The Last Books for 2015...

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! I spent Christmas morning sleeping (I was standing guard up till the wee hours and was quite tired), then went to see the extended roadshow viewing of The Hateful Eight, which I enjoyed. Then this morning I hit the town, and ended up at the local book store. I really need to stop visiting second-hand book stores, because I always seem to leave with fewer dollars in my pocket than when I arrived!

My two newest acquisitions:

Napoleonic Wars: Wellington's Army by Ian Fletcher, part of the Brassey's History of Uniforms series. This book goes over, in detail, the uniforms, weapons and equipment of Britain's army during the Napoleonic Wars, to include infantry, cavalry and artillery. It includes color plates, contemporary paintings and illustrations of soldiers, as well as photographs of extant uniform and equipment items. This is probably the best single book on the British Army that I currently own.

 

 

Uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars, 1796-1814 by Jack Cassin-Scott and Philip Haythornthwaite, two authors whose other books I currently have. This is a relatively small, quite handy little uniform guide, compete with uniform plates, of all of the major (and a few of the minor) armies of the Napoleonic Wars. A solid addition to my reference library.

 

 

Coming soon: my 2015 In Review post.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

-Chuck

Christmas, Lost Mojo, New Figures and Books

Merry Christmas everyone!

It's been a little while since my last post, and for that I apologize. I was waiting for some figures to arrive in the mail before making another post, but since the military's mail system is slow as molasses they haven't yet arrived and I wished to post at least once more before year's end.

Unfortunately, I seem to have lost a bit of my painting mojo as of late, ever since I arrived at my first command and have yet to move off the ship. Navy ships are not known for the vat amount of space they afford their crews, so I have not the space for painting. But this hasn't stopped me from picking up a few figures, here and there.

I discovered a new local game shop here in San Diego, and there I was pleased find some Perry Napoleonic figures. So I picked up a box of 28mm plastic British Hussars, which I more than likely will paint up as one of the KGL Hussar regiments.

They are very nice figures, and I look forward to putting them together as soon as I move into a bigger place.

Additionally, I found an Essex miniatures British Rocket Battery caisson on sale online, and picked it up to complement the Minifigs Rocket Battery figures I picked up on eBay a couple of years ago. This is what's currently bogged down in the military mail system.

Finally, I have picked up a couple more interesting books. While out shopping for my mother's Christmas present today, I found a nice little second-hand book shop where I picked up the following two books cheap:

 

The Anatomy of Nelson's Ships  by C. Nepean Longridge is an illustrated guide to all parts of Napoleonic Wars-era sailing ships. from deck plans, obscure bits of rigging, guns, ship's boats, you name it. I rather wish I had had this book handy whilst I was reading Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey-Maturin books in high school.

1815: The Armies at Waterloo by Ugo Pericoli covers the history and tactics of the Battle of Waterloo in its first couple of sections, but the last two thirds of the book is devoted to beautifully illustrated, full-color uniform plates of the different belligerents. While I don't game Waterloo, I am a sucker for books with uniform plates, and so I had to add this to my collection.

Well, that's about it. I get to go home for the first two months of January, which will be nice. I hope to get some painting done, hopefully. I would also like to do a "Year in Review" post, to cover what all I accomplished over 2015. Until then, I hope you all have a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Thanks for looking,

-Chuck