Nathaniel's Ambo Scriptorium
Not much to report, otherwise. Doing a project like this solo is a lot of fun...and a lot of work. No matter what, it always takes me longer than I think it will, so, anymore, I just have more of an 'it's done when it's done' attitude.
Shown here are all the cavalry and infantry troop figures for one side of a two player game. Not pictured are the artillery and other equipment pieces each player also needs. Eventually, all of one side's pieces will be red and the other player's pieces will be ivory or whitish.
Knights! There are about 70 here but I only need 60. This probably looks like some strange fetish collection or OCD dark hoarding, but I don't think it is. I hope not. In truth, I need these for my current WIP and I acquired most of them in one haul. More on this to come as it develops and it is shaping up pretty well so far.
mixed media on newspaper on cardboard, 31 x 40 inches.
I love Paul Klee. Brilliant designer. Unsurpassed stylist. A very special human being. I worked through the better part of his notebooks and Bauhaus lessons and while I'm not saying it was a complete waste of time, it was almost a complete waste of time. Not sure if he was a hustler or was sincerely attempting to document and explain his process in earnest technically, but the teachings amount to a whole lot of psuedo-intellectual hot air. Couched in exclusivity jargon and fancy terms for brick-simple concepts, the bulk of the materials aren't worth the time for a person trying to improve his or her craft. People claiming his writings on Art are on par with da Vinci are lying or confused. Whereas da Vinci informed generations of not just artists and craftspeople but also engineers and technicians, Klee's writings are thousands of pages the end result of which can be better internalized by understanding the golden mean and a brief survey of his artist's statement/manifesto. Or better yet, study his pictures. I imagine it was a combination of needing to justify his approach and teaching position, keep pace with the intelligentsia fashions of pre-Great War Germany and fill time when asked to speak publicly on his work that led to his prodigious overly complex prose. That or he was sincere and extremely neurotic. His math exercises take the student on long tedious journeys of arithmetic that end up illustrating principles that if not patently obvious or intuitively graspable are demonstrable by considerably more direct and simple means. That and they aren't particularly helpful to a person trying to improve his or her design powers.
Regardless, he's great. My favorite of the...whaddya call it? Was he Cubist or Expressionist? Whatever. I'm glad he defies classification. That's a hallmark of Quality, in my humble opinion.
Oh, also, like Klee, I made this frame by hand for the painting and the mat area is part of the painting itself. Note that the original is around 10.5" x 15.5" whereas my loose interpretive copy is a bit bigger at 31 x 40 inches. It hangs in my home above the landing on the stairs.
Warlord Games works with or is part of Osprey Press, a known publisher of history texts. I am entirely new to Warlord Games product line and yet my initial brief perusal of the materials has been somewhat confounding. In barely cracking the covers of a couple of these books I've found some alarming and, to me, entirely new information.
To begin, in the Thirty Years War section of the Pike & Shotte rulebook, page 128 says that events in 1643 led to "...Sweden once more becoming the dominant force in Scandinavia and the Balkans."
Did the Turks know about this? Did anyone consult the Sultan?!
Then in the introduction to the Battle of the Bulge Bolt Action supplement, pg. 9 says that as a result of the Allied invasion of Normandy "...Hitler’s forces in northern France were comprehensively defeated and forced to retreat westward."
Was there a failed German withdrawal maneuver that somehow escaped the attention of the Allies and everyone else in the world including a couple subsequent generations of academics and historians? (Thinking: this'll confuse the yanks and brits, everybody run away from Berlin!)
I realize, after being reminded every few paragraphs, that these rules in no way attempt to simulate "real" conflicts, but then the books proceed to offer chapter after chapter of seeming technical and historical information. If the games are in no way intended to reflect the reality of anything, why the copious amounts of (questionable?) background information? It's sort of a confusing stance in my opinion. Why partner with Osprey Press who clearly do intend their publications to be regarded as serious efforts at history?
If these publications were small press with limited budgets some of the confusion might be understandable, if only regrettable, but these are fairly large corporate entities with large market footprints and with presumably capable and qualified editorial departments. Is this just contempt for consumers, actual ignorance or something else?
Still, the pictures are really nice in some of these books and those alone make them interesting to me. Nice pictures. Lovely toys. The "fun" side of warfare, I guess, to be taken lightly, as they spare no effort to remind the reader. VERY lightly.
Finally, and I do apologize for invoking the following but it's too apropos here to forgo, perhaps the lady doth protest too much. Or maybe she could just do a better job.
