Vanha harmaa pillitesti

Your Old Uncle Nundanket brings you the gift of some mellow, if melancholic, music this Easter. It’s been a long time since I treated you so, and you deserve it. 

You may recognise the tune, if not the specific words. The singer, the late Topi Sorsakoski*, had, in my opinion, a super voice and imbued the song with such meaning that you don’t have to understand the words.

https://youtu.be/0IrTUI1owLg?si=oRv2eci3TpphcT6e

* not his real name, I believe. The surname translates as Duck Rapids.

Lyrics below so you can sing along. And practice rrrolling your Rrrs.

Kitara soi: the guitar plays. Other keywords: 

surua: sorrow. 

Suru vain: only sadness 

Sointi sen nyt minulle tumma on: its sound to me is dark now

Think you get the picture.

My name is Legion

In an unaccustomed bout of decisiveness, I placed an order for 2 legions' worth of Romans, as described in the last post, plus a similar sized force for Carthage. I was teetering on the brink of ordering an equivalent number of Macedonians, then nearly swapped them out for more SYW figures and pondered ordering various odds and sods for an Ottoman army*. It all proved too much for me and my usual prevaricatory side returned. So just the Romans and Carthaginians then.

* H&R don't do any Ottomans, but I might try some Zouaves, Tartars, Cossacks, Pancerni etc. Irregular do by the way, so that's an option.

18 packs ordered (8 Roman, 10 Carth. incl some elephants naturally). £90 for 2 small armies, not bad.

Once they arrive I'll have a play around with different sized card bases to get a sense of what they will look like, before ordering some MDF ones. Then begins the search for some painting guides. I'm trying to save the pennies for future troop expansions so I'll probably avoid splashing out on books. Any recommendations for on-line guides?

From a terrain point of view, I'll stick with my green felt cloth and not go down the 'arid' root that seems to be favoured. I got some spray paint recently with a view to lightening the cloth a bit. Hopefully we'll get some dry weather soon so I can spray outdoors.

Thoughts turn to Rome

It’s been a long while since I posted. And only twice in the whole of March. Wargaming activity has been sparse to non-existent. The fabled Real Life mostly. But also some football watching in the flesh. The latter has finished for a few weeks, after 3 games in a short period in London and the South East. 

I have been involved in a PBEM ECW campaign, where as King Charles I prematurely lost my head. Pop along to Mud Blood and Steel for an entertaining account of the campaign. The last tactical game I was involved in was a virtual Punic War campaign battle run by Jonathon Freitag of Palouse Wargames Journal fame. You see I’ve been teetering on the brink of building up Roman and Carthaginian armies (and maybe Macedonian and Syracusan). And it’s that subject that I want to briefly touch on. As part of my background preparation, I came across the article by Bret Devereaux below, which focuses on one of the Romans’ wars against the Macedonians in the early 2nd century BC.

https://acoup.blog/2024/03/15/collections-phalanxs-twilight-legions-triumph-part-iva-philip-v/

Fascinating stuff, but it lead me on to looking further at Roman formations. All that fancy quincunx stuff must look great (as it did in the Spartacus film climactic battle- admittedly from the later Republican period). I’m pretty new to all this, and the debate around to what extent this was a pre-contact formation. This is all part of my decision-making process on what I want my models to look like. As I’m most likely to go for 6mm figures, I can afford to show such formations, at least stylistically. Not all 30 maniples in a legion.

A dozen or so 6mm figures in 2 ranks would fit on a base 30mm wide. A flexible, if fiddly, layout would be to have 4 30x15mm bases representing the Hastati, the same for the Principes, maybe just 2 bases for the Triarii. Plus an appropriate number of Velites and cavalry of course. All told, 175 infantry figures plus 10 cavalry, to represent the legion. So two legions could be built from 8 packs of H&R figures (50 inf or 20 cav per pack). £40 plus p&p.  Not bad. But then there’s the Italian alae!

Postscript: Here’s the link for the start of JBM’s ECW campaign, as requested by Joseph in the comments. Apologies for not including it originally.

https://mudbloodandsteel.blogspot.com/2024/02/and-theyre-off.html?m=1

The place of History and the Unreliability of Eyewitnesses

Been a bit quiet lately, due to a mix of Real Life and Football*. The latter is clearly not part of the former, but it is sent to test us just in case Real Life isn't doing its job properly.**

I've always thought History was important. I'm probably biased in that, because I enjoy it as a subject, as I'm confident, so do you. However, this article argues, cogently, that it is even more important and immediate and vital than I'd given it credit for. And the US Department of Defense [sic.] seems to agree as it employs 300 PhD qualified historians at any one time!

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/03/10/the-history-crisis-is-a-national-security-problem/ 

That is a staggering statistic. If I had to have a stab at a number, before reading the article, I'd say that the UK equivalent would be 1/2 dozen at most. Even after reading, I'd be in the low double digits. Anyway, plaudits to the US DoD.

* I've managed to attend 2 Grimsby games, and watch one on line in the last 8 days, and I should be at another on Saturday, due to the fixture computer throwing up 3 London/S.East games in 2 weeks. Last Saturday at Sutton United, was particularly pleasurable due to seeing MANY friends and acquaintances, both new and old. Some folk I know well or quite well and like, some I know quite well and don't particularly like, some I hardly know but they seem pleasant, others are just folk on 'nodding terms' (no idea of each other's names but we recognise each other). 'Mr Michael' (father of a buddy) was there with his fast growing grandsons. Also rewarding was seeing one of our loose collective of south east exiles (himself the son of an exile, never having lived in Grimsby) with his small son and friends. The ground being a bus journey away, it was easy to get them there. Apparently the boys, with no connection to Grimsby, love coming to these games because they have a sense of freedom that they can't get at say, Chelsea or Arsenal, even if they can get hold of £££ tickets. They were having a grand old time stood at the front by the barrier, chanting along with the crowd, slapping the goalscorer's hand as he ran past in celebration. Old school! This speaks of a desire to be part of a community. In the metropolis it is easy to feel unconnected.

** I mean, how is this a penalty to the yellow team?!

https://twitter.com/jamrobertspics/status/1766513065426592026?s=12&t=FTPg9pGSHEJC1fkAgEJiZQ