One year in review - or two…

The year 2013 is coming to an end, and it seems a good time to pop back on my DestoFante blog for a quick update. Blogging has clearly taken a backseat in my gaming related priorities, already quite stretched by my busy traveling and business schedule, Mrs. DestoFante's busy traveling and business schedule, as well as the legitimate demands of the 4-year old Destofante Jr. That said, 2013 was a good year, in which projects were kept on a good track, and many ideas were sharpened. I am remained committed, as much as a wargamer can, to limit the number of periods in my collection: WAS/SYW, Colonial, WWI, Modern Africa. I have been able to rationalize (in some sort...) my collections, out of the realization that, as a solo player, I really do not need thousands of figures suitable for multi-player games. Also, I feel somewhat more focused about the rules that inspire me. Years of unrestrained rule purchases have fortunately come to an end, and I now gravitate toward two-three favorite sets per period. If you are curious: for WAS/SYW, Might & Arms, Piquet Cartouche, possibly Maurice and Kriegkunst; for colonial, The Sword And The Flame, Piquet Din of Battle, THW Colonial Adventures; for WWI, Piquet Barrage, TFL If The Lord Spares Us, and Greg Novak's Over The Top; for modern Africa, TFL Charlie Don't Surf (a Vietnam adaptation of IABSM) and Ambush Alley. At cost of sounding a little sentimental, I want to take one moment to share the greatest hobby's joys of this year, which happen to be the same joys of the prior's: at the very end, for all our toils in collecting and painting miniatures and terrain, learning rules, devising scenarios, what really matters most is the great bond of friendship and camaraderie forged around the gaming table. This year, I was blessed to meet friends, old and new, at Historicon (for a fantastic siege game arranged by Eric B. and Tim C., a Renaissance clash with Peter Gonsalvo, Gabe and Michelle, and some quality time with Andy, Tom, Jim, Rob, and the team at Rebel Minis). During my business traveling in London, I had the immense pleasure Tim C. in Harpenden for a fun game set in East Africa, and enjoy lunch in the City with Bob C. of "Wargaming Miscellany" fame. In San Francisco during a conference, I only touch base with Freddie A. and Jeff G. - next time, we must ensure we get to the table! Unfortunately, I missed a big gaming extravaganza in Denver with Bob J., Brent O. and Sam M., and I can only hope this will be repeated in 2014! Here's a few pictures with some of these 2013 highlights. At Historicon, Eric B. offered a preview of his latest creation, a witty siege game loosely based on the Piquet mechanisms.

Eric's terrain was gorgeous - and still a work in progress! Of course, my bad rolling resulted in much amusement being had by all, especially when I blew up my own gunpowder magazines!

The game provides a great sense of how sieging operations proceed. It was unnerving to see those trenches getting closer and closer, and little could be done by a couple of brave sortie from my grenadiers. Finally, a breach was opened in the fortress (Warsaw, if I recall correctly the set up of the scenario) and the Russians came in. We called the late game before playing out the storming, but the destiny of the Polish capital was very much decided.

In Harpenden, I played the German in a East Africa scenario where my askaris were called on defending a line of hills from the assault of a full Imperial and British brigade. (Ironically, I play the British in Tanga at Historicon 2012: it seems East Africa is a recurring theme of the games I join.) I successfully held the line until the time to catch the last train from St. Pancras - I'll call it amoral victory, even if things were getting dicey for the Germans after the loss of a gun and some machine guns. Here is a picture of the British lines closing my the hills I was defending.

To all of you, my dear friends, old and new, close and far away: a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Thinking of a DestoFante website

It seems that in recent years blogs have become the standard for wargamers. They are fun - I have one, too, albeit somewhat dormant. Even if I do not write much these days, I check the blog roll on mine almost every day, and I enjoy very much what other people contribute.
So far, so good.
But here's my question: are website a thing of the past? Personally, I have dear memories of the Major-General Tremorden Redding, Bob Cordery's Colonial Wargaming, AK-47 Ztum-Setum, The Great Adventure about Great War Spearhead, just to name a few of my favorite.
The limit (and the strength, in other regards) I see in blogs is their "daily diary" nature. Yes, as a reader (and a writer), it is great to receive a daily pill of wisdom, a splendid picture, a AAR for the ages. But in a blog, all these contributions will end up buried over time; also, a blog makes very hard to arrange the narrative of a campaign, unless labeling is carefully done and the sequence of battles is not too stretched over time. This is particularly true for blogs like mine, which cover many different interests and periods within the hobby, and are not updated with frequency.
All of this to come to another question: am I a fool in contemplating the creation of a website? A site where notes, thoughts, OOB, AAR, reviews may be collected and organized in a more logical order than a blog allows? When I first started DestoFante, I intended to use the blog as a way to generate materials, and have them later organized in a proper site. The blog has become little more of a collection of WIP entries, but I still wouldn't mind to have things organized properly.
Finally: if I create my website, what platform/host should I consider? I know google offers free space on Google Site, but I do not know the quality of the service (although I would be tempted to go that route only because of the hope the technology would resemble Blogger, with which I am rather comfortable now.)
Just sharing some food of thought.

In need of a reset

Tomorrow is September 1st, and it makes almost a five-month of long sabbatical from posting. This has been, indeed, a fairly frustrating year, hobby-wise. As I briefly mentioned in the past, for more than six months I were not able to purchase much needed miniatures, because of a long and unfortunate sequence of events including the demise of GFI/Minifigs, the supplier of my much beloved Minifigs 15mm miniatures, and the collapse of the relationship between Essex Miniatures and its U.S. distributor Wargames Inc. To say the least, these situations were very annoying, and left me rather jaded in respect of the professionalism in the hobby, or lack thereof. All I wanted was spending my money on toy soldiers, dude. It was indeed frustrating not being able to succeed in such an apparently elementary task, and to deal with counterparties that were less than straightforward in addressing some basic customer request.

Fortunately, things are improving. A two-year baby boy makes very difficult to find the time to paint of play games, but it doesn't deter dad for continuing the build up of his forces, nor to plan ahead future campaigns and new directions where to direct my hobby interests. At the end of spring, I finally succeeded in getting the much desired figures; thus, I am glad to report that a rather massive order of British, French, Bavarian troops, plus some additional Austrian and Prussian complements, is at Fernando, my miniature painter of choice who did marvels on my previous order. I have already seen some previews of his work on the current batch, and I am very excited about it. A few other units are getting completed by yours truly, slowly but steadily -- hopefully pictures will follow soon. In the making, new plans for scenarios, new plans for my long dormant Imagi-nation campaign, new plans for additional WAS/SYW units. Wargaming is slow, but life is good. I feel I am ready for a much needed reset, and I look forward blogging more frequently.

A tale of four (postal) orders

This not a "test", because it was not really designed to be one: just an interesting "tale" about ordering miniatures all over the world, with different conclusions to be drawn about consumer services -- mostly, very positive conclusions.

In the evening of March 23rd I submitted four orders for WWI miniatures to complement my Turkish and Australian/British/Indian forces for the Middle East theatre. The four orders were not exactly comparable, as I picked and chose missing elements here and there. From Eureka in Australia I ordered a few Light Brigade mounted figures. From QRF, a mix of infantry and mounted troops both for ANZAC and Turks, plus a couple of guns and some MG sets. From Peter Pig, some WWI Indian bags plus a few other bags from the Sudan range, and some heads in sun hat for swapping and conversions. Finally, from Minifigs/Caliver a variety of items including more mounted Light Brigade and Indian infantry, plus British infantry in sun helmet, some Yeomanry troops and a Rolls-Royce armoured car. And a few bags to check out (Circassian cossacks, uh?) Minifigs was probably the largest and most diversified order, with QRF coming second in variety, Peter Pig third with a couple of unusual items. Eureka was probably the simplest, most straightforward order to fill.

The submission of orders and payment went very smoothly, with prompt email replies with payment receipts from Peter Pig, QRF, and Minifigs. For Eureka, I had to check back on the website. All in all, it was a total of three orders from the UK and one from Australia to be shipped to Chicago, USA.
[By the way: can you tell we just experience a dollar rally in currency markets?]

That was in the evening of Tuesday, March 23rd. On March 24th, an email from QRF announces that my package has shipped! Good, that's promising... I wonder how this little contest will play out. On the very same day, an email by Minifigs/Caliver tells me to expect the package by mid-April. ...mmm... this sounds a little optimistic. During the winter, my orders to Minifigs took about three weeks to ship, and other three-to-four weeks to be delivered: based on that experience, I was not really expecting my miniatures before early May, but we'll see.

A couple of quiet days follow, and on Wednesday March 31st... the Peter Pig order shows up in the mail! WOW, that was fast, five working days! On Friday April 2nd... surprise! Eureka package is at the front door, too! This is even better, seven working days from Australia! And yesterday, Monday March 5th, the large-ish QRF models are delivered! Excellent!

There is very little to say: these three companies showed a fantastic consumer service... it makes me want to go back and order more! Bravi! to all the gentlemen involved: Nic in Australia, Martin and Geoff in the UK.

Now I am rooting for a prompt delivery from Minifigs/Caliver. These are miniatures I love, and I know the staff at Caliver has been struggling a bit during the transition from the previous ownership. I have been a big fan of this line for several years now, despite the sluggish delivery performance. I can only hope that, by now, Caliver has successfully turn the situation around, and they will indeed succeed in having my package delivered by next week.

Overall, a very satisfying customer experience. Let's knock on wood about the final parcel.

Happy Easter!

It has been almost 40 days since my last post. In the meanwhile, business took me almost on the other side of the planet for a trip to the Persian Gulf, and then a few days in Washington D.C. Unavoidably, traveling has slowed down my wargaming stamina. Although, there has been something else going on. The hobby flame comes and goes in spurt, and about every two months or so I feel the need to take a break from the current project and refocus on something else, different, or new. For financial reasons, I try to limit the new project at one per year, while old ones come back into the rotation cyclically. From November to February I was very much into Napoleonics, but after my traveling I felt the need to take a break from it, and direct my energies somewhere else, at least for a short while.

So, where do I stand right now? There is an old project gaining strength, and a couple of ideas about a new period to start in 2010.

Old project back on the workbench. This would be WWI Middle East -- Sinai & Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Gallipoli. I have almost completed a full Turkish regiment; I have a mix ANZAC brigade on foot ready and available (Australian and New Zealand troops), and I am currently working on a Light Horse brigade as well. Arabs were already available from my colonial collection. Assorted guns are also being painted. Also, being slowly worked on, a Indian brigade with one British battalion and three Indian ones, plus a Gurkha battalion just because nobody can make it without Gurkhas. I got some missing elements for all the above by filing a few small orders with UK Minifigs, Peter Pig, QRF, and Eureka. At the end, this should make for an interesting collection of troops for a fascinating area of operations. Pictures and progress report to follow soon.

New projects being considered. Fundamentally, there are two. Two and half, to be precise. One of them is WWII in the desert. I have a lot of scenery for this setting, again thanks to my colonial collection. I have some unpainted figures already, sitting in some box in the closet. I am holding back only because of the cost of adding armour. In 15mm scale, the quantity of tanks, armored cars, and various mechanical gadgets required for this front can be intimidating. I am almost tempted to mix 15mm infantry figures (which, in the case of Eureka and Peter Pig, tend to be on the smallish side of the scale, i.e. "true" 15mm) with 12mm tanks from GFI. In general, I am not fond of this type of mixing. But , ehi, I might try with a few vehicles, just to check whether the "feeling" is acceptable, or just plain wrong. Any comments?

Alternatively, project # 2 would be the Thirty Years War. Again, there are miniatures sitting in the closet, and again, I did some stimulating readings on the topic in the past. Here, the question mark relates to the size of those early war tercios, and I also question how a game of the period would "feel." I have a couple of good rules that could easily work: "Father Tilly" (the new edition), "Piquet - Anchor of Faith", "1644". The temptation is definitely there.

Finally, the "half" project I mentioned would be the the Russian Civil War. I can pour some enthusiasm in leading a White Army, but overall I find the military dimension of the whole affair somewhat lacking; or, maybe, I just need to study it more. This would be a natural progression from my WWI project (not the Mesopotamia/Sinai/Gallipoli: the "other" project about the European theaters.) And some of the miniatures could be used for any type of troubles in the 1920s -- Germany & Weimar, Poland, maybe even a pre-dated Very British Civil War, which appears to be the latest fad in wargaming. This theater would be very playable with any WWI rule set, and it would be a perfect way to test the Perfect Captain's "Red Actions" rules that I read with some interest some time ago. I'll keep this idea in the backseat for the time being, but it is not completely off yet, despite not being completely on, either.

News about MagWeb

This announcement was posted a few days ago on TMP, and I hope not to commit capital offense in reporting it verbatim:

The MagWeb server is still off line, and support@ and magweb@ e-mails to our server will only bounce. I don't have an ETA on getting MagWeb back up and running, but I know that when it does get back online, it will be in a different format. We've found that we just can't rebuild something this large built over the last 13 years in just a few months.

As MagWeb has not been updated since the end of September, we here at MagWeb agreed that we should offer a refund to members' credit cards for the unused portions (October onward) of memberships. Our guru, Tibor, has done most of the work, and this will appear as a credit on your next Visa or Mastercard statement -- anywhere from $4.08 USD on up depending on when you joined.

So, I'll apologize (once again) for any inconvenience and thank you (once again) for all your support of MagWeb past, present, and future. I'll also try to cruise TMP more, or at least the "Websites for Wargaming" section.

Feel free to point folks to this message in TMP or repost this message elsewhere on the web.

As always, if you need to reach me, you can at my home e-mail address: [omissis]

Russ

Russ Lockwood
CEO, MagWeb.com

For those of you not familiar with the site, MagWeb is a fantastic online archive of wargaming magazines, some of them dating back to the '60s. In particular, I am very fond of The Courier, the magazine that basically re-started me into miniatures wargaming in my early '20s: I believe that the full text (and most maps and figures) from the publication are available online through MagWeb, from the first issue in 1979 to the last one in 2005. Also, MagWeb preserves the electronic archive of the Midwest Wargamers Association Newsletter, MWAN for short, a magazine that had -- and still has -- cult-like following among wargamers, and to this day reference for generations of players, a few years after its demise also in 2005 (clearly, a hell of an annus horribilis for wargaming publications...)

Unfortunately, I believe MagWeb was a victim of the extended flooding in the Midwest last year, which knocked its server down with severe loss of functionality. To this day, I can still have access to the information, but the search engine function has never been fully restored.

All I can hope for is that Russ will soon restore the site to its full capacity. If you have never subscribed to MagWeb before, you should plan to invest a few dollars into this service as soon as they will be back: it is money well spent!

Experimenting: how to write a battle report

It is just a vignette, showing some of the IDF miniatures I just finished to base... but I am very intrigued by the idea to write my battle reports in this format...

Busy life

Life has been busy chez DestoFante. Between traveling and work, with a move weeks away and a baby due August 15th, I am actually surprised I can still squeeze in one hour or two for painting or catching up with the hobby. Of course, the choice is between coming here, and talking about the hobby, or sitting to the table and practicing the hobby. You guess how my time is distributed... But then, I realized that to my readers I may appear as a complete wargaming slacker! So, here a few topics for posts I promise I will write soon, if not exactly right now.

• Cold Wars. I manage to squeeze in a cameo appearance for 36 hours at Cold Wars, the HMGS-East spring convention in Lancaster, PA. I did a little shopping, as you may expect, and also had a few thoughts about the state of the hobby. I need to write a thoughtful post about those, and share a few pictures (eye-candies always welcome!)


• My Marlburian project continues in full swing! A couple of weeks ago I made some significant progress, short of a great push but enough to feel a sense of accomplishment. Photos to follow, hopefully soon.


• I also saw some progress in my colonial project: there are several Abyssinian units almost ready for dipping and basing, and so several other European miniatures. It didn't help that I had to wait for almost one months to receive Litko bases, but the quality of the product is so good that the wait is worth. Of course, I got a little derailed by some tangential thoughts. I really would like to play some "Hunting the Slave Traders" games in Sudan, circa 1880. This would be more of a "Dark Africa" than a "Sudan" project, and unfortunately "Dark Africa" in 15mm doesn't offer the same variety of opportunities as it does in 25mm. I still need to do some thinking about that.


• Further diversions. You may remember from here and here that I also harbor a closeted interest for the modern period. I have sketched some good detail about an African imagi-nation, the Republic of Lopongo, where to carry campaigns in style of Bongolesia and Ztum-Setum. That project has slowed down in 2009, but it is not forgotten. Also, years ago I began to paint some IDF and OLP miniatures from Peter Pig and QRF. I fully understand that the topic is politically charged, and I keep quiet about it; yet, this past week, I decided to take a step and I bought the PDF version of two "TooFatLardies" items, "Troops, Weapons & Tactics" and "Rock the Casbah." Once again, Rich Clarke did it for me. As in the case of "B'Maso", the quality of these products is excellent. They deserve a full review. It now seems that a "Lebanon 1982" project will be in the offing...

So many topics, so little time... I hope this will just serve as "menu" of posts to come, but in the meanwhile: back to table to get some painting and photographs done this afternoon!

The myth of "the great push"

Wargamers live with their myths, both collective and individual: realistic "rules", historical "accuracy", the most accurate uniforms painted on the most accurate figures, and so on. At the individual level, my personal, biggest myth is the idea of the "great ___ push". The "great Napoleonic push." The "great Colonial push." The "great WWI push." By this expression I mean to refer to the large quantity of half-painted miniatures I have sitting in boxes in my wargaming closet. The idea -- the dream, the myth... -- is that if I could only have 36 hours of undivided attention to dedicate to complete the project, in tayloristic fashion, I would indeed be able to complete my project "du jour." Of course, real life doesn't work like that, and the idea of a great push remains a myth. And yet it is an inspiring myth, and a comforting one. I know I am not the most systematic wargamer, I know I have tons of lead in a variety of stages of preparation, and in most cases I do really care about bringing a project to completion, at least in the sense that I want to be able to move some basic armies to the field to play some games. Wargaming projects never end, and there will always be the need for an additional unit, some more cavalry, a few more guns, a nicer officer figure, more suitable terrain, and so on. But if I could only, in one week-end sitting, through a "big push," bring to completion what I have preparing thus far for a long time, and complete a couple of armies in one long session... Ah, the myth of the great push!

What this is all about...

Think about: we spend countless hours to search the most arcane historical episodes, to paint the most accurate uniforms, to discuss and playtest the most convoluted rules, to create the most striking and fanciful terrain... and then somebody like Bob Cordery shows up with something like this, and he reminds us what wargaming is all about: the joy of having fun with toy soldiers, a few wooden cubes, and an old railtrack we received as a present when we were, shall we say, seven year-old?

I am looking at Bob's game in sincere awe, because he has been able to capture all the magic of the hobby which thrilled me even before I became a teenager. Simple miniatures (he actually deploys FPW figures as 1930s troops!), simple terrain and scenery, and tons of fun! This is all what wargaming should be about! Oh, I wish I could wash years of conditioning and self-conditioning off my mind, and just go back to play toy soldiers with the creativity, ingenuity and naivete I had when I was playing with my plastics Airfix miniatures 30 years ago!

THANKS TO: Bob Cordery, for graciously authorizing the reproduction of his pictures in my blog!