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| Danish troops take position to defend a town against the Swedes. |
Where have I been? Good question. The last fifteen days see me two thirds through a three-weeker from Los Angeles via Chicago and New York to find myself in the more sedate and old world ambience of Bury St Edmunds and Cambridge (not MA,USA rather...shire, England) by Sunday. Almost all work and no play but I managed to squeeze a couple of interesting diversions in on the way, satisfying my interest in Maritime History and Prohibition gangsters in the process.
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| We used to be the Kings and Queens of the Oceans..... what happened? |
Waking up in Long Beach to see a piece of Glaswegian history right outside my window on Day 1 was a nice surprise particularly since my Father sailed on that very famous vessel in 1940 - Egypt bound and via the Cape of Good Hope. I took that as an astonishingly good omen as I never had the privilege to see her on the Clyde.
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| Swedish gunners and labourers sweat to repair a field gun. |
Time to blog has not been abundant although, on my travels I have made great progress with the final and largest single chapter of the Beneath the Lily Banners 3rd edition GNW/Eastern Wars supplement - The battle report.
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| Not a bad shot but not good enough to make the cut for the book. |
I can share that the book is likely to run to an almost identical size as the rules themselves and that we'll have some lovely contributions from Clarence on the illustration side as well as some new artwork from other talented and well known illustrators. It is also likely to be hard cover.
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| A regiment of Streltsi in a position on some high ground behind a village |
The book has grown in the creation and now includes an extensive period primer, detailed sections on rule modifications and adaptions for the stated theatres, augmented points system for pick up games, detailed 'army builder guides and sample army lists for Swedish, Russian, Saxon, Prussian, Danish, Imperial and Ottoman armies, an exciting and close run after action report, uniform and flag plates, insights into peculiarities of these very distinctive conflicts and bucket loads of new photographs.
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| Vasterbotten at Fraustadt 1706 - A refight we organized about four years ago. |
In the words of S&G I am now homeward bound and looking forward to swapping quesadillas, Mac n'cheese and Yeungling for something LESS healthy! I did get to talk with Clarence during my schlep but not quite in the same time zone, for a change I was actually three hours behind him!
Normal service will be resumed on the blog over the next few days and when I finally hit Caledonia next weekend the brush and camera will resume working overtime in order to make up for lost opportunity time.