Saturday, December 21, 2013

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!!!!

It's hard to believe that it is the end of the year already.  My daughter is out of school for her Christmas break, the tree is up and decorated. There are colored lights on the outside of our new home for the first time. Our bank account is dwindling with the buying of presents for family and friends.  So, Yes, it must be the end of the year. :-)

The move went smoothly into our new home.  The unpacking process has been slow but I have been able to find arrange most of my gaming supplies etc into one place and put some of it away. I did manage to run two games in November but I couldn't find my camera and was so involved with directing the games, I didn't take pictures with my phone at all.  Bad Game Master!
Tonight however, I will be able to play while one of the other guys runs a Bolt Action game.  We haven't tried the rule set yet so this will be a first for us.

I've been thinking about the coming year and how I want to approach it in hobby terms.

My 10mm AWI project.  I have collected all of the figures I need to get started. What I don't have desire to do is paint it all.  This might be a project I send out to DJD and have them do it for me.  Simple rationalization here is, if I want to use this year someone else has to paint them.

Terrain:  I have been toying with the idea of making more terrain boards, but I need to be able to store them and pack them securely so I can take them to the game store on game nights.  Haven't worked that out yet.  From my first set of boards, I have learned a lot from others out there on the web and from what I didn't like with my first ones.  The other option is to buy up some more of the GHQ terrain maker product and build up a sizable stash of those, but they aren't cheap, in the long run, and will take lots of time to make them up.  The last option is to get Kallistra's Hexon product. They are preflocked and it would take two boxes to fill a 6'x4' table.  The draw back here is they are expensive and they would have to ship from the UK.  I do have some of their hills which are rather nice and durable to regular gaming.
I am still on the fence about this and I don't want to make a hasty decision because whatever I invest in will have to work the first time for a long time.
Along with the terrain boards, I want to redo all of the Woods pieces I build a few years ago.
They are starting to show their wear from constant use and I'm finding that I want the forests/woods to have more depth to them.  Since most rules call for some sort of depth that a unit/figure can see into or fire through are a constant theme, it's time to widen the woods.  Again, after seeing what others have done I have a good idea as to how I want to do these.
Buildings and other assorted terrain features will be done too this year.  I have several houses for the AWI project that need some paint.

Other Figure Projects: I have several other projects that I have working that I would like to complete this year.  The first is my Arab/Israeli figures for 1967. This will be a skirmish level game for us.  I have armor and figures for the Israelis and armor for the Arabs but need figures for them.  Since this is somewhat small in scope I'm hoping to have this done quickly.
I have started to collect figures in 10mm for Rome vs. Carthage era gaming I want to do.  Most likely these wont see any paint or time on the table until the end of the year.
The last project is getting together some 1/600 scale jets for Check Your 6: Jet Age.  I have picked up some to do some Arab/Israeli fights but have yet to put paint onto the planes.  The other thing I want to do with this is have better bases, that allow the plane to show if it is in a bank, climb, dive etc.. attitude while playing.

Over all I think that is the plan for 2014.  I'm sure somewhere along the line I will see something that will catch my interest and totally derail what I've written here. :-)

I would like to thank everyone who has come out to this little corner of the internet and has read what I've written and has helped with some of the decisions I've made.  I hope to be a little more active on the blog in 2014 than I was in 2013.

Happy Holidays from Oregon! May you all stay safe and prosperous in the coming new year!