Reviewing 2016

2016 is coming to an end and a lot of people will say it wasn't a good year since so much mischief happened on earth. But nevertheless I'm lucky enough to be able to focus on hobby issues and see the wargaming world in a nutshell. So let me ponder about the last twelve months on Monty's Caravan and review some of my hobby highlights 2016.

To begin with I have to admit that I didn't produce too many articles this year. My apologies for that but somehow real life and family issues consumed more of my leisure time this year and I didn't find enough time to bring my humble ideas to words. Thus my productivity dropped to an average of slightly more than one post per week after more then 1.5 last year and even more in 2014...

Anyway I'm glad that you're interest didn't cease. To my surprise at least the same number of visitors dropped by in 2016 maybe even more. Many thanks for your kind and encouraging support! Frankly I'm really pleased how the virtual wargaming community keeps developing and I'm glad to be part of it! Especially when I see that mostly American, Russian, German and British fellows seem to visit my humble blog. What a splendid international bunch of enthusiasts we are...

Besides those numbers what did 2016 bring on the workbench?

Merry Christmas!

A merry, joyful and blessed Christmas to you and your dears !

Last chance to get a Paul Hicks sculpt for £5 !

A while ago Paul Hicks started a lottery to help raising funds for his local rugby club. Luckily I met Paul at Crisis in Antwerp and had the chance to make his pleasant acquaintance. He's a hobby rugby player and loyal supporter of his club so I decided to spread his project via my humble blog.

The Chesham Stags plan to build a new club house and Paul's helping them to collect the needed money. On Youtube there is a short video clip featuring the Stags:

For £5 you can buy a ticket for his lottery and for the lucky winner Paul will sculpt a bespoke 28mm figure. Pretty simple, isn't it?

So if you ever wanted a special figure or maybe yourself in 28mm or even if you just need a Christmas present for one of your wargaming fellows then don't hesitate to join Paul's lottery. He'll close it tomorrow and draw the winner between 12pm and 1pm.

Some more details on Facebook: Here (public, no FB account needed to read).

In case that you want one or more tickets please contact Paul:

p h i c k s 1 [at] m a c [dot] c o m

A couple of days ago the fund raiser was at £1,305 so about 261 tickets sold. So you might want to raise your chances and take more than just one ticket...

Anyway keep in mind that you have only 24 hours to join the lottery !

New header

My friend Holger is a professional and very gifted graphic engineer and during his lunchbreak he seemed to have been rather bored. Luckily he used his free time to experiment with some pictures and somehow a new header for my humble blog came into being:

As you see he took a historical picture of Field Marshal Montgomery, Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Field Marshal Alan Brooke in front of Monty's famous caravan. On the right hand side he included a couple of my Perry plastics for NWF. I'm especially delighted because those are some of my favourite results from last year.

Many thanks to Holger!

I hope you like the new header as well.

A bunch of conversions - 28th Rgt. of Foot for Aboukir and Peninsular

The annual Painting Challenge is coming nearer and actually I should take time to prepare figures for it. Luckily my lead mountain is filled with primed miniatures so I can use my little time at the workbench to proceed with my contribution to our club's next show project: The British landing at Aboukir 1801.

Besides a couple of boats my largest task is a 24 figure unit of British redcoats that shall respresent the 28th Regiment of Foot. Comparing the different ranges available - mostly of course those perfect 1801 British by Alan Perry - none gave me satisfaction. Excellent figures all around but I wanted to have something more characterful. So I decided to create a unit of conversions:

The whole unit with an additional command for Peninsular