I was asked to be interviewed by Adam Pratt over at Eyecast Restoration last week and the interview is now up and live. You can read it in full over on their blog now.
Flintloque is a unique game system and its range of miniatures is unlike any other in the world as well. Alternative Armies has a huge array of game and figures to choose from and it is always expanding.
Thanks!
GBS
I have not updated this blog in long, long time. Various reasons for this. The prime ones being a lack of spare time, teenage offspring and a lack of things to say of good interest outside of work and private. Well last weekend I finally made it to Edinburgh (third attempt as the last two times were snowed off..Scotland in winter eh!) to see in its final days the fantastic Da Vinci exhibition at the Queens Gallery. As described in its own words:
“Marking the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci, the exhibition brings together 80 of the Renaissance master’s greatest drawings in the Royal Collection, forming the largest group of Leonardo’s works ever shown in Scotland.
Drawing served as Leonardo’s laboratory, allowing him to work out his ideas on paper and search for the universal laws that he believed underpinned all of creation. The drawings by Leonardo in the Royal Collection have been together as a group since the artist’s death in 1519. Acquired during the reign of Charles II, they provide an unparalleled insight into the workings of Leonardo’s mind and reflect the full range of his interests, including painting, sculpture, architecture, anatomy, engineering, cartography, geology and botany.”
It was well worth the trip and to see the works of this great man in person once again including several sketches I had only seen in books up to this point. I am something of a fan of Leonardo you might say. Here are some pictures I took on my phone.
Sketches of artillery and multiple shot cannons. A couple of examples were built but all failed to work properly without modern technology and manufacturing.
In Utero. One of his most famous and rarer still for being in colour, the womb and child. Amazing up close and of course he was well ahead of his time.
Cats and a Dragon..can you spot the Dragon? Took me ages to find it. Da Vinci really liked cats as it turns out.
The end of the world. Towards the end of his life the artist became obsessed with the apocalypse. By hell fire, by flood and by disease. Powerful rendering…
Excuse the poor quality of these selected images the glass in front, the bright lights and the elbows of many around made it tough but each of these can be seen online larger with a wee search.
My only purchase at the exhibit was an eraser, a rubber, which was not only the cheapest thing there but also half price since the event was ending. I picked up four. One for me plus one for my three sons. When I was a student I picked up the three volumes, from the late 1950’s, of Da Vinci’s drawings with notes. Very comprehensive. In fact we used it to create our own vision of the ‘turtle car‘ his ‘tank’ in 15mm scale along with the man himself.
I recently finished listening to Walter Isaacson’s life of Leonardo. A really good book and well worth reading or picking up on Audible as I did since I can type and listen at the same time.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and feel free to comment if you want to ask me something. Perhaps another post in less time, next time.
GBS
I have just finished reading 12 Rules for Life An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson. It was a truly excellent book and I also listened to it on Audible too told by the author himself. A professional clinical psychologist who has taken great time and great effort to try to explain the world and a way to live within it. It is a valuable book which I think anyone would benefit from listening to. That said the sheer hate he is subjected to by people who frankly strike me as a bit insane. ‘Hate Speech’ they call it. Well sadly for them the contents of this book are rational, incisive, provable and backed by experience and history. I could find no fault with it. It resonated with me.
If you wish to know more please go to Google and look for reviews of this book and you will see what I mean (Financial Times, Guardian etc). History will repeat itself if we are not careful. Live a good life, do good, gain in experience, be grateful, value free speech, respect the Christian tradition, raise a family well and take care of your children and parents. It is a great book and I challenge anyone to take the notion that what it says is wrong based only on a narrow ideological basis. Nihilism is a dangerous thing and must be combated just like the attempt to destroy the very foundations of the civilisation which has brought life and prosperity to all us poor apes.
Go HERE for the penguin books page on this title. It will be the best money you will spend this year.
I should also point out that George Orwell and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn are greatly admired by me and I shudder in terror of the left wing now.
GBS
A broken tusk jutted from its lower jaw and pierced through its upper lip drawing blood. The arrow had grazed the mouth. With its free hand the Orc tore two more arrows from its chest breaking the wooden shafts with apparent ease. It awaited the order. Blood trickled down its face staining the rough white fabric and leather around its neck. Blood flowed out of injuries and mixed dark with the red of its crudely stitched coat before dripping onto its course black leather boots. It awaited the order. Ahead the Hoomans rode horses their armour sparking brilliant in the sun; lances shining as they began to charge. Arrows rained down from the Men further back behind the riders and struck the Orcs along the thin two deep line drawing grunts but no movement; a couple of Orcs toppled forward onto the grass. It awaited the order. The spear had been lighter, the spear has been faster but the spear was gone and now he had Bessie. The order was shouted gruffly. Bessie moved from resting on the shoulder into both hands and up until it pointed at the Hoomans. The plains had been his hunting ground and the spear had thrown far and silent. Now the ranks and the lash for speaking out of turn. Bessie spoke with fire and anger but there was no fear. No fear now of the Hoomans. The lances came down to level and then gouts of grey smoke and fire stabbed out and the Men died. Dresda was theirs and his Lordship would give sips of Ladye Juniper to all who served in the ranks. Blood mingled with bitter powder as the unbroken tusk bit into a new cartridge and then he spat the lead ball into Bessie’s smoking maw.
It was my great pleasure to make my entry into the 2017 Advent Calendar over at Orcs in the Webbe and article at the request of the site’s owner Craig Andrews. I write an article each year for his birthday on or around the 18th of December. This time it was a play tested article for using the now vanquished Human race on the battlefields of Valon in the time of Flintloque the Skirmish. You can read it HERE and download a formatted PDF of the article on that page too.
I do not play Dresda but others do, the game first made for Alternative Armies range of High Fantasy miniature. I wrote DarkeStorme to replace it and Flintloque does not really use Humans. Such as those above in the Knights and Footsoldiers part of the range. Orcs have wiped out Mankind and taken their cities including Dresda and now call it Londinium. The article was fun to write and play out the scenario included in it. Humans are like Elves but slower and being afraid of black powder makes playing them in Flintloque tough at anything but close range. It does bring up some nice ideas though.
In 2018 I will be working with other authors and creators to expand Valon even further with titles set in the twilight of the Crystal Empire of the Elves. Revisiting a classic title and also a brand new one too. There will be more on this at the time but for now I just wanted to say it is coming. Stay up to speed by following the Alternative Armies blog or facebook group.
I leave you to enjoy the Advent Calendar and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and all the best for 2018 now just under two weeks away. Time flies.
GBS
“I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself.” – George Orwell.
I have been a long term reader and fan of Eric Blair (George Orwell) ever since I was a teenager. Not the Orwell of 1984 or Animal Farm but rather the earlier man of essays and of books such as Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia (not to mention the sublime Down and Out in Paris and London). Time permitted me to read Homage to Catalonia over the last week during a time of great joy and a friend’s wedding celebration. It is a book well worth reading if you are interested in several different aspects of life, politics and writing. It is auto-biography, it is a war memoir, it is a social account and it is a man’s take upon the Spanish Civil War. Read Orwell and learn about the workings of the world. Here are some thoughts and if you want to get a copy of this book it is very easy (not the first edition above!) it can be had for pennies from bookshops and elsewhere as it has been in many editions. My own is in the bin now, water damaged and smelly it was due for composting.
Orwell went to Barcelona in 1936 to report on the Spanish Civil War. He was so struck with the progress of the workers’ revolution there, the camaraderie and the hope, that he decided this state of affairs was worth defending, and enlisted with a militia unit. His unit soon went to the front, where it stood nearly idle for several months and did little fighting. The unit returned several months later to what seemed like a different city, in the throes of inter-party fighting as the Russian-backed communists attempted to take control of the war effort. Orwell’s unit returned briefly to the front, but while he was hospitalised (due to a bullet caught in the neck,) its members were declared illegal, and he was forced to flee the country.
Most of us are more familiar with the Spanish Civil War through Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Unlike that novel, Homage to Catalonia paints an affectionate portrait of a brave, but naïve, effort that was doomed from the start by international intrigue. Orwell’s affable co-combatants are poorly equipped, crawling with lice, and little interested in fighting, which is lucky because they’re left on an immobile front where if the food isn’t great, the cigarette ration is at least adequate.
This book is indeed an homage, to a brief time in a small place where equality was real, but fleeting, and to the people who were there to live this hope. It also shows us the moments when Orwell became disillusioned with communism, leading to his best known works. (It may difficult for us to imagine, but we need to keep in mind that in the 1930’s, the violence and cynicism of the U.S.S.R. were still widely unknown, and there were many active communists all over the world.) Thus, this book, in addition to being highly enjoyable, is vital to understanding a mindset now remote and alien to us, and a time we mostly know nothing about.
The power of this book is in its indictment of the foreign press and the hypocrisy of international communism. Each did its part to muck up the war effort and betray the people it purported to defend, and Orwell explains as clearly as possible the complex international forces that wasted the war effort and opened the door to fascism in Spain.
Well worth reading and in case you wonder…the world is not so different now. Be careful what second hand accounts you believe.
GBS
I had a great day on Saturday from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed late on after watching the taped new episode of Dr Who. Among the highlights I can share with the public the brightest was my trip to Collectormania 2014 in Glasgow. Its not often I get enough time together to do something like this but the trip had been planned for two weeks and I was raring to go. Why you ask..well for the chance to meet two childhood heroes of mine and the chance to get some new t-shirts too.
I got the shirts and as you can see above it was a smaller sized event, nothing like Salute at Excel in London, but that was good for me. It meant that there was virtually no que to wait in for an autograph and it meant that you could actually spent a bit of time talking to the person too. Sylvester McCoy is a really nice person and it was great to be able to speak to him. I did not mention the seventh Doctor once rather it was more a meeting of two men from the former region of Strathcylde. However for my good lady the star of the show was Dirk Benedict who took a real shine to her! After that he was quite happy to talk about the A-Team and his time as Starbuck too.
We got our autographs which my eldest son who came with us found quite funny. For you see I put no stock in religion or celebrity or anything else that is beyond my normal grasp as a Man. I take each on its own merits but actually conversing with these two put a grin on my face that he found amusing! I might well go back next year. I missed Sophie Aldred as she was only there today and not Saturday. Shame but there is always next time.
So I will finish on a last picture of my good lady with The Face Man as he was and still is known. Hands off mate…she’s mine!
GBS
I am about to re-enter the realm of fiction. No, I don’t mean that I am going to cease to be a real person. I mean that I will be creating new content for Alternative Armies, 15mm.co.uk and The Ion Age. While there will be more on this as it happens what it does mean is that I will be looking for listening material. Some people can write while listening to the radio or to recorded audio books but I simply cannot as the voices get confused with my own if you follow me. So what does that leave as I do like to listen to something as the hours pass. It leaves music.
I have a large collection of music on CD and on Vinyl and as MP3’s as well. Last week I saw a magazine for sale that caught my attention. You can see it above. I really like Prog Music and since the magazine had a count down of the top 100 albums in this genre a plan was hatched. I am going to try and get all one hundred of these albums and listen to them essentially in order!
There may be blog reviews of some of them or the better ones but this is more of a mission statement for me. As it turns out most of these albums are fairly cheap and I have just purchased a download of number 100 on the list. What is at this barely made it position? Its the 1980 album Drama by the band Yes. Find more about it HERE.
I will let you know how it ‘prog’ resses! Ha!
GBS
I was invited to Glasgow University on the Wednesday of this week to be a part of my sister in law’s graduation from the university. I was honoured to be selected as tickets are rare and it meant I would once more be able to walk the halls of my old haunt and enter the illustrious Bute Hall for the ceremony. By an odd coincidence it was twelve years to the day after my own graduation from the university in exactly the same ceremony but this time I was able to see it from the outside without the gown and the mortar board.
The programme of events. We were lucky with a mild and dry day and it was really fantastic to see all the smiling faces full of accomplishment. I will admit it was a lot of deja vu on my part but I will avoid going into details. I had not been back to the university since 2002 but I keep in touch with letters and email. Its a place that holds and radiates its five hundred years of scholarship and its formed the minds of thousands who have shaped the modern world. I have done a lot since I graduation not least the public work I am known for but I have gotten married, bought two homes, had three children, travelled, wrote, thought and fought the good fight.
A view of the side of Bute Hall to give an idea of the scale of the stone work. My sister in law Kirsten Loy was the star of the day and trust me it only seems like yesterday when she applied to go to university. While some might argue the benefit of further education I can tell you from my perspective that you go in one person and come out another better one more suited to the rapidity of the world now and better to deal with it. So congratulations and I am so proud of you. I wait to see where you go now!
I will end with the above photo of Kirsten on the left and my good lady on the right. I am so lucky to be part of a world of such beautiful and talented women.
GBS
I was going to do a blog post this evening about how the build of the mighty new Alternative Armies website is now complete and that preparation to move over to the new site will begin soon. I was going to do a blog post about it being only 100 Days until Scotland must choose to be in this union or become an independent nation once more. I was going to do a blog post about the great success of the latest Ion Age early supporter offer or about the great reception to the re-mastered Sabre Jet Flyer for Laserburn or even about the massive efforts we have been going to for project Darkhelm. But no. I little piece of my world died this afternoon for my comedy hero of my entire remembered life is dead. Rest in Peace Rik Mayall aged only 56.
Its not a big tribute. Its just what I feel. On the odd occasion where it has gotten a little dark for me in life the comedy programme of Rik kept me going. I know literally all the lines of Bottom dialogue off by heart. I own four copies of Guest House Paradiso in an effort to support him. I have seen him live on tour. I own all the Young Ones, all of The New Statesmen, the movie Drop Dead Fred and even the little known Filthy Rich and Catflap and the Dangerous Brothers. Since the 1980’s and boyhood I have adored Rik Mayall. Hell in the last blog post I put up there was a still of Ade Edmondson leading it, that is how much its on my mind most weeks. I had hoped for another series of Bottom, of another Tour. Really anything but no chance of that now.
I do not yet know what happened to Rik but it must have been quick and that is something. Time will tell. My thoughts are with his wife and three children. Enjoy these video links:
No more work for me today. Email will have to wait this evening and instead its going to be a DVD and a few beers. Anarchic comedy one last time before it becomes legend.
GBS
The Ion Age is continuing to grow in infamy (I like that word more than fame, it suits the world just now rather well) and today I saw my first ‘conversion’ of our miniatures. Above you can see some Shia Khan Pioneers in 15mm scale turned into Galafraxian Black Guards. Yes those are eye stocks!
This made me smile among what is now a truly awesome amount of work which I must carry out. I try not to let customers down and as such I answer every email sent to me and I try to make things run smoothly all the time. I will be working on Patrol Angis full time as of this week along with an overhaul of the Alternative Armies website. That will keep me from posting overly much. I have signed up to follow Allison M the chap who created these images and made the conversions.
The quasi-humanoid, photosynthetic Garafraxians (colloquially called “Chloros”) use heavy armour to protect their fragile bodies during combat. Their long eye stalks give them excellent depth perception and peripheral vision however, so they generally extend them out of their suits except when in immediate danger. The suits are lined with red-LED arrays to maintain their metabolism far away from their home star’s nourishing rays.
You can find the original blog posting HERE. Lastly congratulations to the blog runner…enjoy those coming sleepless nights and demands on your time!
GBS