Spectacles

 Spectacles were what the events in the arenas/ampitheatres were called by the ancient Romans; everything that hapened in the arena was part of the 'Spectacle', 

The photograph on the right shows the Murmillo that I started way back at the end of April, prior to my unexpected hospital stay. Since returning from hospital, I've endeavoured to get him (and the 'umpire') finished and although it's been a big struggle, he's as finished now as he's ever going to be.

He can, of course, now be considered for any future spectacle in my arena. It was a struggle getting him finished mainly because of the two paintbrush tips I see or the problem I have of getting the paint in the correct place when one of my eyes is shut (stopping the paint-brush tip duality). 

I must have seemed a bit better as my wife booked me in for an opticians oppointment last week and consequently I will be recieving my new spectacles next week, to enable me to carry on with the specatacles in my arena ! (I'll get my coat).

Side view (obviously)

Not the view you want to be showing your opponent

Strange shield but hinted at in manuscripts.

The 'Summa Rudis' - all finished now too

Rear view (obviously padding -Ed.)

"Known for his fairness" (and wonky stick)

Group shot (Can two be a group?)

So that's it then for this week, not a lot, but at least it still counts as a post right ?

Since the optician's examination, I've found out that my 'good eye' (my right one) is now worse than my left one (the bad eye) - not wonder everything is getting blurry ! Hopefully when I can see better (after next week's post) I may have enthusiasm to paint or finish model - who knows?

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully there was something of interest and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

Space Hulk

 Whilst not having anything to do with wargames or wargamng, after thirty-plus years this is still a great game even if GW did try and break it (IMHO) with the supplements "Genestealers" and "Deathwing" .
For those unfamiliar with this game (is there reallyvanyonevwho hasn't heard of this game?), it consists of  geomorphic tiles as the playing surface for one player to use his marines in completing a task opposed by the other player's "Genestealers". In the box your get ten marines and twenty genestealers. Somehwere down the line I seemed to have gained another set of ten marines.

A game in progress - hence its claim of being '3D' ! (-Doors and figures I guess.)

Initially the game was bought by me to play with my eldest son, as he was into 'Fantasy' and of course he wanted all the pieces to be painted, which I duly did whilst we both learned the rules.
 The game itself I found intriugingly easy to play, but hard to master, the initial mission "Suicide" run was difficult, but not impossible to win as he marines  and it still remains my favourite  scenario to date. 

The new supplements came with new rules, new Marine weapons and new Marine models, most of which I disliked but still made the equivaent conversions with both the original and subsequent models.

Finally I got  a second mortgage and paid for five metal Marine figures with the new kit.

Here's the photographs:

The original plastic Marines - some still with their aerials.

Second style of Marine, wiht home-made 'lightning claws' on the right.

More conversions, gatling cannon thing, chainsaw thing and a sword!

The very superior metal figures, with the new weapons.

A selection of Genestealers, painted in one night iirc, using inks.

All three dozen-plus  marines and two dozen or more genestealers carefully packed away !

So why all this and why now I hear you ask ?

Two things, firstly it shows I do have some fantasty /sci-fi figures and secondly I am getting more and more desperate for things to post about, (these have also been staring at me across the room where we played our gladiator games too !)

 

So that's it then for another week, hopefully there's something of interest in this post and of course, as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated. 

Wild West - Past Rule Sets.

 Amongst the few papers that I rescued from Bryan's (Vampifan's) collection were several set's of rules, maps and notes from his wn western games. The  rules are date from the 1970's only two of which I recognise. The biggest part of the 'haul' is the (then) well-known Boot Hill, a rpg with several module. The loose covers of the models all have a map (or maps) on the inside which realate to the adventure in the module. Boot Hill 'suffers' from the same feature of a lot of 1970's rule in that it has a mass of detailed statistics in a very  over-complicated (imho) set of rules. 
The second set of rules "Wild West" has a single module, but has two addtional maps with town mps of both the centre of Tombstone and Dpdge City of their reverse.

Finally there ar copies of Book one and two of "The Old West" skirmish rules, in much better states thn my single, coverless, well-worn, earlier edition.

Here's the pics:

Boot Hill, rules, referee's screen and sceanrio modules.

 

The slim "Wild West" rules and the single scenario.

Huge, A1 size map for campaigns

Detail from the centre of the coloured, hex map

The reverse of the above map, a fair represernation of the centre of Tombstone

A3, hand-made version of the above map, I suspect for players

Another of "Wild West's" maps, central Texas, with Dodge City on the reverse.

Some of the extra paraphrenalia of gaming.

Hand-written notes of each location on the top map (left) and a campaign journal (right).

Page from a dissertaition on Gunfighters by Bryan

I hope this insight shows just how much of a fan of western games that Bryan was. I must admit it came as quite a surprise to me that we shared such enthusiasm for the wild west era, if only we'd have known this over the ten years or so I knew him!.

That's it then for this week, thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully it was worth your time.

In other news, I've reverted to my "Firefox" browser to write this post, rather than having to use Microsoft's "Edge", which I don't like.  Hopefully Blogger will behave itself for a while now that the previous problem seems to have been sorted.
 

Until next time then, that's it for this week as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.  

A Battered Box of Folders

 This was yet another box that I rescued from Bryan's (Vampifan's) collection - probably rescued from ending up in the local dump. It's a box of ring binders (rather than the folders of the title) that I decided to rescue, largely because they contain many of Bryan's art-work and countless hours of home-made file cards, one for each of his characters for his Western games - another reason to rescue them as it's a gaming period I'm also very interested in !

Each of the nine binders has its content's title on the spine and contains an A5 card with a charcaters information on it, all enclosed in a plastic wallet.

Some titles are readable in the above, but contain "Tong Assassins" too  !(?)

There's a lot of information for each character on their card

The illustrations ae hand-drawn as far as I can tell, and certainly hand coloured

All bear more than a passing likeness for their model - anyone not recognise the old Britain's farmer ?

Along with his fictional characters, he also has real-life ones too!

It begs the question why he included these real-life characters and also a Harry Callaghan! 

This drawing of Geronimo is taken from a well-known photograph of him I reckon.

The binders aren't just any old binders either !

There's at least 25 character cards in each of the binlders and as some of the fictional ones have notes when they 'died', means to me that they were used at some stage in his gaming. I have some ideas of what he did with all these, which I'll get around to next week !

So that's it then for this week, I did have two quick gladiatorial games last week (lost both, but one gladiator survived the wrath of his appeal to the crowd). I also finally finished  the metal gladiator I had started in the back-end of April, before being laid up in hospital. 

Thanks for taking the time to visit, hopefully some of it was interesting and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.