Home from Colours 2009

Uniforms of Waterloo (Blandford Press, London, 1974)

As I suspected, despite the title above, I was too tired to complete this post on Sunday evening. My feet are still aching from going up and down all the stairs in the venue! Something that isn’t aided by the fact that we did a four-hour family dog walk and blackberry picking outing on Saturday.

My overall impression of Colours this year is that attendance was slightly down but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing – either for visitors or traders. The games and trade stands were easier to get at and more comfortable to stay at making for a more pleasant experience and, according to some traders I spoke to, encouraging more actual purchasing.

As usual, my companion around the show was Peter F. and the latest news from Calpe Towers is that the first moulds for Saxon artillery pieces have been made and I’ve now got a couple of these highly distinctive items in my possession. I’m too stretched to photograph them for you now but that delight will follow in due course. Peter’s also working on the Saxon grenadiers to complement the already released musketeers and then artillery crew will follow. The other photo-worthy item is Peter’s entry in the painting competition that came a creditable second in its class – I’ll have a nice picture of that for you soon too.

The demo games were of variable standard and there wasn’t much new or exciting to report from the trade stands yet, despite this lack of excitement, I still really enjoyed the day and picked up a couple of bits and pieces that I’d been after for a while or that had been recommended. I got some 100mm wire pikes for cutting down as landwehr cavalry lances; on Peter Royle’s recommendation via Peter F., I got yet another type of white paint to try (more of that on another occasion); and I acquired some very neat castings of wooden barrels and buckets from Antenociti’s Workshop – these are destined to grace some artillery and command bases.

I also learnt a lesson about striking while the iron is hot (or rather, failing to do so). I saw a second-hand copy of the Blandford Press book Uniforms of the Retreat from Moscow on one of the booksellers’ stands but rather than snaffle it there and then I opted to see what else I might find elsewhere and return later. Of course, the inevitable happened and another eagle-eyed shopper had purchased the book by the time I returned. Never mind, I was forced to console myself with a copy of Uniforms of Waterloo from the same publisher instead. While it’s true that these old Blandfords contain quite a few errors and modern research has superdeded them they are still useful and many of the colour plates are lovely little works of art.

So that brings to a close this year’s visits to wargaming shows for me and, as Autumn begins, I can turn attention to painting again on the cooler evenings. Plus I’ve got a weekend of sculpting and mould making lessons to look forward to at Calpe Towers in a few weeks time.

“Events, dear boy”

This weekend sees another key date in the annual wargaming calendar – Colours at Newbury Racecourse. This is a regular in my diary and I’ve enjoyed it all the more since it moved away from the cramped and difficult-to-park-at Hexagon in Reading. For me, getting there on Sunday (I don’t go to the Saturday of this two-dayer) is a simple drive East along the A4 and the parking at the Racecourse is free.

So I’ll be sitting down to compile my shopping / to-do list tonight though it will be hampered by the fact that the Colours website yet again doesn’t (at the time of writing) have an up-to-date list of traders or demo games. It’s only two days to the show, guys, surely you could manage to make this information available by now?

Still, that’s a minor gripe and, more importantly, I’ll be meeting up as usual with Peter F. So that gives us an opportunity to pick up the Calpe threads after our Summer breaks. We’ve got several things on the agenda: completion of the PayPal functionality for the website, progress on the next Saxon releases and a weekend of sculpting tutorials and mould-making later in the Autumn. If any of you are attending Colours and want to see what a painted Calpe Saxon musketeer battalion looks like, I suggest you check out the painting competition because Peter F. is almost certain to enter a little something.

The other imminent event that’s caught my attention is the latest Foundry open day on 25th September. Plenty of juiciness to this with the presence of Kevin Dallimore (lovely chap) doing a painting clinic and a couple of big Napoleonic participation games. The trouble is there’s a snowball in hell’s chance of me (and I suspect many others) going. Why? Well, apart from a long journey to Nottingham (which Foundry can’t help) they’ve persisted with the lunacy of holding the open day on a Friday. Are they quite mad? Why can’t they schedule it for a weekend?

Lastly, on a personal note, another event I’d like to mention is that tomorrow von Peter and his family end their eight month sojourn in the UK and begin a stately passage back to their home in New Zealand. It’ll take them quite a while to get there because they’re taking in a grand tour of mainland Europe on the way. So I’d just like to take a moment to wish them bon voyage and thank them for their good company and coffee-buying heroics while they’ve been here.

UPDATE 12/9/09: there is now a list of traders on the Colours website but it’s not linked to from the home page (or rather the link there doesn’t work).

A quick plug

This coming weekend is Attack! (the annual show of my local wargames club in Devizes). Though I’m not a member (I’m not very good with the whole business of joining things), I do try to support the show every year by going along.

It’s unusual in being a two-day event held over both the Saturday and Sunday of a weekend and that seems to lend a relaxed atmosphere to proceedings. This year is a bit special though because it’s the 30th year of the event. So if you’re in the area, why not try to pop along and help the club celebrate?

The only fly in the ointment is that I may not be able to make it myself this time around because of pre-existing commitments with family visitors. Still, I might just be able to sneak away unnoticed for a couple of hours…

Phew!

What a scorcher! And I don’t just mean the welcome sunny weather over the last couple of days. After a good night’s sleep I’m able to reflect on a hectic weekend of hobby-related activity that has seen me escort von Peter and ADC Simon to Calpe Towers and then onwards to Partizan and back with Peter F. It’s hard to know where to begin so I think it’ll be simplest to take things in chronological order.

That means we’ll start with an overnight stay at Calpe Towers enjoying the hospitality of Peter F. and family. There was a lot of discussion about the usual topics: painting, uniforms, the imminent Saxon range (and some exciting plans beyond that!) and the upcoming adjustments to the website. It doesn’t take psychic powers for me to deduce that many BfK regulars will want news of the Saxons above all else.

Well, the full set of production moulds for the march/attack musketeers is complete and I’ve got a set of castings sitting here on the desk beside me in Bfk HQ as I write this. The number of variants is astounding: more than enough to do a 32-figure battalion without a single figure repeat. And there’s plenty of little details to admire across the figures. The three foot officers and three mounted officers demonstrate this brilliantly with their range of headwear, jacket and legwear options. Just make sure you read the uniform notes with care to get the colours right before you wield your paintbrushes!

Peter’s going to write up the release notes this week and “magic dip” some figures for proper photographs for the new section of the Calpe website. With that in mind, I’m going to restrain myself from including any homebrew sub-standard pictures of unpainted figures here. I promise you’ll see the official shots on BfK first plus, of course, WIP on ones that I paint. The intention is to aim for a 1st June release date. Meanwhile, on the Saxon front, plans are in hand for a second set of musketeers in advancing pose, line grenadiers, artillery and two sets of light infantry (plus all the other troop types required for the 23rd and 24th divisions of Reynier’s corps). Peter is also in the middle of sculpting the new versions of the Prussian dragoons that will have the saddle furniture integral with the mounted figure rather than on the horse.

Peter F’s already painting his first Saxon battalion so we spent a lot of time inspecting the workbench and leafing through uniform plates discussing colours, accurate uniformology and reasonable conjectures for campaign kit. This set my mind racing about the possibilities and I’m going to have to adjust several of my painting palette choices.

Sunday saw us take the road North to Partizan at Kelham Hall. The only disappointment was that none of the traders had the supplies I was hoping to pick up but that’s easily resolved with a bit of online ordering and more than made up for by everything else at the show. It really is a day when you seem to bump into everybody and share a pleasant cup of coffee and/or chat. I enjoyed seeing a WW1 trench warfare game, a bijou 1066 game that would have fitted on my dining table and what looked like something inspired by Ice Station Zebra.

There was also a second chance to see two of my favourites from Salute. The Perry Twins ran their Quatre Bras game again but this time with added cotton wool smoke and flashing red LEDs to simulate musket and cannon fire. If I’d had my tripod with me I could have captured the effect on camera for you. The whole thing was a source of much mirth and Alan didn’t seem to averse to the suggestion of visiting to take proper pictures. The other news from the Quatre Bras game is that the Black Powder rules are almost ready for publication. We do seem to be on the cusp of the apeparance of glut of new Napoleonic big battalions rulesets and I feel a big comparison review coming on at some point.

The other Salute re-appearance was Barry Hilton’s Peninsular War game. This time with the added attraction of several of Barry’s friends from Scotland. I was especially delighted to see David Imrie again. Particularly because the game featured his massive 100-figure French legere unit (split into two 48-figure units for the occasion but we re-arranged them when Barry waan’t looking) that I mentioned the other week. It looks even better in reality that in the photos and David confirmed several things about how he’d put the unit together and based it that will certainly inform my future unit plans. David also had an only slightly smaller French line unit involved in the action. I’m hoping he’ll publish some pictures of this soon too. And there’s the prospect of a Napolenic game if we can hook up on my usual Summer trip to Scotland. My sister-in-law will have to manage without the pleasure of my company on one evening of the holiday!