Blog List Update

I deleted the old blog roll gadget but still couldn't get new instances to display properly. After several reinstalls and some trial and error, I discovered the new problem hinged specifically on how each individual blog was added.

The blog roll is OK now, but I'll cover the issue in some detail for the benefit of any fellow bloggers who still have the same problem. One of the most frustrating aspects of this saga was the lack of information or help.

For each blog I found that I needed to enter the URL and the title freshly, either by typing or pasting. You will then get the following dialogue box, and I choose the first option: 

 

If, however, you allow Blogger to autocomplete the entry, the blog will be added but it will display like this and appear at the bottom:

 

Presumably there's no feed. I haven't exhaustively experimented with every permutation. This works for me so I'm sticking with it. Done properly, the blog in question appears like this and in the correct order:

Blog rolls are important. They promote other blogs with shared interests, they provide the most convenient basis for interactivity, and they draw readers. I know of one person at least for whom my blog roll is his starting point for wargame surfing.

Dum vivimus vivamus!

Current reading focus: Late Antiquity

A happy new year to one and all! I can only hope that 2022 will see an end to the epidemic of fear. We need to live, not just be alive, and Covid is just another risk we have to manage rationally. 

As regards wargaming, my new year’s resolution was to make no resolutions. I certainly won't be formulating any grandiose plans and I hesitate even to mention current interests in case of raising expectations...but that's the point of this blog so I will.

My immediate activity is to continue reorganising my 15mm Ancient and Medieval armies in anticipation of playing To the Strongest! and in learning the rules. As ever, my wargaming interests run parallel to historical reading (when I get the time) and I am currently focusing on Late Antiquity.

The combination of 80mm frontages and a 4" grid (which I have chosen for TtS!) works so well for me that it has also set me thinking about rebasing my 25mm Renaissance armies on 80mm wide bases.

I intend to continue work on the 28mm Russian Civil War armies for The Men Who Would Be Kings as these will be easier to complete than many of my other, more colour-complex, 28mm armies.

Other than that I should move myself to finish the 6mm armies for Tilly's Very Bad Day as they are not far from completion.

28mm figures on 80mm bases from the collection of
Norm (Battlefields & Warriors blog). Great dynamism
in posing the figures and a true inspiration. More
pictures here.

I should not of course be starting  anything new but there are some significant historical gaps in my collection and it is hard to resist nice figures. One such gap is the Hundred Years War and the figures which draw me are the 28mm ranges from Claymore Castings and Antediluvian Miniatures. This would be for the Anglo-Scottish Wars (e.g. Otterburn 1388) rather than the Continental theatre.

In recent years I settled on using relatively small numbers of individually based 28mm figures for Rampant skirmish games and smaller scales for multibased mass armies. This project would be multibased 28mm figures, thus breaking what has been a very sensible policy. So, to keep things under control, I am again looking at 80mm wide units for use on a compact table. Quite a few gamers have gone down this path and I am particularly inspired by the Wars of the Roses figures (pictured above) belonging to Norm of the very content-rich Battlefields & Warriors blog. This is just the look I am after.

I have to admit that if using TtS! (which seems likely even though I haven't yet played it), the armies and the game would be little different from using my 15mm Feudal English and Scots. I guess it's all in the aesthetics.