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It has been a while since my last post.  Since then my focus has shifted from Dark Age England to 1st Century BC.  I have been reading alot about the transition of the Roman Republic to the Principate.  Pen & Sword have published quite a few great books that cover this period and provide interested reading.

Roman Conquests:  Judea and Egypy by John D. Granger
Roman Conquests:  Asia Minor, Syria & Armenia by Richard Evans
Mithridates the Great by Philip Matyszak
Crisis of Rome by Gareth Sampson

These are just a few.  I hope to post more as time goes by.  Until next time...

Reading Blitz

My summer reading blitz continues with new historical fiction and the return of some oldies.  I heartily recommend them as good inspirational reading for the Viking Age.

The Norsemen Saga by James L. Nielsen (3 books and I hope their are more to come)
Fin Gall
Dubh-linn
The Lord of Vik-Lo
These three book are set in Viking Age Ireland and focus on a single crew of Norwegian Vikings under Ornolf the Restless, Thorgrimm Night-Wolf and Harald Broadarm.  These books include alot of intrigue, double dealing and violence.  The historicity might be questionable but Nelson spins a good yarn and I hope to add more books by him to my collection.

The Strongbow Saga by Judson Roberts (4 books for now but I believe another is in the works)
Viking Warrior
Dragons from the Sea
Road to Vengeance
The Long Hunt
These four books cover the life of ex-thrall Halfdan whose reputation grows among the Danish Vikings in the middle of the 9th century.  Thes books cover his near murder by a his notorious step brother Toke and his travels to glory and vengeance.  It is from the young adult historical fiction so it is a bit of a light read but still entertaining.

The seven books above I have read since the end of May along with a couple of non-fiction texts and a few more novels.  I will add the other books a bit later.

The Warlord Series/Saxon Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell (You can't seriously read Viking Age historical fiction without the master himself)
The Last Kingdom (Just finished listening to this one again on Audible)
The Pale Horseman (Just finished listening to this one again on Audible)
The Lords of the North
Sword Song
The Burning Land
Death of Kings
The Pagan Lord
I have read the first five of these over the last few years and the last two this summer.  I restarted the series on a trip to South Carolina through Audible but have all of the books on my shelf.  Cornwell has a newish book in the series (The Empty Throne) and another on the way.  I am waiting on the price to drop on The Empty Throne but I have plenty other books to keep me busy this summer.

Frenzied Painting

Work continues apace on the forces needed for Dark Ages FOG 300.  8 stands of Viking Huscarls are done as are 10 stands of Early Scot Thegns.  I will run them as impact foot.  Just need two more stands of these boys.  Working steadily on the Early Scot/Later Pict offensive spear and should have ten stands worth done soon.  Command stands for the Vikings and the Scots are done.  Thinking of using Viking Berserker figures as Galwegians.  These are medium foot so would work as Viking 3BL raiders for DBA 3.0 and Viking Raiders for ADLG (ack).  I hope to post pictures later this week.

Welcome to my blog.  Blogging is a new adventure for me so posts may be a bit erratic and will probably wander from topic to topic as a new squirrel pops up. I am a miniature wargamer.  My preferred rules set is Field of Glory.  Most of the people I have regularly gamed with (the regulars in the GCC) have decided to move to another set of rules out of France called L'Art de la Guerre.  Not because Field of Glory was broken but because someone told them they should and that irks me. 

Some of the arguments for ADLG is that it allows for faster games, requires fewer figures and less space.  Its funny that this is one of the arguments because the consensus from everyone when we tried FOG at 600 points was that they wanted more figures on the table.  The standard 200 point game for ADLG uses a table similar in size and requires the same time frame as FOG 600.  The GCC has not held its first sanctioned ADLG tournament and already there is a push to increase ADLG to 300 points.  ADLG 300 pushes the time frame back up to the 800 FOG games which defeats one of the arguments people have used for switching.

To me, ADLG is too much like DBM which I detested.  So much, that I gave up ancients gaming for quite a while.  ADLG brings back pip dice, corps commands and element based units.  You can give DBM a boob job and change her make-up but its still DBM.