I'm a Wiener (Again!)

I'm a happy-dancing silly-sausage!

Jonathan Freitag over at the Palouse Wargaming Journal recently ran a competition to celebrate the 2nd anniversary of his blog. The prize up for grabs was a copy of Henry Hyde's Wargaming Compendium with the runners-up receiving a Kindle version of the compendium or a book on Naseby.

The Prize!

 The device he'd settled on was a Haiku competetion on two themes:

1. What wargaming means to you; or
2. Why you should have the Compendium

I was a late comer to the competition and dashed off a haiku on Option 2. I wasn't really expecting to win anything, but enjoyed the challenge and was impressed by everyone else's efforts. I was very surprised, then, to find that Jonathan had rated my entry highly enough to win the runner's up prize!

Here's my Prize-Winning Haiku:

A compendium

Is all I need to master

An elusive art.

Thanks again, Jonathan, and Happy 2nd Blog Anniversary. Here's to many more!

I'm a Wiener!...er, Winner

A winning wiener!

A losing Wiener

Thanks to Millsy of the excellent Canister and Grape blog, I'm the winner of this fine book! He recently celebrated his 100,000th visitor mark with a generous giveaway competition and I was lucky enough to score a prize.

It's a biography of Mithradates IV of Pontus, one of the Rome's most implacable enemies in the late Republican era. Who knows? It might spawn another wargaming project!

The Great Give-Away Prize Draw!

And now the moment you've all been waiting for....The Prize Draw!

I used an on-line randomiser (a fancier way than drawing names out of a hat, I think you'll agree, and one I can display screen-shots of) from this website http://mathayward.com/randomiser/ . I'm not sure how random it is, or what algorithms it uses, but it looks good (most important!) and seemed to come up with random results of a test list before I went live with the draw

The list of contestants and their choices.

First of all, the winner of Charge! is.......

Congrats Derek!

The next draw is for Mask of Command. It goes to.......

¡Felicidades, Anibal!

Soldiers at War is going to.......

Congrats Robert!

And last but not least, Against All Odds goes to......

Well done Tamsin!

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to all who took part. Maybe better luck in the 200,000 draw!

Could all the winners please send me an email via the 'contact me' widget, which you'll find between my profile and followers list? After I've got your addresses, I'll send your prizes winging their way to you ASAP.

Milestone Celebrations and Giving Back!

Hip, Hip, Huzzah! 

This blog is celebrating...

...passing the 100,000 mark...

...450 posts...

...and 180 followers!

Monsieur le Rosbif & Johnny Frog has had a rush of milestones to celebrate all at once! Thanks again to all my followers and all those who regularly take time to leave comments. It is much appreciated.

To celebrate and share the love I am offering my followers the chance to win 4 books from my personal library. All are military histories (what else?) and all have relevance to the theme of the blog (Napoleonic military history), with 2 devoted purely to that theme.

Click the images to read a review of each.

If you'd like to go into the draw there a couple of simple rules:

1. You have to be a follower of this blog
2. You have to leave a comment on this post stating which book you're interested in (you can nominate all if you want to!)
3. The draw will happen on Saturday 6th of July 12pm AEST (+10 GMT)
4. The judge's ruling is final!

Best of luck and thank you all, again, for your continued support!

(Feel free to spread the word, too!)

Russian Military Silliness and a Blog Pimping

The Russian military has always been adept at marching because of the sheer vastness of the country. Getting from A to B in most periods of Russian history meant that the average Russian army, whether Imperial or Soviet, needed to march long distances. Think of the long march on Paris 1812-1814, or the march on Berlin, 1942-1945. 

In crossing these vast distances the Russian armies have had their marching songs which helped them to maintain a steady march rate that ate up the miles as they crossed Europe in between savage battles. One of their favourite tunes was a song whose origin is lost in the mists of time. Some say it was derived from the ravings of a demented monk, others from the alcohol fuelled delirium of a particularly hated officer. Whatever its origins, it became the basis of a popular children's cartoon once a couple of American animators heard its nonsensical lyrics.

WTF? Is this final proof of the corrupting influence of US cultural imperialism? And why are there so many different units marching to the same silliness? Is it some sort of Russian military craze? Have they spent too long in the snowy cold of Siberia and collectively gone doolally?

Anyway, I shall be recommending my opponents in our upcoming Borodino game to send their troops forward with this song on their lips. We'll have to see if there's any footage of French troops marching to the Simpsons theme, or Italians marching to Kimba the While Lion....

On another tangent, Ian over at the Blog With No Name is having a competition with the prize a £20 sterling giveaway competition. He will pay 20 quid at the online store of your choice for whatever you want to buy. Of course, if you want to spend more than that, you can. He's not averse to some silliness himself and is asking for respondents to tell him a joke. I don't think it's a condition of entry and hopefully he's not basing the winner on the quality of the joke, otherwise I'm screwed!

Another Yabbie Award Nomination!

Liebster...Lobster...Yabbie...geddit? Oh, just google it, willya?
It's an antipodean thing!

Thanks go to Conrad Kinch over at Joy and Forgetfulness for a 2nd Liebster Blog Award nomination! As he has so kindly taken the time to spruik my blog during his nomination post, the least I can do is to return the compliment.

Kinch writes one of the most consistently entertaining blogs on wargaming you could find. His gently tongue-in-cheek humour is a delight to read and some of the captions to the accompanying pictures make me laugh out loud. Mainly a 1/72nd collector and gamer, Kinch has a wealth of Napoleonic figures and battle reports in his wonderful blog, but I note with mixed feelings that he's begun to dabble in a little bit of modern gaming including WWII and '70s counter-factual-pulp-style scenarios. While I enjoy his writing on any subject, I especially enjoy his Napoleonic ramblings.

His entry on my blog nomination reads, and I quote: My " ...ancestors were transported to the Antipodes for stealing a pig and yet, despite dodging venomous beasts and the daily trips to something known as "The Thunderdome" (which I believe is a chain of local supermarkets) he manages to write a wonderful blog devoted to Napoleonic wargaming and painting. One wonders where he finds the time. "

• Actually, my ancestors got upgraded to the orlop deck on their trip over because it turned out they stole a pig AND a loaf of bread. 
• The trip to work isn't worth the ticket price unless your tram is attacked by homicidal mobs of kangaroos or the need to check under the seats for tiger snakes ("Snakes on a Tram", now there's an idea for a movie!), while doing laps at the swimming pool is facilitated by the sharks and crocodiles following in your wake. 
• "The Thunderdome" has a day where 2 lucky shoppers are allowed to scour the shelves for discount bargains, but as the promotional catchphrase says "2 men enter; one man leaves!" I have personally participated in 3 of these events, each time leaving the store with a trolley full of bargains and my competitor's scalp, removed by a saw-toothed hunting knife.
• To fill in the time when I'm not wrestling wombats or dodging dingoes, I like to paint little plastic men and play with them on a tabletop with other like-minded blokes. If you think that sounds funny, let me warn you the last person who laughed at my hobby ended up with a paintbrush sticking out of his eye. We shook hands, though, and drank a beer later. He's one of my best mates. The eye-patch suits him.

Award Winning Blog!

After the virtual back-slapping of the Stylish Blogger Awards comes the Liebster Blog Award! I've been generously nominated by that all round decent chap and amazing illustrator of all things VBCW, Pete Barfield of PanzerKaput's Painted Review. He really brings the counter-factual world of the 1930's abdication crisis alive.  If you haven't already, do yourself a favour and visit his splendid blog.

Thanks PK; much appreciated!

Now to the rules of this blogger appreciation society chain letter:

1. Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it to you.
2. Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.
3. Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing that you have just made someone's day!
4. There is no obligation to pass this on to anyone else but it is nice if you do.

1st point already done, so on to the next point; passing the award on to some of my favourite blogs. Again, like everyone else, it's a hard job narrowing it down to just 5 and leaves me feeling guilty that I can't nominate more! But rules are rules, so here goes...

In no particular order I pass the award to the following nominees:

1. James Fisher at Avon Napoleonic Fellowship. He is a serious Napoleonic wargamer with a blog full of resources, reviews and battle reports of games using figures of my chosen scale, 1/72nd! What's not to like?!
2. Sander at Modus Reg Magni Momenti. Another 1/72nd aficionado whose work I first saw on the HaT website and thought I'd love to be able to paint like him!
3. Francesco of Franznap and Franznap Miniatures. He is currently sculpting figures in preparation for opening his online store. I can't wait! His Marechal Davout is simply exquisite. And his chosen scale is 1/72nd, too!
4. Robert of "Serrez les Rangs!". He's been a bit busy with real life of late, but still managed to post a cracker of a batrep recently. His West Tokyo Wargamers club puts on a great show and his sterling efforts in organising painting comps at the La Bricole forum are greatly appreciated. Plus he's a dab hand with producing the eye-candy, too!
5. And last but not least, another denizen of La Bricole,  Paul Alba of NAPOLEONICS IN MINIATURE. He has a brilliant way with 15mm AB figures. The way he paints them, you'd think they were 28mm figures!

Bounty from the Blogosphere #2

I received a box in the post this week all the way from the Emerald Isle, the contents of which were another swap with that footsore gentleman freshly returned from his march to the Boyne, Conrad Kinch.

We had arranged another swap where I'd buy him something that he required for his current WWII project and he'd send me the sweepings from his spares cupboard (actually a few of the Italeri chasseurs I've been after, a heap of Italeri dragoons, assorted Italeri British infantry, Hat Nassauers and Strelets Guard Chasseurs). All of these will find their way onto my painting desk at some stage either as complete figures or fodder for conversions.

Enclosed in this package was a handwritten note from the man himself. A handsomely written piece it is too. Obviously a discerning chap where his blog reading habits are concerned; a real scholar and a gentleman!

I'm not sure what sort of beasties he's referring to, though. The only beasties we have here are the kangaroo I use as a sparring partner, the poisonous spiders I sprinkle on my breakfast, the venomous snake my daughters play with and the shark we keep in the swimming pool. They're just the everyday animals we deal with; no distractions required!

Kinch's message

Cardboard cornucopia  of plastic goodness!

Bounty From the Blogosphere!

"Damme! That bounder Kincaid's written a giant book!"

My winnings from Tamsin's birthday bonanza arrived today. Huzzah!

Expect to see a review in the not too distant future (studies willing!).

Thanks again, Tamsin!