Welcome to my first foray into playing the Black Seas wargame- and we're going to be starting off with a very small scale game- a single ship action fought between two Brigs during the War of 1812- where HMS Pelican captured the USS Argus off of the Irish and Welsh coasts. The History of This Action This Action took place on the 14th of August 1813, with the ships spotting each other very early in the morning.  The Argus was a Brig that had escaped from the blockade of the American Ports that the Royal Navy had been conducting, with a mission to deliver an American diplomat to France (who at the time, was of course at war with Britain too). The Argus achieved its mission- and after this, her Captain, Master and Commander William Allen, decided to remain in the Atlantic and seas around Britain to disrupt merchant sailing. He and his crew were extremely successful at this, capturing and burning in the region of 20 merchantmen in a short space of time. Ultimately, this flurry of activ

  For my Isengard army that I'm currently building, I'm going to be including some Crebain- flocks of crows which Saruman uses as his spies. The first point of call would of course be the official models made by Games Workshop. However, the official models are Forge World- and a little on the pricey side... £27.50 for 2 Crebain flocks... I looked at reviews, which do suggest these are good models- but as I needed 3, I didn't feel I could justify £55 for 2 packs- especially as the rest of the army didn't cost much more than this...  I therefore had a look for some alternatives to make Crebain with- although there weren't a massive amount of crow models out there. I found some individual crow miniatures, but would have had to completely construct a base for them. This was perhaps a bit too much effort for what aren't something that I want to become a time sink. In the end, I circled back to Games Workshop, for some other miniatures they make for Age of Sigmar. The

  We're into our penultimate month of painting for our challenge to each build a 700 point Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game army. There is still plenty to paint though, and this month we were tackling a new warband to add to the first we've all painted for our armies. This is going to mean plenty of painting, so lets get straight to how we all got on! Isengard- Onod Onod: June was a busy month for me- which isn't always ideal when you've got some models that need painting by a deadline. My painting this month was orcs- which is what the bulk of my army is made of. It's safe to say that painting orcs isn't the most interesting thing- and if I'm honest, painting large quantities of models like orcs is one of the reasons I don't normally try and paint 'horde' armies. I have a tendency to get distracted, and move on before finishing the army. However, having a painting challenge like this can really help with motivation, and whilst I was very much