In The Beginning

This is my first attempt at a modelling blog; any blog come to think of it, so you’ll have to excuse any technical limitations. Normally the last thing I want to do after work was sit down at a computer again, but seeing as everyone else seems to be wired up to the internet I thought I’d give some 21st century technology a run for its money.

The idea for this blog site is to record places of historical interest I’ve visited and also to chart progress with my military modelling, including wargaming figures, terrain etc.

Oddly enough the resurgence for my interest in wargaming started around a year ago and came about via two separate events. Firstly was my disillusionment with computer games or, more likely, my regression back to childhood. This was triggered just after I bought the PC game ‘Company of Heroes’. Although the game is visually and tactically very impressive it still left me cold; now whether this is because I spend enough time at work glued to a computer I’m not sure. I literally wasted hours and hours playing computer games with nothing to show for it apart from a feeling of motion sickness. Living life vicariously though a monitor had lost its appeal.


The second factor was an advert for the JS II tank, by Tamiya, in Military Illustrated. After looking at this impressive model I was bitten by the modeling bug again. All this coincided with a local model show. Back in March I attended WMMS 2008 in Wolverhampton looking for similar large scale models and 54mm figures etc. similar to the ones I’d made in my youth. What caught I eye though were the 28mm wargaming figures, in particular the display by the Shrewsbury Wargames Society with their stunning Seven Years War game with fantastic buildings and terrain. Why not have your cake and eat it? (Shouldn’t that be “eat your cake and have it”?). Historically accurate figures that you can also play with! Everyone’s a winner.

I’m new to the hobby unless you count playing with Atlantic Romans and Greeks (anyone remember them?) back in the late 70’s when I was a young lad. According to the ever excellent Plastic Soldier Review these figures were launched in 1977 when I would have been all of six years old.

These ‘games’ generally consisted of my older brother and myself spending hours setting up the individual, unpainted, plastic figures only for my brother to knock them all down whenever he was losing. Although to be fair, I had a vast number supremacy and the extent of the rules consisted off rolling a single die and knocking over the relevant numbers. No movement restrictions or modifiers, nuffink. Ah, happy days.

My main principle interests are, in no particular order, late medieval, American War Independence (AWI) and the Great War.