The Resurrection Reshuffle!

Oh my goodness me, what a couple of weeks this has been! With the academic year now well underway, I had started to turn my thoughts towards Zomtober; that wonderful opportunity to awaken some long neglected undead miniatures from the pile of shame and have them shamble across the painting table. With this in mind, I had already earmarked a couple of likely candidates and was preparing to make a start when, without warning, the gremlins descended upon my beloved 28mm Victorian Warfare!

What nonsense was this?  Try as I might, I simply couldn't fathom what was causing the interminable loading times and infuriating delays. Initially, I assumed that it was connected to the problems being reported by others across our cosy corner of the blogosphere, but to my horror I soon realised, through a process of elimination, that the root of this particular affliction was this humble weblog, oh the shame of it!   A little investigation, courtesy of Google, suggested that the problem might lie with the widgets in the sidebar. Many of these venerable additions had been there since the blog's inception, way back in 2011, and so I embarked upon what I imagined would be a spot of gentle housekeeping.

Oh, how wrong I was, best beloved!  What began as a little judicious pruning rapidly descended into a full scale purge as I cut swathes through links, pages and widgets in a desperate attempt to discover what was causing the problem.  Each hopeful deletion was followed by another frustrating test, but still the wretched thing refused to behave.  All of this coincided with a ridiculously busy couple of weeks at the chalkface, what with reports to complete and parents' evenings to attend.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the shuffling of the undead finally groaned to a halt before it had properly begun.

This came as something of a bitter blow.  I had so enjoyed reconnecting with friends across the hobby community and was determined to maintain that momentum, even if only at a somewhat reduced pace.  Instead, I found myself spending what little free time I had dismantling the very blog I was so keen to return to.  With precious little left to remove, short of the posts themselves, I decided to try another line of enquiry and turned to ChatGPT.

Now, I appreciate that the seemingly inexorable march of Artificial Intelligence is not without its detractors, and I would certainly count myself amongst those who approach such developments with a healthy degree of scepticism.  I have a natural mistrust of anything that appears to make life suspiciously easy, but I have been spending a little time exploring this particular large language model and, rather to my surprise, have found myself thoroughly enjoying the experience.

On this occasion, however, it proved to be something of a revelation. Guiding me through seemingly unnavigable recesses of the blog, places that even the spam bots feared to roam, it helped me investigate the problem and eventually identify the offending gremlin lurking amongst lines of code and commands that made my head reel. With a little reassurance and some carefully explained instructions, I kid you not, we managed to snip out the culprit; a long expired piece of widget code that had been left behind. And just like that, everything worked again!

Well, almost everything. The blog now loads beautifully, but the various bits and pieces I had so enthusiastically sheared away are, alas, long gone. If only I had thought to ask for help a little earlier!  Still, with the gremlins finally banished and my enthusiasm suitably restored, I find myself with only a couple of weeks of Zomtober remaining and rather more unfinished business than I had anticipated. Clearly, drastic measures were required, so I decided to combine a couple of smaller projects and see if I couldn't get the undead shuffling again.

The first order of business was to complete the French ammunition caisson that I had mentioned in my previous post.  This was another fabulous little kit from 'Warbases', mounted upon one of their MDF terrain bases.  I supplemented the wagon with a selection of boxes and assorted odds and ends from the bits box, together with some frankly ridiculous cannonballs fashioned from metal ball bearings.  I suspect that the Chef de Bataillon might have raised an eyebrow at their dimensions, but they certainly look the part!

The various sponges and ramrods also received a little attention. If you look closely, you may notice some rather suspicious kinks along their lengths; these mark the points where I removed the hands that had originally been holding them before repositioning the equipment as abandoned stores.  With the groundwork painted and dressed to match the previously completed pieces, the caisson was ready to take its place alongside the unfortunate artillery casualties.

Now, clearly, what every devastated French artillery position needs, particularly at this time of year, is a freshly resurrected crew! Enter the wonderful Chris Peach of Peachy Tips fame. Chris is one of the many inspiring hobbyists whose work I enjoy following, and I had watched one of his YouTube videos demonstrating how to create revenants using ordinary plastic infantry sprues. The process looked so delightfully straightforward that I simply had to give it a go.

Essentially, the trick was to take perfectly respectable artillerymen and subject them to a series of increasingly undignified alterations. Legs were twisted into awkward positions, feet repositioned at improbable angles, heads left balancing precariously upon shoulders and arms extended in that wonderfully familiar gesture of the recently deceased seeking a little companionship.  It was hugely entertaining and, much to my delight, worked every bit as well as Chris had suggested.

Before long, I had assembled a small group of four French artillerymen whose rather unfortunate postures suggested that military discipline had become something of a secondary consideration.  Painting was kept deliberately simple, with the uniforms matching those of the fallen artillerymen from the previous post.  Their complexions, however, were given a distinctly less healthy appearance, suggesting that their recent experiences had done little for their general wellbeing.

With the newly resurrected crew complete, I reached once again for one of Jon Hodgson's wonderful backdrop books and arranged a few photographs alongside the damaged artillery and newly completed caisson.  I have to confess that seeing the various elements together was enormously satisfying. What began as a simple casualty marker has gradually developed into a rather more substantial scene, complete with abandoned equipment, shattered artillery and a handful of former Frenchmen who appear unwilling to accept the finality of their circumstances.

Whether they will eventually make an appearance in my next Silver Bayonet solo adventure remains to be seen, but I rather suspect that the Harvestmen may have something to say about that.  And so, with the blog resurrected, the painting table once again occupied and the dead shuffling obligingly towards their next engagement, I can finally declare my somewhat belated Zomtober underway.

It would appear that reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated!