pleasure-seeking and early attempts at political interference were a kind of 'displacement activity'" - are creeping in again.

Tabletop Gaming Annual

I GAVE up buying Tabletop Gaming because I felt the editors' hearts were not in it.
Instead of showing a game or game components on the cover, they always went with a computer-generated image, suggesting tabletop games were a poor relation of 'the real thing'.
However, I have made an exception with the magazine's special issue: The Best Games Of 2019.

Annual round-up … £9.99

It contains 181 reviews - in some cases, perhaps, truncated reviews.
That is a lot to get through, but most I just skimmed as they were of fantasy games set in the game-designers' imagined worlds - not something that interests me at all.
But there was enough in the magazine to form the basis for further research, with the possibility, however remote, of making a purchase.
The reviews that have piqued my interest are: 1066, Tears To Many Mothers; Ancient Civilizations Of The Inner Sea; Blitzkrieg!

Looming Success

I TRY to browse as many charity shops, pound stores and the like, as you never know what may catch your eye.
My latest find is a 50p pack of loom bands from a shop in Watney Market, East London.

Loom bands … not just for ten-year-old girls

The pack has scores, probably hundreds, of coloured rubber bands - far more than I will use, but the price makes that irrelevant.
My idea is the bands can be used as relatively unobtrusive casualty markers for Project Kaiser, in which I plan to use 54mm toy soldiers to refight the main battles of the Franco-Prussian War on their 150th anniversaries.
Regular infantry and cavalry units will likely have a strength value of four points.
If, as planned, an infantry unit consists of four figures, it will be simple to indicate the loss of a strength point by removing a figure.
Cavalry units, however, will probably consist of two figures, so there needs to be way of showing when an odd number of strength points, ie one or three, has been lost.
The photo below of two Bavarian cavalry shows how this will work.

The loom band over the head of the righthand figure shows the unit has lost a strength point

Miniature Wargames January 2020

I STOPPED buying glossy wargaming magazines because they stopped including battle reports.
Imagine my excitement, then, to see issue 441 of Miniature Wargames leading on the cover with "an epic 10-page Black Powder battle report."

Miniature Wargames - the Battle of the Nive takes centre stage

I was sorely disappointed.
For starters, the report assumed a familiarity with Black Powder rule-mechanisms that many readers will not have (I own the rules, but I found the report heavy going).
More seriously, the report has no map or overall photo of the two armies' initial dispositions, making it impossible to know what is going on.
Instead we are treated to juvenile cod-historical, and anachronistic, 'bon mots' such as "cheese-eating surrender monkeys!" and "curse you, English swine!"
The rest of the magazine is overrun with sci-fi and fantasy content which, to be fair, is the way a lot of the hobby is heading.
I am probably being too negative, but I expected so much from the cover.

Ancient Warfare Nov/Dec 2019

ISSUE 3 of volume XIII of Ancient Warfare surpasses even that magazine's usual high standards.

Spoilt for choice

I found every article very interesting and only wish they could have been longer.
If I cite Gareth Williams on Persian armour, or the lack of it, at Platea, and Murray Dahm on mounted hoplites, it is merely to highlight two helpings of cream among a pot full of tasty choices.

Paint It Black

I LIKE to support the Orcs Nest in the Seven Dials district of central London as I find it good to have such an easily accessible model shop.
But when I went there recently to buy a bottle of gloss-black paint, I was surprised, to say the least, that the shop had none in stock.
It was no problem for me as I was able to get what I wanted at the Ian Allan model shop near Waterloo, and one bottle of paint is a very modest purchase, but even so ...

History Bargain

I HAVE taken out a six-issue subscription to History Today for the very-hard-to-beat price of £12.
The offer is available at historytoday.com/6for12. It involves committing by direct debit to a follow-on yearly subscription of £54, but this can be cancelled at the appropriate moment.

Toy Soldier Collector December/January 2020

ISSUE 91 of Toy Soldier Collector has a fascinating article on miniature playsets sold by New York-based Marx Toys.

Another glossy edition of TSC

The company boasted that their sets were "hand-painted in the British colony of Hong Kong," and the sets were apparently a popular feature of many a North American boy's Christmases.
As well as obvious themes such as Custer's Last Stand and Knights & Castle, the company, before it folded in 1980, produced a guerrilla warfare box themed in Vietnam. Perhaps my surprise at that is based on the hindsight of knowing how the conflict ended.

Slingshot November/December 2019

ISSUE 327 of the Society of Ancients' magazine was waiting for me when I returned on Sunday from a trip to Malta.

Irish warriors adorn the predominantly green cover of the latest Slingshot

The most interesting article for me is what is claimed to be the first English translation, from Latin, of Chronicon Terrae Prussiae, a history of the early activities of the Teutonic Knights in what would become the kingdom of Prussia. I only wish more of the chronicle could have been included.
Rather less successful, in my opinion, is an attempt to show every move of a wargame in diagrammatic fashion. Why not just print a photo of each move?

Camel Raiding

TODAY I finished reading Wilfred Thesiger's Arabian Sands, which I bought at Foyles in Charring Cross Road prior to flying to Malta on Saturday.
It is his account of spending many months with Bedouin over five years following World War 2.
Thesiger explored areas of the notorious Empty Quarter, usually being the first Westerner to reach the parts he traversed.

Penguin Classics' edition of Arabian sands

He stoically endured incredible hardship, often while being tracked by fanatical rival tribesmen determined to kill the "infidel" in their midst.
Later in life Thesiger was honoured by authorities in the Arabian Peninsula, who acknowledged his realistic portrayal of Bedouin life that paid tribute to the men who helped him without romanticising their lives or overlooking their faults.
I bought it primarily because I love travel books, but anyone interested in skirmish-gaming Arab raids and tribal fighting would find plenty to interest and inform.

Mdina

NO trip to Malta would be complete for someone who is into history without a trip to the ancient capital Mdina.
It is on a plateau that has been inhabited since prehistoric times, but the founding of the city is usually attributed to Phoenicians more than 2,700 years ago.
The city was abandoned after its population was massacred by Arab invaders in 870, but was later repopulated by Muslims.
It gained its modern name of Mdina - today pronounced im-dean-er - from the Arabic word for city, which is also how Medina (or Madīnah) in Saudi Arabia got its name.
Mdina fell to Normans from Sicily in 1091 as part of a re-Christianisation of the whole of Malta, which survived a renewed Arab invasion in 1429.
The Knights of St John were given Malta in 1530 by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in return for an annual tribute of a Maltese falcon.
They effectively moved the capital to Birgu, beside the Grand Harbour, and it was there that the Turks concentrated their effects in the Great Siege of Malta in 1565.
But, in an attempt to boost morale and give themselves a secure winter base, the Turks also advanced on Mdina, but were fooled into abandoning plans for an assault when the garrison fired its guns at what was considered a wastefully long range, convincing the Turkish commanders that the city was amply supplied.
Ernle Bradford's The Great Siege: Malta 1565 vividly tells the story.

Main entrance to Mdina

Close-up of the gate

A typically walled and paved street

View from a bastion with the Mediterranean in the far distance

Almost certainly St Paul - the site of his shipwrecking on Malta in about AD59 is traditionally given as being in nearby St Paul's Bay

Exmouth War Memorial

THIS photo was taken last week during a visit to Exmouth, Devon.

Exmouth war memorial in a town centre park

It is is probably one of the earlier examples of a WW1 memorial as the conflict is dated 1914 - 1919.

Four Mags

A QUICK catch-up on recent magazine-reading.

Fab four

The September/October 2019 edition of Slingshot has a good variety of articles, with the most interesting for me being Mick Hession's on military campaigns in 15th century Ireland.
The October/November 2019 edition of Toy Soldier Collector, labelled "15th Anniversary Issue," has its usual great eye-candy.
The Sep/Oct 2019 edition of Ancient Warfare is themed around the importance of geography in ancient battles, and I found the whole issue fascinating.
The October 2019 edition of History Today has a lurid cover but interesting contents, including church-going in Victorian and Edwardian Britain (it was not as popular as you might think) and how women shaped the monarchy in France (a much bigger subject than space allows, but you have to start somewhere).

Slingshot - July/August 2019

ISSUE 325 of Slingshot arrived last week while I was in Torquay playing chess.

Slingshot … definitely better late than never

The Society of Ancients' magazine is consistently one of my very favourite wargaming publications.
But somehow I felt this edition was not up to scratch, despite having articles on Cannae, the Trojan War and infantry manoeuvrability - subjects normally guaranteed to grab my attention.
The Editor promises the next issue will be published more promptly, and I am certainly eagerly looking forward to it.

History Today - September 2019

THE third and final issue of my cheap mini-subscription to History Today proved a very welcome surprise.
I found more-or-less the whole magazine interesting, including features on Himmler's obsession with 'witches', life on the Mississippi, punkahwallahs in British India and a Transylvanian enemy of the Habsburgs.

It's Himm again

It was particularly refreshing to find little of the nanny-ish PC mania that has been prevalent in the magazine recently.

Ancient Warfare - Jul/Aug 2019

ISSUE 1 of volume XIII of Ancient Warfare magazine is themed on "hired help from overseas - Hellenistic mercenary armies meddling in Magna Graecia," and is the best history and/or wargaming magazine I have read for a long time.

Ancient Warfare ... more than just a stab in the right direction

I found every article full of interest, with the notable exception of one supposedly on ancient combined arms, but in fact concentrating on modern combined arms (ominously, we are told it is the first part of a series - but maybe future parts will get round to actually discussing ancient warfare).

Soviet War Memorial

AM visiting the Czech Republic, and specifically Olomouc, a city that used to be a major centre of the Greater Moravian Empire.

No prizes for guessing which country erected this memorial, nor to which war it refers

As I believe can be seen from the picture, the memorial to the Red Army is still well maintained.

Paddington Station War Memorial

THE war memorial at Paddington station in West London looks in such a good state of repair and maintenance that it would be easy to mistake it as a recent dedication.
This effect is enhanced by a plaque that states the memorial commemorates 3,312 employees of the Great Western Railway who "IN THE WORLD WARS … GAVE THEIR LIVES FOR KING AND COUNTRY"

The war memorial at Paddington station

But the memorial's statue, of a soldier reading a letter, presumably from home, shows a figure with a distinctly WW1 trenchy look.
That is because the memorial was unveiled on Armistice Day 1922, with a new plaque added much later.

Tricky Conversions

I CAN report fairly good success with the Tricky Stick I bought to solve the problem of getting superglue to work with soft plastic.
It was needed because I could find no suitable figures for Prussian artillerymen for my Project Kaiser 54mm refight of the Franco-Prussian War.
I wanted to convert Armies In Plastic Union artillery crew from the American Civil War by replacing their heads with pickelhaubed Prussian heads.
Superglue alone did not come close to getting the job done, but by first preparing the Union torsos and the Prussian heads with Tricky Stick, I was able to come up with appropriate-looking crews.
There was an awful moment when one head fell off at the smallest touch. For a moment I thought I might have to restart from scratch.
But the other conversions proved fine, and the failed one worked at the second attempt.
By adding some Prussian infantry to the six converted Union men, I have come up with three sets of four-man crews.

Three crews with two guns - all from Armies In Plastic

And here is how a gun and crew look beside one of my newly finished houses:

Housing Improvements

I HAVE finished improving the £2 houses I bought from The Works at Stratford, East London.

The final step, after priming and painting, was to add doors, windows and chimneypots ordered from  Irregular Miniatures of Great Edstone, North Yorkshire.

No one could mistake them for being diorama-standard, but they work for toy soldiers.

Toy Soldier Collector - August/September 2019

ISUUE 89 of Toy Solider Collector is full as usual with glossy pix of metal and plastic toy soldiers.

Included among the contents is a four-page article by me about my 54mm Project Kaiser plans for refighting the Franco-Prussian War on the 150th anniversaries of its battles.

History Today - August 2019

THE August edition (Vol 69 issue 8) of History Today starts off pretty well, if you ignore the twerp at the front who claims "racial divisions" are the "most enduring legacy" of the American Civil War.
Articles on so-called witch marks in limestone caves in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, Graham Greene in Havana, thefts of antiquities in Renaissance Italy, military slaves in Islamic states and de Gaulle's righthand man Philippe Leclerc all held my interest.

August's History Today … promising start

But then the right-on brigade gets its turn with reams of space devoted to Peterloo (what a foreigner would think of such detailed coverage beggars belief) and to 18th-century women who did not go to university but were nevertheless scholarly. Perhaps the magazine should be renamed Social History Today.
The final straw, for me, comes at the back with 20 questions to a woman who specialises in "contemporary history," a contradiction in terms to say the least. Asked to name "which history book has had the greatest influence on you," she lists The Handmaid's Tale, The House Of The Spirits and 1984.

SPQR ASAP

MY gift for taking out a three-issue subscription with History Today has arrived - a copy of Mary Beard's much-praised book SPQR.
I started reading it yesterday and am fairly racing through the pages, despite a few misgivings about a somewhat-verbose introduction in which she seldom uses one word where ten will do.

SPQR … racy read

It could be argued that the story of ancient Rome is so compelling that only a complete dullard could make it boring, but I am sure there are writers who could achieve this.
Rather than just telling the story as she believes it to have occurred, Professor Beard discusses the various possibilities, sometimes with an annoying emphasis on modern PC concerns, but generally with what seems to be intelligent analysis.
My one regret from reading the first four chapters, apart from the inadequate and hard-to-decipher maps, is that the book ends in AD212 (or 212 CE, as she puts it).
Rome did not cease to be Rome simply because citizenship was extended to inhabitants of the whole empire, which Prof Beard claims is her reason for ending the story there.
I suspect the real reason is that the length of the book, which, for a paperback, is lavishly illustrated with colour plates, was getting out of hand and she did not want to (drastically) trim it.
This is an observation, not a complaint, and the early finish has the advantage that with any luck there will be a part two - I would certainly be a buyer.

Throwback To Another Age

STROLLING around Bridgend, I came across this impressive drinking fountain/memorial.

It turns out to have been built on the orders of Caroline, Countess of Dunraven, in memory of John Randall of Salisbury, Wiltshire, who died in 1859 after managing the Dunraven Estate for more than 30 years.
Dunraven Castle - really a manor house - was in Southerndown, a village southwest of Bridgend.
Caroline is credited with building two fountains in Bridgend as part of a philanthropic scheme to give the town safe drinking water.

Newcastle (Bridgend)

ASK people how many Newcastles there are in Britain, and I guess many would answer two, citing the football-mad one in Tyne & Wear and the market town in Staffordshire, namely Newcastle-under-Lyme.
But the Newcastle electoral ward in Bridgend, South Wales, is a reminder that "Newcastle" was a common if unimaginative name for military buildings all over the British Isles.
The ward is named after a Norman castle, which apparently began in 1106 as a ringwork, ie an earthen/wooden ditch-and-bank on a hill overlooking Bridgend, a town that developed around a ford on the River Ogmore.
It is believed the current ruins date back to the late 1100s, when a more permanent stone castle was built, possibly on the orders of Henry II.

Newcastle ruins, Bridgend

Looking through the main gate

Not much survives of the internal structure, which is probably why entry is free. But I found the site to be quite atmospheric, perhaps because of its very basic nature.

Looking back from inside the castle, with the parish church of St Illtyd in the background

Bridgend War Memorial

AM spending a week in Bridgend, which is a town in South Wales about halfway between Cardiff and Swansea.

Bridgend War Memorial was built to commemorate the Great War, which is dated as 1914 - 1918 (rather than 1919).
Made from portland stone (as, for example, is The Cenotaph in London's Whitehall), it features Britannia with her right hand resting on a sheathed sword.
The memorial has been updated with plaques commemorating the dead from later wars.

House About That?!

I HAVE finished preparing the four wooden houses I bought from The Works for £8 (https://timspanton.blogspot.com/2019/05/working-it-out.html).

The four houses as they came

Giving them an undercoat was simple enough.

The four houses treated with Bulls Eye 1-2-3 primer sealer from my local branch of Leyland SDM

The next step was to give them basic paint-jobs - I did not see the need for anything fancy.

The roofs of the righthand houses are identical in colour - a trick of the flash makes one appear pink

The final step has been to order four doors and a variety of windows from Irregular Miniatures of Great Edstone, North Yorkshire.

12th Century Gatehouse

SPENT the weekend in Bristol where, as advertised, the architecture gives strong hints as to how wealthy the city was thanks largely to the profits of 18th century commerce (a main contributor was the slave trade).
My travel each day took me several times through the 12th century Great Gatehouse, also known as Abbot's Gate and Abbey Gatehouse.

Uphill view of the Great Gatehouse

Although the gate is from the 12th century, the top half, which is now cathedral offices, is a 'modern' addition from about 1500.

Bargain History

RECEIVED a flyer via Literary Review, I believe, offering a three-issue subscription to History Today for £5.
The first issue, July 2019, arrived this week and proved an entertaining, if at times frustrating, read.

Striking cover

There are main articles on apocalyptic thinking in the 1500s, women of the Ku Klux Klan, the 1943 Bengali famine, a consensus-inclined Cavalier, German armed operations in the Baltics in 1919, an "undecipherable" manuscript and Thatcherism.
I found every article interesting, but I am not sure what many of them are doing in a history magazine - if people from an event are still alive, I regard that as current affairs, not history.
And there is little attempt to investigate any of the subjects in depth - this is at best "History Lite," and seems to be aimed at a very general readership. This is somewhat confirmed by the magazine's crossword, which includes the clue: "9 _ de Milo, work of ancient Greek sculpture (5)".
Some of the English could be generously described as sloppy, eg "What book in your field should everyone read?" (my emphasis).
Then there is the "undecipherable" manuscript. Leaving aside that the word is more normally written as indecipherable, there is the fact that no manuscript is impossible to decipher any more than any castle is impregnable (despite the number of times a fortress is described as such in popular histories - often a paragraph before the said structure falls to enemy forces).
A sense of political correctness permeates much of the magazine, to comical effect at times, eg racist women in the Ku Klux Klan are described as "progressive" because they supported increased roles for women.
As well as three issues of the magazine, I am due to receive a copy of Mary Beard's SPQR: A History Of Ancient Rome. All in all, despite my criticisms, quite a bargain - as long as I cancel the direct debit before the annual follow-up charge of £84 kicks in.

Lotharingia

SUCCUMBED to temptation and bought in hardback Lotharingia - A Personal History Of Europe's Lost Country, the latest book from travel historian Simon Winder.
By "travel historian" I mean someone who goes through areas, visits points of interest and recounts their past.
His previous two books in this genre, Danubia and Germania, have pretty much self-explanatory titles.
Lotharingia is named after the middle portion of the Emperor Charlemagne's domains, and was somewhat squeezed between East and West Francia, whose borders are recognisable today as the cores of modern Germany and France.
Lotharingia as a single realm was short-lived, but Winder's book at some 500 pages is not a short read.

Lotharingia … short in life, long in the retelling

That should be all to the good if it is up to the standards of Danubia and Germania.
I know one should not judge a book by its cover, but the jacket illustration by Berlin-based Martin Haake did nothing to put me off making a purchase.

Newmarket War Memorial

A GRANITE war memorial in Newmarket, Suffolk, is an interesting example of one of the earlier memorials to WW1.

Newmarket war memorial

You can tell it was one of the earlier ones to be commissioned as the Great War is dated 1914-19, the five-year span representing the fact that Germany only sued for an armistice in November 1918 - peace treaties came later.
According to the Imperial War Museum, it was unveiled in October 1921, and there are 218 WW1 deaths recorded compared with 80, plus 10 civilians, later added for WW2.

Past Present Toys

FOLLOWED up an ad in the latest issue of Toy Soldier Collector by taking a Great Northern train to Winchmore Hill, North London.
I found Past Present Toys easily enough in Green Lanes (but do not go on a Wednesday - it is closed all day).

Toys present and correct

The shop was much as I expected, and is well worth a visit if you are into traditional Dinky/Corgi/etc cars, Hornby OO trains, Scalextric or W Britain toy soldiers.
I did not find anything to tempt me - and I did look pretty hard! - but maybe another time.

Ancient Warfare Vol XII Issue 6

THE latest issue of Ancient Warfare is themed on barbarian crossings of the Rhine, and the consequences of such crossings for the Roman empire.

Cross barbarians

I guess anyone interested in ancient history will know a basic outline of the Germanic invasions - part of what German historians call the Völkerwanderung.
But I had not heard of "Charietto the Headhunter," a celebrated early vigilante who apparently rose to become some sort of general in the Roman army.
Another very interesting article was part two of Gary Bruggeman's look at battle maps of the 216BC Battle of Cannae - part of his well-argued thesis that most maps of ancient battles show armies drawn up much deeper and narrower than was really the case.
All in all, I found this an especially good edition of Ancient Warfare.

Medieval Warfare Volume IX Issue 2

I SUSPECT this will be the last edition of Medieval Warfare I buy for quite some time.
These may be "famous last words," but I found this issue particularly unsatisfying, despite covering a wide range of interesting topics. Perhaps that is the problem - too much, too shallow.
The main article, The Rise And Fall Of The Assassins, was fine, if lacking in detail.

Medieval Warfare … striking cover

However The Battle Of Jargeau managed to cover a battle from the 100 Years War without a single battle map, and a piece on Hussite war wagons was so incomplete it would barely merit a Wikipedia "stub" label.
Some of the writing is rather lazy and needs stricter editing.
For example, a piece on Genghis Khan includes the sentence: "After climbing a scared mountain and communing with Tengri, the god of the limitless blue sky, he learned the heavens wished him to conquer the world."
Now, it may be Genghis Khan claimed this happened, or some of his followers believed it happened, but to state it as a fact in a magazine devoted to history is ridiculous.
The article on the Hussites starts: "After several years of mounting tension, Hus was arrested, and in 1415 he was executed. Hus's followers were outraged and a rebellion took off, lasting from 1419 to 1434 …"
This rather prompts the question: if Hus's followers were so "outraged," how come it took them four years to rebel?
Another piece states that an Italian condottieri was paid "the incredible sum of 60,000 ducats a year."
This may or may not be "incredible," but since we are given no reference point for what 60,000 ducats represents, it is hard to tell.
If Medieval Warfare were a specialist magazine for hardcore historians, readers might be expected to have a good idea what 60,000 ducats were worth, but the magazine is clearly being aimed at general readers - very general readers.
I certainly do not wish the magazine ill, but I have much better ways to spend the £5.99 cost of each copy.

Interesting Book

I LOVE espresso, and these days there is a huge choice of where to get it, although the quality varies immensely.
While in Gloucester over the bank-holiday weekend I remembered my favourite place for an espresso in the city, based on my visit last year, is Coffee#1.
(You might think coffee is very much the same wherever you get it, and there is some truth in that if you add milk to your drink - but not if you like your coffee straight).
As with a lot of independent outlets, Coffee#1 has shelves lined with job-lots of second-hand books.
I usually give these a glance, just in case something piques my interest, and I hit the jackpot yesterday with a large volume on Petra.

Pretty Petra

Having been to the ancient city, and being interested in Nabatean culture, I settled down for a good read in the short time I had available.
The book was first printed in 1972, if I recall correctly, so much of its information has probably been superseded. But I sped through the first 60 pages, finding author Iain Browning's account fascinating.
I now have to make a decision on whether to buy a copy of the book via Amazon (from £3.07), or to save it as reading material when, as is likely, I visit Gloucester next year.

Toy Soldier Collector Issue 88

THE June/July edition of Toy Soldier Collector arrived on Thursday with its usual mix of mouth-watering glossy photos of modern and old-style toy soldiers.

TSC 88 - Vietnam cover

But one of the most interesting bits, to me, was an ad from W Britain listing UK stores that stock its products, including one near me I had not heard of, "Past Present Toys LONDON."
Unfortunately the shop does not have a website, and a Facebook page is particularly uninformative, but there are photos (http://n21online.com/business-directory/item/past-present-toys.html) that suggest the premises would be well worth a visit.
One of the more intriguing articles is about Paper Replika, a company that produces paper soldiers.
These are very much toy soldiers rather than smaller-scale paper model-soldiers for wargaming that can be found, for example, at http://www.juniorgeneral.org/
What especially interested me is that Paper Replika also has a small selection of paper buildings. I am not sure how useful these would be for me, but I should probably keep an eye on the website: http://paper-replika.com/

Slingshot Issue 324

THE May/June issue of the Society of Ancients' magazine arrived on Wednesday.
As per usual, I found every article to have at least something of interest, but particularly entertaining for me were Joe Collins' DBA 3 - Improving The Simulation, Martin Smith's Coals To Newcastle - Playing Welsh DBA Lists In Wales and Paul Stein's Simple Campaign For Danelaw Britain - A Solo Or Programmed Campaign For DBA 3 (Part II).

A DBA-heavy edition of Slingshot

I See The Light

THE day after my visit to a large Poundland in Stratford, East London, I called in at its sister store in Peckham, South London.
Again my visit was rewarded, this time in the shape of a garden ornament that will make a good addition to the scenery for my Project Kaiser refight of the Franco-Prussian War.

Poundland street light

The light with a 60mm Victorian toy soldier for scale-comparison

Boats & Matches

WHILE  I was visiting The Works at Stratford, East London, I took the chance to pop into the next-door Poundland - quite possibly the biggest Poundland I have ever seen.
Going there proved well worth it as I picked up a Beach Boat Set and a pack of 400 "matches" - actually small sticks the size of matches but without combustible tips.

Boats and matches

I have no idea what I will use either purchase for, but I am fairly certain they will come in useful one day, and meanwhile I am only £2 out of pocket.

The boats - minimal assembly required - with a 60mm Victorian toy soldier for scale-comparison