"A General Plague of Madness"

...Or so Lord Derby, Lancashire's highest-ranked nobleman said of the 'English' Civil War(s).  I realise that the title could equally be used of wargamers.  Perhaps one could even suggest 'madness' as a suitable collective noun for wargamers: 'a madness of wargamers'.  Sounds quite good I think - and is certainly descriptive!  Anyway, enough of this frivolity - what is this entry about?

I found, and bought, a book yesterday: "A General Plague of Madness, The Civil Wars in Lancashire, 1640–1660" by Stephen Bull.  I have a passing interest in the Civil War; well, I guess just about anyone living in England with an interest in history probably does, to a greater or lesser extent; the evidence is all around us.  For instance, the hill in Lancaster on the slopes of which I live, is known as 'Cannon Hill' - presumably the Royalists sited guns on it when they were besieging the place - the next hill (to the NE) is Castle Hill - and yes, before you ask, that's where the castle is!  So, maybe I might 'do' the ECW as my next project, once I've finished with Third Century Romans.  I have a set of Warlord Games' plastic infantry sprues, which Paul Sawyer kindly gave me just before release.  Maybe I ought to assemble and paint them, in order to decide if the idea really 'grabs me' and before splurging on a shed-load of figures!

The book, by the way, has been confiscated (hopefully to be regurgitated as a birthday or Christmas present), so, other than a flick through in the bookshop, I don't really know what's in it.  Seemed pretty detailed and fairly comprehensive at first glance.  Not, seemingly, a lot of 'wargaming detail' (i.e. details of regiments, colours, uniforms, etc), but plenty of other stuff.  Hopefully, if I decide to get into this, I can find the information out from some other source.  So long as that doesn't involve mail ordering from Caliver Books: Dave Ryan has charged me twice for a book I bought from him recently.  He did something similar a couple of years ago.  I was prepared to put one incident down to an error, but doing it a second time is enough to put me off buying from him permanently.  Hopefully, the card company will refund my money shortly.

The 'Fire in the East' project is coming along nicely.  Still got to decide on terrain - the only desert terrain item i have is one watchtower - see the blog entry here.  Apart from that, I have, I think, only a few units per side left to do. The Sassanids need two jumbos, a unit of spearmen, some archers and a unit of Savaran super-heavy cavalry.  The Romans need a unit of cavalry, a unit of legionaries, a large unit of auxilia and, possibly, a unit of camels.  No more than about eight weeks work, even at a fairly pedestrian one unit a week.  

On terrain, my lad found a shop selling some 'sandy' coloured felt the other day.  That'd be easy for the basic terrain - I could glue 'blobs' of 'burnt grass' turf on in patches to make the figure bases blend in better, and it should still roll up okay.  Other than that, I need the odd hill, some rough ground, palm trees and maybe an oasis, and we're done.

Copyright © Dr. P.C. Hendry, 2010