Hobby Update - 13 Jun 26

 Not much time for games or hobbies recently, but not quite no time. Gaming is still pretty much stalled: no space, no time, not in the best of spirits and difficulty in translation of 'general desire to play games' (which remains as strong as ever) into actual games on the table. But I have made a bit of progress on the painting front. For some of it, you will have to take my word for it: my phone died and with it a few progress pictures. But the following should give a sense of what I have been up to!

Some Japanese infantry for my littlest to use against his US Marines. They are nice figures, but painting them really brought out that there is a more-or-less generic WW2 infantry look: the Soviets, the Poles, the French, the Eastern European states and the Japanese do look quite similar, really! Sure, there are differences and noticeable ones too, but at a sufficient level of abstraction, they are quite close. 

I have also been doing a lot of fixing and restoring from the pile of 'casualties' - figures that have been broken over the years, or the odd figure that got left or forgotten or whatever. For example, this next batch is the WW2 British Airborne that have been in the pile for a while:

Additionally, I fixed a bunch of Perry Agincourt-era Men-at-Arms, some Zulu warriors and some Mahdists, some British opponents for them both, a few Romans, some WW2 German grenadiers, a few Space Marines, etc.

 

Of much more recent vintage (from the recent Partizan) are some British Colonial artillery. For some reason the clash of Redcoat, Zulu, Dervish and Pathan really inspires my little one (of course, there is a very obvious reason: he has watched Zulu (and Zulu Dawn, and The Four Feathers, and Khartoum, just like a lot of the more veteran wargamers!). He bought some painted British infantry for the Sudan, and then got this Perry set as well.

 The little one's collection has come on quite a lot over the years!

I have managed to get a few of my own figures done too, in the margin! These are the first batch of Duchy of Warsaw infantry. There are another 4 infantry units in the pile to complete, plus some extra skirmishers, then I will move onto the cavalry and artillery.

(also another British Para from the bits box has been restored in the background). 

 Coming up, I am trying to finish a bunch of 28mm WW2 extras for the the little one, and then a few more of the 6mm Polish for me. The main effort is on really getting down the lead mountain which has grown much more than I comfortable with over the last couple of years. Making progress on the 28s is key I think, since they are the ones that take the storage space, plus I can get through the 6mm stuff quite quickly when I put my mind to it.

I suspect the game drought may last a little longer, until I can sort out time, space and mental energy, and, in the end, fix on what I actually fancy doing. Possibly the fundamental tension is that OTOH playing some simple games is the best way back in, but my mind is being drawn to more complex affairs. I might have a go at some of the simpler scenarios in SPI's ETO, inspired by Martin Rapier's recent re-fights of some of the early WW2 campaigns.