It's September 1st and I'm still waiting for MWAN #89 from Ruele, my printer; I suspect it may have something to do with the UPS strike. I'm anxious to see how it turned out with a little larger print (13 point as opposed to 12 point) for the most part.

Spent a fair amount of time on this three-day weekend with hobby activities. I pulled out "The Frontier Ablaze: The North-West Frontier Rising 1897-98" by Michael Barthorp and it motivated me to get down to the basement, dig out my 25mm NWF figures and start basing them. I've been putting this off for several years having started mounting them on washers and then changing my mind as the collection got too large - have I done this before?!!! Last week, a friend from work gave me two large pails of Lake Michigan fine sand and I thought I'd give this a try for a terraining medium. Well, it worked out pretty well, I think. I am using metal stands from Wargames Accessories and started out by priming them black. I then painted the figure stands with GEO- HEX desert color and then super-glued the figures to the stand and let them sit for awhile. Actually, my intentions are to use Walther's GOO as the adhesive agent but I didn't have any on hand. I did try Elmer's Glue with one unit, but even after letting them sit overnight, the figures came off easily so I redid them with superglue. I then took a larger brush and painted the stand (three foot or horse to a stand) and dipped it into the sand. After letting them sit for awhile, I dropped Elmer's Glue on certain parts of the stand and dipped it into another container filled with grass and let it dry.

I was quite pleased with the effect. It comes out as primarily "sand" with small areas of "grass". Thus far I've done about fifteen Sikh artillery stands; two infantry and one cavalry unit (infantry are 24 figures, cavalry are 12, 15, 18, or 21 figures; and, batteries are two guns) as well as a bunch of mounted infantry of officers on single figure stands. Also put sand on about 15 units in preparation for when I can pick up more Walther's GOO.

My North-West Frontier Project in 25mm, as you may remember, consists of: (1) the Sikh War; (2) the 1850-60's; (3) the Second Afghan War; and (4) the 1890's. Quite a few units can be used for more than one period, which is quite handy! The vast majority are from Wargames Foundry with a fair number of Lyzard's Grin figures/guns/limbers, especially for the Sikh War as Richard Houston makes a lot of guns, limbers, artillery crews, camel gunners, and other useful items for the Sikh War.

To top off the weekend/evening, I'm taking Donald Featherstone's"At Them With The Bayonet: The First Sikh War" to bed with me and I'm looking forward to some enjoyable period reading - actually, this is about my tenth rereading!

I've also spent some time over the last few weeks mounting and terraining my 15mm ECW and 20mm ACW foot units. I've got fifteen 27-figure ECW (two stands each of 12 musketeers and one stand of nine pikemen) foot units and three horse (three stands of four figures each) finished thus far.

I recently decided to repaint some 25mm figures which were mounted on washers. I had too many French and British line infantry for the French-lndian War period and wished to transfer them to another "theatre", the Seven Years War.

My FIW units were not only smaller than my SYW, the units had different facings and of course, I wished to have the same facings within one unit. I wanted to remove the washers, however, since there were about two hundred of them, I was trying to think of a way to do it as easily as possible. The figures were glued to the washers with Elmer's White Glue. I soaked them in hot water, changing the water as soon as it cooled down a bit, and this allowed the washers to "slide" off easily and make my job free of "injury" (self-inflicted Exacto blade wounds). This method also "freed" up the static grass which had been placed on the base of the figure following the application of a coat of green paint and I was able to scrap it off with my fingers.

I've been in a "collecting" mood for the last ten years or so and have only played in at the most five wargames during that time. I haven't run a convention game for probably about three years or so and didn't miss it for a long time. I find myself, with my work on my NWF Project nearing an end, thinking of holding a game or two. Some years ago, one of the English glossies ran an article on Maiwand during the Second Afghan War which highly interested me. I've always been interested in "Last Stand" type scenarios and this article was one of the main reasons for my entering this period. The other reason was the release of the appropriate figures by Wargames Foundry, of course! I've currently got all of the figures painted and mounted on metal bases, except for the irregular foot, and I have to order stands for them. I've been debating whether they should be three per stand, as is my standard for this project for foot and horse figures, or go with six figures per stand.

Every other time I've done this sort of thing, I start out with three figures per stand and following several games, I realize that since the natives are "run" by the dice, not by players, it is far easier to have them mounted six to a stand. I want them to have more room than "formed" units would have - on the stand, that is. With 24-figure units, I'd end up with only four 6-man stands per unit, which might not "look" quite right. Since my "formed" foot units are three figures to a 1" X 2" stand, I'm thinking that I A" X 2" would be just right for three irregular foot. I want to keep the frontages the same for both formed and irregular units.

I would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thanks very much for your continuing support of MWAN in 1998!