250,000 Hits!!! and a Prize

Just a quick Thank You to all you Gamers and bloggers out there, who over the

 last 20 odd months have taken their life in their own hands and visited this strange little world of Ray,

and helped it to 250,000 Hits!!!

Hopefully you'll all still come and visit again??

Note the 2012/13 Championship winners shirt above........fingers crossed!

And now to the give-away, quite simple really all you've gotta do is be a follower of my blog,
then comment below, saying you'd like to enter, if you post on your blog, giving a link back about my giveaway you get another entry into the draw.

So to the prize, now don't get too over-exited, its not all that!!!

If the winner sends me either 5, 20mm figures, 5 25mm figures or 12, 15mm figures, 
from any period or even Fantasy (cough!), I'll paint them up and send them back for free!!

Now I'm not the worlds best painter, but free is free!!!

The competition will close 1 week from the start date. So that's July 2nd at 1930 GMT

Cheers and good luck!

Gunners Wargaming Giveaway!!

Check out Dan's Blog "Gunners Wargaming" for a fantastic give-away. The lucky winner will recieve a very unusual prize, here's what Dan's suggesting.

   "I was trying to decide what would be a good prize for a give away, when I thought the best prize is something tailor made for the individual, and something you can't get anywhere else, so my prize will be, I will collaborate with the winner to use my limited skills to create a group of characters/command stand/vehicle's/small unit, for your army, to your specification, using figures/models from my collection, and my conversion/painting skills. So you choose the scale, period and force and if I have it in my collection I will make something for your collection.
So how big will the group of figures be? upper and low limit will be determined by how much work will be needed for each figure, and how many I have available in my collection.

15mm and 1/72 figs - 8-16ish
28mm figs - 6-12ish
15mm vehicles - 1-3
1/72nd vehicles - 1-2
28mm vehicles - don't ask, I don't have any.
Mixed - or you may want a mix of a vehicle with some crew - 1 vehicle + 4-6 crew."

Sounds a great offer to me, my entry is already in, If you haven't taken up Dan's offer yet, I suggest you get your finger out, because time is running out to enter tomorrow!!!

NYW Flags - Danish Foot Guards 1690

Here's my take on the flags for the Danish Footguards during the NYW, the flag can be seen flying high, in one of my previous posts here. I've leaned heavily on the flags pictured in "The Danish Army 1699-1715" by Sapherson, for these two flags, but I've not used the Order of the Elephant ribbons or the Danish Great State Shield,  that was used on their flag after 1693. Instead I've used the C5 cypher of the Danish king Christian V.

Analouge Challenge Prize - Architects of War

Back in December last year, as some of you will remember, myself, Fran and loads of other wargamers and painters entered Curt's Analouge Painting Challenge.
Now you may not have realised that I actually won the Challenge.........ok you probably do!!!
The top prize was a $25 voucher to spend at the Architects of War website.
I wasn't really sure what to spend my $25 prize on, finally as I recently bought the Saga set of rules I thought I'd get some of their Dark Age terrain pieces, I settled on the Donkey Mill and the Fire Pit Kit.
I spoke to the very helpful Barb, via email and within 4 days the items had arrived at my doorstep, now that's some going!!!! I've gotta say that impressed me a lot!
And I wasn't disappointed either when I opened my box of goodies, I was very happy with the Donkey (Fran) Mill, and am very pleased as to how it looks painted up.
The Fire Pit Kit was an enjoyable paint as well, I did have a bit of trouble trying to work out what was on the pole standing straight up, then Fran said it was a rabbit! Doh! oh yeh!!!

So thanks go out to Barb at Architects of War and of course to our host and prize giver Curt!!

Friday morning 0205, out comes the energy drink, (or as I call it "Jungle Juice!") There's 4 hours to go and me and Fran are fading fast, swigging back this damn drink to try and help us stay awake!

And then for some reason Fran decides to try and choke himself, spitting the drink out all over himself, the messy git!!!! I thought it was quite funny????? Lucky I had the camera in my hand at the time!

NYW Flags - Dutch Guard du Corps

I'm back at work tonight after 12 days off, so I'm feeling pretty sorry for myself, what makes it even worse is I'm working with that miserable git Francis............but at least England won!!!!!!!! Come on ENGLAND!!!!

I had a request from Mark, on the League of Augsberg Fighting Talk forum, for this flag which I'd inadvertantly forgotten to post, its for the Dutch Guard du Corps, during the Nine Years War.
The flag can be seen flying high on one of my previous posts, here.
The flag is very similar to that of the Dutch Garde te Paard, so it didn't need a lot of work to change it over!
Print off and use if you wanna!

Ray

RP No 79 NYW Danish Guard

On the 15th August 1689, King Christian V of Denmark signed a treaty with William III of England to hire out 7,000 Danes. They took an oath of faithfulness to William and to serve for the duration of the war, providing Denmark wasn't attacked itself. The Danes were to be under the command of an English officers although Danish Lieutenant-Generals and Major-Generals were to be present at councils of war.
The Commander of the Danish force was the Duke of Wurtemburg, under him the Marquis de la Forest (or de la Force) the Cavalry commander and Julius Ernst von Tettau, in command of the foot.
The Danish Footguard or the Garden til Fods were led by Wurtemburg himself.
The Guards fought in nearly every of the battle of the war including the Battle of the Boyne, where they had 698 active fighting men all armed with a flintlock musket, the pike being abolished in 1689. Their uniform is stated to be a straw yellow coat with red cuffs. Clarence at Quindia Studios, II and Barry at The League of Augsberg have gone for the lighter straw colour as in the Osprey book "Battle of the Boyne". I've gone for a slightly yellower colour as did Pete at Irish Armies of James , with his figures. I would have liked to use a brighter yellow, but I'm quite happy with how these turned out.
Once again the figures are from Essex's 15mm range and the bases are from Warbases, the flags were pure conjecture and were made back in November last year.

Broadside 2012 - The story

Well I'm the last Reject to get my Broadside post up and running, Fran and Lee both got there posts in earlier today. So I won't bore you all with too many of the same details that the lads have already written about. We were all up nice and early as the doors opened at 8, for clubs and traders alike. We were a little early, arriving at around 730 and after a little confusion as to where to park, we found the Wyvern Hall and started to unload all the gear....The Rejects have arrived!!!!

The lads getting a telling off from Postie, as they took out the terrain boards from the wrong end of the box.

 "Look, It's numbered like I said"  Bet you all guessed who the main culprit was??
We made some boards to go under Posties tiles, we gave them a lick of paint, BIG MISTAKE!
Next day they were like bananas. Lesson 1, learnt, use an undercoat or oil based paint!!!!

Hhmmm? What to do???
 It didn't take us as long as we thought to setup!

I had a great chat with fellow bloggers Whisperin Al from The Wargaming Shed and Tamsin the Wargaming Girl, made an appearance as well, she's loaned me 4 books on Viking Sagas so, I've got a lots of interesting reading to do!
  Here are a few photos of our game at the show "The Battle of Amiens 1918". I'll post a short write up and more pics on our game at a later date, I must agree with Fran and Lee, at being both shocked and extremely pleased to be awarded joint second in the game of the show competition. It was unexpected but a fantastic honour for all the Rejects especially Postie himself! well done to all the Rejects!!!!!!

The Canadian 9th Brigade advance.

Richard's "Willie" bites the dust! ( I know!) The first of many Tanks to be destroyed.

A view of the German trenches.

It's Sylvia's turn to go to Tank heaven. Note the broken down tanks in the rear.

The French advance in rather a neat line??

Two armoured cars explode.

The Canadian's are over the trench.....leg it!!!!!

Here's some pics from some of the other games at the show, after looking at BigLee's pics, I've realised somehow I missed quite a few of the games. So apologies if your not here.

Milton Hundred's Rapid Fire WWII Game

Not sure who's game this was, but what an excellent looking game. I want this!!!
"The Storming of the Alamo 6th March 1836"

Congrats to Maidstone Wargames Society who won the Best display game for their WWII 6mm game 
Operation Deadstick - The Coup de Main at Pegasus Bridge

Had a couple of great chats with Clint from Anything but a one who made all the terrain for one of his clubs the Rainham Wargames Club. The game was a Modern Force on Force skirmish. He's a very talented chap is Clint, not only did he make this terrain, but as Fran mentioned, he worked on the film Aliens 2 making a gun rack, but his real claim to fame are the models he made for everyone's friend, Thomas the Tank Engine!!!!

Clint said everyone loved his goats!

My personal favourite game at Broadside was Southend Wargames Club's The Battle of Benfleet, a massive Saga game. I had a long chat with Richard from their club, I mentioned I'd never heard of the Battle of Benfleet, he explained that there's not a lot of info about it. Infact it only gets a 2 line mention in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and most of the info for the game came from Bernard Cornwell's novels, and why not!!!!!

Another great game, this time from Shepway Wargames Club entitled  Romani ite Domum, (Romans go Home) North West Germany II IIIX AD

A Franco-Prussian game from Real-time Wargames, unfortunately the time I got around to taking pics of this game, they had started to put the figures away, so I didn't get many pics or any info.

The Battle of Oudenaarde 1708 from Tonbridge Wargames, a great looking game, using Beneath the Lily Banners. The two guys hosting the show for Tonbridge both live in St Albans and drove down for the show, now that's commitment!!
I loved their Gunpowder clouds, which actually lit up and flashed, I tried to get a pic of the flashing, but that was as hard as getting Fran to buy a packet of crisps!

Lastly a few pics of some Zulu War era guns and Zulu weapons.

A Peaky looking white helmet, otherwise known as Fran!