Holiday Book Buying

I always receive amazon vouchers for Christmas from some of my relatives, and this is a gift that I am always happy to get. This year, I used them to good hobby effect, with all three purchases being hobby related.

The first one was

 

Color, by Betty Edwards.

This was the recommendation of Meg Maples at her Masterclass, as the book to use to understand colour theory. I have yet to dive into this one, so I'll be holding back on further comment until I get a chance to read through it.

Lion Rampant, by Daniel Mersey

I've been aware of a steady increase in the number of blog posts relating to this game, with people using various medieval armies, as well as fantasy armies to play the game (Dwarves seem to be particularly popular). For one such excellent review, I'll point you to the Dice Bag Lady's blog. All this points to a good game with a healthy following. It will also give me another use for the Bretonnian and Empire armies I have, especially since I have been using a Medieval historic theme for my Bretonnians. It will also give me an excuse to buy into more Scottish minis, especially the Claymore Islander figs. Claymore have even released army bundles just for me! Now there's a forum for the game too, to go learn more about the rules.

 

Bannockburn 1314, Robert Bruce's Greatest Victory, by Peter Armstrong

My interest in this battle has been simmering away in the background, pretty much since for ever, being Scots born, however, with last year being the 700th anniversary of the battle, and the release of the rule set above, I finally bought this so I could learn more about it. Of this set of books, this is the one I read first, and it is a great example of the Osprey campaign series, and gave me lots of ideas as to what I want to do to make Lion Rampant forces for Medieval Scots and English to batter lumps out of each other over the table top.

In one final piece of news, in an attempt to make a little money from this blog, I joined as an Amazon Associate, so buy clicking on any of these links to buy these books (in the titles), you'll be doing a little to help fund my book buying habit. I will not become a millionaire through this by any means, but every little I earn is something I didn't make before, and for that, I am very thankful. I figures this was an inoffensive means of monetizing this site, as I'm not a fan of ads everywhere. Even if you don't buy aything, at least give me some clicks, so I can sit back and watch the pennies roll in!

In fact, I've gone back through my old book posts, and updated all of the links, so if you were thinking about buying any of the books I have mentioned before (even the free ones) now is the time to go do it.

If any of you have had experience of this system , or others like it, let me know what you think.

Upper Canada Village

As newly minted Canadian Citizens, we get a Canadian cultural pass. This allows free access to a whole host of attractions and parks across the country, as a way of helping new Canadians to see and access the country. One of the places we can get into for free is the Upper Canada Village. This is only about an hour and a half from Montreal.

I can remember going to somethign similar as a kid, with the Canadian branch of the family on one of our many visits to Toronto as a young 'un (I think it may have been this one), but I can't remember a thing about it, other than some pigs, people in costume, and it being really muddy. Fortunately, that was not the experience we had today (the blistering sun for one kept the mud at bay). Furthermore, there were two added bonuses to the visit. First off, they were holding a Medieval Festival today, replete with vikings and jousting (not at the same time) amongst a host of other events. This we knew of before going, and was one of the reasons we went today. The second bonus was that the village is sited right beside Crysler Farm, that of 1813 fame.

Firrstly, some pics from the Medieval part of the day.

...and got to try out some others

We got to see all these warmachines in action...

Big'un gets to go for a ride on the knight's horse.

Full contact jousting.

A dragon and minstrel show.

Vikings marching to battle. I was surprised how easily the lil'un followed the chevaliers!

I was sorely tempted by the one with the wings!

Then it was back to the 1860's era village. A great mix of buildings with many roles within the village. Unlike a lot of this type of place, where you just look in and see old stuff, each one of the buildings had a volunteer playing the role of the owner of the building, and each one had very interesting stuff to pass on, as well as was able to answer any questions we had. The last little surprise, was, when looking at the map of the village, I noted one of the homes was named the Robertson House. Made me feel right at home! If you're in the area, I cannot recommend this place more highly.

In the end, the three things in one place was too much for one visit, and we didn't make it round the farm memorial site, so no pics of that. That plus the gorgeous weather all day left those of us with a soft northern complexion in need of retiring back to the air conditioned car before sun-stroke set in. The good news is that there was enough of the village still to see (and a train we didn't manage to go on), that we plan to come back another time (as it's still free for us for the rest of the year), at which point I intend to get a look at the site.