While no gaming on tap besides a few solo dabbles, my attention has been drawn to rummaging through The Lead Pile. In an effort to consolidate and organize the bins of figures, I spent time inspecting the stockpiles of figures for each project. The Punic Wars project likely already musters enough Cretan archers for the field armies but these dozen figures were left over and taking up space. Grabbing these dozen 25mm BTD archers and pushing them into the painting queue frees up some space in the storage bin. I get three skirmish stands too. It is very good that I stockpiled a number of figures divisible by four since my BMUs are four figures strong and BTD has withdrawn the ancients ranges from the catalog.
On the gaming front, a solo AWI replay of the Action at Mill Creek remains to be tackled. With some luck, I can get back to that little scenario later this week. With even more luck, a F2F session is scheduled for Saturday evening outside on the patio. Commands & Colors Ancients is on the slate using my 6mm collection. With proper protocols and facing off across a table in the Great Outdoors, any risk should be minimal.
Finally, 01 August signaled the return of the Great Wargaming Survey by WSS. Again, I plan to be performing some of the data wrangling for this venture when the survey closes. Some of the questions have been tweaked just a bit from prior years to better enable analysis. At least, that was my plan when I submitted my requests. I added a couple of questions too. Stay tuned to death by analysis once the surveys are in.
If you have not already completed the survey, go to,
and have your preferences counted.
Lovely looking archers, it's a pity BTD have withdrawn their ancients line, there were some cracking figures in it,the survey is on my list to do,I look forward to pie charts and data wrangling!
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Thanks, Iain! Yes, a pity, for sure, the the ancients have been withdrawn. Luckily, i already have most of what I might need.
DeleteA nice looking and no doubt useful unit...
ReplyDeleteAll the best. Aly
Thank you, Aly! I am afraid I may have too many Cretan archers. Is that possible?
DeleteHope to see an AAR of sorts when you get some FtF gaming in and, as you say, you should be as safe as you can be outdoors.
ReplyDeleteThe GWS seems markedly different in terms of questions to last year, so will be interested to read your analysis of the results. I won't pretend I'll be able to take it all in though!
Oh and nice Cretan archers too:)
I will provide an update on the CCA gaming session if it comes to pass. Getting back to an actual F2F session will be a good accomplishment and very enjoyable.
DeleteAs for the survey results, I will try to improve upon my delivery next time.
Good to see you like the archers!
Another great looking unit Jon.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear you’re getting back to F2F gaming while it’s still good weather so you can do it outside.
Thanks!
DeleteWeather has been sunny and hot here of late but a chance of rain today. An F2F session will be most welcome!
Nice Cretan archers Jonathan, very useful skirmishers to have. I have some of these BTD figures with the sun hat (petasos). Look forward to your 6mm CCA game.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Mike! The BTD Cretans are very good sculpts. The figures in petasos are my favorites.
DeleteLovely unit - it just looks the part. Can’t believe it has been a year since doing the survey. Going over to it now.
ReplyDeleteI see the opening page requires one to enter their exact age, previous years have given age slots and you just choose the one that represents you. I have a bee in my bonnet about data harvesting and the precision asked here by by this question by an independent pollster organisation, leaves be backing out of the survey. Shame really. I will take it up with WSS as I doubt I am not the only sad soul that cares about such things.
DeleteThanks, Norm, for the Cretan comment.
DeleteYes, exact age is asked and it seems to be a required field. Too bad that you have reluctance in completing the survey due to this question but I understand. I hope you get a satisfactory response from WSS regarding your trepidation on responding to the survey. Report back if you wish. I, for one, would be interested in the official position.
DeleteUntil then, I will offer my USD$0.02 which is becoming less valuable with each passing day as QE and government stimuli erode the dollar's value.
Norm, by time the data are presented the data have been anonymized. In fact, the data are anonymized before reaching me. There is no link between an individual and any of the survey attributes. As for data harvesting, I believe the EU has strong safe guards in place for exactly this purpose of protecting PII. Reporting will still remain at the AGE GROUP level.
If age precision is a concern, what about entering an age within the AGE brackets from last year such that your data falls within your appropriate AGE GROUP?
Hi Norm. AGE is now not a required field.
DeleteHi Jonathan, the editor of WSS has replied to me with a sympathetic style and some very helpful reassurance, not least, is that software used prevents a users I.P. becoming an identifier from which to hang data from.
DeleteTogether with the rest of the contents of his e-mail to me, I am happy to crack on and do ‘my bit’!
Outstanding! The guys at WSS responded quickly. Not only did you get a response but so did I!
DeleteAnother batch of lovely figures up to your usual impeccable standard Jonathon....and I hope your FtF encounter comes to fruition over the next few days!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Keith! You are too kind! I hope to pull off the F2F session on Saturday too. My luck is that it will rain...
DeleteGot to love some Cretan Archers! Nice work :)
ReplyDeleteIndeed, and thank you!
DeleteGreat looking and very useful figures, Jonathan! Cretan archers always have great stats in rule sets. I may have to take that survey for once - just to see how it comes out. Best, Dean
ReplyDeleteThank you, Dean! Go ahead; take the survey!
DeleteCretan archers, either useless or deadly in my games, never quite sure which. Lovely unit.
ReplyDeleteThank you, George! Under my command, I hope deadly. Under my opponent, useless.
DeleteVery nice indeed Jonathan, and I'll be back to use these as inspiration for mine over the coming month.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny reading Norm's comments as I started the survey but abandoned it as I felt a few of the questions were a little, well, unnecessary. Like many of us I have done a few statistics papers in my time and actually conducted market-research projects as a part-time job while at university in the 80's, so although I'm no expert I understand the need for demographic data and assumed that it would be aggregated, but in my case it was the personality-profiling questions that I found a little off-putting (perhaps there should have been a tick-box for 'grumpy old bastard' that I could tick and leave it at that).
I also wonder about the bias that is inherently built into surveys such as this, as I can almost guarantee that no-one among the dozen or so in the two groups I game with will have heard about the survey as none of them are active bloggers or spend any time on on-line forums.But that is an issue with most surveys conducted nowadays in that certain sections of the population are becoming much harder to reach.
That said, I did not make the connection that this was the very same survey you presented all the analysis on last year and which I enjoyed reading about on this blog, so will go back and give it another go today!
Thank you, Lawrence! You don't need me for inspiration for finely painted Cretans. Your work is always fab.
DeleteAs for the survey, yes, data will be anonymized and aggregated so that any individual's comment is masked. Any survey in which the respondents "self-select" will inherently carry some bias especially when only a subset of these self-selectors are aware of the survey. In the regard to survey awareness and your group, let them know!
As for the personality profiling questions, since there was no tick box for "Grumpy Old Bastard," I skipped them! I recall verbiage in the survey, itself, suggesting that one need not answer these questions. These questions were submitted by a German sociologist who is conducting a study.
Please give the survey another try and skip any question that is either not required or of no interest.
As always, thanks for your feedback.
Nice Archers and useful in a number of armies of the ra.
ReplyDeleteI already did the survey. I didn't find any of the questions off putting (not ready for GOM staus, I guess; hopefully even less GOMER status). The intro explained the sociology questions, which made perfect sense to me widening the sample group by both genres and countries.
Thanks, Peter! For the personality questions, I didn’t have the time to thoroughly ponder each attribute pair without becoming completely bogged down.
DeleteI'll be interested to see the survey results. I expect that
ReplyDeleteWhat do you expect?
DeleteGreat looking archers and your making good use of this imposed down time. 😆
ReplyDeleteI’m looking forward to your deeper dive into the survey results.
Thank you, Stew! I look forward to comparing 2020 vs 2019 results.
DeleteAnother great looking work sir!
ReplyDeleteMuch appreciated, Michal!
DeleteThese figures are really nice sculpts, it's too bad they are no longer available. And I love the base!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Hopefully, these out of production ranges have been withdrawn for retooling and will be back some day.
DeleteThank you for reminding! I looked into the questions and found all of them exciting.
ReplyDeleteHave a nice Weekend!
Good to see taking the survey was pleasurable. You have a great weekend too!
DeleteCan never have too many Cretins. Cretans. I meant Cretans.
ReplyDeleteSure you did...
DeleteThey look great Jonathan!
ReplyDeleteChristopher
Thanks!
DeleteWhat a bunch of Cretans!
ReplyDeleteI completed the survey quite early in the piece and was not overly concerned about the questions. I remember years ago a roommate was concerned about what was being asked in the census so he sought to skew the results by claiming that his ethnicity was Indo-Inuit, his mother was a brain surgeon and his father as garbage collector, his religion was Old Norse and he was a warehouseman with a salary of $250,000 PA. He was quite an eccentric individual and it probably escaped him that his one result like this was unlikely to skew a survey with several million respondents, but it was his little protest.
Nothing wrong with a harmless and insignificant protest!
DeleteYou can never have too many archers, your productivity as always astounding I never have time to spend organising stuff. But I have managed to get away cycling for three days 😀👍
ReplyDeleteI don't know, Matt, I may have TOO many Cretan archers now...
DeleteGetting away for three days of cycling sounds terrific! Hope you had an enjoyable time and brought home a few photos.