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Sunday, December 06, 2020

TML's new home

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Anyone who follows this blog may recognise yours truly has moved around a lot; it's not as a result of my 'Career' or anything, just, well; life.  Hopefully life settles down now, and part of the relative silence of late has been due to the efforts to move and set up the new TML Towers:

Home...

The new venue is a permanent dedicated space in my new shared home.  Shared with my partner that is.  Lots of shelving allows for storage of all my miniatures, games, books and art materials; alongside the work computer, a smart TV, PS4, record player.....

Yeah, pretty nice. 

But also, maybe most crucially, a permanent 6'x5' table surface; extendable to 8'x5' when required.

We can have some proper games, when the world allows again.

Fingers crossed this tower is built to last; I'm already rather fond of it!


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Thursday, December 03, 2020

Painting from lately....

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Hello, occasional readers.  This is your, now, very occasional writer.  This is just some progress photo's for those who haven't switched to stalking my Instagram (see below).

Reaper Bones Stone Circle terrain piece.
One of a set of Ogres, painted using undershading techniques

A Warhammer Underworlds Medusai

This lovely model got me featured on the Warhammer Community Twitch stream; which certainly felt like a feather in the old cap!


Age of Sigmar Nighthaunts

A Banshee
Chainrasp Horde

Lord Executioner

The Nighthaunts are on eBay presently, but I may yet pull them and add a another model or two.  If they sell, they sell.

However, the main effort of the past two months has been the moving of TML towers to another new fastness.  This time we hope it's one that will stick, as we have a permanent dedicated studio/games room.  But more on that in another post...

Laters.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2020

Remembrance

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The Messages (~1918)


"I cannot quite remember.... There were five

Dropt dead beside me in the trench – and three

Whispered their dying messages to me...."

Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,

Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,

He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly:


"I cannot quite remember.... There were five

Dropt dead beside me in the trench – and three

Whispered their dying messages to me....


"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive....

Waiting a word in silence patiently....

But what they said, or who their friends may be,


"I cannot quite remember.... There were five

Dropt dead beside me in the trench – and three

Whispered their dying messages to me...."


Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

1878-1962

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Tuesday, September 29, 2020

New Media Ventures

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Everybody, lets jump on the Hype train

[Hype train has left the station]

Yes, whilst I felt like an early adopter of Blogger, after close on 15 years on here, its not the platform it once was, in as far as it isn't the prime channel it used to be.  TML isn't going away just yet, but I've decided to expand my channels, specifically for miniatures painting at least.  

 

www.instagram.com/dean_aki_uk will now be a new venue to see some of what I'm doing, with some projects that don't really fit on TML at all being exclusives to there, it looks like I can experiment with videos and other things on there too, but for narratives and those rare thought pieces it's less than suitable.  Be assured all gaming material will still show up on here in due course.

Please feel free to check it out, if you are already cooler than me and all over Insta!

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Thursday, September 10, 2020

Researching Mali....

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Is not that easy.  Of course, if you want material on Western military history; or to a slightly lesser extent Arabic derived Muslim armies?  No problem.  Step south of the Sahara, and the material relating to before the colonial period is rather limited.

First off there are few good books on the subject, partly as there are few if any written histories or contemporary accounts out there.  It is possible there is more in French, but at this early stage in my project I've not been able to track that level of material down.  I've grabbed a couple of the limited English language material available; W.E Conton's West Africa in History Vol.1 and John Parker's African History: a Very Short Introduction; but beyond those there seems to be a split between material for the very casual reader and heavy academic volumes little concerned with military history.

At this point you have to give a nod to Wikipedia, who thanks to the enthusiasm of amateurs, and the inclusion of chunks of knowledge from other languages, can off a decent primer on many subjects.  It's generally reasonable material, as long as you check your sources!

No surprise, there are no ranges already available for the period and region, my intent now being to produce an army for the Manden Kurufaba, or Mali Empire, I have no obvious shortcuts to a fair amount of conversion work.  I did discover an article on the Mali Empire in Wargames Illustrated, issue 375, but the writer had done scarcely more research than I've managed in the past two weeks, and the mandatory pictures of figures were simply of Muslim warriors with vague 'I guess these would do with a different paint' statements attached.  Harrumph.

However, There are lots of models for 'Darkest Africa'  And some of these will work as a basis for some of the forces; also undeniably some Arab styled models will work as a good starting point, for cavalry especially.  However few if any of the plastic figures out there appear to meet my needs...

Image research was my next stage, to see what inspired, get some history together, and to work out how I could use the models out there. I'd direct the interested parties to my Pinterest board of West African Images:

 

I'm a big fan of Pinterest; it often beats Google for a general image search, as plenty of people are likely to already have curated what you are after, making is quicker to get a decent response.  And once you set up your own account, you can easily pin images straight from another site or search to you Pinterest board, from where you can always refer back to it.

I've managed to gather 40 or so images, and accompanying notes to give me some ideas, and from these, I've moved to my next stage in any project that 'breaks new ground'  Doing some of my own illustrations to get a feel for what I want to end up with:

Native Bowmen make up a large portion of the army

Heavy cavalry were some 10% of the army

Mali is an excellent basis for my purposes.  One of the Wealthiest Empires in History, having vast gold reserves; formally Muslim but with distinct African appearance and traits, and with many 'Pagan' troops fielded from the southern tribes and nations.  The Empire lasted some four centuries, conquering vast swathes of Sub-Saharan Africa, and having a semi-professional field army of around 100,000 men.  Plenty to get to grips with.  But as stated the source material for design is limited; hence the need for the working sketches above.  The Bowmen is easy, and as a basis for these I've opted to start with Foundry Africans:

DA084

These will need some added detail, but being pretty clean of anything that doesn't work, they are and Ideal start.

The cavalry and Spearmen are a mix of Tuareg and African influences, and so will be more of a challenge  No one range seems to be a perfect match - not least as the region only tends to get covered once the French Foreign Legion is involved - but I think the real fun will come from making something unique, so I'm okay with that.

Then there is the opportunity to add real oddball units like Knights in Full Padded Armour and masked forest tribesmen with poisoned javelins.  Even potentially a leader on a Litter. 

Aside from pushing some representation into my collection, and learning a lot of new, fascinating history, these are the sort of elements that get me excited for a project like this.

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