This is a post I never expected to make. An interviewed I recently did with Jared Fishman of 20 Sided Gamified podcast and his scintillating co-host Kelly Jones McManus was posted on the 20 Sided Gamified site this past Friday.
I would have come here to spread the word sooner but I was busy at HMGS-Pacific South West Mini-Wars convention, helping run the biggest historical miniature wargame I've ever been part of, or even seen -- a 28mm mega-game commemorating the 80th Anniversary of Operation Market Garden, which I'm happy to say was a big success!
***If you happen to be interested in checking out some pics and a very preliminary AAR for that game, here's just one pic and a link to where I just posted about it on TMP: TMP link
NOW BACK TO THE MATTER AT HAND:
I'm here posting on the TMP podcast board for the first time ever for shameless self-promotion purposes… though honestly it's more because Jared the host asked me to spread the word wherever I spend hobby related time on the web and social media. Since I'm an old guy who has zero social media presence that left my humble blog, The Miniatures Page, and Lead Adventure Forum.
The interview covers a wide range of subjects, stretching from my intro to the hobby as a boy in NYC in the Seventies (Polk's Hobby Shop & the opening of The Complete Strategist) to how my wargaming became so focused on the Second Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-1880 and the North-West Frontier in general (my dad's one year of US Army service in British India during WWII), and some of the methods I use and post a lot about on my blog to scratchbuild my terrain. Though I build my terrain for Afghanistan it can be useful for other arid theaters of war, stretching from Ancient North Africa and Middle-East to WWII Western Desert, etc., plus various fantasy & sci-fi settings, so maybe it's not as niche as it sounds.
Towards the end of the interview Jared asked me about my work as a writer and producer in Hollywood… which led to him mentioning the recent Napoleon movie… which led to me telling a story about the 2010 Ridley Scott/Russell Crowe Robin Hood movie, which I don't think I've ever told "in public" before. So if you're into "Hollywood Behind The Scenes" with a military historyl twist, you may enjoy that part.
Honestly I don't know how interesting this stuff will be to my fellow wargamers. Some may enjoy it, others not, and if the latter is the case I will take no offense whatsoever. Looking back on it I kinda wish I had gotten a bit more into the weeds on hard-&-fast practical aspects of my terrain building… but the truth is while some might find that super interesting, others with little or no interest in terrain building would find it a waste of time.
So to sum up… I'm a long-time 28mm Colonial Wargamer who had a long conversation about my hobby interests and experiences and if that sounds interesting to you, thanks in advance for your time and please click on this handy link to go and start listening…
link
…& if you turn it off after a minute or two, no worries, I will take no offense!
One last thing: My sincere thanks to Jared for going out of his way to track me down and have me on as a guest. I think a big part of that was our shared interest in NWF miniature gaming. This past Historicon he ran a big beautiful NWF game that earned an award and when I asked he was kind enough to send me some pics. I'm posting them here, so you can see he is a legit miniature wargamer (a lot of his podcasts focus on various other genres of gaming) as well as a talented terrain-builder. I wish I had some close-ups so we could enjoy his figure-painting, which I'm confident is also pretty good:
