Inspiration?

… can come when least expected.

I was about to get a train back from Manchester Piccadilly on Saturday evening when I chanced upon the latest edition of Wargames Illustrated in the station's WH Smiths. 
I rarely get the magazines these days, but with a train journey of a couple of hours ahead, I decided it would make for good company on the way home.

And I'm so glad I did.
I was pleasantly surprised by the content of this issue, for us "mainstream"/ traditional wargamers.
Amongst other things, the main source of inspiration came from 2 sections...

1. Bill Gaskin's photo shoot - showcasing his Napoleonic and SYW collections. Now, there were some glaring oddities about some of the captions (to label a SYW unit as "5th Prussian Musketeers" when they are clearly carrying Hessian flags is a bit of a goof, for example). However, Bill's collection is superb, and no mistake. I couldn't help thinking that the photos were a bit "busy" and there could have been more thought about the choreography and composition of the shots, but I can imagine that seeing the Gaskin collection in Bill's legendary wargames room would cause massive overwhelm, and a desire to just click away at the shutter as fast and as often as possible! Lots of eye-candy to enjoy.

2. The second item that really caught my attention was the piece by David Bickley about his Italian Wars project. I've "done" Italian Wars (way back in the past), and it's a colourful and vibrant period. Yet, it wasn't so much the period that inspired me, but the way David and his pal Phil (a different one) have gone about their collection. It's a good read. Well done to them both.

Finally... there have been a couple of 'offline' enquiries about the Napoleonics for sale (see previous post, below), but nothing is yet concrete... so if you fancy them, drop me a comment.
Cheers.
Phil