Chicago Bears Middle Linebacker Brian Urlacher Retires Today

Brian Urlacher has announced his retirement today in Chicago after 13 brilliant seasons with the Chicago Bears as the middle linebacker. His birthday is coming up this Saturday the 25th.

This is a great player, worthy of the many tributes going on today around here.

Photo: Off English wikipedia, q.v. (which see) Brian_Urlacher.jpg: Jauerback

Jeff Joniak is interviewing everybody he can find



I have been listening to sound bites gathered by Jeff Joniak on WBBM radio who is running around trying to talk to everybody.  At first Jeff was saying he had 11 forced fumbles, but has latterly corrected that to 12.

Charles Tillman just said he was a "great player, and a great friend,...a great leader, an awesome leader, and great guy." That's a lot of greats.

 Roosevelt Colvin just said he "always went to bat, never threw anybody under the bus, class act."

Other people are saying stuff too.

Here is an excerpt from the already updated wikipedia page including a quote from Devin Hester, where Devin was talking about the 2006 game with the Arizona Cardinals with an Incredible Hulk performance, by Urlacher, after that was the Super Bowl. 

 I had to work the day of the Super Bowl, even though it was my day off, but some lady from New York needed to be escorted and I had to get called in to do that just when the Super Bowl was about to start. She didn't even know it was the day of the Super Bowl. With the Bears in it!!!!!  It was so cold that day my moustaches froze solid, and the jets going into O'Hare sounded different in the sub-zero air, it has to be really cold to sound different like that. My truck barely started too. My day off. I blame my Civil War Correspondent for calling me in, I never should have answered the phone. Ah who cares, the TVs are better at work anyway. Je ne regrette rien.

Go to the link for more with highlights, stats and pics.

"The team continued their resurgence into the 2006 season, finishing with a record of 13–3. During the season, Urlacher had one of the best performances of his professional career against the Arizona Cardinals.[32] He helped the Bears overcome a 20-point deficit by recording 25 tackles and a forced fumble that was returned for a touchdown.[32] Teammate Devin Hester commented on Urlacher's performance, stating, "We watched the film and everybody was saying that he just turned into the Incredible Hulk the last four minutes of the game, just killing people and running over and tackling whoever had the ball."[33] The Bears won the NFC Championship against the New Orleans Saints, 39–14, but lost Super Bowl XLI to the Indianapolis Colts, 29–17. Urlacher finished the season with 93 tackles and three forced fumbles. He was elected to the 2006 All-Pro Team and 2007 Pro Bowl, while also earning consideration for the League's Defensive Player of the Year award.[34]"

Here's the link to read more.    So hit it.


And Brian himself said, among other things, "I don't regret anything I've ever said or done, I know that much."

Well I haven't forgotten about that one Friday night date with Paris Hilton, wasn't that Las Vegas, about probably eleven or twelve years ago, and then on Sunday at high noon the Bears lost that day. I haven't forgotten, but I forgave it, even that day, I understand. I wouldn't really regret either. Probably just scurrilous rumors anyway.

If you want to hoot with the owls, you better be able to soar with the eagles in the morning.


So an Era has ended...
 It's a New Era Now and Time for Reflection and Renewed Resolution of Our Goals

That's great, he can say that along with Edith Piaf, l'incomparable.

Here are her lyrics with English alongside, I think they are worth reading. The Spanish translation transduccion en espanol is in the Uploader Comments.

I am reflecting on these past thirteen seasons, one of the main highlights has been seeing him up there in the middle of that Defense. In my world, it has mainly been thirteen years and in fact more than that  basically down the toilet slaving with Gee Four Ess, which was wacky. My only goal was to survive, and so far I'll give it that, although several times that looked dicey. And to see my gf naked. So I win.

But my achievements pale in comparison to Urlacher's. Even Oprah Winfrey has his jersey along with thousands of other people around here. My gf to be different has a Devin Hester one, in an orange, authentic of course. You could get NFL jerseys from nfl.com or maybe someplace else. I think the Brent Farvra ones are still in the bargain bin, after everybody had to repurchase the Rogers ones a couple years ago.

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Austerlitz 1805 207th Anniversary Project

 207th Anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz 1805

Today is the 207th Anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805, December 2. This was considered one of Napoleon's best in any list of his bloody masterpieces.

I have been working towards a new project because of the anniversary to use the small shipment of some 1500 new 3mm Napoleonic figures I ordered about a month ago, to make a very small miniature setup based on Austerlitz, as near as can be ascertained with the books I have on hand.

I don't intend to use more than about ten percent of those figures on this project, which is meant to be extremely compact, if not minimalist.

This post is only to update readers; I don't have really dramatic progress such as pics this time, for viewing, but have done the preparation research so I could start now, if I weren't writing this. To me that part is the more important part and always has been. The rest of the hobby is a good way to use the information. Other gamers I know are content to let someone else figure it all out, but I prefer to do that myself.

About Those 3mm Figures

They are very quick to paint up. The artillery I showed last time only had a few swipes of the brush and were pretty much ready to use, in maybe three minutes' work plus modest drying time, and the same applies to the other types. After just a few colors are applied they are about as good as they are going to get, except for any obvious slop-overs.

They are kind of tricky because they are so very small, on the one hand a very quick few strokes makes them more or less ready to go, but when you look closely especially with magnification you actually can see more details, that you are then tempted to try to paint. But the trouble is your finest brush will then look like a baseball bat under the magnification and it will appear to move ten feet when you try to even make the slightest move.

And then after all sorts of delays for corrections of seemingly massive slop-over, where even 1 millimeter equals two feet on the man, it turns out that when you set them on the table 1 foot from your eyes they are so small that you can hardly tell which are blue and which are gray. You also cannot see the slopovers that seemed so bad a minute ago.

Over at the 3mm group some have started to be posted as enthusiasts have been getting their pieces painted over the past couple of weeks, and I don't think their standard is much better than mine. People so far have been skipping details such as cuffs. If there is any way to get them on, they would look better with them, so I will soon see about that. On a 6mm figure that is what makes the uniform come to life in periods when they were used, but this is rather smaller than that, and is a very tiny area. I am curious to see whether tey will be visible even if done.



Painting has not been the holdup. Rules have been. And specifically which scale of representation to commit to before painting. I was talking about using 1 figure = 312.5 men a month ago. Now I have gone even further towards the far out there scale by going to 1 figure = 500 men.

At this scale a battalion of 500 men would be just one figure, and a whole army could easily deploy on an area the size of a mousepad. The ground scale is 1:50,000, which directly corresponds with military and other topographical maps, notably those used by NATO and others.

I have talked about this sort of arrangement before. I don't think anyone actually does it but me, as far as I can tell. If anyone else does try to play at a scale like this I would love to hear about it.

Talking About Austerlitz Books in This Section

There are two sets of rules that lend themselves to the army level of play that I have referred to here before.
One is Napoleonic Wargaming for Fun, by Paddy Griffith.


The next one is Charlie Wesencraft's Practical Wargaming.

Griffith has Army level rules in that book among other sets of rules, and Wesencraft has what he calls the Army Corps in Action rules. These last ones predate and resemble the systems of DBA closely.

Both of these books have been recently republished by John Curry, who is at johncurryevents.co.uk

The problem I am having with these is that they are element-based, where the elements are all of some uniform size, so as to compare with one another one-on-one, whereas I am making units of the correct size, within the nearest 500 at least.So I can't just say a brigade is 2000 men; some may be but many are not. Uniform elements are not good enough for me, they'd seem a ghastly abstraction.

So I am probably going to see what I can use from these rules, once the figures are painted up, but at the same time I am about halfway through just making my own rules anyway, since the scale is radically different from what we normally see. At 1:50,000 scale, 20mm is 1000 meters. The huge expanse of Leipzig would be only about 20 inches of battlefield, and other battles would be smaller still.

But Austerlitz takes up a wide expanse, if one includes Brno (Bruenn) the nearby fortress town, and the map I am looking at takes in 24 km by 18 km, which is a pretty large area. That translates to about 14 by 19 inches, a foot to a foot and a half, and could easily be played on a coffee table sized area.

Also the armies are quite small at this scale, only around 150 figures or so on each side. They could all be assembled on the same mouse pad. So I think they will be ready soon, sometime this season. I have been figuring out how many to use,

Then another influence is the famous game with the greats of British and American wargaming who did Borodino at 1 figure = 500 men. That can be read about on the Vintage Wargaming blog (see Blogroll.)

So far I have been reading in Robert Goetz, 1805 Austerlitz: Napoleon and the Destruction of the Third Coalition, Greenhill Books, 2005. This book came out after the earlier Scott Bowden book on Austerlitz, that there was some controversy over because some critics were accusing Bowden of making citations he had not really researched properly. The consensus IIRC among the critics, if there was any consensus that is, was that he did read the French sources, and analyzed well from them, but probably not the Austrian and Russian ones, even though he cited them, so that was the basis of the criticism.

You could find these type arguments at TMP and at Amazon reviews, and maybe some of the other specifically Napoleonic sites, if you wanted to follow up on that.

And the Goetz book came out later, with another adjustment to the OB, which Bowden himself had been correcting in his book, from the received wisdom one quoted in Christopher Duffy's Austerlitz 1805 book much earlier, that one came out in 1977. Goetz comes up with about 82,000.

The idea is that Napoleon's Bulletin lied like a bulletin, and exaggerated the Allied army to 90,000, and did this to make the victory look even more amazing and great than it was, for propaganda value. So the modern revisionist might doubt that they were all present, and say there were many less than we thought, due to attrition, etc, and surely so many less that it is easier to see why they would lose.  But Goetz seems not quite so ready as some others to take away all the strength of the Allies, and gives some back, in a process of applying what is known and projected and guessed at.

I find this kind of adjustment to the OB fascinating to follow through different authors and books.

There is also an Osprey title, Campaign 101, by Ian Castle, Austerlitz 1805: The Fate of Empires, 2002, which I have been using. That one has some parts written by David Chandler. Now this is a replacement at Osprey for an earlier number actually written  by David Chandler, which I would like to get, even if some parts of the analysis may seem to be dated.

Another book I have here is a thicker one, not just on the battle but the whole war situation of 1805, in 700 pages, talking about the overall situation for 500 pages before arriving at the battle of Austerlitz. This one is by Frederick W. Kagan, The End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe 1801-1805. So it takes in a wider picture and isn't only about the battle and military aspects. It puts a perspective on the situation though. There are readers' impressions of these books at TMP as well as at places like Amazon reviews.

Kagan has several unflattering footnotes aimed at Bowden and some at Duffy.

Trying Out Skimlinks on the Blog
Besides the fact that I have been using these books to come up with a painting plan, I am trying to do something completely different at the same time by citing their titles. With the Christmas season well underway I am trying to launch skimlinks on the blog as a belated replacement for amazon links, which I used to have here.

The governor of this state made a highly misguided tax deal (extreme increase) that caused all 9,000 amazon associates in Illinois to be kicked out, and become unemployed, over a year ago, reducing our income to zero. We have been near destitute since then, eating beans and rice sometimes to eke out an existence. Even my figures are now the size of rice grains themselves.

Skimlinks is a British-based, London, UK,  middleman company who themselves would serve as a non-Illinois amazon associate, that would allow me to resume the sales through them back to amazon, at least until I can get to a better state. They have a lot more than just amazon however, about 12,000 retailers, so it could be that if I mention things they may pop into links whether I planned it or not. So this post is also an experiment to see whether I can get the links working, and if not I will try making adjustments later, so the scene may change a bit, and that explains why. For example it may change much earlier links from a couple years ago. I don't know yet what it'll look like; if it gets too carried away I can reduce it.

When someone follows a link for a certain book, they are not committed to buying that or any book or other item, but can get whatever they then decide they do want after all. For instance once when I was talking about Wesencraft's book, the best customer was buying Civil War books unrelated to what I was talking about, but it was good anyway. I have also followed those links and found forty dollar books for two dollars, or even less, sometimes. It turns out to be a better deal than I could have imagined.

I might also consider adding google affiliate ads as well, the ones currently displayed off on the corners are called adsense, this would expand on that program.

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3mm Napoleonics Arrived In 2 Days

Quick and Accurate Service From PicoArmor

I sat around thinking about the Napoleonics for a week, and how I might use them, and then placed an order over the Internet on Saturday the 27th, so for them to arrive by noon today the 30th already was quicker than I had expected. In fact I was still thinking about how I was going to use them.

It was already afternoon when I ordered on Saturday, about 72 hours ago, and I have not even checked my email yet to see if they had confirmed receiving the order. By ordering over 25 dollars' worth, domestic US, I qualified for the free shipping, which cost them $3.65, but because I am in the worst state of the Union,  and so are they, being within the distance I would drive to work at the Salt Mines, I was subject to the tax which was about 25 percent more than what I saved there. No doubt the governor's cronies already spent my money last year anyway, plus everybody else's.

Look at These Babies

I ordered fifteen packs. Altogether with the governor getting his vigorish it just goes over $64 US for that many.

There are over 1500 between the troops and the sixty pieces of artillery. There are closer-up pictures on the links already  provided, and I'll put up some more; I meant to do one particularly for the UK and Euro people last time but I'll just put it here.


The whole line so far has only ten packs, so I got one of each and a few extras in certain types strategically selected. That way I can see the entire range right here, and still expand in certain ones before ordering again.

Now when you check what the Fighting 15s guy said, here, you'll see he is a bit concerned he might run low on the bearskins Grenadiers first, but mine came from PicoArmor just that quick. Where it says 'here' leads to him talking about it on TMP, and where it says Fighting 15s it goes directly to their site, where the figures are pictured for all ten packs closer up, and priced at 3 GBP each. You can do the math, the rates change a little daily. I can't tell who's in worse shape between US and UK from such a rate, considering in the US they are $4, maybe free shipping. Time is a factor, though, too.

I don't know how Australia is doing for these, but they are probably coming right along, it isn't really that far anyway depending on your means of transportation.  On the Fighting 15 page they have a blue flag with a circle of stars. I think that means the Euro flag, but in any event  both of the sites linked take PayPal, etc, and can handle the conversions of currencies in a click.

From what I have seen so far, it looks like the bearskins could pass easily enough for an 18th Century Grenadier mitre with a different swipe of the brush. The infantry with helmets might be a better choice to do 18C fusiliers, until better ones come along. The guns could also be used earlier well enough. And the shakos themselves could possibly resemble the headgear of the Croats or Grenz troops from a generation earlier.

So we'll see whether the Napoleonic bicornes come in first before the tricornes we are waiting for. For the time being I will be using those Irregular 2mm wagons and tents I think as a substitute since no one has done them in 3mm yet. After all they are just game tokens, aren't they?

And Another Comparable Range From Inkbiz, Getting Closer to Fruition?

Inkbiz has been talking about his 4mm he sculpted, and teasing us with pictures, for a few years now. He picked this week to do it again, and there's an interesting discussion about that here, along with pics including painted.. He says he has a number of sculpts and is about to make some molds. So how compatible these would be next to the others is a very interesting question. No one has seen how much larger of smaller they will be side by side yet.

To me the frontage question is as important as the height and girth question, but there may be ways to work around whatever the result turns out to be. If he puts them closer together because some want to do 1:1 ratios, and he can by half a millimeter, then to my way of doing things there would be too many figures on a given frontage, unless something is done about it.

But let's say he does 1.5mm and the other are 2mm apart. Then the workaround is to use the narrower frontage ones for columns and that sort of thing. Also in some armies a 2- or 4-rank line is used instead of 3-ranks, and one way to express that on the table is with a different frontage for x number of troops. So whatever he does, there may be workarounds, unless they are absurdly out of scale. That remains to be seen when someone does see them.

For the moment, I am thinking about a one-meter square Leipzig 1813, where each tiny figure would be 312 men and a vivandiere, counted mathematically as a half man to even out the math. This would mean eight figures at this scale would stand for 2500 men, and small units would be divisions, half or a third of the small unit a brigade, and Corps have a few of the divisions.

This is about as far from the 1:1 idea as anything, but it does put Leipzig on a dining room table even though it is sixteen miles by thirteen and a half.

I already tried this scale for Gettysburg with the ACW, and it seemed it would work, but because the field there is only maybe six miles or less across I could see I could do that on a somewhat more intimate scale too, then was distracted by other battles, work, etc. Also I have so many more figures than that scale calls for, I thought then I would try having larger units and a larger field.

But a one meter Leipzig is now right here in my hands, and the only trouble is, these 1500 figures still won't be enough for such a massive battle. They would already come close to what I have in mind, but I will probably need more shako men. 1500 x 312.5 comes to 468,750 men, but because I wanted the whole variety that would mean some 46,000 Austrians would have helmets in 1813 unless I order more figures. So I think I will.

Also the cavalry are still limited to heavy cavalry in the French-style helmets for right now, so I look forward to fresh releases. I could make do with ACW cavalry for other types for the time being, while we are waiting.

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