Remember, remember the fifth of November...

...gunpowder, treason and plot;

I know no reason

why gunpowder treason

should ever be forgot !

As most of you know 408 years ago some traitors around Guy Fawkes tried to blow up the British parliament, King James I., his family and the whole House of Lords. Fortunately they didn't suceed because their plot was discovered by Thomas Knyvet. Later the traitors were brought to trial and sentenced to death.

Source: Wikipedia

HAPPY BONFIRE NIGHT EVERYONE !

Besides that historical note there some wargaming remarks to make:

Firstly I'm working on the report about Crisis and hoping to have it online tomorrow morning.

Secondly the registration period for the 50K raffles ended last sunday. I'll have the lots prepared tommorrow and have my daughter draw the lucky winners then. They'll be announced by the ending of this week.

Thirdly there is a raffle I want to promote here. Andrew "Loki" Saunders of Loki's Great Hall is celebrating his 200th follower and giving away a nicely painted Saga miniature. You could register until this evening if you want to test you luck:

Congrats Andrew, it's always a pleasure to visit your great hall !

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go... Vignette finished

Yesterday I had a rather long evening at my workbench. Figures had to be sorted and packed, orders of battle printed, everything checked twice whether anything is missing and most important the interrogation vignette had to be finished:

It's based on the excellent figures of Alan and Michael Perrys. They are from their nice AW100 set with a couple of Hessian and British officers interrogating an American captive.

Since Giles from Tarleton's Quarter told me that those figures have real and living models - him and some of his fellows - I was very careful with painting the faces. Not perfect but satisfying for me so I hope I didn't insult anybody with disfiguring his alter ego. 

Anyway it was great fun to paint those very individual miniatures and arrange them. As usual I used Vallejo Model Colours mostly.

For now that's it with AWI. I need a break and will paint something else during the next week. First of all a small band of Saga viking mostly of Gripping Beast Plastics. Then a large unit of Napoleonic KGL riflemen from the 2nd Light Bataillon KGL for a La Haye Sainte skirmish and then a unit of FIW redcoats for Bloggers for Charity. And probably there will be enough diversions to let me begin some other project simultaneously.

But now I have to finish my cup of tea and get into my shoes. Very soon my fellow Robert will pick me up to leave for Antwerp! I hope to come back after a great trip with the boys with a bag full of stuff and my head full of new, insane ideas.

I'm looking forward to see some of you at Crisis!

Countdown for Crisis... Three days to go...

Crisis 2013 is the first convention where I have the pleasure and honour to be involved in preparing a game. Together with our THS club I'll bring and present our Penobscot AWI game on a large table. If you missed my post on our summer event when we played the scenario then have a look here for part 1 or here for part 2. Or have a look at the kind of official coverage of the game. It's available on our club's homepage in English or German.

Anyway I planned to finish a small vignette with the Perrys' excellent interrogation scene for this event and after painting the figures there is a first WIP shot of the scene itself:

Looks a bit like retreat 1812 before painting the ground...

Unfortunately the faces turned up very difficult for me. Most of them aren't perfect but I reached a state which I wasn't able to improve any longer so I'm satisfied more or less. Anyway my plan is to place a piece of broken fence behind the rebel officer and then of course some flock, bushes and grass around the scene after painting the ground.

But let me take this as advice to visit the THS game. We'll have our table at 3b02 in the center part of the front hall.

THS on Crisis 2013

We plan to play a couple of turns between 11.00 am and 01.00 pm and give the croud an idea of the scenario we prepared and the great game it made during our summer event. Nevertheless any participants are welcome who want to try Black Powder or just spent some time with us. And by the way that would be a chance to collect additional entries for my 50K raffle... However I would be pleased to meet the one or the other there.

50.000 Hits Raffle - Part 2

As promised yesterday here comes the second lot of my 50K price draw. It's a rather rare kit of an aircraft which played an important role during some major operations from 1942 to 1945. But more on this later. Firstly here are the rules again:

1. To join the raffle you must be public followers of Monty's Caravan.

2. You place a comment here expressing your whish to participate. That grants you one (1) entry.

3.  You'll receive one (1) bonus entry if you plug this draw on your blog and post a link to your article here. (one promotional post is enough to get bonus entries in lot 1 and 2 if you participate both)

4. You'll receive another bonus entry when you address me at Crisis next weekend and take some minutes for a small chat. Since I'll be there with our THS club it wont be too difficult to catch me. But more details on that later this week. I hope that'll turn out a good chance to meet some of you fellows.

5. Registration is possible until sunday (2nd November) 09.00am  CET.

6. Both draws will be excuted by my personal lucky charm Viktoria under the witnessing eyes of Mrs Monty. There's no right of appeal.

7. The prize draw will be helt at the beginning of next week and the winners will be announced here on Monty's Caravan.

But now for the prize. It's a very nive 1/72 kit which should fit well to 20mm stuff. It represents an airplane which isn't published as kit too often:

2nd Lot: 

Horsa Glider

2nd Lot: An Italeri Horsa kit in 1/72

It's an earlier edition of Italeri's plastic kit for the Horsa Mk. I / Mk. II glider which was used in famous airbourne operations like Operation Tonga, Operation Deadstick or Operation Market Garden. Italeri made this model for D-Day's 50th anniversary but I'm not sure whether this box is really that old. Anyway the model is still in production and recently Warlord Games took it into their shop as scenary for their Pegasusbridge set. But because I switched to Grand Manners 28mm version of the Horsa I would like to raffle the 1/72 version here and now.

50.000 Hits Raffle ! - Part 1

The day before yesterday my humble blog reached its 50.000th hit.

Thanks to all interested readers for your attention and the many encouraging comments !

50.000 hits that's more than one and a half years of Monty's Caravan: 123 posts, 162 followers, 1.130 comments and 50.400 hits. A far better feedback than I imagined when I started this wargaming diary. Actually to keep things ticking over on my workbench...

Since Monty's Caravan was my first step into this Web 2.0 social community new media stuff I'm surprised and delighted alike where in the whole world people are interested in my posts:

14.130 hits from Germany

11.503 from the USA

5.948 from the UK

1.863 from France

1.161 from the Russian Federation

1.023 from Australi

and some around 500 from Poland, Canada, Spain and Italy

As promised some time ago I want to organize a little raffle to celebrate this step with you and give you someting back. There will be two lots. One announced today and the other tomorrow  to make it easier for me to sort out who wants to join which lot.

The rules are as follows:

1. To join the raffle you must be public followers of Monty's Caravan.

2. You place a comment here expressing your whish to participate. That grants you one (1) entry.

3.  You'll receive one (1) bonus entry if you plug this draw on your blog and post a link to your article here.
(one promotional post is enough to get bonus entries in lot 1 and 2 if you participate both)

4. You'll receive another bonus entry when you address me at Crisis next weekend and take some minutes for a small chat. Since I'll be there with our THS club it wont be too difficult to catch me. But more details on that later this week. I hope that'll turn out a good chance to meet some of you fellows.

5. Registration is possible until sunday (2nd November) 09.00am  CET.

6. Both draws will be excuted by my personal lucky charm Viktoria under the witnessing eyes of Mrs Monty. There's no right of appeal.

7. The prize draw will be helt at the beginning of next week and the winners will be announced here on Monty's Caravan.

But now for the prizes. I've selected some kits from my cupboard of unfinished project. Actually absolutely great models but insufficient space at Monty's Caravan to keep them all. So I hope they'll find a good treatment under your craftful hands:

1st Lot: 

Italeri M4 Sherman and Airfix Tank Transporter

1st Lot: Italeri M4 Sherman Tank and Airfix Scammel Tank Transporter

Of course both kits are undamaged and as far as I can judge complete. Decals and construction manuals are included. The kits are 1/76 and 1/72 and should match perfectly for 20mm WWII. Probably most of you know both vehicles very well but anyway here you could find some information:

- M4 Sherman Tank

- Scammel Tank Transporter

So stay tuned for tommorow's post about the 2nd lot and good luck to all participants !