Native Son

Hi,

Things are starting to shake down here in Monkeyland.  Finished up the orientation for Newjob yesterday, and while I'm a little sad that Cub goes back to his mom's today, the upside is that now that we're in Halifax, we'll see him again in just over a week, rather than in several months.

On the geek front, I've spent some time modelling and priming up most of 1000 points of 40k orks.  The Cub has shown some interest, so I figured we'd take him down to the local for a few trial games.  He's also been painting a few old space marines I've got kicking around.  Three cheers for GW, gateway to the hobby ;)  I helped him a little with the eyes, but the rest is his work.  Not bad for an 8-year old, and a far sight better than his efforts of a few years ago.





For myself, I've managed to paint up a few more Natives for M&T. I like how they turned out, and feel better about these than the last batch of French.  Less rush, less feel of "work".  One thing that's pretty clear about how things will operate here; in the absence of any regular gaming, my painting is less instrumental.  With no pressure to get stuff on the table, I might get less done, but will also be painting for the joy of it, which comes with it's own advantages.



I also had a chance the other night to sit down and plan out the Acadian project a little.  Historically, this is one of those "margins of empire" struggles.  It bears a similar relationship to the F&IW as that bears to the 7YW proper.  While the bulk of the literature I've seen focuses on the Ohio / Champlain corridor / St. Lawrence theatres, there was a long-running guerrilla conflict, preceding the formal outbreak of war by several years.  French marines, militia and provincials, Abenaki and Mik'maq, Massachusetts colonial militia, mercenary ranger companies, and more, along with shifting identities, and mounting violence and atrocity.  The Acadians, with close kinship ties to the Mik'maq, cultural and religious ones to the French, and economic ones to Boston and Massachusetts, were torn apart, and eventually forcibly relocated.



Before we came out here, I picked up a mess of the 18mm Blue Moon figures.  The more I paint these, the more I like them.  I think, given the often metis nature of the Acadian community, and the sometimes haphazard equipment of the informal combatants, I might try my hand at some conversions.  I've done head swaps in this scale before, when I was putting with FoW cossacks, so I'm kind of interested to see what I can cook up here.



Another thing I'm looking forward to is making some terrain.  In addition to several 4Ground buildings, I'm going to need some terrain basics - hills, trees, etc.  I've been purusing some websites out there, and will see what I can cook up.



To help get me in the mood, I've been reading Faragher's "A Great and Noble Scheme" on the morning commute.  It's a sympathetic history of the Acadians from the earliest settlements to expulsion, and stresses the various connections that both pushed the Acadians towards neutrality, and eventually made that position untenable.  I've been finding some interesting similarities to recent histories of the US RevWar and 1812.  The Acadians comprised a nativist and North American culture, distinct from the imperial cultures that fought over Acadia territory.  In many ways, they were ahead of their time, foreshadowing some of the issues that would drive later conflicts to different ends.  If you get a chance, I'd recommend reading it.

FMB