Duke Seifried in Chaldea

I've always been a gamer both interested in wargames and creating worlds, so over the years, I've gone from pure wargaming to roleplaying and back, but more often, I try to find hybrid games that blend both wargaming and creating (fantasy) worlds. See our series on the Chronicles of Lowenheim, or the Antares 2401 campaign.

So I was very much intrigued when I heard about Chaldea in Henry Hyde's interview with Peter Adkinson,in which the fantasy world of Chaldea is presented through a series of films (and much more ...). Episode 3, called "The War Room", features live action scenes around a huge wargaming table featuring Duke Seifried. Definitely worth a look!

You can also watch all videos on the Chaldea Youtube channel.

The last of the few

It's not in our habit to share links to outside (non)wargaming-related topics, but this is something I could not resist.

It's a story in the Daily Mail, featuring close-up photographs of Spitifires "in action". Great quality pictures, very colourful!

Full link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3598540/The-Photographer-captures-pin-sharp-images-final-55-airworthy-Spitfires-using-just-handheld-camera.html

How many terrain systems does one need?

Back in February 2006, I wrote a blogpost on the different styles of terrain systems for wargaming I have used over the years. 9-and-a-half years later, I am still very fond of my Kallistra terrain. In the mean time, I have sold off my Geohex, and have done away with many custom-built boards. The only thing I still have besides my Kallistra terrain are a number of felt mats for various terrain types.

Anyhow, I was pondering on this question again when I saw this Kickstarter for Terra Tiles. There have been quite a number of terrain systems for gaming active on Kickstarter (just do a search on terrain tiles or gaming terrain), but this one looks especially nice.

The tiles are pre-printed, graphically the look very good, but they are still 2D. For the discerning miniature wargamer who likes their terrain 3D, this is a bit underwhelming. But I guess that for the occasional miniature wargamer who wants to play a quick skirmish game every now and then, this might be an ideal solution.

Cool website ...

Sometimes one stumbles across a wargaming website never seen before. The site of Irrational Number Line Games is a site I discovered yesterday. One of the nice things is that they have a "good ideas archive", many of which are conversions and clever modeling. Some highlights (pictures from their website):

• Under The Sea Conversions

•  Wormmen

•  Shadow Monsters

• SciFi Complex

Meeples & Miniatures painting specials

While painting the last few days, I've been listening to two episodes of the [Meeples and Miniatures podcast](http://www.meeplesandminiatures.co.uk/): episodes 65 and 69 which form two parts of a special on painting miniatures.

Host Neil Shuck and guest presenter Steve Archbold talk about painting miniatures (obviously) for someone who is only just beginning to paint. So they go into all the basics such as material, painting techniques and painting styles.

A few things I particularly like about it is that they have a firm emphasis on army painting, i.e. painting a miniature to a standard that works on the tabletop in a time frame that actually gets said miniature on the tabletop with a few tens or hundreds of its friends and enemies. Additionally, it hits upon a few of the things that I know are true (I have a bit of experience painting miniatures myself) but haven't really heard or read in much other places. Things like brush control, brush size (the bigger the better - which is somewhat counterintuitive) and the amount of contrast you need on a wargame level figure (more than you think).

Of course, there are areas where I disagree (I *do* dip figures in Army Painter, as real men do - you can be the judge as to the [result](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000295.html) ) and the hosts accent is thick enough to host an elephants picknick on, but in general these are two very good podcast episodes to listen to, preferrably while painting miniatures. Heartily recommended.

[Meeples and Miniatures episode 65](http://traffic.libsyn.com/meeplesandminiatures/meeplesandminiatures_ep65.mp3)

[Meeples and Miniatures episode 69](http://traffic.libsyn.com/meeplesandminiatures/meeplesandminiatures_ep69.mp3)

A 40 year old mystery, thanks to Nazaire Beeusaert

A few weeks ago I visited a special exhbition in the [Belgian Army Museum](http://www.legermuseum.be/) in Brussels. On display was part of an extensive collection of toy soldiers of collector Jacques Witmeur. Although I had some trouble in actually getting to this special exhibit (apparantly museum personnel seems to think closing off a special exhibition is in the interest of their customers, but a special thanks to the friendly man at the reception desk for summoning his minions to open it for me), it was worth it. Several thousands of toy soldiers, of all periods and manufacturers, were organized along several historic themes. A pleasure for the eye, especially the eye of someone who likes to play with toy soldiers.

In the museum shop I bought the booklet that was published together with exhibition (“Figurines Made in Belgium” by Paul Herman and Jacques Witmeur), and which lists all the Belgian manufacturers that at one time or another made and sold toy soldiers. I was particularly interested in this work, since I was hoping to identify some soldiers that have been in my collection for over 40 years. As long as I remember, I do own some soldiers that once belonged to my dad as a child. These were 'Belgian' soldiers, and as a kid, I happily mixed them with my plastic 'Cowboys and Indians' playsets. Needless to say they have taken quite some beating over the years.



Anyway, the only identification I ever found on these figures read 'NB' on the bottom of their base, which - after consulting the booklet - seems to stand for the Belgian toymaker Nazaire Beeusaert. Just the sound of this name makes it come from a different era! A quick Google-search turned up some more facts. There is a [website dedicated to Nazaire Beeusaert](http://www.vanwanzeele.com/beeusaert/), on which I could actually see some photographs of exactly the same figures as in my collection. A 40 year old mystery solved after all.

Der Spiegel & Wargaming

For those of you who want to freshen up their German, here's a nice article about wargaming in Der Spiegel (dated July 2009).

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/spielzeug/0,1518,634213,00.html

How do you organize your paints?

My paint bottles are usually kept in boxes. I try to organize them by color (all the reds go together, all the blues, etc.), but I still have trouble finding a specific colour when I need it.

So, I was pleasantly surprised to find this product:
http://www.miniaturicum.de/index.php?infoBox=3&cPath=723

A must-have paint organizer rack for the discerning wargamer!!!

Warhammer 25 Years

This year Warhammer is 25 years old. Warhammer was first published in 1983 by Citadel, to give people a ruleset to use all their fantasy miniatures. Up to that point, fantasy miniature wargaming was not a mainstream genre, although fantasy roleplaying was hugely popular -- hence the collections of fantasy miniatures people were building up.

One of the anniversary products is a fascimile edition of the original ruleset. It was sold in a box, and contained 3 booklets. Actually, it was also one of my first fantasy games, so I have some fond memories of that first edition. When reading the booklets again after so many years, I can almost again feel the same sense of discovery I had back in 1983.

Anyway, I have long dropped out of Warhammer (stopped when 4th edition was published), and these days I don't particularly like the philosophy of the GW rules, but I do recognize the huge influence Warhammer and GW had on the development of miniature wargaming and the gaming hobby in general.

Miniature Wargaming Podcast

Recently, I have been looking for a podcast related to miniature wargaming. The advantage is that one can listen to wargaming-related news and stories while driving the car, or even when painting.

After some search, I found the following, which I think is very good. The hosts have a pleasant style of presenting, and the topics are varied and well-researched. Their sense of humour is also to my liking, so that's a bonus!

http://allaboutminiatures.libsyn.com/

Wargaming in style

Below is a clip from a British tv-series from the early 70s (I assume), "Callan". Watch the whole sequence: 2 gentlemen playing a wargame in a spacious wargaming room.

Operation Market Garden game done the right way

Operation Market Garden has always captured the imagination of many wargamers and historians as a tragic 'could have been' battle. It only stands to reason that many wargamers, ourselves included, have replayed this battle in some form or other on our wargames tables.



The [Elhiem gang](http://www.elhiem.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/), a bunch of dedicated 20mm gamers, have done it in style, however. They set up a 20mm megagame of the entire Operation Market Garden -- see the [game report here](http://www.elhiem.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/game.html).

This is truly mouth watering stuff, the stuff wargamer's dreams are made of. Well done, guys!

Wargaming video

For those who haven't seen it yet:

http://www.hmgs.org/wargamevideo.htm

A very well made video promoting the hobby of wargaming.

Commands and Colors: Ancients

The new "Command and Colors" game is available. It is the third game in the series, now dealing with Ancients, the previous two being Battlecry (ACW) and Memoir44 (WW2).

I'm a big fan of this system, it has inspired me to develop my own fantasy version for 25mm miniatures on hex-based terrain. So I'm looking forward to acquiring a copy.

Links:

[http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/14105](http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/14105)

[http://www.gmtgames.com/cca/main.html](http://www.gmtgames.com/cca/main.html)

Phil

_Update_ (Robartes): linkified links

Lotsa blogging going on

There's an ever increasing number of wargames blogs out on the Net these days, but here's one of the latest and best: [Wee Toy Soldiers](http://www.weetoysoldiers.com).

Hyun's blog is more about the modelling and painting side of the hobby, him being a 'converted' boardgamer attracted to modelling, so there's less actual gaming content than on other blogs (such as ourselves), but he does make up for it with other high quality posts. Just check out his brilliant [CD case becomes organizer](http://www.weetoysoldiers.com/wp/?p=76) post.

Historical Collectibles at last!

After the success of various collectible miniature games (see Wizkids), Hasbro/Avalon Hill is now producing a miniature game based on WW2:

Click here

Apparantly, the figures are prepainted, and come in boosters, so you never really know what you will get.

The game was released at Gencon, and apparantly, was a huge hit there.

Game or simulation?

Partially sparked by [Phil's post](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000136.html), there's an interesting discussion over at a few of the [Napnuts](http://www.napnuts.com) [blogs](http://wargamescorr.blogspot.com/). The other blog is [here](http://wargamer.blogspot.com/).

Some posts to get you started:

* [Historicity in Wargames](http://wargamer.blogspot.com/2005/08/historicity-in-wargames.html)
* [More wargame theory](http://wargamescorr.blogspot.com/2005/08/more-wargame-theory.html)
* The three posts before the previous one on [Wargames Correspondence](http://wargamescorr.blogspot.com/)
* [How historical is your wargaming](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000136.html) -- Phil's post

Go check it out, it's interesting stuff!

Technorati tags: miniatures wargaming

Good thread on WWII miniature scales

I'm just back from the Black Forest, a land of no connectivity and no miniatures (unless you count our daughter and my brother in law's two children), so TTM kicks into life again.

Just a quickie now: there's a [great discussion thread](http://www.wargamesdirectory.com/html/bkc/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1060) on WWII scales over at the [Blitzkrieg Commander](http://www.wargamesdirectory.com/html/bkc/default.asp) [forum](http://www.wargamesdirectory.com/html/bkc/forum/) (free registration required). The initial author is new to WWII miniature wargaming and has taken the rich pragmatist approach to selecting a scale to play in: he has bought samples in various scales (6, 10/12 and 15mm) and is regularly reporting on his progress and findings.

Dynamite stuff!

Technorati tag: miniatures

Great terrain article

Craig over at [Minimods](http://minimods.myblogsite.com/blog) has a really nice article up on [building rivers from foam](http://minimods.myblogsite.com/blog/_WebPages/HowtoMakeaRiver.html).

The foam he uses seems to be a high density variety, akin to the type used to make children's foam play tiles and the like. He gets it from [Hobbycraft](http://www.hobbycraft.co.uk) in the UK, a chain that does not seem to have outlets in Belgium, but I think you can get similar stuff at [De Banier](http://www.debanier.be) stores in Belgium.

Anyway, [Minimods](http://minimods.myblogsite.com/blog) in general is shaping up to be a great miniature wargames blog (with a tighter focus than our eclectic selves), so by all means go over and have a shufti.

Warning order online mag

In the spirit of [our earlier discussion](http://www.nirya.be/snv/ttm/archives/000073.html) on the effect of the Net on wargames magazines, allow me to point you all at the [Warning Order Online Magazine](http://www.wfhgs.com/wrngorder.html). Mike is doing a very good job at putting out a regular magazine, filled with oodles (yes, that's an official English word -- says so [here](http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=oodles) ) of interesting articles (a bit like TTM, I hope :) ).

The [latest issue](http://www.wfhgs.com/PDFFILES/WO11.PDF) has a whole crop of articles on our favourite WWII ruleset [Blitzkrieg Commander](http://www.wargamesdirectory.com/html/bkc/default.asp).

Everybody go there (and then come back :) )!

wargames
miniatures