Hobby Update 16th November 2020

 I haven't managed to get as many games in as I might have liked recently, although I have made some steady progress on my Gallic War campaign.  58BC and 57BC have passed, and I am well into 56BC now, so perhaps I am just past a quarter of the way through the campaign now.  I haven't done lots of painting either, a combination of work, education, family and illness.  The education bit should ease off however - I got my Masters degree at the end of October, and although I have another exam on a different subject in December, the slackening off of those pressures should lead to a little more time for games.

What I have managed to finish is a platoon of Soviet WW2 infantry, along with a couple of T-34s to support them:

These were from the Plastic Soldier Company, and they were pretty nice.  I did one T-34/76 and one T-34/85, which more or less suit for the entire war.  I will get some more vehicles to support them in due course, naturally.  I would like a few soldiers with the SVT-40  Along with the 6mm Soviets I got from 2d6 Wargaming, that puts me in a position to do any Platoon-size scenario on the Eastern Front.

Otherwise, I recently celebrated my birthday and got a few gaming-related items, all of them suggested/recommended by people on The Wargames Website:

Firstly, there was Lipscombe's recent Atlas of the War of the Three Kingdoms:

I haven't read it in detail yet, but I have spent a couple of hours browsing and it looks really nice.  It is fairly comprehensive, if not totally so (no map of Tippermuir, for example) but it has most of the actions you would expect in there, and some of the smaller ones.  The campaign movements, accompanying narrative and orders of battle aren't neglected either.  Just like his earlier Peninsular War Atlas, it is a really lovely-looking thing.

I played a game with 'Fire Fight' a few months back, which led to some comparisons and confusion with the contemporaneous boardgame 'Firepower'; I remember wishing I had this in the mid-eighties, and now I have managed to get a copy.  It looks of its time, but still very interesting and I am looking forward to getting this onto the table soon.

I try to think about my next campaigns a year or two in advance of playing them, and I was recommended 'Britannia' as a possible engine for campaigns in Britain set between the last days of the Roman Empire and the Norman Conquest.  This is more of a 'slow burn' project, but I will try to have a proper look over Christmas and see what changes I need to make to convert it into a solo campaign engine.  I believe that a new edition has just come out too.