Wargames blog, covering many shiny things but at the mo its mostly a 1940 Desert Campaign, 28 mm Crusades and 28mm Italian Wars.
Now with its own You Tube Channel - Yarkshire TV, find us on the Twitters and Insta @yarkshiregamer
Steve has been a full time painter for many years now and many of the figures in the collections of my previous guests have originated from his brushes, so it's a great excuse to get a bit of a geek on about Paints, techniques and of course wet palettes 😆
Alongside the painting Steve has been writing articles and books for the hobby and beyond. He has a passion for the Franco Prussian War with a number of scenario books, wargame and uniform guides going back to the 1980s.
In recent years Steve has self published two excellent scenario books on the diverse subjects of Leipzig in 1813 and The Seelow Heights in 1945.
It's a long old chat with the episode just tipping over 3 hours. This isn't a short format, I want to bring you a good all round wargames chat not a 10 minute sales pitch, I know a lot of people who listen to this whilst painting so hopefully you will get some more figures done, so here is an excuse to get some more done !
I'll be back in 3 weeks time when I will be speaking with Nicholas Schofield, who has written a book on the British and Irish Troops in Service of the Papal States in the 1860s. It will be an experiment in an episode that is more about the history than the wargaming, hope you will enjoy it.
Regards Ken
The Yarkshire Gamer
You can find out lots more about Steves Book, Paintings and Terrain at his blog site
Well that wasn't what I was expecting as an end result to say the least, to say I was distracted is a real understatement. It was all supposed to be about the 28mm Italian Wars but as anyone who had a look through my posts would know it went a bit sideways, or seaways to be more precise.
Not too much of a distraction were these 10mm Pendraken Malburian figures for my Savoyard and French Armies, I've been using these for quite a while now as a Palette Cleanser so these were everyday fare.
Another planned distraction were these 28mm Franco Prussian French Chasseur a Pied, these were a bookend on last years Garibaldi Project and got me started back in December.
I did eventually get some Italian Wars stuff done, a unit of 16 Swiss Shot which I needed for an existing Pike Unit and 12 Borgia Light Cavalry and finally just under the deadline was a 60 figure Spanish Colunela, which should have been the first of a number in the Challenge.
The Colunela is a fine looking unit and I did some photos with a white background which I really like.
But of course the main distraction were these 1/700 WW2 Naval Ships, 3 large vessels, Bismarck, Prince of Wales and Ark Royal along with 2 Merchant Vessels, 7 Destroyers and a Submarine.
The Ark Royal is particularly impressive, the base is 42cms x 10 and its definitely imposing, I'm not a fan of the aircraft supplied with the kit and will be replacing them with upgraded versions in due course.
My favourite from my Challenge was the Bismark Build, the detail on the Revell kit is superb and it really added to the model. One of the best things I've ever done. I will sort out my charity donation in a few minutes and that's me done for another year.
Thanks again to Curt for heading up this wonderful Challenge, Peter for being my Monday Minion and waiting for so long for some Spanish Wars Italians and finally to all the people who visited and commented on my posts.
Welcome back everyone, it's been nearly 2 months since the last episode, doing 5 in December was like setting a flamethrower to both ends of the candle and I had burnt myself out.
The episode is available on all major Podcast Hosts, or via the Podbean link below. If you do enjoy it, please like, subscribe and comment to help increase the Podcasts profile.
But after a good rest and concentrating on my hobby projects for a while I'm back and ready to go again. I've got the next 8 episodes planned with some great guests, I have Manufacturers, Painters, Authors, Big Gamers, Hobby Legends and the like to bring to you, I also hope to bring episodes from countries we haven't visited before and get the low down from fellow wargamers around the world.
In addition to that I have a tester episode with a non wargaming Historian which will follow an obviously different format, but if it works its something I plan to do in the future if it works out well.
But that's the future, it's time to introduce my guest, I first became aware of Martyn Kelly from his Facebook posts regarding some huge participation games he has put on at Conventions in the US. He's done some brilliant Italian Wars games featuring a 196 figure Pike Block which in my opinion really represents the 9,500 men who were actually in that block, much better than 24 figures for sure.
I love talking from Gamers outside the UK and getting there perspective on a hobby we all love in so many different ways. All the usual features are here, Big Game Chat, Quiz, Wargame Room 101, Desert Island Wargame and the usual chat in between.
I talk to Martyn in the Big Topic about the set up of Conventions in the US, how they are organised and what a visitor expects to see. We then move on to talk about what visitors expect from a Big Game at a convention and the differences between putting such a game on between one with friends and one with total strangers at an event.
Its then a deep dive into how my guest goes from that first germ of an idea through to actually playing the game at a show. Trust me its a lot of work and guys like Martyn go a long way to make these events what they are, so if you haven't say thank you to your game organiser.
It wouldn't be Yarkshire Gamer with a bit of Italian Wars Chat (now apparently an extension of the Wars of the Roses ;-) and we start the Pavia Challenge live on the show. Martyn has gone for 1:25 scale so I've gone 1:24 !
It was a great chat and the fact that I thought that we had only done an hour and a half when we had done two and a half shows that the phrase "time flies when your enjoying yourself" is true.
Keep up to date with what Martyn is doing next as well as a wealth of information about his previous projects on his blog, College of Kings.
Thanks for listening and welcome back to the show, don't forget to subscribe, like and leave a review wherever you listen to this. Not much in life costs nowt, but this Podcast does so give us a like.
All pictures above reproduced with the kind permission of my guest Martyn Kelly.
My next episode will be out in a fortnight and I'll be speaking with Steve Shann. I've known Steve for a long time and you will be familiar with the name if you've listened to previous episodes. Steve has a number of publications to his name covering diverse topics like WW2, Leipzig and The Franco Prussian War. On top of that Steve does a spot of painting so get ready for 2 hours on the correct shade of blue for French Uniforms !
Until next time, Sithee
Regards Ken
The Yarkshire Gamer
And here is my usual P.S. Its the Utubes version of the last episode.
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