Peter Laing ECW Cavalryman Mold; the 64th Time is the Charm

     The Peter Laing mold  made before going on vacation was tried out today.  After a little work on the mold, the figures were the best I have managed to cast. Of course, the master was painted with a thick coat of enamel paint that I couldn't remove and the base was flocked, so there is no detail to the figure. Still, for my project they will do fine. The pictures are poor as I still haven't found my camera and used my cell phone to take the pictures.

New Inspiration for Wargaming

      My wife and I returned from our week's camping  in New York.  We had just about the whole campground to ourselves and I got some reading done on the English Civil War. This has got me wanting to do a ECW war-game. Hopefully my copy of "One Hour Wargames" will be mailed soon. Before leaving for vacation I also made a mold of a Peter Laing ECW cavalryman, as I have very few of them, and it seems in many ECW battles there were large number of cavalry. The mold looks promising and hopefully I can get some casting done in the next coupe of days.

    While on vacation we managed to visit Olana, the home of Frederic E. Church, a Hudson River School painter.  He built his home on a hilltop overlooking the Hudson River. One of my interests is the painters of the Hudson River School, so this was an enjoyable day for me. The photos below were taken with my cellphone and don't do justice to the views. The good photos are on my wife's camera, which still needs to be downloaded.

 

Olana,  Frederic E. Church's home.

A view of the Catskills Mountains from Olana.

Our home away from home. One night my wife woke me to point out two deer outside our camper. She  saw 5 throughout the night grazing in the field we were camped at. One week just wasn't enough!

Unusual Wargaming Inspiration

  My wife and I are on vacation this week and are preparing to go camping one last time. My wife wants to go to the "Sheep & Yarn Festival" in Rhinebeck, NY. For me it was an excuse to try out our new camper for the week. Also, it is close to Sleepy Hollow, of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" fame. We have visited Sleepy Hollow before, but I might try to get there this week.

    Now Halloween is my favorite time of the year, and with my wife working Saturday I spent the day watching ghost stories on Youtube. One I watched was from a series from England named "A Ghost Story for Christmas". This story was called "A View from a Hill". At one point the main characters were standing on a hilltop viewing the surrounding country side and one pointed out a village and  mentioned of "some battle fought in the Civil War". The scene made me think of what the battle would have looked like from that vantage point.  I also watched "Matthew Hopkins; Witchfinder General" starring Vincent Price. This movie took place during the English Civil War. I  now find myself wanting to use my Peter Laing ECW. I don't have many figures but I have also ordered "One Hour Wargames" by Neil Thomas. Based on Bob Cordery's review, it seems like the rules call for a small number of figures, and the rules are very basic. The book is not yet available in the states, but hopefully by the time we return from vacation I will have some idea of when the book will be shipped.

   I still haven't found my camera but borrowed my wife's camera to take some shots of the Minifigs/Hinchcliffe? landscape pieces.

The bridge assembled and painted. Forgive the poor quality of the pictures; it's been a couple of  years since using the camera.

The brick wall, with a Peter Laing peasant behind for scale. The picture is from slightly above, which makes the wall shorter than it actually is.

The hedgerows. Unfortunately the SD card at this point was full and I couldn't take a photo of the stonewall.  These pieces would be good for my ECW wargame.  I am thinking of trying to cut a sample down to 1 inch long pieces to see if they could be useful at this length. As I have about 24 pieces of each, the loss of one wouldn't be too bad.

More Gaming Purchases and Great Values on Kindle

      While my job and sudden interest in R/C naval combat has distracted me from wargaming, I still haven't completely given up on war-games. I have bought several lots of old Minifigs 15mm terrain, including stone walls, brick walls, hedgerows and 5 arched bridges. I was going to include photos of them, but seem to have misplaced my camera.  Also after reading Bob Cordery's review of "One Hour Wargames", I ordered the book.

    In a previous blog I brought up about buying books for my Kindle. One very good buy is a collection of Osprey guides. I bought 4 so far, The Franco-Prussian War 1870-1871, The Mexican War 1846-1848, The Ottoman Empire 1326-1699, and Byzantium at War AD 600-1453.  At $1.49 each, it is a great buy. While they are not illustrated, they have maps and are listed as being around 90 pages. I am going to try to get the whole collection in time. I also downloaded "Sino-Japanese Naval War 1894-1895" by Piotr Olender. After reading this book, I plan to buy a paper copy of it as the illustrations of the warships makes it worth the extra money.