Rapid Fire Review: All The King's Men 18th Century Playing Cards

"Annnd coming out from the left wing, a strange and what would appear to be out of place review of non-wargaming material..."

Ah, but you see, that would be completely incorrect.  Yes, a slightly out of the blue sort of blog post, but I need to get back into the swing of things somehow.

Last weekend I drove the 1,800 kms down to Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA to attend HistoriCon 2012 and came back across the border with a lot less money and a lot more toys.  One of the items I purchased was a deck of playing cards.  Playing cards? What kind of connection do they have with wargaming?  Well, its a rather simple answer, not all rulesets employ a IgoUgo system or even dice for that matter (read: Malifaux).

So, wandering around the dealer hall at HistoriCon, I dropped by Ken Cliffe's booth All the King's Men.  Ken is a friend of a friend and I had not meet him until the event itself.  My "mentor and patron" Dave Hoyt of much ado about nothing blogging fame is a good friend of Ken and usually helps him out with running his booth at the major historical wargaming conventions (Cold Wars, Fall-In and HistoriCon).  Ken is a transplanted Canadian and was born in my hometown of the GTA.  Anyway, All The King's Men produces a line of drop-dead fantastic 54mm War of 1812 figures and terrain.  He is actually expanding into the Napoleonic range.  Not that I need another scale or project... but very tempting is his wares.

His ruleset (All the King's Men) uses a card deck system to activate units and while he has another FANTASTIC set of War of 1812 themed playing cards that include historical tidbits and interesting facts, I think the real jewel in the rough are these 18th Century replica cards.

Anyway, on to the rapid fire review of the cards themselves.  They cost 10$ a set and come in a nice canvas bag.  Printed on what I would imagine to be paper that would have been used in the 18th Century, they are very high quality and very professionally done.

I'm not exactly sure what I can use these for (other then Ken's ruleset of course), but its a nice little addition to my collection and lets face it, Cons are terrible for spur of the moment purchases...

These cards will fit in quite nicely with my 18th Century ImagiNation project and are just darn cool to have.

Would I buy these cards again if I had to order them online from ATKM?  You are damn sure I would do such a thing.  Not only is it supporting a small company, but they are also just plan neat.

If you want to order yourself a set, they can be purchased from All the King's Men and if you have any interest at all in historical things or know someone who does, they make perfect stocking stuffers. 

Summer Update #1: Back in Action

Well, it has been a long time since my last blog post and prior to dropping off the face of the wargaming blog world, I had quite a good run of posts going.  Cause of my disappearance? I was posted since the 5th of June to a Head Quarters unit within the Canadian Forces as a Signals (communications) Officer.  After two months of sitting in front of a computer for seven hours a day, five days a week, I had some trouble summoning the willpower to do anything other then rest my eyes, read and enjoy the company of my better half.  I guess it does not help that the temperature in Kingston has be rather nasty from May onward, humidity standing in the mid-70s to 90% and the lowest its has been in terms of temperature is 23*C.

The high humidity and heat has not made it easy for painting as well.  Even with over-soaking my wet palette with to much water, the paint was drying to fast to effectively use.  My bottle of flow improver is almost empty as I have had to save most of my paint collection from drying out in bottle (fuck you GW and your crappy designs).

Anyway, I plan on posting at a more regular pace and maybe increasing my follower count past the seven that have added me to their reading list.  In the next week or so I will be posting up pictures from my trip last week to HistoriCon in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

To end this report, I shall add in some pictures of my current paint station layout and the models I have managed to finish over the last calendar year!

The set of cards for the Maurice ruleset can be seen at the bottom of the picture, I hope to get some games and battle reports done over the next month.

Duchy of Libations in the back, Malifaux in the middle-front and some newly completed models for my line infantry regiment can be seen unbased (I can't find my wood filler :-/ )