Hobby Update 08 Apr 26 - A Million Hits

One million hits used to be the sign of a very popular blog. These days it isn't quite as true since much of the traffic will be scripted bots but still, I guess it is a nice milestone to have reached anyway!

 Recent lack of blogging has very much reflected a lack of activity on my part. A combination of being super-busy at work and (another) move around at home has eaten up both my time and space. And also, as is very much the pattern for me, when I reach a certain level of stress I seem to gravitate towards RPGs rather than wargames. I have created quite a nifty OD&D character generator and editor, I suppose!

So, apart from a somewhat unsatisfactory WW2 game that I abandoned, I haven't done any wargaming at all, and only a little bit of model-making. Such as that was, it included an mdf Roman Villa: 

A very nice piece from Sarissa I think, and not too complicated to build - for my youngest.

And then a bunch of Warlord WW2 US Marines - as usual for WW2 28mm stuff, these were for my youngest: 

And finally a few Baccus WW2 bits and pieces for me:

German anti-tank guns (75mm and 88mm), anti-aircraft guns (quad 20s and 37s, Mobelwinds), some movers (Sd7s) and some Demags.

And some British Bofors guns, some 2pdrs, some carriers and some scout cars. I found doing the WW2 figures strangely difficult, I think my eyes really are going a bit - I don't find the equipment that easy to pick out.
 

Next up will be some more stuff for the bairn - some Warlord British for the Zulu War,  some WW2 Japanese and doing some repair work on some Space Marines that he tried but didn't quite turn out as he hoped. After that, hopefully I will be able to get back to some of my own projects, although I am not quite sure what I will prioritize. I have some more WSS stuff to do (which I just love painting!), some Ancients I want to rebase and add to (particularly Successors, who seem to be really useful as Ancient armies go), a Byzantine Army to paint up, some Napoleonic Poles, and quite a bunch of little additions. It feels like I have cut back on buying stuff a bit over the last couple of years, but not as much as my painting has been cut back, plus I am painting for two and that really slows things down. So I should proabbly cut down even further on the buying but...I don't particularly buy much stuff for me generally so part of the way I structure my life is in thinking about the next show and buying myself a few figures. Ho hum. So, at Hammerhead for example, I limited myself to a pack of WSS figures. I wanted to buy a fair bit more but restrained myself, hoping I will get the pile down a bit. Perhaps I need to start thinking about buying more painted miniatures in the future?

I am off for a couple of days at the moment. More important than the painting is actually working out a way of getting some games in, and where the models can be stored and accessed to make that happen. My lovely long-awaited table in the garage has yet again been buried under the excess stuff from the house, so it is really a matter of finding a place to squeeze in somewhere.  The key thing to decide is how much to try and attempt this way. For example, I could do 6mm WSS no problem, two sides, small board, limited terrain, easy. Should I try and fit something else in? 6mm Ancients is a possibility. 6mm WW2 works great on a small board, but seems to really benefit from having a wider range of models and terrain to support it. 6mm TYW/ECW works quite well too I guess, as does 6mm Napoleonics. 15mm WW2 skirmish might work, but terrain gets to be an issue much more quickly. Portable Wargame stuff is obviously designed for this kind of thing. 28mm skirmish is harder to pull off on very small boards unless you keep the figures to a minimum, and then it feels like a lot of terrain for a quite limited number of games. 1/4800 Napoleonic Naval and 1/600 WW2 Air might work. So lots of options to choose from, but I do need to actually make that choice if I am going to get more games in - wish me luck!