First heard this phrase from the mouth of Sheriff Buck in the vastly underrated TV series "American Gothic" and along with "Someone's at the door" are two of my favourite quotes. However this article is not about how the past continues to hold the present and future in the palm of it'S hand but about Ancients. The wargames classification for literally everything before effective guns ie, almost all human history before about 1500 ish. I have painted quite a few bits and bobs

The Trojan War was for a very long time believed to be a classic Greek Literary myth collected by Homer or Homers about a mythical war and a mythical place to be set alongside the other stories of Greek Myth. All that changed in 1870 when Schliemann excavated a site at Hisarlik in Turkey and 'discovered' Troy. Or rather Troys as there was occupation on the site for thousands of years from around 3000 BC to the end of the Roman period and literally everyone knew the site to be

Continuing my completely non expert illustrated wander through the possible historical back stories of Game of Thrones I arrive at the base of the wall to consider what historical organisation were the Night's watch based on? The Romans The first thing that springs to mind is obviously The Romans manning the outer defences of the empire such as Hadrian's Wall or the Rhine defences (see article on the Free Folk here). Most people know that the walls and various defences were

Think of the Wildlings or Free Folk north of the wall and the immediate analogy which comes to mind are the Pict barbarians living North of Hadrians Wall in what is now Scotland. This is an obvious parallel what with the wall and the Picts being hairy barbarians with blue tattoos and that is what I thought as I worked my way through the Free Folk army I've been painting for a regular customer. However as I painted I began to think through other possibilities trying to meld th

In my head the Starks and their allies are a combination of the Medieval/War of the Roses great earls of the North such as the Percy's and Warwick (lands in the North) mixed with the Reiver families of the 16th century like the Nixons and the Johnstones and I'm sure this is the intention of George Martin. I think of castles like Bamburgh and Alnwick as well as the fortress towers called Peels scattered through the Borders. Winterfell anyone? Peel tower Of course it could just

This week’s blog is the ‘backstory’ behind how I approached painting a small group of minis for a South Korean customer and tried to give proper value. By that I mean I charge £8 each for painting 28mm figures on average ( though that includes building and basing) and these figures were so slim on detail that I felt I had to improve them through painting to justify my fee. So here we have the background to the Ulsan Cartel. The first figure is a limited edition from Hasslefre