Thursday, January 21, 2010

Return of the progidal?


There is an old Jewish proverb to the effect that one should be careful of what one prays for, as God may answer your prayers! 

In my case, the gift from the Gods above is that I found another gamer who has been living no more than twenty minutes walk from me these past two years, and through his contacts we now have the makings of an active club! Regular gaming is now a reality.

Of course the other side of the coin is that wargaming covers a wide variety of eras, scales and armies.  We can't do everything at once so that for the moment the members are involved in organizing 15mm DBR and 20mm WWII using Blitzkrieg Commander amongst other pursuits.

So far, wargaming 18th C. battles has been mooted, but there has been of yet no groundswell of interest.  No hurry, I will persist, and I have been working on my miniatures.  But of course priority has so far been on getting in painting for games that we are going to play.

Nonetheless, M. le Marquis is never far from my thoughts, but having been inspired by the opportunity to finally read my new copy of Savory's His Britannic Majesty's Army in Germany in the Seven Year's War,  where I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of the battles were a lot more close-run affairs than I had thought, and have once again turned to thinking about tricornes, muskets and lace.   

In fact I was inspired enough to once more take brush in hand again,  and "warmed up" by working on a fusilier of the Regt. Bigorre

A Front Rank figure.  Looking back on my previous attempts, on reflection I decided to go for a bolder shading style and black outlining.  While looking almost garish in a close up picture like this, it actually appears extremely effective on the tabletop- much more so than did my earlier efforts.

More to come, but in the meantime here is a clip from a Canadian TV program of a battle that was not by much of a stretch a "close-run thing" (even if the campaign itself was much more touch-and-go than is generally realized).  A British victory  over a different, more famous Marquis, the Marquis de Moncalm.  

Quebec, 1759. 


  

Quite a well done video for the numbers involved.