Failte

With MacDuff  On The Web
Ross Macfarlane's Toy Soldier and Wargaming site
in which I ramble on in undisciplined fashion about my hobby.
Please note there is no archive or audit trail so what you see is what you get!
(return to Loch Sloy Miniatures homepage)

Welcome

Coming events:

COLD WARS March 11-14  NQSYW Charge! with Not Quite the Raid on St. Michel

HUZZAH Portland Maine, Apr 30- May2nd   With MacDuff to the Frontier goes up the Aroostock.
A new con, come help make it a success!

Meantime in January Marathon is the Game of the Month

31 Dec. DONE!!   THE END. All 52 scenarios in "The Red Book", aka Scenarios for All Ages by CS Grant & S Asquith, have been played and recorded. I enjoyed playing them and the challenge it some tines presented to scramble to convert them to something I could field but I'm glad I'm done! Starting January 2010, a more sane project, I'm going to play all of the scenarios and Table Top Teasers in Battlegames magazine, 1 a month until done, hopefully a never ending task. The results won't be chronicled here but on a new blog:

http://gameofmonth.blogspot.com/

Here I hope to be able to capitalize on the smaller number of games to provide more information about each including the preparation and a more complete illustrated battle report. The Blog is up but real posts won't appear until January.

Happy New Year to ALL!!

As I occupy my new & improved, permanent wargames room, I am reducing and rationalizing my eclectic clutter of wargame armies in various sizes and periods. One day I'll build a page summarizing all the projects that have been and gone over the last 35 years, just to remind myself. Meantime, here is what I am intending to keep and add to or play with over the next 5 years. Selecting which projects to keep has not been easy, some of the criteria used were:
a) at least 1 project in each of the "ancient" (ie pre-gunpowder), horse & musket, and modern (post 1900) eras,
b) at least 1 "skirmish" project with individual figures,
c) at least 1 "battle" project for fighting traditional wargames with a table full of troops,
d) at least 1 project that will allow me to play with "my" army against one of more freinds' armies.

 Click on the pictures to go to the page for that project.
  

Thank you Lawrence for the photograph
 of Elastolins attacking my GW castle.

16th C (40mm)
Rules: Rough Wooing
(nee Rough Wooing)

  

Rules: Charge! by Lawford & Young 

A new distraction!

1/72 plastic Russian Civil War
Rules: Blitzkreig Commander and/or maybe Morschauser!.

1/72nd  Post War II Fictional Forces
 

Rules: Cold War Commander

It has taken me 35 years of exploration but I have found the wargaming equivalent of my calling. Brigadier Peter Young, co-author of the classic Charge! or How to play Wargames, (my 3rd book on wargaming) urged wargamers to build one set of armies and use them even if re-fighting battles from a different era. Even earlier influences on me were Funken's Uniforms through all the ages and Don Featherstone's Battles with Model Soldiers which covered wargaming in various periods. After decades of historical projects in various scales and periods, where similar armies were essentially duplicated because their hats were the wrong shape or some other such trivia, I decided the Brigadier was right.  I've never liked the exaggerated detail and awkward anatomy and poses of the modern 28mm and despite years of enjoying detailed painting, I was ready to a return to the simple, glossy wargame figures I saw as a youth. I also had a hankering to recapture some of the imagination, spirit and sense of H. G. Well's Little Wars (my 2nd book on wargaming).  It was Dick Larsen with his Sudan collection of old Britain's B series and 1960's vintage Scruby 40mm miniatures that showed me my solution.  The result of all this is the Oberhilse and Fahrway Campaign, a largely solo affair that I intend to be the focus of my collection over the next 20 years,
  

French Revolution (15mm)
Vendee, Egypt & Guadaloupe

Hearts of Tin
(nee Morschauser Meets MacDuff)
 
Lawrence of Arabia 15mm

A Bit About Me:
History, Hobby Philosophy etc

LINKS

1 page right now but I will include more cameo's of friends' games. (eventually)