Rare Practical Application of Useless Knowledge Learned in Gaming

My wife often says it's too bad I can't put all of my (mostly) useless knowledge and interest in history and gaming to use making money. Well, the other day there arose a rare opportunity!

I work at a marketing/ad agency, and a colleague wrote an ad for a wine bar and asked me to review it. The wine bar was touting a new cocktail it offers, a French 75. The ad indicated that according to legend it was invented by a WWI pilot, and was named after the French 75mm artillery howitzer gun.

Umm. Le soixante quinze is a field gun, no? Oddly, I was the only one in the agency who caught that! :) I proudly told my wife and, of course, her response was "who knows that stuff?" Gamers, that's who.

I had design make that change, but opted not to get into crediting Raoul Lufbury for the drink's creation. I think the whole Lafayette Escadrille thing would really confuse these people.

So on that note, to illustrate the difference, I dug out some of my 15mm WWI French artillery pieces. The 75s are Peter Pig, and I think the howitzers were Houston Guns, crewed by Peter Pig.

Liberators! Update, and Resisting Temptation

It isn’t much of an update, but I did finally go through the Liberators! page here and at least listed out my inventory. I’ve been perusing the books again, and wishing I had the time to dedicate to this project. They really are gorgeous figures.

At the same time, I find my eye wandering toward the southern theater, while the figures I have are for the north. Do I really need to buy more stuff!? No, but dang it’s cool.

This on the heels of being sorely tempted by Warlord Games’ new WWII Belgian anti-tank gun, and, oh, have you seen the stuff from Capitan Miniatures? 18 mm boarding actions between Americans and Barbary pirates? With minis in the same beautiful style as these Liberators! Must resist temptation and paint up some of what I have…

New Toys - Liberators!

It's always exciting to start in on a new period, and to get that first package with all those fresh, unpainted figures. I'd had my eye on these South American Wars of Independence figures from Grenadier Productions for a while, and a 25% off sale over the Labor Day weekend ended up being just the push I needed.

I bought the first book in John Fletcher's series a while ago and was quite impressed, but hadn't taken it any farther until now. I must say I am doubly impressed. Great resource books that tell you almost anything you would want to know about uniforms, organization and individual battle scenarios. And the figures as sculpted by Mike Broadbent are outstanding. I haven't painted 15s in a while, but the detail on these is so nice I am really looking forward to it.

Given my usual pace, it will be a while before I have anything close to a game, even if I can find an opponent!

The bulk of what you see here is based on the British Legion setting. I have some British, some Venezuelan regulars, some llanero militia and some Royalists, as well as some artillery. I need to do some more research as to where to start, and undoubtedly I will ultimately need some more to fill some holes. But for now, aren't they nice to look at?

(Photos are the overall collection, Royalist General Pezuela and staff and some British legionnaires.)