It has been a while

I last posted in August as my job in Jakarta ended.  I had expected to do more posting, but my elderly mother-in-law had an accident whilst Sarah (wife) and were in Mongolia, so we sped back to the UK.

M-i-L recovered from her fall, which is good. 😃 Not so helpful is the fact that a lot of our stuff, including models in various stages of completion, is still in Jakarta....😟

So, several half finished planes & modelling projects have yet to be completed.

A return to the UK has been good in several ways.

I've been able to visit the war-games club in Oxford and have enjoyed a number of games as both winner and loser.  This year's Christmas game was based in Java, 1811, in honour of my return to Blighty from Indonesia - featuring Xmas hats and dice rolls modified by Xmas crackers.  The game also had sealed orders, with one Dutch player following his, sallying forth from the fort with 1/4 of the troops and defecting to the Brits!

Looking North.  The Franco-Dutch defend Fort Cornelius against the EIC

A suitably festive look, as the EIC break in to the fort.  Mark, 2nd left, made us pull crackers to determine several special events, such as blowing up captured bastions, etc.  A lot of fun!

2mm BBB ECW.  Bruce has been working on rules & figures.  I recreated history and lost for the Scots against the Sassenach Cromwell.

I went to Warfare, Reading, in November, as I discovered that I only had 1 ton of unpainted troops in the UK, so might need a few more....

I've been wargaming regularly with my friend (& worthy opponent) Mark, BBB Sikh wars, Indian Mutiny/1st war of Liberation (delete as appropriate) & French versus Spanish, 1811.

Mark's daughter Sarah is a keen WW1 planes fan, so wisely used her University holidays to help me playtest some suitable "fast & furious" rules.

I've been painting my Baccus 1809 Austrians, which has been a really enjoyable process.  More of this in a later post.

The new workbench.  I used the previous day's Oxford Mail wisely.

6 mm Baccus Austrians.  Note the use of coffee stirring sticks as troop holding bases and the highly effective re-cycling of coffee cup lids as palettes.