I’m here in Washington state which has had fairly tight regulations for gatherings.  We had an early shelter-in-place order, which led to a reasonably early shut down of our flagship game convention, Enfilade.  I have not gotten together to play a game since the end of February, and despite obvious yearnings and hopeful prayers, nobody I know is getting together to play a miniatures game.

Yes I’ve done some online gaming because . . . well, I just must.  I’ve painted until I can’t see straight-literally- I’m 64 and my very long hair hangs in my not so young eyes..  I haven’t played any solo board games only because my wife has become a full-time mask maker and taken over the entire dining room table.  That’s a lie, she’s become a part-time mask maker but she still has taken over the entire dining room table.

I’ve mostly avoided buying a pile of unpainted lead to add to my current pile of unpainted lead.  However I have invested mightily in my bunch of tiny ships.  No paint required.

But this is all a dodge.  This is Enfilade weekend. I’ve taken on more responsibility for next year’s convention and leadership in NHMGS.  We have an entire year to begin thinking about what that convention may look like.  The virus could still be with us even if a vaccine is available and could change everything. But we’ll deal with that later.

In theory, the state could begin opening up in a couple of weeks. Maybe you are in a state, a province or country that has already begun opening. Under phase 2, we could begin gaming in groups of five or less.  Game stores could open up.  Will you give attention to social distancing?  Run small games?  What about masks?

I ask because I don’t have the answers.  I’m anxious to get together with friends, none of whom are at high risk for infection.  But we are all exposed to those our friends are exposed to.  I have 87 year-old parents I like to visit.  I don’t want to put them at risk. Many of us have spouses who don’t need the germ.  Many of us are ourselves at risk due to age or contributing health factors.

I wish I had some new super cool thing to share with your or report. But rather than sharing some new toy or set of rules, this is real.  What will you do as the state enters Phase 2.  Game without worry or limits? Game with safety precautions? Temperature check at the door? Masks?  Wait for Phase 3?  What are your worries?  What can we agree on?

I’ve posted about my tiny ships and acquisitions.  But there are great local ties to some of those ships and I’ve really wanted follow up on them.  So today I said to hell with the lockdown I gotta get outta here and took a drive.

Just to be clear, I didn’t do anything unsafe.  I wore a mask when needed and kept social distancing, but I did get away for about six hours that took me across half of western Washington. My travels took me from Shoreline, just north of Seattle, to Woodland Park on Seattle’s Phinney Ridge, to Wright Park just above downtown Tacoma, out to Veteran’s Memorial Park near the Narrows Bridge.  Finally, there was the unexpected drive to the Veteran’s Museum in Chehalis.

I left South Hill and made it to the freeway entrance at 8:23. I didn’t know what to expect about traffic.  The daily traffic near my home seemed to simply grow after eight weeks of quarantine and I was prepared for a long slog up the “freeway of wasted lives,” but it wasn’t.  Traffic never slowed below 60mph, and at times it was easy to go 5-10 miles per hour faster. I followed 167 north to the the Kent-Des Moines and ducked up to I -5 heading north through the city. I exited I-5 and dodged up 15th NE to 150th and the entrance to Hamlin Park

I wanted to go to Hamlin Park in Shoreline.  Oddly, I was quite familiar with Hamlin.  It was near where I grew up in the 1960’s.  It was the park where Little League games were played.  We’d  wander through the trails when we held Cub Scout events there.   I remember an Easter egg hunt there.  I experienced my first make-out session in Hamlin Park.

But I don’t remember the two big steel guns in the lower park. There is a curious Facebook entry for the Shoreline historical museum that tries to fix the timeline for the guns’ arrival, but I just don’t think they have it right.  The guns weren’t in the park when I left for California in 1970.

The guns belong to the USS Boston, commissioned in 1887.  It was a ground-breaking ship, a member of the ABCD inductees into the new American steel navy. Commissioned as a “protected cruiser” along with the cruisers Atlanta, and Chicago, and the dispatch boat Dolphin.  The Boston  was armed with two eight inch 35 caliber guns, one each fore and aft.  They were in open mounts protected by a barbette.  The hull was pierced for six 6-inch guns, three per side.  The ship weighed in at over 3,000 tons powered by a not terrifically efficient coal fired engine that could make 14 knots.  But just to be sure she was given a full sail rig.

Some views of the USS Boston.  The line drawings in the upper left show the offset barbette arrangement of the two eight inch guns.  The sail rig is perfectly shown in the large photo right. A calm, composed photo of one of the America’s first steel warships At some time in 1899, while on a Far Eastern station, the sail rig was removed.

If the Boston seems somewhat primitive, it is not coincidental that the first steel ships were built in the early days of the American steel industry.  While Mr. Carnegie was becoming adept at quickly producing the steel rails that served the burgeoning railroad industry, it was new to the idea of bending the steel plates that went into building steel ships, or hardening the armor that would form their protection.  These early ships formed the aptly named “Squadron of Evolution.”

Despite it’s limitations, the Boston was an important part of the early days of the New Navy.  It supported the overthrow of the legitimate Queen of Hawaii, Liliuokalani in 1892.  The Boston, perhaps most notably, was with Commodore Dewey at Manila Bay in 1898.  It represented the Navy at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Astoria in 1805.  It offered aid and comfort to victims of the earthquake and fire in San Francisco in 1906. From 1911 to 1916 Boston was a training ship for the Oregon Naval Militia, and her days as a warship came to an end. Boston sailed to Bremerton and was converted to a supply ship, her guns removed. She would remain on duty as the USS Despatch, a receiving ship, a radio school until her demise in the scrapper’s yard in 1946.  A long life for a remarkable vessel.

The 30,000 pounds of steel that graces an area under the trees by Hamlin Park’s chief parking area are easy to see, and a short walk.  They are nicely displayed, with a plaque on each gun that tells of its achievements at Manila Bay.  Not unrealistic given that each gun would have been a separate battery.  But given the notably poor percentage of American shots that hit the mark at the stationary Spanish fleet in the Philippines, or the even more still Spanish fortifications, this may have been a bit of hyperbole.

After about thirty minutes at Hamlin Park, it was time to move to another memorable park of my youth, Woodland Park.  Today, the park is kind of a spendy tourist destination that not only costs zoo admission, but parking fees as well.  Not so when I was young..  My mother and my aunt would often throw all their kids in the back of a station wagon and off we’d go to the zoo.  For free.  No costs.  And when I was really young, my uncle worked at the zoo and sometimes he’d take us places where we could see cockatiels and coatamundis up close. He had a special relationship with the penguins.

I have a real fondness for Woodland Park and it forms some of my earliest memories.  My grandparents lived on Phinney Ridge, and I have a dim memory of my grandfather taking me there, and being chased by a goose-because in those days they just wandered loose. Sigh.

But one of my favorite places at the park was near the rose garden just outside the zoo.  There was a memorial to the Spanish American War veterans and some naval guns behind shields that seemed perfect for my excursion.  So I made my way south on Aurora, took 85th over to Greenwood which turns into Phinney and voila.  Grabbed a parking place near the green field where I should see the guns.  I was greeted by the grand Spanish American War Statue, but the guns . . . were gone. So I took a photo of the memorial and headed to my car in a huff.  Where could they have gone?

Dragged out my trusty iPad and typed out “removal of naval guns from Woodland Park,” and passed over the 2018 Seattle Times article I knew I couldn’t access. But this blog entry from Vintage West Woodland, explains how the Concord’s six-inch guns ended up in the Woodland Park War Garden and how they ended up there in the first place as “Battery Dewey. ”

I was so bummed.  Most of my visits to the zoo included climbing all over the guns in the War Garden at some point, though I had no idea they were from the Concord.

Concord was gunboat PG-3.  Another ship with an interesting history.   It was commissioned in 1891, at about 1,700 tons and was considered a “third-rate cruiser.” It was a member of the “Yorktown” class,” comprising three ships, Yorktown, Concord, and Bennington. Gunboats were used throughout the U.S. Navy and 13 official, numbered gunboats were in the fleet through 1906.  Concord was one of the larger PG’s and was armed with six inch guns instead of four inchers. It served with Dewey at Manila Bay, and then was stationed up and down the west coast, ending up in Seattle as a floating barracks for the Washington Naval militia.  The two guns were donated to the Woodland Park War Garden by the Spanish American War Veterans in 1915.  Concord was scrapped in 1929.

Oddly, the most recent ship ordered for my collection of Not-So-Great-White-Fleet ships was the Concord.

So where did the guns go?  Why, to one of Gene Anderson’s favorite places, the Chehalis Veterans Memorial Museum.  Could I squeeze a trip into my day?  Well maybe.

But my next stop was back in Tacoma, not far from my friend Tim’s house.  We’ve taken a look at it many times.  My suggestion was that it was a Spanish cannon, obvious from the markings, taken from the Spanish defenses of Manila Bay.  It was known many guns from those forts were quite obsolete, and with it’s casting date of 1784, that fit the bill.  What I didn’t quite get was the very light weight garrison carriage it was mounted on, which couldn’t possibly have been a stock item.  As with all things, the internet is your friend and Tacoma Metro Parks fills us in here.  Moro Castle, Santiago Bay. Wrong battle, but right idea. The markings on the barrel are really beautiful.

Wright Park is located  on the hill overlooking downtown Tacoma.  The cannon is on the northern edge of the park, east of the Seymour Botannical Observatory.

My next trip took me out to the Veterans Memorial Park on the Tacoma’s west side near the Narrows Bridge.  I wanted to get a picture of the bell from the USS Tacoma, a Denver-class light cruiser commissioned in 1904.  It was variously labeled a cruiser, a gunboat, and a scout cruiser.  Mostly the Tacoma served throughout Latin America, literally doling out “gunboat diplomacy” as needed.  Unfortunately the little cruiser, only 3,200 tons, was wrecked on a reef off Vera Cruz, Mexico while trying to show that government how to elect good men.  With the wreck sold off to a Mexican company, I guess it isn’t surprising we have a bell but no guns.

With the clock showing about 12:15 and a projected arrival home set at 2:30, I had a choice.  I could call it a day early, or I could extend my trip to Chehalis and the Concord guns.  As long as traffic was decent, I knew I could make the trip easily.  In fact, except for a couple of loons on the road, the drive was pretty perfect. I made it to Chehalis at about 1:00.  Now where are those guns?

I hoped they were in one of the fields near the museum as they had been at Woodland Park, but no such luck. Instead they were behind a chain link fence across the road from the Veteran’s Memorial Museum.  When the museum is open, access through the gate is also open.  Alas, closed for Covid 19. Pictures were a bit of a challenge, but I tried to maneuver the lens of my 35mm camera up to the gaps between the links.  I got a few decent shots, a lot more less decent.  It’s nice to know the Concord’s guns are being kept company by the dual purpose 5″/38 from the USS Colorado, and a F 105 Thunderchief.  It’s good to have friends.

Longbowmen painted in Cheshire livery for Dragon Rampant.  36 figures will be accompanied by 36 mounted archers in livery.  Hope to finish them in June.

Today is May 16th, the official median date of the May Painting Challenge. I hope all who are participating are finding some success and getting some stuff done regardless of whether they meet the 100 mini goal or not.  I’ve seen some fun stuff folks are working on and that’s great.

This morning I find myself on track to meet the hundred figure goal.  Yesterday I set myself up for the rest of the month, preparing figures to paint.

Here’s what I’ve finished so far.

Six 1/300 scale Scotia SBD’s in New Zealand markings.  Part of a future Rabaul project

24 28mm longbowmen in Cheshire livery for the HYW.  They are part of a Lion Rampant project that will see a fully mounted and dismounted retinue.

Eight 28mm Old Glory woodland Indians that go with my America Rampant project (reorganizing for Rebels and Patriots.)

Six 1/300 scale MSD A-6 Intruders  for a someday Vietnam project (but really I just wanted to paint some planes.)

18 28mm Tagalog bolomen for the Philippine-American War.

The total at this point is 62 figures.

All my Philippine forces waiting to be primed and painted. Some assembly required.

I’ve prepared figures for the rest of May, but realistically it will probably take me into June.  They are my remaining Philippine figures for the Philippine American project.  Those are four units of Republican infantry, two Lantaka home-made cannon and crew, and nine command figures for command bases. That’s 67 figures, but it’s a nice wrap up to half the figures I need to complete this project.

These are the Miniaturas 1898 Tagalog Lantaka figures.  The Men Who Would Be King require four gunners per crew so I had to substitute some infantry for crewmen. Not far along yet, but making progress.

In addition, I’m getting seven WWII transports, mostly C-47’s but also a C-46 and a C-54 ready to paint.  Why?  Because I have them silly.  I have them, I may as well paint them.  They’re pretty basic, with USAAF Olive Drab over gray, which seems to be the standard scheme.

A variety of planes and makers here.  I suspect a C-47, C-46, and C-54 by Scotia.  A second C-47 by a different maker. Three more C-47’s waiting to get started.

Hope your May is going well and your paint and paint brushes are holding up under the strain.

During the 1967/8 school year I was 12 years old and in the 7th grade.  I was a Boy Scout, albeit not a very good one.  I didn’t mind camping and cooking meals over a fire, but I wasn’t a very good hiker.  But we did lots of other stuff in addition to getting cold and wet in the great outdoors.  We also took overnight field trips.

One of our outings was to Oak Harbor Naval Air Station on Whidbey Island. It was a great trip.  We got to sleep in a barracks and eat in the mess hall.  We went to the rec center and shot pool.  Fun stuff.  But the highlight of the trip, at least for this twelve-year-old was seeing the planes.  The two I remember best were the big P-2 Neptunes that were being phased out to the P-3 Orions.  The others were the big black-nosed A-6 Intruders that may as well have been space ships to my eyes.

We got to crawl around in the big Neptunes that did coastal patrols, watching for Soviet submarines and chasing off Russian “fishing boats” that strayed a little too far inside territorial limits.  But the A-6’s belonged to some carrier air group rotated home from Yankee Station.

Anyway, Intruders have always had a place in my heart.  A few years ago I-94/Raiden miniatures had A-6’s on their production list, but they broke my heart again by not following through, sigh.  I’m slowly working my way through my sizable collection of Vietnam-era planes, starting with the Navy (why, because they’re easier to paint silly,) The only Intruder out there is offered by MSD Miniatures.  MSD is not my favorite, mostly because they aren’t consistent.  Some of their planes are great, some not so much. See previous comments about their Swordfish.

The big day came and the planes arrived.  I, of course, stashed them away for future consideration.  That day is now here, and I’ve been working on them.

First things first.  The A-6 was a big plane, and that’s clear from the miniature.  Not huge, but certainly good sized from the nose to behind the wings with a sizable tail assembly.  The miniature is pretty clean.  Separate tail assembly and a separate in-flight-refueling probe, one that is easily lost if dropped into the carpet.  At least I still have five of the six, sigh. Intruder is extensively scribed, maybe more than any other plane I’ve painted. I don’t know if that’s good or not, but it is quite busy. The huge radome doesn’t seem quite the right shape, but it is really big.

Primed and ready to go.  We’ll get serious after the longbowmen in the background are finished.

Light Gull Grey and white control surfaces are done.

So, tail-check.  Refueling probe-check.  That’s it. No fuel tanks or underwing ordinance. Some molded underwing blisters to mount such things would have been helpful, but no.  Step one was to dip into my dwindling supply of such goodies and mount them.  Can’t have a bomber with no bombs. I added the really big rack o’ bombs from C and C, which can’t be had anymore. I also gave my boys two wing mounted drop tanks to fit them out properly

Intruders on their backs waiting for gloss varnish.  You can clearly see the fuel tanks and bomb racks in place.

I began by brush priming them with Vallejo white primer, but switched to spray.  Better coverage. Then it was on to paint.  I used the Vallejo Air Colors Light Gull Gray for the upper surfaces and fuselage.  I did two coats because it’s thin.  For the bottom, I started with Vallejo Air Colors Insignia White.  Again, pretty thin, so I used Vallejo Model Colors white for a second coat.

The white is supposed to be a gloss color.  I used Vallejo Gloss Varnish on the undersides and the control surfaces.  Mistake!!!  I dunno, what the deal was, but I just couldn’t wash it out of my brush.  It glopped on to the brush, and despite repeated cleanings, I just couldn’t get my brush free of gunk.  I thinned it with water and that seemed to help, but I may have second thoughts about using it again. Finally, I painted the canopy Ceramcoat Ivory, which is my go-to color for planes.

Then, it’s on to detailing.  The first detailing bit I do for any plane is lining those scribed lines.  Usually it’s black or charcoal, but with a plane this light, I used Vallejo Neutral Grey, which is a great color, not too light, not too dark.  With all the scribing on this plane, however, it was long and tedious.  The white, lower fuselage scribing, I used an even lighter color, Vallejo Light Sea Grey. More tedium, but done at last.

After the lining was done, there were a few more bits to paint.  I started with the little bits of red for the air intake warnings, the tail stripe and drop tank fins.  I wrapped up with the NK group markings, the tiny radome on the tail, and the plane numbering between the nose and radome.  I used an Army Painter Insane Detail brush for this. I used to give fairly short shrift to this little guy, but it is long, holds a nice point as well as enough paint to be useful.  Highly recommended.

Finished up with pretty simple markings.  The national insignia are from I-94’s excellent range of decals. The Navy markings are from Flight Deck.  It’s a really great set of markings because it’s just a block of words without extra space.  I even learned something new about maneuvering them into place—with a toothpick!!! Duh.  What a great idea.  A little matte varnish over the decals and bang, we’re good.

The Intruders join my bunch o’ Cold War Navy and USMC planes.  I’ve got almost 50 painted planes I’ve completed over the past 25 or so years.  Done stuff for the Cuban Missile Crisis (twice) and now I’m moving on a bit later for Vietnam-I’d like to do Rolling Thunder and the later Linebacker missions for both the Navy and USAF.

This is my pile o’ planes.  And look, room for more.

All kinds of stuff here, with the Intruders far left.  The next two rows are mostly George Kettler’s lovely Raiden F-8 Crusaders though there are a couple of Skytrex minis in there too. Behind them are the extremely wonderful Raiden A-4B’s.  Then six F-3H Demons.  Not a great mini, for a not very good plane, but they were on aircraft carriers in the Caribbean in 1962.  In the corner is a Shapeways EA-3 Skywarrior which will serve in an  electronic warfare role.

Box two is mostly empty, but there are nine very serviceable USMC A-4Fs, probably by Heroics and Ros. On the right are some Skytrex F-86’s that I painted as FJ-2 Furys back in 1995.  In the back are a couple of F-4B Phantoms I again painted 25 years ago for a first iteration of U.S. airstrike on Cuba during the Missile Crisis.

Each year I have a budget for Enfilade.  It is protected, cherished and almost worshipfully invested in the convention each year.  There is money for registration. I share my hotel expenses with Doug Hamm.  There are meals, each one profoundly enjoyed with my friends.  The past couple of years I’ve gone with David Sullivan to Rainy Day Records and spent a few bucks in downtown Olympia. I share the wealth with vendors and in the B and B.  The next Enfilade is one of those almost spiritual experiences I look forward to the minute Enfilade ends each year.

So no Enfilade for 2020.  It’s not an occasion to pass unobserved.  So I did the only thing I could.  I spent the money. I combined my Enfilade budget with some extra cash and made a really big order to 1 /1250ships.com.

Before I go any further I wanna say a couple of things. First, yes I know these ships are expensive.  I hope I clarified my reason for investing in expensive ships a couple posts ago.  A) I don’t have to paint them or try to create and glue on fiddly bits, thereby allowing me to give time to the rest of my unpainted mountain of lead. B) I have a nostalgic attraction to these ships.  In my world, nostalgia trumps everything.  it’s why I have a huge record collection, it’s why I still love the Seattle Pilots, it’s why I’m stuck reimagining the Seattle of my youth.

Secondly, yes there are more space-friendly scales to do this.  !/1250 scale stretches the limits of the tabletop.  However, because I’m really interested in that cruiser and gunboats collection of ships, the ranges aren’t so long. The period means a really fast ship is about 23 knots. Torpedoes really aren’t very effective beyond 400 yards.  Few optical range finders exist and those aren’t very good.

Well, enough of that.  I’ve really tried to acquire ships I can use for possible scenarios between the U.S. and other countries. One scenarios guide I’ve found really useful is Monroe’s Legacy from the Admiralty Trilogy guys.  It has a bunch of real and hypothetical scenarios, some of them really interesting.  So I’ve focused most of my acquisitions on American ships 1884-1905 or so.  I’ve also picked up some German ships for a Caribbean crisis, conflict over Samoa, and a potential seizure of Manila.  One of the early scenarios in Monroe is a an American attack on the Chilean navy after American sailors were killed in Valparaiso during the civil war in 1891-2. So my purchases are pretty focused in their extravagance.  I’ve also purchased lots of used miniatures which can lower the price by as much as 50%.

Well, after all that explanation, my order from 1/1250ships.com arrived today.  If you have even the most remote interest, they give very good service.  Chris Daley is very responsive to my ridiculous questions and is very knowledgeable of the manufacturers and the state of the market.  Dependent on imports, things are a little wild right now.

On to the ships

The Chileans

One of the Monroe’s Legacy scenarios calls for the Almirante Cochrane (1875.)  It’s really an ironclad central battery frigate with obsolete guns, iron armor and should be in the scrapyard by 1891, when the scenario takes place.  The Hai miniature is quite nice, if small for the cost. Nothing fancy schmancy about this guy.

The protected cruiser Esmeralda (1883) also features in the Chilean scenario.  Much more modern than Cochrane. It was one of the Elswick cruisers, built for the foreign market by the British shipyard. This model is by HL miniatures.  It is incredibly nice.  Again not very large.  A second Esmeralda entered Chilean service in 1896. HL also makes that ship.  It is lovely and long, but the mini crosses the sixty dollar no-go line for me, so I’ll probably just let it go.

The scenario also calls for a pair of Chilean torpedo boats.  Not surprisingly nobody makes Chilean torpedo boats.  I bought a pair of used Hai Swedish torpedo boats from the 1880’s.  Shhh, don’t tell.  They cost six bucks each. They’re kinda small.

For the scenario, I really need at least one of the light cruisers then in Chilean service-either Presidente Pinto or Presidente Errazruiz.  Again, not surprisingly the 2,000 ton French built craft aren’t made by anyone, probably in any scale.  I may take my chance with one of the Hai French avisos.  That would be the end of the Chileans.

Germans

I have a vision for my German collection.  Despite the fact that almost every manufacturer is in Germany or Austria, none make the early German protected cruisers and scout cruisers (avisos) from the late 1880’s to put them on an even par of cruiser development with the early American ships. Too bad.  But my plan is to mostly acquire pre 1904 armored cruisers and light cruisers.

Prinz Heinrich (1902) is the first German armored cruiser of the 20th century.  Just under 9,000 tons with  two 9.4 inch guns.  A little underarmed but representative of its time.  I picked up a used Navis miniature for half price.

Prinz Adalbert (1903) by Navis was slightly larger, with more main guns, if a bit smaller at 8.2 inches.  Probably the latest class of armored cruisers I will go, maybe Roon, we’ll see.  Another used bargain.

This is a Bremen class light cruiser.  Completed in 1904, it is the latest of the light cruisers I’ll buy.  I’m more interested in the Hela and Gazelle’s but this is a used model and the price was right. This is also a Navis miniature.

American Ships

Hey, I admit it, I’m a homer, and I love ships of the American navy.  Most of the early American ships aren’t in large classes  so I’m interested in picking up as many as possible.  Focused mainly on cruisers and the Hai gunboat models.

This is the USS Boston (1884) by HL miniatures.  It’s really a lovely miniature. The Boston was one of the first ships in the steel navy and was everywhere.  It was with Dewey at Manila Bay.  It was in Tangier harbor demanding Perdicaras Alive or Raisuli dead in 1904.  It served as a training ship for the Oregon Naval militia 1911-16.  For the Great War it was converted to a freighter in Seattle shipyards.  It finished its career as the Despatch, a radio school during WWII.  The Boston’s eight inch guns can be seen in Hamlin Park in Shoreline, not far from where I grew up.

The Charleston (1888) was the fourth U.S. protected cruiser. The Hai model is larger than my other Hai miniatures.  Charleston was about 3,700 tons and is bigger than Atlanta and Boston.  This ships is especially significant because it was built on the west coast, a huge deal before the Panama Canal. She became flagship of the Pacific Squadron and single-handedly capture Guam in 1898.  There is a story here, but I don’t have time to share it. Unfortunately Charleston was wrecked on a reef near Camiguin Island in the Philippines in 1899.

The New York was the first true American armored cruiser (ACR-2) 1893. The USS Maine was actually ACR-1, but was completed after New York, and then there’s that explosion in Havana harbor problem.  With six eight inch guns and 19 knots it was a worthy representative of its class and time.  New York was the flagship of William Sampson’s Santiago blockading fleet, but missed most of the battle as Sampson left prior to the Cuban breakout to meet with General Rufus Shafter. It returned for the closing moments of the action. This is a very fine used miniature by Saratoga Shipyards.

Jane’s Fighting Ships describes the Tacoma as slow and having practically no fighting value. Tacoma was one of six ships of the Denver class, completed in 1904.  These were known as “peace cruisers,” really just over-sized gunboats intended to bring “gunboat diplomacy” wherever the US needed to extend its power. This is a Navis miniature, and though it is called Denver class in the catalogue I’ll happily name it for my adopted home town.

The Wheeling is one of Hai’s extensive range of American gunboats.  Wheeling is one of the smaller ones at just under a thousand tons. Another one of those west coast builds, Wheeling had a sister Marietta, that accompanied Boston and Brooklyn to Tangier harbor in 1904.

Yeah, I don’t see another big haul like this happening again, but I was delighted to unpack all of it and add it to my collection.

Seattle is a lonely place.  Gasworks Park would normally be full of people.  And dogs.

Friday Governor Inslee announced that Shelter and Stay Safe order would stay in place through the end of May.  It looks like things me open up slightly before then, but bless him, it’s likely the Guv will keep me from gaming well into June.

Well, bummer.  But that doesn’t mean the fun has to wait.  You, my friends should be using this time to paint, paint, paint.  In fact I know that some of you are.  It’s even likely you’ve looked around for a new project to start on.  Maybe you did a massive order before the Perry Brothers closed shop.  They’re open now, but that’s another story.

Half of my closet of sadness

In your haste to think new, look at what you’ve done.  Those thousands of figures sitting in your closet, or your garage, or holding up the foundation of your house are still sitting there.  Waiting. Lonesome.  Wondering when lead rot will set in.  Maybe some are the newest Warlord WWII ships (a pox and curses on them.) Or maybe they’re some nice Mike’s Models wishing Paul Hannah would scoop them up, or some strip Minifigs-wait I think Paul likes those too. In any case this is your chance to give these minis some respect and paint those babies up!!

The other half.  See the tears??!!

So here is my challenge to you.  Can you, in the month of May paint 100 figures?  No, that’s not in the month of May can you go buy a hundred new figures and add them to your unpainted mountain of “someday I’ll paint you too.” Paint something you have that needs painting.

But look.  I’m getting stuff done.  I mean it this time.

There really aren’t any rules.  They could be figures of any scale-54mm, 40mm, 28mm, 25mm, 15mm, 6mm, mmmmm 2mm are just sort of little bumps aren’t they?  Tanks, planes, ships, terrain bits.  A figure is figure, is a tank or plane or tree, whatever.  Have fun.  Paint lots. Do your best, just get stuff done. Base it, don’t base it. Just paint it. Show it, if you can, on the NHMGS Facebook page and let us know what you’ve accomplished. “Lookee Ma what I done!!”

For myself, I have a plan.  It is subject to change without notice.  But here’s what I’m thinking so far.

8 Figures 28mm Woodland Indians–finished

12 Figures 28mm Longbowmen–almost finished

6 1/300  A-6 Intruders (more about this next post)–assembled and primed

12 figures 28mm Longbowmen

18 figures 28mm Philippine bolomen

10 figures 28mm Philippine artillery and crew

13 figures 28mm Reviresco baseball players–1977 Houston Astros colors

12 figures 28mm Woodland Indians

12 figures Philippine riflemen.

That’s 103 figures, though the composition may change.

Hope you can come up with a plan that works for you.

Cousin Kevin is one of my favorite songs from the Who’s rock opera Tommy.  Kevin terrorizes the deaf, dumb and blind Tommy when the grownups have all gone away.

Just an old photo of my Hundred Years War figures.

When I was 14, a ninth grader and living in Shoreline, my Dad came home from work with news.  It was November of 1969.  I was looking forward to the second season of the Seattle Pilots, I’d taken the bus to Seattle to buy The Beatles’ Abbey Road.  I’d attended my first and only IPMS meeting. I played Avalon Hill Games and painted (badly) 54mm figures. But my Dad’s news overruled all of that. We were moving to the Bay Area after the school year was over.  He’d gotten a promotion, and he would be working in South  San Francisco.

My entire life to that point was lived near Seattle. My friends lived here.  My family, except for my mother’s parents lived in Seattle or Edmonds.  I spent my time between Shoreline, Seattle and Vashon Island.  That was really the extent of my universe.

This was a big opportunity for my Dad.  My parents married young, and though they didn’t have kids right away, they had few skills.  My father worked hard, often juggling two jobs to keep my mother at home with the my sister and I. Dad became a milkman, and though he was good at his job, it just barely paid the bills. He decided that if he was going to get ahead, he’d have to go back to school.  He learned how to run the room-filling, tube burning, had to be air-conditioned computers that have less computing power than your smartphone, and gradually he rose through the ranks to manage the San Francisco branch of an industrial laundry. This story doesn’t have a happy ending, but we won’t go into that.

We finished out the school year, endured the agony of the Kent State shooting as the neighboring high school campus exploded in protest.  Six weeks later we were on the road to the Bay Area.  Our new home was not quite ready for us.  While we spent a week in a motel waiting to move in, the ROTC building on the Stanford campus was bombed.  It was an interesting time to move to Northern California.

Stanford ROTC building burning after the 1970 bombing.

It was tough to be the new kid.  I literally knew nobody, and hung around the house for a few weeks, but by the middle of July I had enough. I went up to the nearby middle school to see if anything was happening.  Sure enough, there were guys playing baseball and I asked if I could play.  This became my semi-regular activity, when one of the players, Russell Fung, told me about a group of his friends who played games with tanks.  Games with tanks!!!  Count me in!!!

Within a couple of weeks I found myself in a Belmont basement with Russell and surrounded by guys who would be my friends throughout high school and beyond.  Wes Kuwano had piles of RoCo Minitanks.  We were blasting away Germans against Russians, rolling a dice using home-grown rules that considered penetration, armor and ballistic armor slope.  Not bad for a bunch of 15-year old kids in 1970.  It was fun, it was addictive.  I was a historical miniature wargamer.

A few more armor games ensued, and I was introduced to 1/1250th naval games.  We somehow were able to play on an elementary school gymnasium floor.  That would be impossible today without paying for the custodian’s time. We estimated ranges to tiny ships some 40 plus feet away, something I was incredibly bad at. The rules were based on Fletcher Pratt.

For my remaining three years of high school Wes and Russell, Bill Cranor and Andrei Austin, Jose Iglesias and Don Arnett would form my game posse.  We mostly stuck to armor and ships, with some SPI board games and the odd Risk afternoon thrown in.  I was distracted with sports and a girlfriend. They were distracted with doing really well in school.  They went off to Berkeley and Stanford.  I went off to College of San Mateo.

For the next couple of years, our meetings were few and far between. By 1974 I was gaming regularly at The Outpost, a store I’d learned of in San Carlos and I was making new friends in the hobby.  Oddly, some of the guys who stepped into the Outpost are fellows I still know.

This story could go on and on.  But there are a few important points I want to make.  The first is this: although I’ve done lots of things over the intervening fifty years-finished college, married a wonderful woman, raised two fantastic sons, had as good a career as a teacher could wish.  I’ve participated in elections, played sports and explored other interests.  At the end of the day, I’m a historical miniature gamer.  I love it, I truly do.

The other thing I’d like to add is what is really important about the hobby to me.  There are many things I love about it.  I like the history-I’ve always got my nose in some book that supports my interest.  There is room to game any subject.  The usual subjects like WWII, the Napoleonic Wars, wars of the Roman Empire.  But I’ve done, almost everything: hydroplane and air racing, baseball, buffalo hunting, the Burr Conspiracy, along with those more traditional topics. Painting figures.  I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t paint figures.  Yes they are a means to creating armies and playing games, but god help me if I couldn’t paint my life would be a lot emptier.

This collection of ne’er do wells played in our Skulking Way of War game. I’m the goob with the Mariners cap. Enfilade 2019.  Sigh

But the most important part of the hobby is the people.  I could make a huge list of people I have gamed with or that I still game with.  Some live close by, others are farther away.  The hardest part about shelter-in-place or closing Enfilade for the year is not seeing them. Games and lunch with my buddies, Saturday night beer with my Canadian friends at Enfilade, I miss all of it.

And I confess, I wish I could talk to the old Belmont crew.  I know they don’t game any more, but it is such an important part of who I am, that I wish I could thank them for a life well spent on something worth doing, something I love.

I dunno how many unfinished projects I have laying around.  Okay, let’s just say a dozen (actually that’s a fib, I count 23 incomplete projects, some more incomplete than others.)  If you need to see an actual list, let me know and I’ll send you one. But it feels like the end of the year and time to start thinking about something different.

But I have decided I will NOT take on one more thing to paint.  Maybe I’ll feel differently some time down the road, when I’ve made progress in more areas.  Honestly, just sticking with the projects I have will keep me busy for the foreseeable future.

I have a longing for a naval project.  I mentioned this a couple of posts ago.  I really don’t want to do the same thing others are doing. No slam there, I just like to go my own way, because that’s who I am. If others are already doing that, I’ll love it.  If they want to join in, welcome to the party.  But for me I really want to do 1/1250th scale pre-dreadnaughts.

Let me just focus a little bit more and say I want to do American pre-dreadnaughts, as well as some potential enemies. I have a real fondness for the American ships 1883-1906.  There are some really good ships, and some godawful designs. The good news is, with some very rare exceptions, I won’t be painting anything.

We’ll use David Manley’s Fire When Ready Rules.  They are available as a PDF from Wargames Vault.  You can also buy the supplement Fighting Fleets that will help with creating ship cards required by the game.

I picked up a copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships as a game resource.  This is the Arco reprint from from 1970.  In really good condition, it was fifteen bucks plus four dollars shipping. In 1970 it sold for $19.95.  Good deal.

First, I’m thinking we’ll use David Manley’s Fire When Ready Rules.  They seem well known, I’m fond of his rules in general and it’s easy to create ship cards for the game. To do that I’ve also purchased a copy of Janes Fighting Ships 1905/6, which can be obtained pretty inexpensively, and I’ll probably add the earlier Janes Fighting Ships 1898, also relatively cheap (less than twenty bucks used.)

The armored cruiser Vineta, and the gunboats Luchs and Iltis both participated in the festivities threatening the Monroe Doctrine over Venezuela’s failure to pay back loans from German banks 1902-3. Hah, you thought the problems were just Chavez and Maduro. Vineta by Navis.  Luchs and Iltis by Mercator. 

I’ve tried to create some limits to the project. I’d really like to focus on potential conflicts between the United States and other colonial powers during this time period.  So, the US had diplomatic conflicts with Germany over Samoa, Venzuela and potentially Morocco. So adding German ships to the mix seems smart.  I’ve also thought about Japanese ships, as potential conflict over China or the Philippines seems like a possibility.

Another limit is the type of ships I’m most interested in.  While I’m not adverse to having some battleships (hell, I already have some battleships), I’m thinking the best scenarios might be cruisers and gunboats.  Why?  Well, battleships are expensive to dispatch, and early destroyers are very small barely seaworthy in an ocean battle. Cruisers range from 2,000-12,000 tons, and gunboats are surprisingly large at 1,000-2,000 tons. Armor is generally not great, and guns are generally not big. So, cruisers in all their variety and there are lots, and gunboats are my main interest.

Sources for ships in this scale are limited.  Once upon a time there was a perfectly adequate range of ships in 1/1100th scale.  Richard Houston’s Lyzard’s Grin made ships for the Spanish American War, for the Battle of the Yalu, and other ships.  Unfortunately, those models have passed into the ether.  They also required painting., but I probably would have sucked it up as needed. War Time Journal likewise makes some good-looking 3D printed ships, but they would need some work-masts and perhaps other bits I’d have to fabricate.  And they’d also require primer, paint and additional time that will distract me from other projects.  I’m not saying never, but I am saying not likely.

American ships from upper left.  Gunboat Helena by Hai miniatures.  Protected cruiser Brooklyn from Navis.  The Atlanta by Hai was the first ship in the American steel navy.  The Pubelo, in later 1909 colors by Navis was a large and nasty armored cruiser.

So I’ve turned to the collectables market.  They come painted, usually in a color I want.  I prefer my Americans in the white and buff of the peacetime navy.  The miniatures are lovely, and come mostly from German manufacturers.  The biggest of the lot is Navis, but the Austrian company Hai has a ton of the earliest American cruisers that are fairly worthless in a battle, but are representative of a time.

The bad news is that they are generally pretty expensive.  An American cruiser is usually somewhere from 40-50 bucks a whack. The paint job adds to the cost of the vessel. There are some things that can keep the price down a bit.  It’s sometimes possible to get ships used, and I’ve done that to acquire a few German ships. German companies are homers, they make lots of German ships, so there are more used miniatures.

Yeah, that’s a lot and an extravagance.  However, I have a regular Kevin fun budget for each month. That pays for game bits, lunches with friends, movies and other stuff.  Guess what I’m not spending money on these days?  Like, all those things. I’ve been able to wheedle the funds for a fair number of ships, many of them used for a lower price.

i guess it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m interested in this project.  1/1250 ship combat was one of my earliest miniature wargaming interests.  Of course, in those days, a top of the line battleship cost fifteen bucks.  We also played on a gym floor.  We won’t be doing that, my knees can’t take it. Nostalgia only takes me so far. In any case, this is a project just begun.  Forces will grow pretty slowly, but I’m looking forward to moving ahead and hosting a game, when such things are possible again.

Week 26 of the Covid 19 Stay at Home order.  I really need a hair cut and I’ve forgotten how to shave. I figure if I look like Sasquatch I can scare away the kids in the neighborhood. It’s alright.  Rusty, Amos and Lola, the three Australian shepherds who have moved into the house still love me. Where did they come from anyway?

There’s this woman who takes up a great deal of space working at the computer all day long.  Says she’s my wife.  I keep sayin’ prove it. She just smiles knowingly and pours me a glass of wine. When I go to turn on the Mariners game, she reminds there are no Mariners games and turns on General Hospital.  That’s when I get up and go to my den.

Things are more familiar there.  Needs a good vacuuming, lots of stuff on the painting table, but I make myself leave a 6″ X 6″ painting space. While painting, I’ve watched every Ken Burns documentary-again. The Civil War, Baseball, The West, Jazz, Prohibition, The War, Country Music, Vietnam.  I think I know them all by heart. It’s Philippine-American and Hundred Years War projects until I run out of paint or Amazon stops delivering.

* * *

Okay, it’s not quite that bad, but I’m really jonesing for a game.  I’m playing a bit of online baseball, a little online Fort Sumter with Daveshoe, some reading and some walking.  A lot of eating. Hope each and every one of you is well, safe, and somehow getting by.

Four of the eleven Philippine units I have painted for this project.  I have enough figures for four more rifle armed Republicans, one more bolo-armed unit, and a couple of home made guns.  Would like to be done with these by the end of June.

I’m feeling kind of liberated.  My Enfilade projects are more or less finished, so I’m just painting for fun.  I am still working away on my Philippine project, but I ended up short a few figures to complete a unit, so figs from Badger Games to fill them out, so that’s on hold until they arrive.

For the last few years I haven’t played a lot of Lion Rampant.  I only have my zillions of Hundred Years War figures, singly mounted, and together they take a long time to move.  I’ve decided to change things up a little bit.  I’ve decided to create a mounted retinue with three units of mounted Cheshire archers in their familiar green and white livery.  I’ve had forty Old Glory mounted archers for eons, so I’m creating mounted and dismounted archers, 36 of each, and then I’ll do something about melee troops.  I have plenty of those unpainted too, so it’s a way to paint some some of my paintless oldies but goodies.

Dismounted Cheshire archers, painted, based and ready to go (left). The mounted versions of themselves, still under construction (right).

I’m not going to sweat what I paint for a while, just focus on what grabs me.  So far so good.  With a week left, April has been a banner month.

9 1/300 scale B-24 bombers for Ploesti

36 bolo armed 28mm Philippine infantry

12 28mm foot longbowmen (yes I actually re-painted some figures)

12  28mm mounted longbowmen-still under construction but done by the end of the week for sure.

9   28mm Woodland Indians-not actually finished, but also under construction.  These have been lurking around my painting desk the past few years and were begging to be painted.

If I’m able to get it all finished it will be my most productive ever painting month I think

The painted Philippine figures actually wraps up all my planned Enfilade projects.  Still a couple of terrain pieces to build, but someday I’ll be able to play a game again.

Enfilade 2020 suffered a merciful ending this morning (Thursday.) Yesterday while driving from one son to another son, I received a response to a call I’d made 24 hours prior.  It was the catering manager from the Red Lion, home base of Enfilade. When I asked where we were contractually, with the convention approaching and there being little likelihood of a quick resolution of the coronavirus crisis.  Surprisingly, he suggested the convention could either be rescheduled or cancelled without penalty. After a quickie string of e-mails by the NHMGS board, a decision was taken to cancel the convention.

Though consideration was given to a September postponement, there simply were too many risks from a health standpoint as well as financially.  It is, in my view and from the perspective of attendees, the right decision for this year.  The NHMGS leadership rose to the occasion and acted quickly to bring certainty to a situation that was causing myself and others ulcers. It really was a decisive moment and one that I think will lead to a better NHMGS governing body.

* * *

The word was passed along a few weeks ago that Dick Larsen passed away.  Dick, together with some friends was the founding father of the Northwest Historical Miniature Gaming Society nearly 40 years ago. I feel like NHMGS grew out of the ashes of various Puget Sound area game groups, though I don’t know that for a fact.  There was a Western Washington Wargamers (WWW) that included guys a few years older than me, including Larsen, Lyn Bodin, Bill Stewart, Wayne Jacobs and many others.

Dick and I were not close.  There are many others who knew him better than I.  I would say our views on the state of the hobby in the Pacific Northwest, came to diverge over the last 20 years or so. But I think there are many things we share, including a belief in the importance of NHMGS.

Dick was not a waffler.  He believed in the value of historical miniature gaming, and he sought to promote it whenever possible. Dick believed the hobby deserved respect for what it was, a collection of enthusiasts who enjoyed pushing lead according to agreed- upon rules that were rooted in an interest in history.  He didn’t believe the hobby had a lot in common with role-playing, or board games or even non-historical miniatures, and that crossing to the dark side was a black mark. “Troll-rollers” was only one of the endearments he would label them with. He also saw the challenge in making historical miniatures successfully function in a multi-genre setting like Dragonflight.

In the early 80’s Dick began promoting all-historical-miniatures-gatherings in places like the Seattle city park at Camp Long.  These brought dozens of gamers from the Puget Sound area, the Vancouver B.C, area and points south to Portland. It is at these events, when I was still in my twenties, where I met guys who would be my friends for all of my adult life.

In promoting these events, Dick persuaded gamers like me that we weren’t limited to playing WRG 6th edition ancients in our basements or at game stores.  There was a bigger world of gaming out there, we could celebrate our ridiculously wonderful hobby with those that shared our interest, who we could learn from, whether it was a new set of rules or a new painting technique.  It opened an entirely new world to me and to others, and I will never forget it.

I always had the sense it was a real struggle to promote these gatherings. Meeting spaces were few and far between.  They could be costly at a time when many of us were raising families and could afford to pay little. We weren’t officially non-profit and couldn’t use that status to our advantage.  We moved from Camp Long, to the Bremerton to the Veterans home at Retsil and any number of other locations for an annual meeting.

Though Dick passed leadership on to others like Gary Williams he was still a spiritual leader. He was still capable of leading trends, at least locally, in the hobby.  I remember a year when he cobbled together the first round robin Tactica tournament at our Retsil meeting. It was great.

In 1991 Mike Pierce promoted the idea of a paid convention, modeled on the success of the HMGS conventions.  Dick was on board along four others, including myself. With the success of Enfilade, including some financial support for the first gig from HMGS, Dick was drawn to the politics of HMGS as a national body.  Unfortunately, drama was what was ultimately produced, the national board collapsed, and it felt like Dick suffered from a certain amount disillusionment.

Each year Enfilade seemed to grow, and after some real pain when the convention was forced to move from Fife in 2000, it found its footing in Olympia, our current home. But as Enfilade became more successful and grew to hundreds of attendees, Dick seemed to draw away from the convention.  I believe he felt the attention paid to the convention drew too much energy, resources and interest from what was happening in the shops, basements and local game groups.  It’s why fifteen or so years ago Dick began a winter game gathering that came to be known as Drumbeat.  It has become an incredibly successful single-day affair that is a central event in the NHMGS calendar. Not only that, but I believe it became a model for other events that have proliferated over the past few years, including Fix Bayonets, the events at the Fort Lewis Museum and the Veterans Museum in Centralia.

NHMGS may not be quite the organization Dick imagined 40 years ago when we met at Camp Long and we put our five dollar annual membership in a cigar box. But it is the largest historical miniature gaming organization on the west coast, and perhaps west of the Mississippi river. We are not pure, and we honor those who dabble in miniatures that aren’t recorded in the official histories. But I do truly honor Dick for what he assembled.  We had far more in common than we had differences.  NHMGS has become an incredibly important part of my life and I mean to carry on his legacy. We would be in a far different place without him.

* * *

With Enfilade 2020 officially in the can, what will I do with myself. Well, it’s not like I don’t have anything to do.  My suspicion is I have plenty to do.  I intend to take a larger leadership role in the convention in 2021, so I probably will host fewer events than I planned.  But, guess what?  My games for 2021 are going to be ready to go. All I’ll need to do is do some playtesting.

The Ploesti planes are all finished, and honestly I’m pretty pleased.  They each have about five layers of Dullcote on them because they required so much handling during painting.  So please, no smoking around them, it’s likely to cause an explosion.  If I have a disappointment it’s that I just didn’t get enough of the mold mark removed.  Should have spent more time scraping and sanding.

i’ve posted these a few other places.  They aren’t perfect, but I feel like they’re pretty good. Glad they’re done. B-24’s on the way to Ploesti.  No, I’m not painting any casualty markers. Thanks for that idea, though.

Still a few things to finish with the Philippine-American scenario.  I’ve started the last couple Philippine units needed.  There are a couple of buildings that need to be assembled, a little terrain work to do and a few playtests at least.  But the pressure is off, so that work will proceed at a more leisurely pace. I’m looking forward to wrapping up and painting the rest of the figures I have for that project.

That said there is no end to things to work on.  I’ll share them as stuff gets done.

I’m dragging an old nugget off the back burner and into the fire.  I’ve had an interest the last couple of years in seeing the cool ships that Dave Schueler and George Kettler have in a variety of scales.  However, I’m really not interested in duplicating what they already have or buying one more thing to paint.  So I did the only thing I could do and dragged in my 1/1200 ships from the garage, safe inside their super-cool mirrored box, probably a humidor for cigars.

The Delphin USS Lexington 1921 is a classic ship model.  It’s about eight inches long.  The Navis USS Kentucky (1900) is also very nice, but about half the size. 

The ships I have are all pre-dreadnaughts except for a very cool Delphin model of the USSS Lexington as a battlecruiser ca. 1921. The rest are Navis models, mostly of the Great White Fleet in their distinctive buff and white colors. I probably bought the ships (I have seven battleships, one cruiser and four destroyers) fifteen years ago before Navis had redone the quality of these ships from really nice to incredibly amazing.  The price went up by at least 50% as the models were re-released.  So, they are pretty spendy.

I’ve decided to build a couple of navies using just pre-dreadnaughts, so 1895-1906, focusing on Americans and Germans.  I’ve already ordered a few more ships including my first Germans.  It will be a slow process, allowing me to order a ship or two per month, and eventually there will be enough to play with.  My friend Tim and Dave Schueler said they might get their feet wet too.

One scenario I’m interested in doing is something loosely based on the Atlantic squadron’s race to Tangiers in 1904 from The Wind and The Lion, and an unfortunate encounter with some German ships in the Med.  Not ready yet but something to shoot for.  One simply can’t say “Mrs. Perdicaris alive, or Raisuli dead!” often enough.