Caernarfon Castle

During the last "clean out" drive of old wargaming junk (how long can you hold on to styrofoam hills or old cardboard houses that haven't been used for years ...?), I also wondered whether I should toss out my paper model of Caernarfon Castle.

I still remember very well when I got this model.  I was 12 years old, and we were on a family holiday in Wales. It was exciting, because this was the very first time I would cross the channel and set foot in Britain. I was also doing a lot of plastic modelkits at the time - mostly Airfix, Revell, Heller, Tamiya, ... I ditched almost all of my models during subsequent moves (those colour schemes that looked exciting as a 12-year old do look a bit garish several years later, and invariably there's a lot of accumulated damage), but this paper model castle always survived the cut.

Enough nostalgia! So yes, let's keep it for at least a few more years! :-)

An old toy castle

Somewhere in the mid-nineties, I bought a vacuum-formed plastic castle from a toy shop that was closing its doors. It looks a bit like the old Elastolin castles, but I guess it is one of the later replicas.

Anyway, I kept the castle for many years, and never really used it in a game, apart from the now infamous Lowenheim game I ran in the attic of my previous house in 2006.

Then, I gave the castle to my younger nephews, along with a lot of plastic soldiers, in the hope of planting the wargaming bug. We still have to see about that, but I think the force is strong in one of them - he is addicted to a D&D dungeon-exploration boardgame (also one of my gifts), a promising sign.

Anyway, since those nephews all have reached the double-digit age at which they consider castles and toy soldiers beneath their dignity, the castle has come back to me, still in excellent condition.

Time to set up another game ... ! A siege perhaps?