Opening shot

With all the dilatoriness I manage to apply towards blogging, it seems a little cavalier to start another; however—Saepe erro, nunquam dubito—here I go. I've had an interest in 17th c. warfare for a very long time. I think reading Peter Young's short bio on Oliver Cromwell and later Antonia Fraser's Cromwell: The Lord Protector in high school got me going.  Back then (the 70s) there wasn't a lot of information in English or in the US easily available for the period. Thus, with my attraction to all things arcane and obscure, I was incorrigibly drawn to it.

Why Pike & Periwig? Well, it alliterates nicely. It's also the name of a set of early-late 17th c. rules that I'd been noodling on for a while (see my other blog). Why did you name the rules that (I ask rhetorically at risk of infinite regression)? I think because the 17th c.—at least the latter part of it—was a time when the pike was still Queen of Battle and all the manly men were periwigged dandies. The juxtaposition makes a interesting mental picture—for me at least.

Why another blog on wargaming stuff? Because I need to compete with El Grego of the many blogs. Also because I have multiple 17th c. gaming projects and I'd like a blog that focuses on that era—though I expect I'll slip a bit into the 16th c. and early 18th c. I realize that blogging here will cut into my blogging on I Live with Cats, but it's more likely that I'll just neglect both.

I'm also emerging from our shared COVID hibernation and it's time to get back to the hobby. Throughout COVID time, I've done very little gaming or painting. We had some naval gaming in the Summer and early Fall on a friend's lawn and one naval game in an open garage in sub-freezing temperature in December. We've only recently come back to limited indoor gaming—still masked—at a game store in Bothell, WA (our former go-to gaming venue closed in the midst of COVID). I've had my first shot of the COVID Moderna vaccine, with the next scheduled for May 12. After that, we'll start some grumpy old men gaming indoors at people's homes. At 60, I've only just became eligible for the vaccine, though it seems to be about to become a free-for-all throughout the US.

A significant part of my effort will be returning to the 17th c. gaming projects for ECW and the 1672 Dutch War. I'll also apply myself to completing the remaining units for my Irish Project, which is really very. very late 16th and just over the mark into the 17th c.

So, there it is. A new blog coming. Hang on for more.