Category: Thomo

Thomo, lost but always remembered.

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Ian Leslie Thompson
(29 July 1954 – 20 March 2021)

“In a hole on the web there lived a Thomo…”

Sadly Ian Thompson, or Thomo as he was more widely known, passed away in the early hours of Sat 20th March after a very short illness and as a result of complications arising from the COVID virus.

Close friends for nearly a decade Thomo was a larger than life character, well read, well traveled, and with a gregarious and easy going nature that endeared him to all.

I first met Thomo in June/July of 2011, connecting as people now do via the internet when he relocated to Singapore. What started as a few emails, quickly became a more regular friendship as a shared love of history, beer, and wargaming, saw him quickly introduced and openly welcomed into my small friendship circle.

Those first months of friendship saw him helping with the christening of the Gun Bar by delivering me a handy defeat in our first battle on my home ground, and while the battles in the years that followed often swung both ways, I think in the end he got the rub of it and was far luckier with the die than I. Coincidently he also enjoyed a victory on his last evening in Singapore before he moved to The Philippines, something he never tired of reminding me.

After his move, “fly in, fly out” visits became a semi annual thing, usually as a detour on our way somewhere else or for special occasions. We shifted our gaming online with FoG, and enjoyed the regular connection that many apps and his Blog allowed, discussing gaming, military history, burgers and such, but sadly those visits never seemed long enough for us to roll die over the table again. And while I lament that such a chance will never happen, I find comfort that those times were always long enough for us to find a place to have a beer, a burger and a good laugh filled chin wag.

Wherever you are big fella, know that you are sorely missed and will always be in my heart.

RIP my friend.

Antietam 3D

~ anthony ~ 2 Comments
Sharpsburg, Lutheran Church
(US Library of Congress)

So with a New Year I decided I needed to establish a new plan, or rather rationalise my projects into some form of coherence.

Sadly, a few years ago I had a successful Kickstarter based around the La Haye Sainte farm at Waterloo, but only sadly in that I let life get in the way, and never really followed up with a sequel.

So with some time to spare on a recent sojourn to visit my parents I “got lost in the footnotes”(1) of the US Library of Congress photo archive, and suddenly the plan was a little clearer, 3D models (as I had for my Kickstarter) for Antietam. Starting with the Dunker Church, then the Lutheran Church, the Burnside Bridge (though I have the Hovell’s model of this so it is less important), and then 2-3 generic clapboard buildings that can serve to represent a small built up area, or a farm.

Thankfully, the preservation of many Battlefields and the abundance of archival photos should make the research stage a little smoother unlike earlier periods, and it should help me get onto the technological stage of creating so much faster. And who knows, maybe along the way I will get inspired to finish the long procrastinated rebasing of my Confederates and Union figures into a semblance of uniformity.

But one question: to make the models “perfect” or if appropriate, with battle damage?

(1) Getting lost in the footnotes is a phrase I first heard from Thomo (of the Hole fame) in an anecdote relating to how he got through University with some learning instead of simply an education.