I suppose that it had to happen sooner or later, but I have to announce that as of MWAN #58 (July-August, 1992), MWAN will more than likely cease publication after ten years of what I sincerely felt was the absolute best effort I was capable of. I no longer feel confident that I will be able to carry out, on a consistant basis, what it requires to publibh MWAN as we know it beyond the date. Thus, it makes sense for me to call it quits at a time when I can leave still feeling good about my efforts.
A month ago, I had no intention of adding the phrase "more than likely" in regarding this decision, however, in the 1ast week or so, while I have been mulling this decision over in my head, the full meaning of this decision has come to mind and I must admit that I feel serious reservations about discontinuing, what haa been to me over the last nine years, one of the most stimulating, exciting, satisfying, enjoyable, and personally rewarding efforts of my forty-four years. It is not often in life that one can create something that comes so very close to what one's original intention was, and somehow that happened with MWAN.
MWAN was an attempt to produce a publication which contained everything that I enjoyed within historical miniatures wargaming publications - the personalized style of Donald Featherstone's WARGAMER'S NEWSLETTER, the never-ending letters section of LONE WARRIOR, the "what's happening at the club approach of the "old" COURIER, Terry Wise's followed by Stuart Asquith's hobby news in their OBSERVATION POST column in MILITARY MODELING, etc., all thrown together within 144 pages and generoualy seasoned with feelings of comradeship and the personal opinion that what we are doing should not be taken very seriously, except for the comradeship, because we are merely playing with toy soldiers.
There have been, I admit, times within the last year or so when I personally felt that I have allowed MWAN to become something less than what I have deacribed above and I feel most uncomfortable about this and it haa played some small role in the decision "semi-reached" above.
Nonetheless, I find it extremely difficult to put MWAN to rest and I suppose only time will tell if this will come to pass.
Each of you will receive, with this issue, a slip of paper informing you as to when your subscription expires and how much it will cost you to continue receiving, or advertising within MWAN up to #58. There are a few of you who will be sent checks for money owed you if you entered long-term subscriptions beyond #58. I would, of course, appreciate your continued support up to #58. If nothing else, putting everyone on a year to year subscription and advertising basis, will allow me to publiah on a year to year basis as when some subscriptions are due with each issue, it is almost impossible for me to put MWAN to rest easily.
I also feel as though I should add that should MWAN cease publication I would not be interested in passing it on to someone else or entering joint ventures in publishing another publication. On to other things.
Painting Silliness
It's now the middle of July and my wife and daughters are on vacation up in the north country of Upper Michigan where we both are from. This has become somewhat of a tradition for us where they go back home for several weeks and I stay here and paint myself silly for two weeks. Well, this year, I was a little worried as I was still in the midst of my painting block having finished 180 figures in the first six months of 1991 whereas during 1990, I had averaged 180.92 figures per month, my third highest tota1 since I started keeping track in Ju1y of 1984.
Well, I didn't have to worry afterall. I dug out as many of my unpainted figures as I could find; made up a list (I love making up lists;) of them in groups; and got warmed up while the family was still here. On July 7th, I knocked out 63 of the new VICTORIAN CLASSICS 25 Dervish foot followed by an additional 111 on the 8th. On the ninth of July, I dropped the family off at the Chicago bus station and headed home fighting the traffic but planning my evening's activities in my mind.
I got home, made myself a large coke with ice, and hit the painting table polishing off 45 IRON BRIGADE Arab foot before going to bed around midnight. I woke at 4:00 in the morning, put on a large pot of Irish Creme coffee and finished 40 figures encompassing WWI French, Sudanese civilians, and some British Colonial Infantry for Clem Clemens before going to work.
On Saturday, I again awoke at 4:00 and finished 97 Arab foot, ACW dismounted infantry, Roger's Rangars (for Rich Black), and some of REDOUBT's FFL. On Sunday, I was still in the mood and finished 137 WWI Turkish infantry from AHKETON and FRONTIER. I got home from work around 8:00 Monday night and did 47 more Turks by 10:30 and added another 44 on Tuesday night. Wednesday night, I was beat so I just primed up some WWI ETON German infantry and Thursday night I caught up with my MWAN books and correspondence. 484 25mm figures bit the dust during this "Paint myself silly" spree putting me well within reach of my "record high" month of July, 1991 when I finished 621 figures, although I did cheat as about half of them were 15mm.
Unfortunate1y, my plans for this weekend are to get MWAN just about finished tonight and all day Saturday, and then allow myself to hit the painting table again all day Sunday. Boy, it's really been fun.
As many of you know, I keep a log of figures that I paint and I have it in front of me at this time. I started this in July of 1984 and finished 794 figures (132 per month) that year. In '85 it was 2478 (206 per month) and that was when I did my Zulu collection. '86 dropped down to 1608 (135 per month) and '87 dropped even lower to 1366 (113 per month). In '88, I did my 25mm Sudan collection and did my all-time high of 2612 (217 per month) and in '89 I think I pooped out with 1542 (128 per month). In 1990 I finished up my 25 ACW and did a good portion of my FFL collection and totaled 2171 (180 per month) but 1991 1ooked like a bummer until July; I hope that I can get beak on the painting track for the rest of this year; I think my distaste of cavalry in wargames stems from the fact that I credit myself with painting only one casting when I do cavalry doesn't seem fair, does it? If I do guns or mules or limbers, they don't count at all; I should change that, just for motivation; I have found this system - keeping track of my painted figures - to be highly motivating in encouraging me to continue to paint. Sometimes it's fun to look back over the painting book and see what I was painting and how many I did at a certain date in time. We all have our own form of madness, I guess!
More Periods
I've been thinking of what other periods I'm going to do as of late. I'm committed to both 15mm and 25mm for the Sudan although the 15mm Sudan project will consist of picking up figures when I can and storing them unti1 I feel like painting them. I've got odds and ends of the FFL to do; about 150 Samurai from DIXON which I think I'm going to end up hiring someone to paint them for me; and a bunch of Colonial figures to fix holes in my 25mm Zulu collection.
I am involved in painting SYW figures for my own Charge project and now that FRONT RANK has released their French-Indian War line, I plan on doing around 500 figures for that period. Clem is working on a French-Indian fort and some buildings for me - you should see the one he built on his first effort; I have a number of 25mm WARGAME S FOUNDRY British Zulu War Infantry on order to be used for the early Sudan - I know they wore Khaki, but I love those red coats; I am aiming for about 1500 for this period.
Then I received a listing of WARGAMES FOUNDRY Maximilian in Mexico and this is something that I've always wanted to do! Years and years ago, when I built up a 5600 fiqure ACW army in 15mm, I spent a lot of time making up a map of a fictional continent set in the time the ACW with Federal, Confederate and Mexican type countries.
Although I sold the 15mm armies eventually, it was always on my mind to do this again. I painted up a 25mm ACW collection of "large" 25mm figures and now this is the perfect chance to do what I set out to do years ago. Greg Novak sent me THE MEXICAN ADVENTURE - MAXIMILIAN IN MEXICO 1862-67 which I just received tonight as well as some beautiful color plates of the period from the Military Historians Society - thanks, Greg! If I didn't have to work on MWAN, I'd be pouring over the book and pictures; now I have to save them for bedtime reading but I`m looking forward to thatlll Can you imagine a campaign where after the ACW, a number of Confederates head for Mexico and the Union decides to put an end to French involvement in the Americas? Wouldn't that be fun? I'll let you know what happens with this project.
It Figures
I've obtained a great deal of satisfaction during my recent painting spree and I think much of it was from getting figures done which had been sitting for a number of years. MWANers have written to me stating that they were cleaning out a drawer and found a box of figures they had ordered years ago and set aside and forgotten they had them. I don't like to have such figures around. When I painted up my 15mm ACW armies, I somehow made it a practice to never store figures away, but rather, never bought more until I had painted what I had hand.
Somehow, over the years, I suppose due to the fact that once I started branching out into different periods, it was more convenient to buy some figures, perhaps on sale, for periods that I was interested in doing in the future, and set those figures aside. I've made, over the years, several honest efforts to catch up on my figure painting, but never really was able to do so. Another option with such figures is to sell them as I recently did with my "large" 25mm Napoleonic collection of painted and unpainted figures. The money went towards our new kitchen cupboards, as well as a number of other household repairs, which, I think, drastically changed my wife's attitude toward my hobby!
There seems to be an increasing interest in WWI figures and gaming. MINIFIGS has a rather extensive WWI line in 15mm; Gary Hirel is releasing a very nice and extensive WWI line in 15mm. Frontier has a selection of 25mm figures from "The Great War"; and now WARGAMES FOUNDRY has released a line of 25mm WWI French, British and German figures. I'd like to get some of these to supplement my WWI Turks' which were intended to take part in a Lawrence of Arabia type of game so as to utilize my FFL Arabs more frequently. I remember the time when I never would have ventured beyond 1900 and wondered why others did (don't we all do that?). It seemed as though, for any period after 1900, machines became the dominant factor, but I am sure that Ancients gamers can say that even more so than someone like myself can.
Book Inspiration
Hey, does reading books ever turn you on to a period? Geez, I can't read an historical book without getting excited about the period. In the midst of my painting spree last Sunday, I read "The Ravi Lancers" by John Masters (I think), a fictional account of an Indian cavalry regiment which volunteers for service in France during WWI. Excellent book! The more I look, the more books such as this I find.
After reading it, I sat down and made up a list of WWI figure manufacturers in 25mm and what I could do with theml From what other wargamere have reported, WWI wasn t all trench warfare. The uniforms may be drab, but on the other hand, one can "pump" out those figures from the painting table. With my WWI Turks, I painted the entire wood brown watering it down so that it "ran" on the figure; painted the shoes, pack, ammo packs, and rifle brown; the handw and face a mideast flesh (from HOWARD HUES), put white and then black dots for eyes, black for a beard, and finally, gun metal on the rifle and I was done. We are talking about seven colors and I have 210 WWI Turkish infantry done in a weekend! Can't beat that, can you!!!
Back to MWAN #53 Table of Contents
© Copyright 1991 Hal Thinglum
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