Not quite what I asked for...

Hello again.

Picture the scene.

You are at a wargames show. The shekel in your pocket is burrowing furtively through your trouser pocket cloth t find its way in the world, eager to make the acquaintance of a trader. You know what you want to buy, but there are just so many goodies on display form so many purveyors of fine wargames materials. But you know what you want and, there, just to the left of the guy with the shiny books, rests the emporium of one whom you know has "the business".

You sidle over, you act as calm as your frantically beating heart allows, you casually enquire of their ranges and they proffer you the show catalogue.

"Hmm," you think to yourself, desperate not to betray the fact that they could sell you anything and you would happily part with your coin.

"I think I'll have half a dozen of code X," you announce, looking at the floor lest the purveyor of fine wares catches the gleam in your eye for his leaden offerings. "A code Y, two code Z and..."

Your eyes flick from side to side, your breath bursting from your heaving chest with too much gusto for one who is neither exhausted nor having a cardiac arrest.

"And one of those cannons with crew."

Job done.

You get home later that day, broke financially, but elated at the offerings, trinkets and baubles of yet another wargames show, high on the elixir of expenditure and safe in the satisfaction that you have, with professional-level deviousness, managed to sneak a backpack full of a hundredweight of lead figures, a half ton of books, sundry sheets of magnetic materials and scenic matter and the odd board game past the love of your life.

Some time later, perhaps days later, when the emotions have cooled again, you trawl back through your purchases and sift through in a more diligent and leisurely manner than is afforded by the mad press of the wargames show, salivating and delighting at your delightful new toys.

And then you come to the cannon and crew.

It's a mortar.

"And one of those cannons and crew," you said to the imp who knoweth not his catalogue.

It's a mortar.

You want to fire roundshot straight down the necks of those scoundrels the Redcoats...

It's a mortar.

"I don't (insert your favourite expletive here) need a mortar!"

You secrete it away in a fury of realisation that you have been duped and dismayed by the bounder. You forget about it. You put it down to experience.

Then you decide you are going to do a show game featuring a FIW siege...

"How foresightful of me to buy that mortar," you muse to yourself.

So you build it, you base it, you paint the crew, you paint the officer it comes with also and you offer it up on the altar of the blog post.

Cue one Redoubt Miniatures French mortar with colonial Cannoniers-Bombardiers crew figures, together with said officer.

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One mortar, which I obviously meant to buy really (!), duly mounted on a base made with coffee stirrer planks and my usual ground cover around the edges. I intend to build a little firing position in which to house it, with gabions, planking and built up soil banks, but that is a while away yet. I need to get the figures done first!





"I said lob it over there!" One officer of the colonial Cannoniers-Bombardiers in siege armour.