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Uniforms of World War One
The Ship Model

In a recent L.W. publication George Arnold talked about a World War One board game entitled Paths of Glory. His article entailed a phrase “It’s taken awhile” as he was trying to find the perfect W.W.1 board game to play. My experience is you’ll never find the perfect game however you can get pretty close with Paths of Glory if that’s what you are into.

At an average cost of $100 U.S.D. less shipping the game is quite expensive however I am on the lookout for a good used game to purchase if possible? Having said the aforementioned, I probably will just go ahead and design my own board game. I am into the latter concept these days. I want to devise a game where I can play three theaters at once; land, sea, and air campaigns during World War One. Paths of Glory have a great base concept established whereas you play point to point engagements of which I am a great fan of.

My inspiration for all of this is a novel authored by Donald Jack (That’s me in the middle, the Bandy Papers Volume 2). For me I love to see the big picture and put myself in the driver’s seat regarding what the chief of staff would think, do, and accomplish during a state of war. From here I can download war maps from worldwarone.com to accomplish theaters. I find the design part of anything I do more fun than actually playing the game. In a weird sort of way I’ll set something up, get it going and there it sits. The latter seems to be typical of most wargamers. You spend months painting and basing figures’ and in the meantime something else grabs your attention and off you diverge to a different path. The best part of the latter is; that one day whilst you’re rummaging through all of the wargame paraphernalia up pops this project you were working on and the idea is immediately re-kindled with a fresh outlook on the original idea. Then you actually play the game and enjoy it as the concern of designing it has passed!

I thought what might be very interesting, and quite appealing, is to add a little ‘Funny Little Wars’ venue into the program by featuring character’s from the Bandy Papers. This would be the only chance to model and paint some figures and it would be only 2 or 3 characters at a time. Also I am investigating the scale of 90 mm. I decided if I only need to paint two or three figures at a time I can up-size to 90 mm and really get into some detail work. A small diorama would look good here as well to portray the event and I can add this to my blog as a post for readers who find this kind of stuff interesting.

I find as the older I get the appeal of collecting and having a whole bunch of plastic or lead to deal with can be troublesome as you need a place to categorize and store all of it. Storage will be at a premium once my wife and I decide to downsize our home and retire. I think this is why board games are becoming more appealing to me these days. The latter are easier to store. I have about 60 figures for my Isle of Le’Ger’s campaign still sitting in primer (in boxes) tucked under my bench. Who knows when I’ll get to them? Sound familiar?

For now I dream of the Bandy Papers. I plan, what if ever, I decide to purchase Paths of Glory or I just make my own game? And as a further note and inspiration after writing this quick article I noticed our local Library has - An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Uniforms of World War One by; Jonathon North and Jeremy Black. I immediately headed down after church service and picked this book and upon opening it up was thoroughly pleased and thrilled to see an exquisitely designed book with colored plates, war posters, B & W photos of troops, artillery, tanks, etc. What a wonderful book!