A Crusader In The Sun...

 It's been a few days, hasn't it? Unfortunately, updating the blog has been hindered by a very busy couple of weeks (preaching appointments and examinations), so any hobby progress has been left undocumented until now. However, now I am on holiday (with Mrs The Cornish Crusade and The Tiny Crusader) at an undisclosed location for the following week, so I thought I'd best put the metaphorical pen to the metaphorical paper and let you all know how things are going.

First things first, the Calebernian and Abnegard air forces have each been supplemented by a pair of piston aircraft, both Mustangs of a kind. Abnegard (in dark blue and red) have received a pair of P51 Mustangs, whereas the Calebernians (in green and yellow) have received two Cavalier Mustang II's with wingtip fuel tanks. Both of these are from Tumbling Dice, and are again at 1/600 scale.

I imagine that the Calebernians, having to operate from a greater strategic distance from the Isles of Smoke than the planes of Abnegard (who are geographically far closer to the contested islands) would need aircraft with the capacity for a greater combat range, hence the Cavalier Mustang II's.

While away on our holidays, I have been making the most of some hobby reading, provided as a surprise by the lovely Mrs The Cornish Crusade - the most recent copies of (from left to right) Wargames Illustrated, Miniature Wargames, and Wargames: Soldiers & Strategy magazines.

The Wargames Illustrated for this month came with a free sprue of Warlord Games' new Japanese Infantry, which includes a heavy machine gun, a lunge mine, and even a trapdoor for ambushing shenanigans.

Sadly, I thought that Wargames Illustrated had the poorest quality articles of the three magazines on offer - this is a long standing criticism of mine of WI, and is the reason I no longer have a subscription with them. There were two "battle report" articles in the issue (one for the blasphemous rubbishgame that is Trench Crusade, and one for the new multi-genre skirmish game Spectre: Out Of Time), both of which had beautiful photographs of beautiful miniatures and terrain - but absolutely no indicator in those photographs of the miniatures' relation to one another on the wider battlefield. All eye-candy, no clarity!

Maybe I was spoiled by an upbringing of reading battle reports in White Dwarf Magazine, but would it have killed them to include a few more overhead shots, and maybe a couple of arrows showing movement? The other magazines are far superior; they seem more dedicated to writing articles to inspire wargamers to wargame, instead of just inspiring wargamers to part with their money.

Wargames: Soldiers & Strategy was a corker. Chris Leach's article on refighting the Swiss-Burgundian battle of Morat, 1476, has got me digging out my old Warmaster and Pendraken 10mm's to attempt a (very loose) solo game of the scenario he generated. The main focus of the magazine was on the manoeuvre warfare that became dominant towards the end of World War One; Blogging's Very Own Jim Jackaman wrote an excellent article on the air war during the Kaiserschlacht, and Youtube's Very Own Alex Sotheran wrote an equally marvellous piece on urban warfare during the same operation. Both scenarios I am keen to somehow convert to using in my Atomic-age ImagiNations world, although I am unsure of how to do it - only time will tell!

Miniature Wargames was also not to be outdone this month: Peter Merritt's article on Victorian Science Fiction wargaming suggested some interesting rules to "bolt-on" to your favourite ruleset to better simulate the trickier sides of battlefield morale, namely shock, danger perception, and combat fatigue; Alun Stuart wrote a scenario for the Battle of Monocacy 1864 that I found interesting despite not being an American Civil War enthusiast; and Jon Sutherland's scenario for the hypothetical "Operation Chastity" (whereby Parachute and Commando units would lead the charge on liberating Quiberon Bay from the Nazis in 1944) has direct use for my Atomic Age ImagiNation gaming, as it can easily be ported to two fictitious countries fighting a war in a nebulously-defined portion of the mid-20th Century.

I suppose I had better close out this (quite long) blog post by showing a snap of some work-in-progress models that I started before heading off on holiday. I was reading about how, at the turn of the 19th Century, there was a half-hearted effort by certain British industrialists and government officials to to induce Denmark to sell Iceland & the Faroes to the United Kingdom. This begged the question (to me), of what Iceland might have looked like were it a British colony...

Such a question set off somewhat of a chain reaction in my brain that led me to my bitz boxes, piling together my 19th century British spares into the beginnings of a "British Iceland Regiment", that I imagine will serve as a small 28mm force for Osprey's "The Men Who Would Be Kings" rules. There is still much greenstuffing to be done, but I'm looking forward to the challenge.

I'd best be going, so goodnight, God bless, and I'll see you in the next blog post!