One Friday night in winter, in the early-mid 1970s, I found some Meccano magazines in the Remuera Public Library in Auckland, New Zealand, containing the articles that were compiled into Charles Grant’s Battle! Practical Wargaming. I remember at the time searching through the magazines excitedly looking for all of the articles. Nothing much came of those, as I was a little young for them, but a few years later I picked up a typewritten set of WWII rules from the Stoker Model Shop and I played them quite a bit with my Airfix and Matchbox soldiers and vehicles. My father built an extension onto our trainboard which we built some hills, a river crossing, and a wood on. The Germans would tend to get pushed back off the extension and make a last stand in the town on the trainboard.
After that came boardgames, notably Panzer Leader, and role playing – D&D, Paranoia, Gamma World, and The Fantasy Trip.
I went to the UK in 1991 and made model aircraft as a hobby, but towards the end of my stay I bought a number of armies for a game called De Bellis Antiquitatis. For some reason although I had painted a number of the armies my first game with them against another person was when I was showing the game to my friend Mark. Mark was a successful convert though, as you can see from his blog. I now get out to wargames clubs every couple of weeks to play DBA, or whatever else looks interesting. Now that we have our big new house I should have the space I need to set my airbrush up again and build more models. I’ve also been squirrelling away the tanks and figures to start on some WWII gaming, in amongst the plethora-and-a-half of side projects we wargamers seem to find ourselves involved in!
While I work my way through my unpainted wargames figures, play wargames, and make models, I’ll be blogging about various painting tools and techniques I’m trying out, the results of any amateur research I do, and hopefully get a few more battle reports up here.
Lydia helping me with some painting
Small Sagas 
Hi!
You left a comment a few months ago about my DBA figures on my blog. I’m sorry I didn’t catch it until today, while I was updating it.
I posted a reply on my blog, but in essence: I don’t know what company the figures are from because I bought them already painted. The background I used is from a model train shop.
Thank you for checking out my blog. You have a nice one yourself!
Once again, I’m sorry for not getting back with you sooner.
Ted
Thanks Ted,
I shall have to keep an eye out for a decent background as they seem to make a big difference.
Great blog!
I like your stuff on Norman shield designs, I was about to do the same thing when good old Google directed me to your article.
Cheers,
Newton.
Thanks. Lots of caveats though, eg, in the pictures of the fleet one of the ships has alternating light and dark shields, which is obviously there to make the picture of the ship look nicer. But I hope the people who made the tapestry wouldn’t have represented any impossible shields – I’m not sure whether nuns were gear-heads though!