Boxing Day

'tis the Feast of Stephen! I hope everyone had a nice Christmas/Hanukah/Solstice, however you celebrate the season. I'm the cook in the family so I was busy preparing the Christmas dinner yesterday morning. My wife and I decided to buy our gifts for each other from local artists. I was given this nice little pottery flask, just right for a nip of something potable.

Gaming may resume this weekend, with the last raid of the season for the newly-minted Saxon Warlord Ebba and his men.

In the meantime I'm contemplating starting a model railway/road blog. It's interesting to note how many wargamers also have a model railway layout or are planning one. I'm in the track planning stage, having decided to go with HO scale. At the moment I'm thinking in terms of a simple oval with a spur line running off to serve an industry of some kind. For Steve-the-Wargamer in particular, here's a photo of some of my stuff so far.

The locomotive is of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe line. The general store was a charity shop find. Apparently it was part of a collector series from the movie Sarah, Plain and Tall, but it works perfectly for HO scale. Alongside it is a scratch-built meeting hut. The track needs cleaning. Months in cold storage during our house move didn't do it much good.

Merry Christmas!

A Merry Christmas to one and all!

Normandy '44: D-Day and the Battle for France, by James Holland.

I've just finished this book, which I borrowed from our local library when I saw it on the shelf. Holland states from the get-go that it's not a comprehensive review of the campaign, since it would take far too large a number of volumes to cover. Even so, he's done a pretty good job of covering the campaign in considerable detail. Some of the detail is graphic, since the Normandy campaign saw bitter fighting, so caution is advised if letting younger readers have access to the book.

It includes accounts of several episodes I didn't know about, or in scant detail. A number of the actions would translate very well for WW2 rules such as Chain of Command or I Ain't Been Shot, Mum. There are a couple of small errors in the text, which is down to an American not having quite the grasp of British culture. Two of the photographs are mislabeled. One of a British 5.5 inch howitzer is described as a 155mm gun, and King Tigers are incorrectly identified as Panthers. Working in the writing/publishing industry as I do, it's quite possible the fault for these latter mislabeling isn't down to the author but rather the publisher's research staff.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/normandy-44/james-holland/9781787631274

Gaming-wise, I'm in something of a lull. I find my interest in wargaming has waned lately, although I still like to read books and visit the various hobby blogs and websites. Nowadays I feel more involved in setting up my model railroad layout than getting figures on the table. I might play the next Dux Britanniarum game sometime over Xmas. We'll see.