Busy or Not

I'm beginning to wonder how I ever got anything done, let alone blog. Blogging has dropped off to next to nothing (BTW for those of you who use Blogger, - how much do you hate the new interface?) and the recent sunny weather gave me a good reason to sit in the garden and catch up on some reading. 

That's not to say I haven't been busy. I mean, I've watched a bit of telly, I'll admit, and we've nearly finished watching our way through the MCU. And we're 5 seasons in to Brooklyn 99, so I've not exactly been wasting my time.

I have made progress on quite a few projects. The Montrose Army that I previewed a while back is now completely painted and based. Currently it's in a storage box that has been re-purposed from another army when it became surplus to requirements when I changed base sizes.It needs the dividers moving around, and proper labels applying, but they're safe for now.

The current painting project is some Strelets WSS "English" infantry. Due to the figure mix I have an abundance of figures in early grenadier caps. These look like fusilier caps, so I've got a battalion of those becoming the Scots Fusiliers (Earl of Mar's "Grey Breeks"), and another regiment for some other Scots fusiliers in Dutch service (I have the exact details somewhere; I'll get them out when I need them). The rest of the boxes - I bought 3 in total, giving me 120ish figures for less than £26 - have been sorted into regimental/battalion groups waiting to be allocated to armies. I probably need more Dutch, and the French are outnumbered, so some will go to them as well (look, I current use Washington's Army for everyone, so some issues over the shape of a knapsack don't fuss me) and I'm also short of a regiment or two in the Jacobite Revolts..

Meanwhile I'm trying to push the latest rule set, the gladiatorial "Dicing With Death". So far it has sold a few copies, but not as many as I had hoped. This isn't helped by the ad on TMP being bounced off the front page in about 2 hours, and the fact that my ad banner with them on still hasn't been processed by good ol' Bill, despite him having it for a couple of weeks. No doubt he's really busy at the moment. Also, threads on various forums have singularly failed to take flight. I really shouldn't mind, I guess, I've shifted as many as I hoped for when I started out with "To Ur...", and the whole COVID-19 thing means everything is taking a little bit longer than usual. Finding affordable ways of promoting the rules is a challenge. My personal rule is that I don't publish anything that I think won't cover its costs. I mean, I know this is all just vanity, but if I don't take it seriously, why should anyone else? I've therefore started a Facebook page (search "Wargaming for Grown Ups Publications") to generate some interest, as I can then share that with other wargame groups as the rules range expands.

As I go to work on the Taiping Era rules I've come to accept I do need to do the French for 1860, seeing as they were present at every action of the campaign. I looked again at the Lancashire Games figures I bought, and they really are too big to go with the rest of what I already have. They need to go to ebay, probably. There's about 140 figures, and I've even painted and based a few regiments. And a gun. What a waste of effort. So there's painting to be done before I publish, probably.

In common with all of my previous rule sets, the moment I sit down and start to transfer my little booklet of rules into a fully worked up version with examples, I start to see the holes. And as I'm researching and reading at the same time I notice things I want to include, so it all starts to expand. The challenge with Taiping Era is that it is a single mechanism set, - everything is driven be using a unit's Moral Vigour rating, - so including new things requires some thought. My desire to put the French in means I need to look at Attack Column formations, because as far as I can tell the French liked them still whilst the British did not (thanks, Colonel Callwell). That unbalances some things I'm currently doing with square occupancy movement rates. Hopefully I can spend a day in Shedquarters this week and sort all of those kinks out.

I'm also having issues with the descriptions of Taiping formations. This is a "shih" of five battalions or "leu" set out in the described formation, with a unit of skirmishers in front. The use of squares probably solves issues about exactly how units were made up and deployed, as under the current version everything in a square fights.

Mongol and Manchu cavalry are also giving me pause for thought. The Mongols seems to have been quite effective, but were thoroughly beaten by relatively few Indian cavalry.

I'm also experimenting with how best to display the Imps on the table. Here I've got them in a sort of renaissance pattern with all the spears in the centre, flanked by muskets. Re-reading about the Hunan Army they had a quite eccentric type of formation, which will also need some experimentation to get right.

So, an afternoon or two in Shedquarters in prospect, as I said

Now, back to editing the photos from that holiday we took three years ago...