Author Archives: Gavin Syme

Now on Gravatar

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Since I began using WordPress it has occurred to me on occasion that some peoples comments on my posts have a little picture next to their name while the majority, including my own, do not.  As it was not a priority I just left it alone but a couple of days ago while speaking to my best buddy Jim Brittain I mentioned it and he, being a master of all things tech, explained to me about Gravatar.  Gravatar is free and very easy to use.  Just create an account with your email address, choose an image you like, give it five minutes and the job is done.

So I now have an image next to my comments on the blog and wherever else I post too.  My chosen picture is one that Sam Croes did for me for use in the Ion Age setting or for my own use…a Nox Trooper of the Shia Khan Empire.

GBS

 

777th Croaked Line – Green to White Metal (pt2)

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Carrying on from the first part of this posting about the 777th Croaked Line for Flintloque and Alternative Armies I present to you all the end result of the molding process.  White Metal miniatures!

Below you can see all of the poses in this brand new regiment both front and back views.

Vampyre Officer, Skeletal Liche, Skeletal Standard Bearer, Zombie ‘squeeze box’ player

Rear View of the above four

Zombie Chef, Decayed Zombie Private, Fresh Zombie Private, Skeletal Zombie Private

Rear View of the above four

Poor Dead Luigi!

Going from the top we can see all of the white metal loveliness.  These are ‘tins’ that is master mold castings which are then used to make the production molds which will make all of the miniatures which will go out to Flintloque players all over the world.   These are brilliant miniatures filled with character and inspiring a lot of adoration even at this point.

Being an Undead formation the unit code for these miniatures will be twenty eight figures strong which will be released alongside a pack of all the poses and a couple of blister codes for trooper boosters and extra dead Todoroni.  So far reaction to my asking has been that the casualty should be in the core pack but not in the unit code.  This might change.  I know Todoroni players will want a pack of corpses for their mortal troops demise on table.

I am going to save naming these miniatures and character ideas until I see them painted up and complete which brings me onto the next part of this series of wee articles.  Rob Alderman is busily painting up his own set of the 777th Croaked Line in a uniform of his choice…but…Eve Hallow is also painting up a set of the same with his own idea of the uniform.  My plan?  To bring you both versions!  As this is a brand new Undead unit there is a lot of leeway with uniform choices and flesh tones.  Rumour has it that Rob has gone for a variation on the Bella Lugosi Militia uniform and Eve has riffed on the historical uniform of ‘Kingdom of Naples’ line infantry.   We will see what is what soon enough.  I will be impartial and intend to studio photograph both sets…perhaps a vote on the Notables Yahoo Group to chose which uniform becomes the one for the official website page.

Until the flesh rots people….

GBS

GBS is not AWOL

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I am still here people!  Yes, I have not posted or blogged or replied to most of my email for a week until now but really it’s not my fault!  Well…mainly not my fault.  Normal service will resume later today with more on Rob Alderman’s Undead Todoroni and then a few more choice and interesting posts.  The reasons…well long and boring really but I have been working on a few things for the far future along with family matters that have kept me from the keyboard and under the grinding stone.

A couple of the messages have asked me how I manage to do all that I do and stay reasonably normal….answer…not sure…perhaps I ain’t that normal!

GBS

B.B.King the Life of Riley

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The great B.B.King

Coming out in a few very lucky cinema’s this week is a biopic of the greatest living blues man B.B.King (sorry Mr Guy you are a close second to me).  I will not be able to see this film until it comes out on DVD but for now I am content to watch clips and listen to my collection of his music.  Those who know me know that I am a big fan of the Blues along with vintage Prog-Rock and other music of the 1950’s-1970’s but my love of this music comes from my childhood and, thanks to my father, a visit to B.B’s club in Memphis when I was a young teenager.

The film by GFM Films is titled The Life of Riley being a play on the old phrase plus that is actually Mr King’s first name.  It features interviews and so on along with live footage and a lot of the man himself looking over a life and career that has spanned way more than half a century.  Follow the link in this paragraph to learn more on this and see some stills.

Below I have put a clip from the film which you can enjoy but it makes me a bit sad really that I have never seen him play and likely I never will.

GBS

Free Postage – The Quest of all Wargamers?

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Does this image make Wargamers Happy?

At the end of this week 15mm.co.uk will be acting on input from a large group of wargamers all over the world who have been asking, cajoling, begging and so on for a ‘free shipping’ promotion on the website.  All of these messages basically came as feedback to our two months of ‘one week offers’ which while on the website were mainly distributed through Mailchimp as HTML emails.  This offer was suggested on almost all of the messages that came back to me.  Based on this I have been thinking that perhaps ‘free shipping’ is the number one wish for wargamers, especially those far from the UK such as in Australia  and New Zealand, even though 15mm.co.uk has the same basic postage rate for all regions.

As everyone knows I like to aid wargamers where possible so it will be interesting to see what reaction 15mm.co.uk has to this offer.  Will it increase order volume, will it mean more orders from far flung places or will wargamers not take to the this offer preferring a deal such as those on certain miniatures or ranges as I have been organising through Mailchimp.

If you are reading this and have an opinion on this offer then please do comment or email me directly.

GBS

‘The Zone’ – A new blog from the Winter ’79 Team

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The Game Begins!

Recently I have been speaking to ‘Maff’ one of the excellent gaming combo behind Winter of ’79 and also the awesome Dropship Horizon blog too.  He is a big fan of the Laserburn range of 15mm miniatures and sci-fi gaming in general.  To that end he sent me a link to a brand new blog where he will be extolling his adventures.  The name of this blog is….The Zone.  They also included an ‘in joke’ in the domain name of the blog, see if you can spot it.

At the moment of typing there are two posts on the new blog both of them crackers.  Intense urban skirmish…ain’t it the best kinda gaming for 15mm.  That is what I had in mind when I thought up the idea for HOF Fire-Team.

Good luck with the new blog lads.  I will be watching.

GBS

Ellie Goulding – Anything Could Happen

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I thought I would try a micro posting, so here we go.  Today while working I have had one track on You Tube on repeat and that track is the excellent ‘Anything Could Happen’ by Ellie Goulding.  This ethereal track is new and well worth a listen.  It makes me smile as so often now popular music is the same rubbish over and over but this is more like what I normally listen to (big fan of the Psych Rock of the 1960’s) and it is catchy as hell.  So the link is below to the video…give it a try.  Am I right or wrong that this is a top track?

GBS

Fjodin’s SHM Aliens for October 2012 – Naming Ceremony

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Fjodin’s new 15mm Miniatures for the SHM Range

I have known Fjodin (I call him Nick) really since the first month after the SHM Range began on 15mm.co.uk.  A young and fierce design talent he lives in Australia and though we have never met we speak fairly often by email and I enjoy his blog too.  He has taken a real shine to the creatures of deep space and told me quite a while ago that he intended to sculpt as many of them as he could manage so that his vision of alien life would make it to the wargaming world.  This is what the SHM range is all about.  I doubt any miniature company except 15mm.co.uk (I am very responsive to industry and customer feedback, just read this ) would have looked at what will end up being a dozen unarmed creatures of all types and said ‘we will take a risk on these’.  It is a shame that a lot of existing and new 15mm ranges consist of nothing but more ruddy human soldiers in powered armour.

My plan is to release all of Fjodin’s designs into SHM as single miniatures but also as packs for wargamers and even just painters to pick up and adore because they are quite simply lovely.  Examine the image above, each of these creatures could very well be treading or oozing across the dirt of a world under a different sun right now.  In wargaming terms they will all feature in my next USE ME project ‘Alien Safari’ which is a solo game system seeing a group of hunters or soldiers trying to capture or evade random critters.  Fjodin actually inspired me to want to write this set of rules based on these creatures.

Fjodin left it up to me to name these creatures and so I have done so right here on this blog.  They are, from left to right, as follows:

SHM44 Nessian

SHM45 Slurmite

SHM46 Avarep Cobra

SHM47 Galdor Burrower

The miniatures in the picture were painted by Eve Hallow and he did a great job I think as he had no idea and no instructions from myself or Fjodin on what these critters looked like!

These SHM codes are out at the end of this week on 15mm.co.uk.

GBS

The Wigton Book Fair 2012 – Day Out!

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One of these days I will manage to post on the day of an event or at least the next day!  Anyhow it matters not and I still want to tell you all about what the tribe and I did last Saturday; attending the Wigton Book Fair.

Wigton is an hours drive from Girvan so not that far by these parts and the weather was fine so the journey went well.  Wigton is Scotland’s national book town meaning that it is home to a very handsome group of bookshops arranged around the town square.  Wigton itself is of the same size as Girvan with a similar population and all in all is just as pleasant a place to spend a Saturday.  Those who know me will know I own a collection of some thousand books mainly on military matters and science fiction but also some rarer titles and a the finest collection of text on the Japanese nation to be had outside of Glasgow University.  I adore books and if possible try to get to these sorts of events if work, three children, distance, funds and the gods allow it.  So it was a wizz and a wheeze for me to make the trip.

I took some pictures and I will run you through them as this posting progresses.

The view from the rear of the library

Upon our arrival we decided to visit the town library which is a towering four story stone building that tells of a time when Wigton was much more than it is now.  The above shot is from the upper floor out over the landscape to the wash of the sea.  Very impressive and the picture does not do it justice.  The reason for the visit to the library was two fold.  Firstly to get tickets to ‘Horace the Haggis’ for the kids and secondly to see the exhibits on the top floor which included a reconstruction of a Victorian Gentlemans Study and letters from the First World War, one of these you can see with a book in the second image.

A diary from 1917

While in the library the children made little figures of ‘mankind’ using clay and I had a look about.  What struck me the most was the level of activity from literary bloggers who were getting photos for the local news and for the internet.  Always one to observe the observer I took the photo below of a BBC fellow taking shots of other visitors.  Not to worry though when he approached me I said…’oh, you don’t want my picture..it would break your lens!’.

Smile Please!

Outside of the library we enjoyed several nature events in the open ground next to the bookshops and then some freshly made cinnamon infused donuts from the food tent.  My middle son ‘The Poet’ had a really good time with an Owl science experiment to find the bones of mice in the remnants that the bird left behind.  Not my idea of fun but he enjoyed himself.

Owl Fun for the Poet!

 The tickets we got for ‘Horace the Haggis’ was for a reading of a new childrens’ book by Sally Magnusson who is a newsreader for the BBC here in Scotland (her father was Magnus Magnusson of Mastermind fame).   I did not attend the packed event but instead went for a wander around the book shops (funny that eh!).  The kids had fun though and the appearance of the Haggis itself at the end was a joy to watch, a real pantomime moment.  The Poet got himself a signed copy of the book which has been read to death this last week.

Sally and the Haggis

As for myself I left Wigton with three new books.  One on Arms & Armour (which has some nice colour images) and two on the Napoleonic period (surprise!).  The first titled ‘The Hussar General’ about Blucher the Prussian commander at Waterloo and the second a detailed account of the ‘Convention of Cintra’ a real low point in the Peninsular War.  I have made a start on the Cintra book but work keeps me too busy for extended reading.  Be assured though that if possible we will be going back to Wigton again soon.

GBS

Napoleon’s Army (H.C.B.Rogers) – Review

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My copy of ‘Napoleons Army’ by H.C.B Rogers published in the early 1970’s but still in print and available widely.

I had another book review planned on a science fiction paperback I just finished but I got passed a note yesterday that one of Alternative Armies customers who is also a member of the Notables Yahoo Group had asked if I knew of a good book about the French Army in the Napoleonic Wars.  Know of one I said…I own a load of them!  Sure I could help.   But which one to choose?  The notable in question had said it must be in English which narrowed the field and that it should have formations and structure of all arms of the army so that narrowed it again.  Lastly that uniforms were to be included in the book.  This took me back to one of my favourites namely ‘Napoleons Army’ by Colonel H.C.B Rogers.

This book has all that is needed.  Divided into sections including a history of the battles of the period the French fought in followed by Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, Engineers & Signals, Administration, Medical Services, Imperial Headquarters.  Then two accounts of the Third Corps at Auerstadt and in Poland ending with an Epilogue.  Each section has full information on structure, uniforms, weapons, ranks and more.  Importantly each section ends with a list of sources allowing further reading and proving the knowledge of the author.  I doubt anyone except a half mad games writer would need more information (though I own many of the books quoted as sources!) as this book is packed.  My own edition is nearly two hundred pages of easily read text with line drawings.  I have used it many times when creating material for Flintloque.

While my own edition can be had second hand or on ebay etc if you look, there is a current edition which is easily had for less than ten pounds.  Here is the Amazon UK link for it.

If you want a solid title on the French Army under Napoleon then this is the one.

GBS