The Great Shelf Disaster

In my last post I made a cryptic reference to "The Great Shelf Disaster" and since that got some interest, I thought I'd tell the story and then solicit your wargames disaster stories.   Maybe it will prove thereapeutic for all of us.

So when we moved in November, Joy and I had downsized and gotten rid of a lot of our CDs.   I had a nice wooden CD tower left over and thought of a great way to repurpose it as a shelf for my command stands, which, because of the flags, are a little fragile to go into boxes.   The idea was that I could just take the command stands off the little shelves and plop them on the games table.   

Unfortunately, or better, foolishly, the shelf wasn't anchored to the wall, it was just balanced, and for some reason one evening it decided to fall over.  The stands on the top shelves shelves suffered the most, the ones lower down took less damage, and all the little shelves came out and fell onto everything, making matters worse.  Gentle reader, I almost cried when I opened the door and saw the carnage.

Since February I've been going through these figures, gluing figures back onto bases, fixing flags, finding matches from my sprue collection for missing arms and hands and heads.   It was a right old mess.  Some of these figures are decades old, and quite fragile, so it hurt to see them so abused.

  

Besides repairing all these stands, I also took the time for a rough but effective bit of DIY to ensure that this never happens again.

February was also a rough month because I grabbed the wrong rattle can when I was spraying dullcote on these figures.

The good news is that this series of unfortunate events taught me to be patient and to be grateful for what I have.  I have a dedicated gaming room, thirty years worth of figures, and a hobby that I love, so I reminded myself of those blessings regularly as I filed, glued, and repainted.

What wargaming disasters have you experienced, and what have they taught you?

Blessings, MP+

The Royal Ontario Museum Toy Soldier Collection

Picking up on yesterday’s post’s mention at the end of my visit to the Royal Ontario Museum last Saturday, I’m happy to share some photos of the ROM’s vintage toy soldier collection.  The collection was donated by Henry Jackman, billionaire businessman, Chancellor of the University of Toronto, Lt. Governor or Ontario in the 1990s, Honourary Colonel of the Governor General’s Horse Guards, Conservative Party bundler, so a fairly serious chap.  As a child he played with toy soldiers (I imagine his dad bought him a LOT of them) and as an adult he collected them, so if anyone tells you that you’re not a serious adult because you’re a wargamer, say “Pfffftttttt” and refer them to Hal Jackman.

What a lucky fellow I am, that when we got to the ROM, my beautiful wife told me “You gotta come see the toy soldiers”.  Here they are.  Blessed is the fellow whose spouse takes such an interest in his hobbies and passions.

Marching bands from various countries, including fellows in what appear to be sombreros.

Even the wounded are allowed to take part in the parade, under the careful scrutiny of the nursing sisters.

A Salvation Army band played, and the children drank lemonade.

Zouaves demonstrating their characteristically athletic foot drill.  Kick, one, two, kick, one two!

Not really sure what the brontosaurus is doing here.  Possibly the TARDIS is behind those palm trees nearby.

Some very finely painted knights.

Canada is well represented.

A fine cross-section of modern transport and equipment, including searchlights!

I now have a plan for my miniatures collection, as I approach the checkout lane.   I’m sure there’s a world class museum out there that will want the Peterson Toy Soldier Collection.

Cheers and blessings to your travels this summer!

MP

Games With John and James: Or, What I Did Over My Summer Holidays

Hello friends:

In my last post, I mentioned that I’d been fortunate enough to spend the month of August off, and besides some overnight trips with the lovely Joy, including taking her to Paris and too many wineries.  Besides Brantford County’s city of light on the Grand River, we headed east to Prince Edward County, near Kingston.   On the way we stopped in the river town of Belleville with its stone buildings along the river, hoping against hope that the Museum of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment was open, but alas it has been shuttered since Covid.

The “Hasty Ps” as they are still fondly known are an active regiment in the Canadian Army Reserve.  They were the subject of Canadian author Farley Mowat’s memoir The Regiment, describing his service with the regiment in Italy.  I hope to get back here to see the museum post-Covid.

 

After a pleasant lunch in Belleville, onwards to nearby Picton, our base camp while we visited several excellent wineries.   The Niagara Peninsula is best known as Ontario’s wine country, but there are some stellar vintage to be found in PEC.  Our favourite was Karlo Estates, where we found some delicious reds in their charming barn/store.

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Also found some delicious whites and serenity at Closson Chase.

Our hotel in Kingston offered a stunning view of Royal Military College, our equivalent to Sandhurst, West Point, and ADFA, as well as Fort Henry in the background.

Early morning walk allowed me to visit one of the Martello Tower fortifications surrounding Kingston’s harbour.  This is the Murney Redoubt, built in 1846.

Quite a solid piece of masonry!

During the last week of August I was delighted to spend a week with my son John, who I hadn’t seen since before Covid.  Despite a forest fire that had temporarily closed his local airport on Vancouver Island, and a long night camping in the terminal in Vancouver, John’s flight arrived.

One of the highlights of our visit was a weekend at my friend and podcast partner James Manto, keeper of the Rabbits in My Basement blog.  We got in two days of gaming, starting with Bag the Hun on James’ nifty custom-designed mat.  John and I flew some snazzy Spitfires, but our lack of coordination had us flying all over SW England.

 John did manage to knock down an ME 110, saving his dad from it hail of cannon fire.  I think we decided that the match was a draw.

Then a game of Sharp Practice using James’ stunningly good new Napoleonic figures.  James and John teamed up as a Bavarian (James) and French (John) force, while our friend Scott supplied the Austrians and French figures from his innumerable collection.  Here James shows John the fine art of stacking the deck.

 Scott’s Kaiserlicks advance steadily towards John, who doesn’t appear the slightest bit alarmed.  My Russian jaegers loiter calmly on the hill, keeping an eye on James’ lights in the building top right.

Russian light cavalry pile into James’ newly painted Bavarian cheveux legeres, who sadly suffer the fate of most newly painted units in their debut battle.

Things are heating up between Scott and John.  Both sides’ line infantry battered their oppos into a pulp, without much of a clear result until the end, when John’s French began to fold after their Level 3 leader caught one in the head.

Meanwhile, after trading away our light cavalry for little gain in return, James and I were content to spar at long range.  Russian gun trades shots with the Bavarians, spreading some shock but not adding much except smoke and decibels. 

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James was content to skulk in his nice stone buildings, and my Russians weren’t eager to die trying to evict the sausage munchers. 

In the last moments of the battle, Scott elected to throw his light cavalry into the fight.  As I’ve witnessed with a lot of new players of Sharp Practice, he quite overestimated their chances of success.  SP is a relentlessly tactical game.  When the numbers are mostly equal, foot with loaded muskets/rifles charged by cavalry to their front, can usually see the horse off.   Save your cavalry for picking off the groups with lots of shock, or work your horse around to the flanks or rear. 

 So a grand weekend of games and kind hospitality offered by James, thanks mate.  We also got in our usual Lord of the Rings themed game using the Dragon Rampant rules, which I’ll save for my Friday Fantasy feature.

Otherwise John and I had an all too brief time in which we did a few days of paddling and another day of cycling.   John pushed the old man hard and I didn’t admit my weakness, secretly chugging handfuls of Advil at night.

 

 

John’s home now and he is about to be the proud owner of a Warlord Games French and British Penninsular War starter sets and some nice fresh TFL Sharp Practice rules as a birthday present.  I’m excited that this young chap was impressed enough by his gaming holiday that he wants to make the jump from the GW world.  A few days after our weekend with James, I took John to my FLGS for another game of Sharp Practice, and he had totally mastered the rules.  In another Napeolonic game, with us as the French, we handily defeated an Anglican-Spanish force of better quality.  John skillfully used his two groups of voltiguers to harass and paralyze a cautious British player, and then brought up his formation of conscript infantry to deliver a Crashing Volley that broke the redcoats and earned us a handy win of 4-0 in Force Morale.  I hope it’s not another two years before I see him again.

I hope your summer holidays were as pleasant.

 

#TerrainTuesday: Repainting the Garrison Gazebo

Hello Friends:

Picking up the blog again after taking August off for some home projects, family visits, and a most enjoyable time with my son John who came out all the way from British Columbia on the West Coast to hang out with his dad.   I’ll have a report on What I Did On My Summer Holidays here shortly.

For now, to satisfy the entirely self-imposed demands of #TerrainTuesday, here’s a project that I dragooned my son into helping me with, the Mad Padre garrison garden gazebo that was sadly in need of cleaning, repainting and re-staining since it was built some twenty years ago.  Between the two of us we blasted it with a pressure washer, scraped and cleaned it, power-sanded it, painted and stained it, and generally refurbished it.  John was mostly cheerful about doing the work in the midst of late summer heatwave and was paid handsomely in beer.  The roof tiles show their age but the structure isn’t robust enough for the ladder work required.  Still, it looks rather good, I think, and the lovely Joy is grateful.

Since 1to1 terrain scale is a bit of a cheat, here’s a 6mm battlefield that I threw together just now to give Osprey’s Absolute Emperor fast-play big-battle Napoleonics rules another go before passing judgement.  Bit of a mix of stuff in this photo:  Paper Terrain roads, rubber river sections from Baccus, mostly Timecast bridges and buildings all on a Geek Villain grasslands mat.

Three Austrian corps will defend against a somewhat larger number of French who will have to cross the river and advance from bottom to top of the photo.

John and I have tried these rules a few times with smaller forces while he was here, so another go tonight solo and I’ll try to give my impressions on the rules on #NapoleonicsThursday.

Blessings to your tiny landscapes.

MP+

#TerrainTuesday: How Do You Like Them Apples?

Since I don’t have a piece of wargaming terrain finished or in production at the moment, I thought I’d cheat and tell you about a piece of 1 to 1 scale terrain that has been keeping me busy of late.

This gorgeous crab apple tree sits in front of my house.  In May, when I took this photo, it is a glorious, fragrant mass of blossoms.    

The blossoms put on a show for about a week, and then they start to fall, like a gentle snow.  They fall and fall, so that our driveway and walkway are on some mornings white as if it was winter.

By the end of May the blossoms are replaced by green leaves, at least until the gypsy moths (sorry, not allowed to call them that anymore - they are now LDD for Lymantia Dispar Dispar, or just furry hungry buggers that grow into the size of small snakes) invaded trees in the area.  The crabapple tree was a particularly tasty buffet.  All through June and July I waged war against them, picking them off, gingerly at first, and then by the fistful, and dropping them in a soapy bucket of water.  I did my best to keep the lower branches free of the caterpillars, but I couldn’t reach the upper bows, and every morning the ground was littered with fragments of leaves and tiny almost embryonic green apples.   I assumed the tree was doomed.

July came, and the caterpillars became sluggish and then disappeared.  The local paper said some sort of virus had killed them.   I found and destroyed a few cocoons, and then for a week small white moths fluttered about aimlessly, as if filled with wonder that they could fiy, albeit badly.  Then they disappeared.

August came with apples.  The tree roared back, green leaves appeared in the bare sections, and SO MANY APPLES.

Now its the apples that fall, buckets of them every day.  I have a nifty roller tool that gathers them in a wire ball-shaped cage, and usually spend thirty minutes a day collecting them, so as not to attract wasps and alarm my neighbours, a nice young couple newly moved in who regard the tree with some alarm.  I’ve noticed they are deathly fearful of insects.   Some of the apples go into my compost bin, the rest into the city green waste bin.  My wife, who has lived with the tree longer than I have, tells me that the apples are sour and hard to cook with, so I’m content to let them return to nature and to give me free biomass for next year’s garden..

Respect for a tree that doggedly does what it wants to, bugs be damned.

Cheers,

MP+

#Terrain Tuesday: Adventures In My Back Yard

Hello friends:

Not much to report here of late - this is my first blog post since I started a month’s vacation lasting all of August, which has been very pleasant thus far, with a fair number of miniatures on the painting bench and some out of town overnight trips with the lovely Joy (our first since Covid), and some significant outdoor landscaping projects under way, which I am going to call eligible for this week’s Terrain Tuesday feature.

To start the project, I needed a new wheelbarrow, which of course meant that I got a chance to put my scale modelling skills to use in a 1 to 1 scale project. We hone our model making skills for real-world moments such as this.  Everything was going swimmingly until I discovered that I had confused front and back in the somewhat minimal instructions, and so had to disassemble and reassemble the whole shebang.

One side of our house was landscaped with flagstones and pea gravel some twenty years ago.   It’s become quite overgrown and we would like to replace it all with a smooth interlocked brick or stone surface, which will look neater and be easier to keep clean.   We have some builders coming in the early fall to do that project, but for now there is some wasted space between two garden beds that I’d like to reclaim, joining the two garden beds and renewing the soil so I can plant hostas or some other shade-friendly plants together.    The area is about eight feet long by four feet wide, and I quickly discovered that the pea gravel is about two inches deep.   I wanted to be able to separate the gravel and the earth, so I knocked together this quick screening device to go over said wheelbarrow.

There is a LOT of pea gravel.  So much pea gravel. Here you can see the mix of gravel and flag stones that our contractors are going to take up.   It’s far too much work for me to do with a pick and shovel.

Underneath the pea gravel is, of course, a myriad of stones, brick fragments from the original construction that were apparently easier to bury than cart away, and of course, thick tangles of roots from the nearby maple trees.   But, I’m too far in to stop, and the garden bed is almost finished and ready for some compost, some bags of fresh clean black earth, and of course, plants.

The pea gravel is proving useful, as we have a garden bordered by large stones which had pretty much sunk into the ground.   Joy asked if I could dig out the stones and raise them slightly so they could be a more visible border.   So, several projects in one going on simultaneously.

 

Anyway, it’s all very satisfying and for now it makes up for not having gone to the gym since Covid.  

I hope you are enjoying some time off this August and thank you for taking the time to read this.   Blessings to your DIY projects.

Cheers,  MP+

Some Good Pulp Doggoes

Hello and Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving.

Here are two Very Good Doggoes (are there any other kind?) for my 1930s pulp project, The Rockies Ablaze.   These good puppers are from Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures range of Yukon Adventure figures.

My wife Joy has had two Siberian huskies in her life, both sadly gone across the Rainbow Bridge, but our house is replete with pictures, which I used as inspiration.   Joy holds that huskies are the most beautiful animals that God ever made, and I am inclined to agree with her.

Of course, Mounties need husky sidekicks.  Maybe not Constable Benton Fraser from the TV series of the 1990s, Due South, but perhaps his grandfather.

“Let’s go, Fang, there’s trouble out there!"

Sadly our house no longer has a resident dog.  Our very good girl Dinah came to the end of her road last week.   Joy adopted her three years ago after her owner passed away.  Dinah was already elderly then, and while she got deaf and started losing her sight, she had a good life until recently  when her ability to walk and keep clean declined, and we decided to let her end her life in peace and dignity.  I suspect the only dogs here in future will be miniature dogs, as we hope to travel once Covid is over, but you never know.

 

Blessings to your brushes and to your furry friends!

MP+