Seaford museum

Got back from our annual visit to Brighton a couple of days ago, during which we had hopped on the bus to Seaford. This time we walked up to the Martello Tower (number 74) and were surprised to find it was a museum... as in, saw the sign on the gun!

So, couple of pictures of the mounting.

Which extends below what you can see from the promenade...

There's a lot more to it than you would think at a distance... most of it being below ground.

As the sign says, it's bigger on the inside than on the outside.

Couple more signs, don't think I need to explain these further.

It does have a lot more than just the gun - a few models of local interest.

I admit this one was more for personal reference.

This is a model of what the local railway station looked like.

And lots more of course -this is a model of a Victorian bathing hut! There is a lot more than I've shown here - early computers/games consoles, for example.

Well worth a visit, meanwhile it has a website and is on Facebook.

Note, all photos taken by my wife Sandra.

Warrior Greek Army Review

 

Added to just act as a record...

Warrior Thracians and other light infantry

 

I put the Thracians together as two units 18 strong - my 'standard' 6 element units.

I kept the flesh and black tunic, everything else was overpainted. I originally considered painting the cloaks in a tartan scheme but remembered that I wasn't out to do complicated designs... the original figures had a rather strange hair design. I painted hair underneath and the original 'hair' I did in red leather to represent fox skin caps!

There were also a few other odd figures...

I left the weird flesh colour... also added a shield to give a couple of elements of long spear/shield armed peltasts. I should probably have given these fox skin caps but left it so they could represent any Greek peltast, not just Thracians.

Not really anything to say about these two elements...

Finally, some archers. These were the only figures I didn't do any further work on.

Second Warrior pike unit

 

Doesn't look very impressive at this angle!

Put the two units together 8  deep and it looks a bit better.

Even better with an overhead view - spoiled a bit by the difficulty in putting these things together in a light box - those pikes really get in the way!

Warrior Greek cavalry

 

I have a few Warrior cavalry, just about enough to do a couple of bases...

Not bad, though spears would have been better if replaced - they aren't good. Horse legs a bit iffy - tried bending them back into shape a bit. Design of the horses is pretty reasonable though.

Refurbishing' old Warrior Greek pikes

 

Bought this lot about three years ago - finally getting round to refurbishing the pikes...

The first lot of 48. Actually 47 because I miscounted... one of the rear bases only has 3 figures at the moment. Correcting that mistake by painting an extra figure to the next unit...

There are two different poses - this is the front rank pikeman (not going to call them phalangites!)

And these are the back rank figures.

There's also an officer (acquired separately) hidden there somewhere. This photo gives an idea of how crude the figures are, as well as the fact they don't fit very well on DBX bases!

20mm Scots Greys

It's about 5 years since I was looking at the 20mm Napoleonic ranges, so in my current tidying up mood it seemed reasonable to finish painting these Scots Greys.

The colours aren't quite right because I followed the picture in Funken rather than look up several sources... also, I can't paint greys very well... Also, think you can buy a copy of Funken cheaper than £109.

Still had the 25mm 7YW Hussars lying around so thought it would be nice to do a size comparison. As I have said in the past, the '20mm' ranges are really 25mm and I only call them 20mm to distinguish them from the later, much larger, 25mm ranges. Perhaps I should really call the larger figures 28mm?

TLC

Having bought all those cheap buildings, it seemed reasonable to go through them and tidy them up a bit, plus do a couple of others in my collection. Intention was to tidy up and make presentable - so very basic work!

So here's a few of them arranged as if in a street, ones at the front showing the backs of those buildings.

And the reverse - thinking about it I should have done all of them as a front view, then all the back views.

Last of the new buildings

 

Another batch of buildings in pretty good condition. This lot cost £45.23, so basically £9 each

The largest building - they are mostly shops with flats above.

Plus one hotel called the Karn Hotel. Might be difficult to rename this so I'll probably leave it as it is. No idea if it's based on a real hotel or not - should look it up... And done... '"Karn hotel" refers to multiple properties. "Karn Residence" is a 4-star hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, and "Karn Havos" appears to be a holiday home in both Saint Eval and Mawgan Porth, according to Booking.com and Booking.com. Additionally, there's "Hotel Karn Vihar" in Munger, India.'

A nice little group of shops!

Back views...

And more back views...

And that lot, especially when added to the things I've already got, should give me a decent city centre shopping centre.

A Meroitic Kushite civil war

 

Steven home usually means a game. So, he said 'Didn't you have a load of Zulus you used as Kushites?' Yep, looked up armies. Meroitic Kushite. Saw it could have a elephant general... intriguing, couldn't resist myself, so sorted out 2 DBA armies - Indian elephants acting as general as I don't have any Meroitic elephants.

Steven lost dice roll and had to set up first. I mirrored him to a degree except I put my Ps element next to my blades (well, guys with spears and shields pretending to be blades). Ready for spears mayhem in the middle as our generals slog it out.

I let my left flank get too close to him while he partially refused his...

OK, I thought. Lets take out the Psiloi element - straight dice roll, I win, he flees, unless he doubles up I just recoil. No, I died... Happily, one of archery elelents succumbed to a hail of arrows leaving a gap in his line.

Just before contact I had stopped a bit over a move away from Steven. That meant I got to be the one making contact and choosing order of combat. As I had given myself a right flank overlap to start with, and as I had also made sure his single ranked spears next to the general were facing a double rank, I had given myself a slight combat advantage...

Steven threw a 2 for PiPs...meant he took out one of my archer elements but couldn't then roll up my line... 

Anyway, the way the combats went I finished up with a double overlap on Steven's middle spear elements. Steven had a dice roll advantage over me early in the game; that changed and I got three sixes in a row. Including here... two dead elements, suddenly the game moved to my advantage...

Last move of the game. Steven's single element of spears succumbed.

I did actually get my flank attack in on that last move. It bounced! But, having taken out four elements, game over and I finished up winner!

So it proved to be a very close game. It would be easy to say that it depended on dice rolls - true, but that's true to a certain extent of every game. When his Psiloi took out my archers we both thought it was game over; I would his line being broken by the loss of his arher unit was more important - broke his line and made him more dependent on PiPs. At the wrong time he threw a two, couldn't dress his line and attack as much as he wanted and was left vunerable. Meanwhile, throwing three sixes at the right time helped me - but my tactics had given me a +1 or +2 advantage across the whole of my right wing and centre anyway. If the dice rolls on that combat that took out his two spears elements had been reversed I would simply have been pushed back!

Afrika Korps

 

Another load of minimal standard WW2 plastics - Afrika Korps to provide an opponent for the 8th Army...