OTHER ARTICLES

Mike Siggins is a popular voice in the wargaming community and many gamers like to see what he has to say on a range of topics, whether he's been incognito and eyeing up the merchandise at hobby shows, or testing the latest make of acrylic paints or playing new boardgames on the market. By turns controversial or curmudgeonly, creative or compassionate, Mike is a man with opinions that provoke a response and, most importantly, make us think about our hobby and its future. Precisely, in fact, why I hired him.
    Now, by agreement with Mike, we have decided to make his famous Forward Observer columns in Battlegames available to the world at large. There will be a delay before they appear here (hey, if you want to read them bang up-to-date, buy the magazine!) but they appear here just as they did in the pages of Battlegames.

• Forward Observer 1 (March/April 2006)
• Forward Observer 2 (May/June 2006)
• Forward Observer 3 (July/August 2006)
• Forward Observer 4 (September/October 2006)
• Forward Observer 5 (November/December 2006)
• Forward Observer 6 (January/February 2007)
• Forward Observer 7 (March/April 2007)
• Forward Observer 8 (June/July 2007)
• Forward Observer 9 (August/September 2007)
  

 

JANUARY 2009: RECYCLING COMPETITION WINNERS
You may remember that in issue 13, Diane Sutherland penned a wonderfully humorous article called "Bags of potential" in which she described her hoarding husband Jon to a T, with his shed full of polystyrene offcuts, bits of wood, horsehair and lots of other 'stuff' that just might come in useful someday. Of course, none of the rest of us felt the finger pointing at us, did we...? And alongside that article, above a photo of some of my own clutter, I laid down a challenge for readers to send in a photo of something they had made from recycled materials.
    Well, as is often the nature of these things (when will people learn that they can't win if they don't enter?), my postbag was disappointingly light, but a couple of readers did send in inspiring pics as you can see below.
    First off we have Andrew Barrow, who made an absolutely splendid river steamer for colonial gaming. "The funnel is an empty tube for vanilla pods," he says, "the main section was a box of chocolates, the stern a cut-in-half pasta sauce pot and the paddle wheels a cut-in-half soup container. The front is just a folded cereal box and the engine (which has some nice detailing sadly covered up) is a little tub that contained mints packaged as a Simpsons Duff Beer can. The remainder are bits of balsa wood and ready-made accessories and the mealie bags are flageolet beans! The Captain is a pro-painted Copplestone figure. This is the only thing I have ever made; and demonstrates my totally rubbish painting skills!"
    Far from it, Andrew, the end result is marvellous and thoroughly deserving of one of our prizes: a copy of our Table Top Teasers special edition.

Then we have a fantastic — and I mean that most sincerely, folks — creation made for Dutch reader Michel Montfrooij's birthday by his two friends Hans Goossen and Dick Bax. You can see how it was made here (Click your 'Back' button to return here):

• Stage 1
• Stage 2
• Stage 3

and then, the finished result. Superb!

Well done to our winners who will be receiving a copy of our Table Top Teasers special edition and my thanks for their efforts. Now come on, I know there are a lot more of you out there making stuff from recycled materials, so why not send in your pics and let us see?

FEBRUARY 2009: COMPUTER CARTOGRAPHY
Another popular article in issue 13 was Tyler Provick's "Computer Cartography for Wargamers", which showed how to make good use of Inkscape, a free-to-download, cross-platform piece of software: select this link for the Inkscape site.
    Following requests from several readers, and with the author's permission, I have uploaded the article as a PDF file so that you can download it here and start exploring the joys of map-making.