Category: Maidstone Wargames Society

MWS Quiz 24th February 2021

Peter sets the latest quiz with a musical theme. Answers on Sunday.

All together now…

Q1a: “Green Grow The Rushes Oh” was widely sung by American troops in which war?

Q1b: What nickname did the Spanish/Mexican population give these troops?

Q2a: What TV series usually ends with a rendition of ‘Over The Hills & Far Away’?

Q2b: In which century was it first regularly sung by British troops?

Q3a: Many regiments in the 19th Century had a band. Apart from signalling & boosting morale, what other key function did they often perform in combat?

Q3b: How did the Romans employ musicians in actual combat with Carthage?

Q4a: For a full orchestral staging, what unusual instruments do you need for a performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 overture?

Q4b: What was the WW2 ‘Red Orchestra’?

Q5a: The song ‘Lili Marlene’ was already very popular among German troops before WW2. Where did the British army first start to take it up?

Q5b: “We’ll Meet Again” by Vera Lynn is sung during the closing credits of which famous Cold War film?

Q6a: Why did Beethoven’s 5th Symphony have such massed appeal in Britain during WW2?

Q6b: Which award-winning Sci-Fi film used five notes as its main theme/signature?

Q7a: A special version of ‘Men of Harlech’ is sung in a famous scene from which film?

Q7b: What is the full title of the British army unit primarily depicted in the film?

Q8a: Hollywood notwithstanding, the song ‘Garryowen’ was most famously adopted by which unit?

Q8b: ‘The British Grenadiers’ was introduced to the UK by William III, but actually first adopted by which British army unit in 1716?

Q9a: Hail The Conquering Hero’ was played in the film ‘Waterloo’ on what occasion?

Q9b: For which victorious British Commander was it originally devised/dedicated?

Q10a: General Grant famously said he could only remember two tunes. Which was his favourite?

Q10b: ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ has been the national anthem of the USA since 1931. Which war was it written to commemorate?

Q11a: Music has often been used to intimidate the enemy. Which track was played by the 1st / 9th (Air Cavalry) in their Hollywood debut?

Q11b: Where was ‘rock music’ actually first used officially as a psyops weapon?

Q12a: Which BBC series was one of the first ever to use all-electronic theme music?

Q12b: Why was ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’ banned by the BBC in 1942?

MWS Quiz Retrospective – 5th August 2020 Answers

Here’s the answers to the latest of Peter’s quizzes from last year. 

01a         Which unit took the main part of the fight against the Persians at Thermopylae?

Answer: Spartans (plus 1200-odd Thebans)

01b         What is the common name for the Persian Guard troops who eventually broke through?

Answer: The Immortals

02a         Which order of Crusader knights were also part-time doctors?

Answer: Knights (Hospitalers) of St John

02b         When their last HQ in Europe was taken by the Turks, what were the elite Turkish forces called?

Answer: Janissaries

03a         Which units of mainly German mercenaries were raised in the Renaissance era to combat the Swiss?

Answer: Landsknechts

03b         Which renaissance-era unit is still serving in Europe today? Not ‘Beefeaters’ (Yeoman of the Guard?

Answer: The Swiss Guard (1st set-up by Julius 2nd in 1506)

04a         18thC: The American militia units were commonly known as what?

Answer: Minutemen

04b         Which hero of the irregular SYW against the French & Indians on the US/Canadian border fought against the US?

Answer: Colonel Robert Rogers

05a         The 95th Rifles was one of two rifle-armed units of the British Army in the Peninsular. What was the other one?

Answer:  60th (Royal American) Regiment

05b         What was the French Guard equivalent unit commonly called, to distinguish them from general Voltigeur/light infantry?

Answer: Tirailleurs

06a         What is the name of the ‘super-orc’ units created by Saruman (Christopher Lee)

Answer:  Uruk-Hai

06b         What is the common name of the shadowy group of super-humans from the north to which Aragorn initially belongs?

Answer: Dunedain or Rangers of the North

07a         What was unusual about the Union 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regt in the early years of the war?

Answer: They were armed as lancers

07b         What was unusual about the CSA Marine Corps

Answer: They never went to sea; only fought one naval action, as gunners on CSS Virginia.

08a         Which British Army unit only lasted from 1912 to 1918?

Answer: Royal Flying Corps

08b         Which other specialised unit only lasted from 1915 until 1922?

Answer: Machine Gun Corps

09a         What knick-name did the Germans give to WW2 British Parachute forces?

Answer: The Red Devils

09b         What did they call their own parachutists?

Answer: Green Devils (the Fallschirmjager, ‘Hunters From The Sky’)

10a         To which human organisation does the hero belong:  Steve Zodiac (Fireball XL5)

 

Answer: WSP – World Space Patrol

10b         To which human organisation does the hero belong:  Troy Tempest (Stingray)

 

Answer: WASP – World Aquanaut Security Patrol

10c         To which human organisation do the heroes belong:  Tracey family (Thunderbirds)

 

Answer: IR – International Rescue

10d         To which human organisation does the hero belong:  Colonel Straker (UFO)

 

Answer: SHADO – Supreme HQ Alien Defence Organisation

10e         Name any two of the Angels in Captain Scarlet

 

Answer: Destiny, Melody, Rhapsody, Symphony, Harmony

11a         What is the US equivalent unit to our SAS

Answer: 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (1st SFOD-D) more commonly known as Delta Force

11b         And their not-Soviet-really counterparts

Answer: SPETZNAZ

12a         MWS Game of a famous siege lasting almost 2yrs

Answer: Beds of Jonquils (Masada) AD73

MWS Quiz Retrospective – 5th August 2020

Here’s the next of Peter’s quizzes from last year. Answers in a couple of days.

01a         Which unit took the main part of the fight against the Persians at Thermopylae?

01b         What is the common name for the Persian Guard troops who eventually broke through?

02a         Which order of Crusader knights were also part-time doctors?

02b         When their last HQ in Europe was taken by the Turks, what were the elite Turkish forces called?

03a         Which units of mainly German mercenaries were raised in the Renaissance era to combat the Swiss?

03b         Which renaissance-era unit is still serving in Europe today? Not ‘Beefeaters’ (Yeoman of the Guard?

04a         18thC: The American militia units were commonly known as what?

04b         Which hero of the irregular SYW against the French & Indians on the US/Canadian border fought against the US?

05a         The 95th Rifles was one of two rifle-armed units of the British Army in the Peninsular. What was the other one?

05b         What was the French Guard equivalent unit commonly called, to distinguish them from general Voltigeur/light infantry?

06a         What is the name of the ‘super-orc’ units created by Saruman (Christopher Lee)

06b         What is the common name of the shadowy group of super-humans from the north to which Aragorn initially belongs?

07a         What was unusual about the Union 6th Pennsylvania Cavalry Regt in the early years of the war?

07b         What was unusual about the CSA Marine Corps

08a         Which British Army unit only lasted from 1912 to 1918?

08b         Which other specialised unit only lasted from 1915 until 1922?

09a         What knick-name did the Germans give to WW2 British Parachute forces?

09b         What did they call their own parachutists?

10a         To which human organisation does the hero belong:  Steve Zodiac (Fireball XL5)

 

10b         To which human organisation does the hero belong:  Troy Tempest (Stingray)

 

10c         To which human organisation do the heroes belong:  Tracey family (Thunderbirds)

 

10d         To which human organisation does the hero belong:  Colonel Straker (UFO)

 

10e         Name any two of the Angels in Captain Scarlet

 

11a         What is the US equivalent unit to our SAS

11b         And their not-Soviet-really counterparts

12a         MWS Game of a famous siege lasting almost 2yrs

That’s a Nasty Habit

Club member Steve conducted a series series of polls on the club’s modelling and painting habits over the Christmas/New Year 2020.

QUESTION 1
What paints do you use?
100% said they used acrylics. No real big surprise there. Although one person did say he uses both acrylic and enamel (Dave – you crazy kid, you!).

QUESTION 2
What make of paints do you use?
A lot more variety here. The most popular were Vallejo with 24.4%. I was surprised by what came second – Tamiya, with 14.6%. I think Tamiya use some kind of oil medium, which is why they curdle and can be a challenge to paint miniatures with, though probably not so bad when it comes to vehicles and buildings and things with other large surfaces. GW came in third with 12.2%. Then Army Painter, Humbrol, and ‘artist’s acrylics’ with 9.8% each (I cannot believe Coat d’Arms wasn’t even on the list! JC).

QUESTION 3
Which colour do you find the hardest to shade and highlight?
I expected red to romp home with this. It didn’t though. The most popular answer was yellow, with 53.8%. I was surprised at that, because I find yellow one of the easiest. Second was a tie between red and black with 15.4% each, and then both white and metallic with 7.7% each.

QUESTION 4
Do you brush or spray varnish?
Spray on got 53.3% and brush on got 46.7%. Fairly even (some of us use both JC).

QUESTION 5
Which brushes do you use?
Mid-range brushes (Daler Rowney, etc) were most popular with 10.4%. A surprising 7.8% went with those dreadful cheap brushes from The Works – I’ve tried them and they lasted all of one painting session. 2.6% went with decent sable brushes (I recently bought a kaplinsky sable brush and it is an absolute gem). 3.9% treated themselves to a proper miniatures painting brush (not sure what that is, to be honest).

Brush care also came into it. 2.6% take proper care of our brushes, giving them a clean after each session. 5.2% give them a clean once in a blue moon. 3.9% are heartless and cold and take no care of their brushes and just throw them away when they’re no good.

11.7% said they use size 0 and 1 brushes for miniatures painting. 2.6% said they go up to size 2 or 3 (must be painting giants with brushes that size!).

9.1% confessed to putting their brushes in their mouths (come on, must be more than that, surely!). And 7.8% admitted to having put their brushes in a cup of tea accidentally.

QUESTION 6
What colour Undercoat?
Both black and white came out jointly on top – with 33.3% each. Grey was next, with 20%, then both brown and ‘other’ with 6.7% each.

QUESTION 7
Metal or plastic miniatures?
40% of us prefer the heft of metal on the battlefield. 26.7% use metal but have the odd plastic figure, and 26.7% don’t care whether it’s metal or plastic just so long as it’s cheap! This left 6.7% who use the Devil’s cocktail – plastic!

QUESTION 8
Do you make or buy terrain?
I get the feeling that MWS is quite a modelling-strong club so it would be interesting to see what our modelling habits were.

22.6% took the middle road – making what they can and buying what they can’t. Which is fair enough. 16.1% confessed to buying the horror that is MDF terrain – shame on them! Another 16.1% said they preferred resin terrain pieces. 12.9% said they buy terrain, whilst 9.7% said they always make and never buy. picture of model buildings3.2% decadent souls said they have more money than sense and pay others to make it for them! 6.5% of us said that making terrain was one of the most enjoyable aspects of the hobby. Which it is. And a disappointing 9.7% admitted to being so bad at terrain making that even MW’s Wargames Widow was inspiring. Can things be that bad? (In Steve’s opinion JC).

So there we go – a review of the club’s modelling and painting habits. I’ll leave you to draw whatever conclusions you want from the results. Let us know how your habits agree or differ with those of the club because it’ll be interesting to see how representative we are with the hobby as a whole.

Maybe someone else can run a series of polls on our gaming habits

Hussar! (South of the Border)

Andy has been hard at work with his brushes….

My first figures finished this year (where has the time gone?).  Eight French Hussars and four Mexican cavalry from the Maximillian Adventure (1860’s French in Mexico). Figures from Wargames Foundry.

Undercoated with Humbrol grey primer, then block painted with Vallejo or Army Painter acrylics and washed with Army Painter shades.

My Maximillian Adventure collection started over 10 years ago with the 2007/2008 MWS show Game, Non Son Hombres Son Demonios!, the Battle of Camerone:

http://www.brigademodels.co.uk/mws/ShowGames/Mexico/index.html

It has grown over the last 10 years, adding villagers, more troops, cavalry and artillery to both sides.

These will be used with various rule sets, originally we used some simple participation rules (available at the above website), we played some gamers at the Society using Stargrunt (with adaptions), recently we’ve been playing The Men Who Would Be Kings, but I think we’ll be trying  Rebels and Patriots soon.

Slammer Update #1

Tony F shows off some of the new models he’s putting together for next weekend’s extended meeting

If you’ve missed the previous updates, we’ve extended the hours for our August bank holiday weekend meeting, with the club open until 7pm. To take advantage of this, two members are putting on extra-large games catering for lots of players.

My offering is a 15mm science-fiction game set in the Hammer’s Slammers universe of US author David Drake. With around 10-12 players expected to take part we’ll need lots of forces to go round, so I’ve been working away on some new mercenary detachments. The first to be finished is this unit of Foster’s Mercenaries, a specialist air-defence and artillery outfit. They are equipped with huge multi-wheeled Centurion transport vehicles – some are command or transport vehicles, the others armed with howitzers or rapid-firing calliopes. The detachment also has an organic infantry element for local defence.

The vehicles and infantry are all from Brigade Models and you can read a bit more about them on the BM blog, including details on construction and painting. Even better, this is another task knocked off my To-do list for the year 🙂

Dark Age Vikings

The first of a trio of painting updates from Andy

These are Artizan Design figures, six Hirdmen with two handed axes and two Hirdmen “with spears”. I bought these second hand from Colonel Bill’s.

The spearmen didn’t come with spears, so I gave one of the spearmen a standard, using a brass spear and a “Raven Standard” drawn up in PowerPoint; the other I decided to make a Jarl and gave him a spare sword from a Gripping Beast Plastic Saxon Thegn boxes.

The figures were undercoated black and then block painted in various shades of Vallejo browns, greys and greens. They were then washed in appropriate Army Painter washes, with the quilted leather armour getting a couple of coats.

The two shields were painted plain white on the front and transfers from Little Big Men Studios and Battle Flag applied before varnishing.

Vive L’Empereur

Another update from Andy … he has been busy !

To give myself some variety in my French Forces for the Maximillian Adventure (1861 – 1867) I have painted up some Artillery crew and Officers.

These are from Wargames Foundry’s Franco Prussian War (1870 – 1871) range; Foundry don’t do Maximillian specific artillery crew, but the FPW figures are close enough and preferable (to me) to the Crimean War (1854-1856) alternative.

Two of the Officers were painted up in Artillery uniform, these together with the six crewmen will give me the option of having two, four man gun crew in my French forces. The other two were painted as Infantry / Foreign Legion officers.

I used Games Workshop’s Chaos Black spray undercoat, followed by Vallejo acrylics. The flesh was base coated with Brown Sand, followed by Medium Flesh Tone.

The Artillery uniform is predominantly blue (Vallejo Dark Blue) jacket and trousers, with red trim (Vallejo Flat Red). Belts and gaiters are white, boots, cartridge box and scabbards are black.

Some of the artillery crew have slung carbines, these had Beige Brown woodwork with Gunmetal Grey barrels and metalwork.

The Infantry officers differed mainly in that the trousers were white, not blue.

Once the painting was done the blue coats and trousers were given an Army Painter Quick Shade Blue Wash, and the hands and faces a Flesh Wash.

The figure bases were done in the same way as the Mexican Peons in my last blog post and varnished with Humbrol Spray Matt Varnish.

I’ve previously painted a couple of artillery pieces for this game, but these are large field pieces. I also wanted a lighter piece, so bought a small mountain gun from Gringo 40. This had a very simple paint job. Black undercoat, Beige Brown carriage and Gunmetal Grey barrel.

That’s it for the French in Mexico for now, next on the painting table are some Viking Huscarls, but the French will get some Hussars before too long, they are in the pipeline.

Viva Mexico

Update from Andy on his French in Mexico project

I’ve just completed a small addition to the Mexican Juarista forces, eight peons mostly armed with machetes, apart from three with assorted firearms. These will form part of a “Tribal Infantry” unit for The Men who would be Kings rules.

These are from Wargames Foundry’s Old West range, and were painted in my usual simplistic style.

I used Games Workshop’s Chaos Black spray undercoat, followed by Vallejo acrylics. The flesh was base coated with Brown Sand, followed by Dark Flesh. Most of the clothing is plain white, apart from one figure in a bold red (Flat Red) shirt with green sash (Flat Green), and a couple with Beige or Deck Tan shirts. Sombreros were painted various brown shades, with an Army Painter Soft Tone Quick Shade applied once dry.

Firearms had Beige Brown woodwork with Gunmetal Grey barrels and metalwork. Sandals were painted Black or German Camouflage Black Brown.

Flesh was then washed with Army Painter Flesh Wash Quick Shade. The Red shirt and Green sash had similar washes in the respective colours, again Army Painter Quick Shade. The white clothing was left unwashed.

Bases were painted with Army Painter Banshee Brown, after a bit of a search I found this to be the closest match to the original emulsion paint I used for my Maximillian troops bases when we used them for the club’s show Game “Non Son Hombres Son Demonios!” in 2007 / 2008. Patched of flock were then applied using PVA glue.

Once dried they were varnished with Humbrol Spray Matt Varnish.