2025

"The Taking of Linnius", a Dux Britanniarum
battle scenario at Posh Lard 2025

Full marks to the astute who will have noticed that I set myself no hobby goals for 2025 :D This was largely because the house was a complete mess, the kitchen was still in a state of construction...

That said - things achieved in 2025 

• worked all weekend at UK Games Expo on the Catalyst events tables: ran a bunch of demos of BattleTech Aces, which was a brilliant laugh
• did various show games for the club
• still chairman (and probably will be this year, since the club seem to have realised that if they vote me out, someone else has to do the job).
• Wednesday paint-n-bitch sessions chez us continue to great success 
• had several excellent guests on The Miller's Tale
• ran another Posh Lard, including a revisit to Dux Britanniarum for the first time in a while
• helped with another successful Hereward Wargames Show
• didn't make any progress on the Compendium (this year for sure!)
• painted lots of BattleMechs
• made a start (admittedly a small one) on some Warlord Epic ACW Union infantry
• built a whole load of MDF buildings for Epic ACW
• added a bunch of racking to the workshop and mostly got everything sorted onto it
• figured out slapchop, to considerable success.

Outside of the hobby:

• Anne retired at the end of November
• I didn't :D
• Lost Anne's mum (in truth, we lost her to Alzheimer's several years ago)
• Finally got the new kitchen fully sorted.
• No more water has entered the house where it shouldn't.

2024 in review

The best laid plans, as they say, once again... (and we'll see how 2025's plans look in the next post!)

There's a big 'ole right outside
my bedroom window, and it's
full of water!

Made it to the end of May with my sanity intact, albeit a little busier than I would have liked. Was driving back from the BattleTech English Nationals when... Son phones, to say there is water coming into the house. 

I'll spare you the full details, but suffice it to say we had to wait on Anglia Water paying for most of the downstairs carpets and the music room floor to be replaced, had to move out the grand piano for several months, and had most of our worldly goods stuffed into three fewer rooms than it was meant to go into. And we were probably among the luckiest of the 50+ houses affected - it's all sorted by the end of August. 

After a bit of thought, we decided to take a cash settlement for the damage to the kitchen (slate tiles fine, but a fair amount of water damage on the trim and side panels of the units) as a deposit on the new kitchen we've been promising ourselves since about 2005...

Mid-October, they strip the old units out. Take one look at the plaster under the kitchen window, note that the damp meter is bouncing off the end stop, and realise that we can't proceed until that's been fixed. (Nothing to do with the flood, it's just the price you pay for having an 1860's house!) Have you ever tried finding someone competent to fix damp in a 150 year old house at short notice? We were being quoted "mid November, but that's just to come and have a look. Expect January for a fix."

Huge credit to Steve from Elite Preservation who gave up a weekend in November to fix it. Next problem, finding a new install slot given everyone's booked up till Christmas. Justin (our original installer) again worked miracles with his team to get three days free in the last week before Christmas, and as off now we have working appliances and most of a kitchen.

We have however been living out of an air fryer and microwave in the laundry for two months, which it no real fun, and the dining room has been full of the stuff we took out of the kitchen in October!

I am not a fan of water this year.

In other non-hobby news, 

• our surviving parents are both surviving, although Anne's mum has advanced Alzheimer's.
• I have one really nasty contract job hanging over me (involving converting a massive suite of undocumented Excel tables to MySQL) which is making me feel guilty about getting stuck into other hobby-related intensive computer work. Hopefully I am getting this finished this week (currently finding the stupid mistakes :D).

Last year's plans:

• Finish the Dux Compendium :D (attempting to achieve headspace for that at present)
• Didn't happen :( See above
• Paint a lot more BattleTech stuff (no, more than that, the Kickstarter's arriving Q2 and, erm, well, I may have indulged in considerable retail therapy....)
• Kickstarter arrived end Q4. I did however buy three people's BattleTech collections off eBay, painted a lot of stuff, and set up a thriving sideline in selling off the ones I didn't want :D
• Run campaigns at the club
• What a Cowboy (deferred from 2023 for obvious reasons) - Q1/2
• Didn't happen :( (annoyed about that)
• BattleTech: Alpha Strike - details TBC - Q3/4
• Didn't happen largely because the KS was late.
• Run RPGs @ home. My long-running (since 2019) weekly sanity break Zoom-based 5E campaign finished in December, and I'm aiming to split my time going forward with two fortnightly ones:
• a 5E campaign set in a different corner of my world
• Running, party now 4th level
• a BattleTech RPG campaign set on - well, that's a secret for now
• Not yet,.
• Start on the Epic ACW plastic (and MDF) pile
• Again, not yet. I remind you that half our worldly possessions were cluttering up the workshop for all the summer.
• Finish the 15mm Bulge forces and buildings, consider an IABSM Bulge narrative campaign later in the year
• Ah... nope. 
• Get someone else to paint my 28mm British and French, and play some Sharp Practice 2
• Did! Thanks Dan!
• Play with the laser cutter
• Yup.
• Blog and podcast as and when.
• Surprisingly, yup...

In addition to the above:

• Started a new BattleTech-specific podcast.
• Actually had a guest on The Miller's Tale!
• Built/3D printed a lot of 6-7mm scale scenery
• Ran a number of fun show games
• Painted/Bitched on Wednesdays (which saved what's left of my sanity)

2023 in review

The best laid plans, as they say...

Do feel free to go read my 2022 end of year post and laugh - probably somewhat hollowly. 

For those who missed the story - we were called up to parents by neighbours at the beginning of January, as Mum had had some kind of fall. Found her not brilliant (with hindsight, she may have had the first of a few minor seizures) and Dad seriously unwell with what fortunately turned out not to be a stroke. Dad to hospital, wife and I up to care for Mum for the next month while we tried to convince her she needed carers in. (How on earth Dad managed to look after her alone (beyond sheer bloody-mindedness) is beyond either of us. She'd been largely chair-bound for most of the past decade.)

When you're 87 and admitted to hospital in as bad a state as Dad was, it's not at all uncommon not to make it out alive. Dad, fortunately, is made of markedly more stubborn Yorkshire grit, and despite being flat on his back for most of 5 weeks, was back walking with the aid of a frame and then sticks before the end of April. And still in possession of the majority of his marbles.

Finally won the carers argument with Mum as it was the only way the hospital would allow Dad home. Sadly she was growing weaker, and passed away at the beginning of March. Next couple of months were taken up with funeral arrangements and starting the process of sorting out her estate. Then Dad (wisely, to be honest) decided that he'd found a really nice residential care home, and didn't want to live on his own in a house that would easily hold 6 while paying for care. (He was wise enough to recognise that his need for some form of regular daily care wasn't going to go away, and quite frankly, after the amount of effort he'd put into looking after Mum, I was quite happy for him to do whatever ever the hell he felt happiest with, because he'd Damn Well Earned It.)

And around about that time Anne's dad passed away. So, once the dust had settled on that, July was spent moving Dad, and then August to pretty much the end of November spent getting the house sold and emptying it of two peoples' lives for the past 50 years. I am I think blessed in that while Dad is a hoarder, he is remarkably good (whether the hospital stay was a wakeup call, who knows?), in fact ruthlessly so, at the idea of 'I no longer need this, lets get rid of it'). So we did - a local auctioneers run a house-clearance service, and they basically auctioned what was saleable (some nice antique furniture) and disposed of the rest. Finally found a buyer and agreed a price, not long after Mum's probate got granted, and Dad and I have spent December helping him set up various savings accounts, ISAs etc to store his half of the proceeds. (Us, we just paid off our mortgage - thanks Mum).

And for a final kick in the teeth, our close friend and musical partner in crime Steve passed away very suddenly in October. 

So. here I am. It's the end of 2023, and ... whew. In some ways I'd like it back for a do-over, and I know I'd like my Mum and Steve back. But... all things must pass, and we move on.

Takeways from that experience:

• Lasting Power Of Attorney - set it up NOW while the people involved still have their mental faculties. You don't have to use it, but it's there.
• Treat elderly relatives protesting that they are fine with a healthy degree of scepticism until you have evidence with your own eyes.
• The process for dealing with what happens when someone passes away is remarkably well documented, Don't panic.
• The NHS are overstretched, underpaid, under-appreciated and being manipulated by the present Government for their own gains and that of their cronies.
• You probably won't have to pay inheritance tax. The upcoming abolition probably isn't going to affect you at all, the Government would just like you to think they are.
• Tell the people you care about that you love them. You might not get another chance.

2022 End Of Year Review

The end of another long strange year.

So, where to start?

On a personal note? Changed jobs again, which was almost as much a surprise to me as it probably is to you. A definite "it's not you, it's me" moment as I got a contract offer from CricViz I couldn't refuse, which also allowed me (as it is only a 3 days a week contract) to take on a second contract for a project I was in at the beginning of that I'd been trying to squeeze into my non-existent free time. Result? Hopefully both more money and more free time, helped by having more trained minions for church tech stuff.

The club, back from a fresh start at a new venue in 2021, grows from strength to strength: we have lots of new members, and consistently over 20 people showing up each Monday. Show wise, we took a big 54mm WW2 game to Hammerhead, our mad 1:1 garden gnome patio skirmish to Partizan, the equally mad Dead's Army (everything is better with zombies!) to Campaign:MK, and our 6mm IABSM game set on D-Day in Chef-du-Pont to the Other Partizan. 

Additionally, we ran a club open day (at which our Bloody Omaha game saw another outing) and Posh Lard, at which the Chef-du-Pont game actually got its first outing. 

We restarted our Wednesday night 'paint and natter' sessions late in 2021, which have basically seen a small group of club members variously doing work on club projects and personal ones. Principal club project at present is detailing the Chef-du-Pont boards, but we will have to revisit and tart up our Dambusters game for the Salute 50th (and Operation: Chastise's 80th) anniversary next year.

As for my personal hobby stuff?

Definitely New Year, new start.

• Just sent the most up-to-date set of Dux rules corrections off to my partners in crime. Now I genuinely have some free time, I'm aiming to crack on and finish the Compendium before the end of Feb. I know - you've heard that before: this time, hopefully is the charm.
• Slowly working on some fresh buildings and vehicles for a narrative Bulge campaign using IABSM - this was supposed to start this year but didn't :D
• I bought two Warlord Epic Battles ACW Starter sets off a club member in February: they are probably the 'second half of 2023' project - there's a heck of a lot of figures there, so it's going to need a good batch painting strategy, probably using Army Painter Speedpaints.
• I'm also aiming to set aside an hour a week to blog, initially, in 2023. Once the Compendium is out of the way, that time will go towards restarting the podcast. I wound up listing to a couple of Meeples episodes recently and realising how much I missed it.

• 

  Studio, including WIP Chef-du-Pont board.
  Garden detailing work started on the three houses
  near the camera.

  The hobby room (studio) just acquired an Ikea Kallax to store all the boardgames, and is looking pretty fine. I have to get some shelves up above the workbench in the end room (workshop) and then I'm aiming to set up the spray booth, hot wire cutter, Cricut machine, 3D printer (or printers if I get a resin one) and maybe an MDF cutter along its length along with a Mac to run them all.

A Happy New Year to you all, then, and hopefully you'll see much more of me online in 2023!

2021 End Of Year Review

To use a familiar phrase from this blog, "I Aten't Ded".

Hard to decide if 2021 was better than 2020 or just different. :D

Hobbywise, I guess the good news is that after a year of Monday Night Zoom calls, we actually opened the club again in mid-August, at a new and very nice venue - for those more local to Peterborough, we're now out at the George Alcock Centre out on the east side of town just off the parkway. Loads of parking space, nice airy main room. The only real downside is a lack of handy pubs and eateries, but this is made up for by having a bar on the premises (who will do food for special occasions) and an Aldi 200 yards away.

It's taken until pretty much this Christmas to get enough minions trained that I'm not spending a night or two a week editing something for church, so hopefully various bits of hobby stuff should start to pick up in the New Year, including You Know What, if I can find space in the 'editing stuff' brain compartment now it's not being used for church video.

On the subject of You Know What, I did manage to record a video version of the Miller's Tale episode 8 for virtual Hereward in September - if you missed it, the link is here. Sadly, the week I'd planned between Christmas and the New Year for at least making a start on the Compendium got eaten by the case of COVID my lovely wife brought home from work, and in the true spirit of the marriage vows, shared with me. Not recommended, I have to say.

Otherwise, I've run a couple of games for Virtual Lard, started a very loose IABSM Lite Battle of the Bulge campaign at club, bought more MDF and more WW2 vehicles...

So. Here's to 2022, and fingers crossed. Stay safe, and hopefully see you all online or in person sometime soon!

2020 End of Year Review

Whew.

What a long, strange year 2020 has been.

First up, of course, there's COVID. I am, I confess, monumentally blessed in that my working life for a sizeable percentage of the last two and a bit decades, and certainly the last couple of years, has allowed me to do the back-end Perl development jobs I do from home, so lockdown, while it's taken a bit of getting used to, hasn't required that much of a lifestyle change. Well... barring a few things of which more later. 

My employer (well, their parent company, really) fired me in March: nicely timing it so I couldn't sue them for unfair dismissal by about a week. Frankly, I was glad to be rid of them, as even the original folks who understood the system and hired me in 2018 were apologising ("this is not the company we hired you to work for") and one-by-one leaving as well. (The last one left a month or so ago, and i think it may finally have dawned on someone that they are, in a nutshell, screwed,.) I managed tot land a contract at the beginning of May with GoDaddy, who are everything the previous lot aren't - an absolute joy to work for, and I'm anticipating some changes on that score in April 2021 which will make it even better,

Obviously, face-to-face gaming took a bit of a hit. We took the sensible but painful decision to shut down regular club meetings as soon as lockdown hit, and (unlike at least one other local club) resisted the temptation to re-open in the summer, not least because our venue (the local St. Johns Ambulance) wasn't prepared to let us. We have, though, managed regular (weekly) Zoom chats every Monday, usually with some mix of show-and-tell and on- and off-topic chatter (and thanks to Grahame, a couple of quizzes, which Carl won by a mile!). 

Hereward Wargames Show, likewise, had to go virtual: if you missed any of the items at the time, they're all on our YouTube channel. Huge thanks to everyone who helped, especially the folks who dived in for a last minute round-table discussion on the future of historical wargaming.

Wargaming sanity was largely saved by the fabulous Virtual Lard games organised by Jeremy, where I ran some Dux and some IABSM, which was both fun and useful. IABSM with limited player view over Zoom was fascinating to umpire, in particular - see the 2020 Lard Mag for more.

I managed to get a group of play testers together to hammer on the Dux Britanniarum Compendium scenarios, to whom many many thanks for helping me iron out a bunch of kinks in deployment rules. especially for one particular scenario! As to the Compendium itself... well...

A very large amount of m free time has gone on video editing work for Werrington Parish Church. For the spring, until we managed to get a team together I could offload stuff to, I was spending most of my free time editing (fortunately when I had no job!), and once I got to delegate, I moved on to just editing the music, which chewed up Friday and most of Saturday (as well as some cat-herding earlier in the week). I think that Dec 25 was the first Sunday or holy day since March 22 I didn't do anything for church (the vicar made me take three weeks off over Xmas!)

It dawned on me sometime in Autumn that there are different head-spaces for different things, and it's possible to run out of free time/desire for them at different times. Specifically, my video editing and rule writing/editing brains seem to be the same one,  and by the time I have done the week's video, I really don't want to use the analytic/editor side of my brain any more. The Compendium is really down to the nit-picky stuff that's very like editing video, in fact. 

This is, oddly, different from the pure creative side of my brain: I may not be motivated to work on the Compendium, but creating and running a D&D campaign (and playing in a couple more) seems to use a different chunk of resources that I don't run out of at the same time. We are, though, managing to put together some processes at church that may give me some of that headspace back, so who knows - there may be a tentative Easter deadline for the Compendium yet!

Painting wise? not a lot. I did a bunch of buildings for one of the Virtual Lard games, as well as a couple of vehicles, and I have a vague memory of painting some figures, but I'm blowed if I can remember what for :D I did just acquire some Reaper gunslingers for What A Cowboy, though!

Podcast: um. No. That's audio editing! No headspace, except for actually taking some working days off to do Hereward! 

Some day I am going to figure out enough hobby income streams to retire from the software business, I swear!

And that... assuming I haven't forgotten anything... was 2020. 

Man.  

That was not what any of us expected!

Stay safe (please, don't think you know better than the health professionals: I like having my friends and readers around), and may your 2021 be better than 2020.

2019 in review

Whew. That was a year.

Looking back at it from Dec 31, it was more of a year than it felt like at times, too. Let's have a look, aided and abetted by having a lot of blog posts and tweets to look back at.

First off, as should be obvious if you follow me on Twitter or pay attention here, I've been doing the #hobbystreak challenge - basically doing something hobby-related every day. There have been a few days (often when away) when it's been as little as some background reading or some discussion with someone on plans for the future, but I have managed it for the whole year - this is day 365! Around mid-February I decided to move the master record of what I was doing from Twitter to here, as well, as that allowed more words and pictures.

At a rough count, over the year I've painted:

• 22 Saxons for Dux Britanniarum (GB Dark Ages plastics)
• 12 White Company warriors for my D&D world (Shieldwolf Shieldmaidens)
• 6 Skeletons and a dragon (from Dungeon Saga)
• 5 Cultists (Northstar)
• 12 or so US Paras (Battlefront - really must get more done)
• 110 US 29th Infantry (Battlefront)
• 4 Sdkfz 250s (PSC and Battlefront)

I reckon that's 167 figures and 4 vehicles. Not bad. Add to that a goodly number of buildings and bits of scenery, and actually I've been pretty productive.

The two major gaming products have been Bloody Omaha (re-visiting for the D-Day 75th at several shows as well as Posh Lard, as well as a hosted game here for Per and his young lad, which was amazing), and the Dux Britanniarum Compendium, which... Is really honestly, nearly finished. I'm going to commit (Rich and TFL willing) to trying to get it out for Salute. We've been play testing like made for the last couple of months, and I'm down to three or four last bits of writing (one of them is the master index, which I'm still not looking forward to!). I've also got the studio (aka PE2 Collectables old office) setup for regular gaming.

Speaking of which, I also (as a side-effect of starting to watch Critical Role when I couldn't sleep one night), rediscovered a love for RPGs, discovered how much less D&D 5th Edition sucks than 3.5, and started to both resurrect my old campaign and start a new one, as well as a RPG blog, The Sage DM. This has, actually, more improved than detracted from my hobby activity as a whole, I think - there is a crossover both ways.

On the topic of blogs and websites, I also turned the Mill House site into my 'professional' site - if you haven't found it yet, and you have use for me as a writer, mapmaker, editor, designer etc, please drop by!

Let's see - sold stuff: 

• all my Napoleon at War figures, having realised they were so far down the list I'd never paint them, I want to play SP2 in preference, and for Napoleonic big battles Gary at our club has enough figures to recreate Waterloo...)
• a fair pile (£200 worth) of old RPG books

Other than that? Several shows, several Lardies events, lots of games. Still club chairman. Got to meet DaveC in Kansas and catch up with the ATF guys (Jeff and Elliot, specifically) in Minneapolis. 

On the downside, I no longer have a wargames outlet at the bottom of my garden - PE2Collectables has sadly ceased trading and moved out, which is a shame, as I rather miss having someone to natter to off and on during the day, and having a ready source of paint when I run out.

Podcast: I got two episodes out (and one in the can that may possibly see the light of day),  which is nowhere near as many as I'd like. Part of it is I think I need to figure out a little more of what I want to do with the podcast, and also work out a process that works for putting an episode, and not leaving it needing editing. 

To be fair, the non-gaming bits of 2020 haven't helped: losing a friend (right here in our guest room) early in the year, having James in hospital or needing to get there daily for most of May and June, and then getting him to and supported in his first term at Uni (while still being treated for depression and ADD) has been ... kind of crazy. Also? I really need a new boss. Getting half an hour to keep the hobby streak rolling is relatively easy when you're frequently out of good thinking brain by early evening, finding the energy to record and edit a podcast or do bigger things, less so. 

Anyway. Things are improving. Hopefully that'll clear up even more in the New Year. I have interesting plans, but I can't really talk about them until certain real-world things happen (or don't). 

Oh, and I've lost 60lbs in weight (deliberately, not through stress, I hasten to add!). More to go, but go me!

OK. If you've read this far, well done and thank you! I'm sure I've missed something, but hey... I'd love comments on what you'd like to see in the blog(s) and the podcast in 2020 - feel free!

Happy New Year!

A belated Happy New Year

Well, that was an interesting year. Didn't quite go according to plan, but hey - what can you do? :D

For those following on Twitter, I still have the tail end of a cold, so I'm holding off on the next episode of The Miller's Tale until I can do so without having to spend an extra hour editing out coughs. That said - every cloud has a silver lining, and while I miss helping to co-present Meeples, it does mean I've produced more episodes in the past 6 months than in the previous... um... yeah. 5 years?

At this time last year, I was hoping to get to spend a few months putting in some full time work on varios wargaming projects - funny how this never quite works out, isn't it? On the plus side, I do now have an office in the converted workshop (which took FAR longer than planned), as well as a wargames retailer (PE2 Collectables. soon to be rebranded as Wargames Direct) at the bottom of my garden. I've been surprisingly good at staying out of temptation's way. even so - PE2C are mostly (very) useful for those "erm, Reuben, I've run out of Army Painter spray black..." moments.

Plans for this year... well, apart from Really Really Finishing the Dux Compendium? I'm currently doing the Twitter #hobbystreak tag, which given the number of hobby-related irons in the fire should mean I find something to do each day: having a workbench as part of my office does make it easier to get odd bits done in lunch breaks or at the end of the day. Apart from the blog, which has been sadly neglected since last January, I have a Cruel Seas fleet to assemble, some Peninsular Napoleonics to either paint or cause to be painted, and a bunch of Skytrex WW2 ships to paint. Once the Dux Compendium is done, I have the figures and background work for another project, of which more later.

So - Happy New Year, and I'll hopefully catch you online in short or long written form, or audio, or at a show!

Happy New Year

...from the Hyatt Place in downtown Minneapolis, where I am killing time till I can head for the airport and home.

Battle reports on a couple of games that happened while I was out here to follow, when I get back and fully awake, but for now.... a quick review of 2017 and plans for 2018.

Operation Get S**t Done progressed... well, a bit. I did make a reasonable attempt at not buying loads more stuff (barring a couple of big KS pledges): major purchases were SP2 forces for the Peninsula and needed buildings and scenery for the club IABSM campaign, and a Nights Watch force for the club Game of Thrones campaign.

The year was made a little fraught and interesting by Amazon deciding to shut LOVEFiLM down, and the ensuing work involved in making it probably the tidiest shutdown ever. I considered a number of options as regards continuing working for a different bit of the company, but in the end the lure of a chance to essentially take a sabbatical for a couple of months was too much to resist. So...

I'm essentially a full time wargamer and writer till, probably, Easter. Top of the list, obviously is to finish the Dux Britanniarum Compendium, followed by several other things. Also, to get back into the habit of blogging regularly, which will, I hope, include being publicly accountable for my time over Q1 of 2018. Given the number of people who very kindly describe this blog as inspiration, I clearly need to get off my duff and live up to that.

Additionally, I'm going to be trying much harder to avoid buying stuff I'll never get to play, and finishing off as much of the Cabinet Of Temporal Insufficiency (to quote Jeff Knusden) as I can. To this end, a bunch of the SP2 lead pile is already at the painters...

Catch you soon, folks!

New Year resolutions

Happy New Year, all. Let's hope 2017 is a GOOD year :D

So. New Year Resolutions.

I only have one, and I make no apologies for the language. It is:

Get shit done.

Too many outstanding projects, secret and otherwise, that need doing. Time for Operation GSD. I've already made a start, as Anne's out of the house for the afternoon so I can make a mess (as long as I clean it up!)....

That's the rest of the Realm of Battle board grassed and drying, top right. Just needs an ink wash on the rocks and we're done. My Total Battle Miniatures roads are on the stocks - the narrow set have their Bitter Chocolate undercoat drying as we speak. (Plan is to paint the ends last.)

2016 in review

It's been... a year. Perhaps wisely, I didn't plan anything for 2016, so this is all bonus :D That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

On the good side, we ran the second Hereward Wargames Show, which seems to have improved on the last with more games. more traders, more floor space and more people through the door, so hopefully we can continue apace. We seem to have also found a formula for the Meeples and Miniatures podcast that works, which people seem to like, including some excellent guests (I'm particularly delighted to have found both Kirsty Rogers (sadly, no longer working for the Royal Armouries in Leeds, but her new job at the National Trust might yet have potential for more wargames tie-ins) and Harry Sidebottom (wargaming historian and author) as guests, as a change from people with rules/Kickstarters to promote!

On top of that, I bought a 3D printer, which, as well as provoking a lot of discussion on the podcast, has been a real eyeopener in terms of getting stuff made for various games.

Gaming-wise? A lot of IABSM, as well as various other Lardy rule sets, some Kings of War and a few interesting one offs including Full Thrust, Altar of Freedom and Halo Fleet Battles.

Various things got painted - mostly 3D printed vehicles - and I did finally start in on the 4Ground French 15mm stash. A bit.

Secret projects have come and gone:

• Sekret Projekt W has been pre-empted (very well) by someone else, so is probably shelved;
• Sekret Projekt D (the Dux Britanniarum Compendium) is on the go - as I've said a couple of times, playtesting is important for the scenarios, so it's going to take a while yet;
• Sekret Projekt A is still being thought about, though I have identified several potential customers;
• Sekret Projekt L, the Lardy Lists site, is on hold pending me finding a week with nothing else to do to get it caught up with all you prolific people;
• Sekret Projekt P is rolling along nicely, thank you;
• Sekret Projekt C is next in the writing queue after D.

On the not-so-good side, my eye is still playing up. And we lost Nick Hawkins.

Watch this space for New Year Resolutions tomorrow.

2015 in review

And a Happy New Year to all my readers!

Normally, I get this post in on the 30th, but life has been.. well, life, so I'm not going to paste in all of last years plans so we can see how well I did (haha) - you can check back if you want.

Achievements? Well - I ran a wargames show, and it was, if modesty permits, Pretty Damn Good. For those who haven't seen the memo - next year's - oop, THIS year's, is on September 4th. I also kept my pledge to buy no new periods/armies well into the year, until the Mantic KoW2 Kickstarter caught me (they NEVER bring a card reader to shows, so basically it was a great chance to get an elf army cheap, AND there is the argument that I already had 20 elves from a Xmas Chaos box a couple of years ago!). And we DID manage the club game for Salute - the fabulous Dambusters Challenge.

Other than that, I've had an eye inflammation since April (sheesh) which has rather put the kibosh on a lot of painting plans - it IS improving after minor eyelid surgery, so hopefully 2016 will see some stuff painted - watch this space.

Meeples and Miniatures 138 - Review of 2014

Neil Shuck, Mike Hobbs and I sat down on New Year's Day for a very pleasant couple of hours chat on what we'd done during the year, and also our own top 5 games for the year.

Neil's finally edited it and posted it (thanks so much for leaving my Jake Thornton fluff in!), and you can catch it here.

For reference, our top 5s were:

Neil:
1: Sword and Spear
2: Chain of Command
3: IABSM
4: Jugula
5: Small World 2

MikeH:
1: Open Combat
2: Pulp Alley
3: Sword and Spear
4: Heroes of Normandy
5: Battlegroup: Overlord

Me:
1: IABSM
2: Firefly Board Game
3: Dreadball
4: Sword and Spear
5: Chain of Command

Buying stuff in 2015

In the short term, just got back from the Hobbycraft sale with

• 2 sheets of A1 artists board
• one X-Acto knife (of the snap-off blade variety, because after scenery building sessions chez moi they're always nowhere to be found)
• one Really Useful 11x7L drawer set for a very reasonable £39.

The latter should ensure I can actually tidy away 90%+ of the debris that's littering my workbenches and then find it again afterwards!

In the longer term, apropos of a discussion on the TFL list and a public pledge you'll hear on the next Meeples podcast, herewith my actual New Year Resolution (as I said to Mike Hobbs, the stuff I posted on New Year's Eve was mostly commitments, not resolutions).

I will not buy any figures for new armies, scales or periods this year. 

 I have plenty of stuff to paint! (and the bits of several Kickstarters on their way still) :D

Just for clarity, the definition of 'new' is meant to stop me, for example, starting a DAK army in 28mm or a British Para army in 15mm, even though I have WW2 in both scales (and specifically have NW Europe in 15mm and British Paras in 28mm), or suddenly deciding that I was wrong all along and I should be playing WW2 NW Europe in 6mm. It's not meant to stop me filling a gap in the forces for a scenario in a period/army I already have.

The one exception to this is (as an incentive to me) if I finish my writing project to the point where it needs playtesting, I am allowed to buy forces for the playtest :D

Plans for 2015

Let's see if I can do better than this year, mm?

First up, the 'must do's:

• The club "29th, Let's Go Large" IABSM campaign (see the TFL 2014 Xmas Special) 
• Buildings
• lots of 4Ground 15mm build/paint
• Figures
• two sections of German infantry, a couple of Pak38s.
• several Sherman M4A1s
• possibly a Marder III or two
• The Chef-du-Pont project (June)
• Terrain build
• Buildings
• Creamery scratch build
• lots of 4Ground 15mm build/paint (which I need anyway for the above!)
• Château (probably Sarissa)
• Figures
• 4 platoons US paras + support
• The club game for Salute (if we make it off the reserve list) and other shows
• ... that's a secret, but AndyM and I will be busy :D

And then the 'things I'd like to do if I have time':

• Start painting some of my Perry WOTR figures
• Continue (haha) painting my Napoleon @ War stash
• Paint the early war Fallschirmjäger for a CoC Home Guard campaign later in the year.
• Paint SOMETHING from one of the three Mantic Kickstarters :D
• Finish off the odds and sods for Bloody Omaha so it's all neat and pristine for next time we get it out

Not involving lead. plastic, MDF or craft foam:

• Rearrange and tidy the workshop and storeroom
• Blog
• Podcast 
• Write :D
• Run a wargames show!

2014 in review

In which we all get to have a good laugh, like as not.

So: here's the plans from this time last year:

• Tidy my Saxons - currently waiting on an order of wire spears from Northstar, who I suspect are away for the holiday period :D Done. But needs doing again, and sorting out the sabot bases and the bases of the boxes they live in. And I should do the same for my Normans.
• Finish off my 15mm British company - tomorrow, barring a trip to see the Hobbit 2. And I did!
• Start on the Napoleon at War 18mms - hoping to get some French at least undercoated by the weekend. I did. Exactly that. And no more :D
• Paint the rest of my Dreadball team when it arrives - I have an expansion set on order from PE2 Collectables, as well as a complete duplicate team in order to paint in their alternative colours. (We have this problem down the club, in that Rob has the proceeds of the Dreadball Kickstarter, and he's a Ravens fan (as well as once playing for a team who played in purple), so half his teams are painted purple as well!) Oh, and a set of cheerleaders from a mix of Shadowforge and Hasslefree. First team done, cheerleaders and coaches done. Second strip half done, may get finished now I have an Army Painter purple ink wash!
• More Napoleonics. Hahahahah. ;)
• Lots of 15mm vehicles (my current stash is most of two 9L Really Useful Boxes) for IABSM. Total vehicles painted - 4 DD Shermans for Bloody Omaha...
• Waiting for the Finns and Russians to arrive, at which point I'll decide where they go in the painting list. Still waiting for the last part of the order.
• More terrain tiles. A bunch for Bloody Omaha, which have seen reuse.
• Some 28mm early war German Heer or Fallschirmjäger to complement the Home Guard. Bought some 28mm FJ, as yet unpainted.
• Gaming-wise, the major new thing I suspect is going to be the club Dreadball tournament, otherwise, more of the same (lots of CoC, IABSM, Dux Brit, Judge Dredd...) Yup.
• I have an idea for a Chain of Command scenario book, which will require liaising with three different people to get off the ground, I still do :D
• I have a part-written supplement for another TFL ruleset, of which more when I get it a bit nearer completion. And I still do :D
• Keep blogging... Well, yes. Up until September, then real life and a non-wargaming recreational role started taking up my time.
• Keep podcasting with the Meeples guys, and see if I can't knock up a couple more episodes of my podcast. Yes and no. :D

Hey. Actually that's not bad. Proof that if I don't overcommit, things don't go so badly!

When you add to that the fact that I also painted and based 18 assault boat sections of 15mm US 29th/1st infantry for Bloody Omaha, which is 27 figures a section, for a total of (dear Lord) 486 figures, along with 6 landing craft... (Yes, Robert, I'll get you some photos to Vis Lardica before the end of the year!)

Compared to that, the four platoons of US paras are going to be trivial :D

Plans for 2014, and a Happy New Year!

By the good offices of Blogger's automated posting system, this should post at 23.59, such that by the time you've read to the bottom it'll be 2014.

Let me see what plans I can come up with for 2014, then :D

Starting, of course, with the 'Christmas break' plans from earlier:

• Tidy my Saxons - currently waiting on an order of wire spears from Northstar, who I suspect are away for the holiday period :D
• Finish off my 15mm British company - tomorrow, barring a trip to see the Hobbit 2.
• Start on the Napoleon at War 18mms - hoping to get some French at least undercoated by the weekend.

In addition

• Paint the rest of my Dreadball team when it arrives - I have an expansion set on order from PE2 Collectables, as well as a complete duplicate team in order to paint in their alternative colours. (We have this problem down the club, in that Rob has the proceeds of the Dreadball Kickstarter, and he's a Ravens fan (as well as once playing for a team who played in purple), so half his teams are painted purple as well!) Oh, and a set of cheerleaders from a mix of Shadowforge and Hasslefree.
• More Napoleonics. 
• Lots of 15mm vehicles (my current stash is most of two 9L Really Useful Boxes) for IABSM.
• Waiting for the Finns and Russians to arrive, at which point I'll decide where they go in the painting list.
• More terrain tiles.
• Some 15mm early war German Heer or Fallschirmjäger to complement the Home Guard.

Gaming-wise, the major new thing I suspect is going to be the club Dreadball tournament, otherwise, more of the same (lots of CoC, IABSM, Dux Brit, Judge Dredd...)

Otherwise:

• I have an idea for a Chain of Command scenario book, which will require liaising with three different people to get off the ground,
• I have a part-written supplement for another TFL ruleset, of which more when I get it a bit nearer completion.
• Keep blogging...
• Keep podcasting with the Meeples guys, and see if I can't knock up a couple more episodes of my podcast.

And now it's definitely 2014, so, please allow me to wish all my readers a very happy, peaceful and prosperous New Year! If I'm still awake, I will be nursing my last Scotch of the holiday season. Cheers!

2013 Year In Review - thoughts

Mmm. An interesting year. The major things from a change point of view I think concern WAB and Chain of Command.

With regard to last year's comments, I'm still torn over WAB. To be honest, I think it seems to be very opponent-dependent. It does suffer badly from special-case rules that potentially interact in complex ways, not least because it attempts to cover every possible army before 1500, pretty much. Of course, the other issue with special-case rules is that unless you're bloody good at your job as a game designer, and you do analyse every single possible interaction, somewhere down the line you hit a problem with the interaction of two army lists' sets of special-cases that cause nasty balance issues.

Which of course takes us into the realms of point systems, which I'm not going to steal Neil and Henry's thunder and discuss... yet :D Perhaps part of my issue with WAB is that it is point-driven for "balance", and thus we tend to play 'a 2000 pt battle' rather than a scenario per se.

I'm kind of interested in exploring the 'real-world' version of Jake Thornton's "God Of Battles" - I picked up a copy at Foundry last month, and I do have to reiterate - the man can sure design game mechanics. In fact, I'm turning into a big fan. Someone else suggested taking a look at Impetus last time I brought the future of WAB up, as well, which I may well do. Dux Bellorum has some nice touches, and there's also Phil Hendry's "Augustus to Aurelian", which takes a similar approach of not trying to be all things to all men (and all periods).

Now, of course, if you want, you can argue that Chain of Command, which is the main thing that cropped up new in 2013 for me, has a points system - after all the approach it uses to generate platoon supports is generally designed around adding up numbers. However, I think the key thing with CoC is that the 'points' are akin to how you spend your last, say, 500 points in a 2500 point WAB army where your core army is already decided for you. It also has the advantage that the army system doesn't kick in until you know a lot more about the terrain your fighting on and the opponent you're facing, and you can happily pick and choose (as would a real-world platoon CO) what supports will best help you deal with the problem at hand.

2013 Year In Review - what I actually did...

Another fun year. Unlike last year, I do seem to have strayed a little less off the planned track in what I have done, even if I haven't done everything I planned (which is why this post looks more like the previous one than the same two posts last year!). The Parthians and the Home Guard are the major timesinks outside of what I planned, and to be honest the former were hovering on the edge of the todo list for 2013 from the outset. I did manage to get to more shows, too.

Two things I am pleased with - I seem to have improved my painting skill, and I do seem to have acquired a knack for building terrain.

Painting/Making:

• 15mm US and German infantry companies complete, a British company stalled about 3/4 done.
• 28mm Home Guard platoon for Chain of Command
• 28mm Parthians (3000 pts in WAB, which is a heck of a lot of cavalry!)
• 28mm Judge Dredd force of Judges
• 28mm Dreadball team
• 8 2x2 terrain tiles plus assorted hills, stand-alone pieces
• lots of trees

New additions to the lead/plastic pile in addition (but untouched):

• 28mm Perry WOTR
• 28mm Dark Ages foot (GB)
• 28mm Fireforge Templars (foot and mounted)
• LOTS of 15mm WW2 
• 28mm Deadzone

Tournaments/Games

• WABGT 2013. Took my newly put-together Parthians, and... came last, as previously mentioned. Well-attended tournament, although I'm considering whether or not to attend next year.
• Axes 2013 (Rushden club WAB tournament) - took the Parthians masquerading as Palmyrans. Came last. (Stop me if you've heard this before!). Might not be able to attend next year as it clashes with Loncon 3.
• Club WAB campaign day
• A couple of Judge Dredd tournaments, one at Mongoose, one at the club
• Continued Andy and my Dux Brit campaign
• Helped playtest Chain of Command
• Assorted other games including In Her Majesty's Name, Judge Dredd, Dreadball, Of Gods And Mortals,. Dux Bellorum....

Shows:

• Hammerhead
• Salute
• MetaGames Con
• The Other Partizan

2013 Year In Review - what I said I was going to do...

Pause for laughter. On past form, this isn't going to make good reading from a promises kept viewpoint...

Taking last year's post:


Games I wanted to play:

• Dux Britanniarum. (Ok, hands up who's surprised.) Andy and I will be continuing the Linnius campaign, and with a bit of luck I may actually get to take some territory off him. In addition, we're planning on running a multiplayer campaign for the club. Well, we managed more games. There's not been much in the way of multiplayer rules out, so not a lot happened on that score.
• I Ain't Been Shot Mum. I'm busy building up forces for the Lardies' Blenneville or Bust campaign, which again I'm hoping to run for interested parties at the club in 2013. Check. Still hunting up M8 Greyhounds, a bunch of other stuff and have some terrain to build for Blenneville or Bust.
• Napoleon at War: past time I got to play this! And it still IS!
• Anything else Lardy we can scare up the time and figures for at club. Chain of Command, obviously. Not at the club, I did get to play Sharp Practice.

Events
Definites:

• Anything Scrivs and Tom run :) Missed it, due to being double booked
• Axes 2013 if it's on. It was, I did.
• The club WILL be running a successor to Bretwalda: watch this space. We did. It rocked, though I say so myself.
• We'll be running a participation game at Hammerhead again, and we're on the reserve list for Salute. Yes for Hammerhead, no for Salute (but maybe this year!)

Maybes:

• The club may also be running another event here in Peterborough. Again, watch this space. And we did - a Judge Dredd tournament
• WABGT, if I can raise an army. I did. And I ... came last again!
• WD3's annual Ayton bash, if ditto and I can sell it to the Domestic Authority. Not this year.
• Something might happen at Partizan :) Something would have happened at Partizan, but my partner in crime just booked his holiday to clash! :D Watch this space for... hang on, I said that before, didn't I! Keep watching.

Figures etc to paint:

• lots of 15mm WW2 US, German and British (in that order). Completed US and German companies, stalled for about 3 months on the British
• lots of 18mm Napoleonics. Pause for laughter.
• lots of terrain! 8 2' square tiles, a couple of hills. More to come.
• A longboat. Still half assembled.
• Anything else on top of the above is a bonus and I'm not going to commit to it. Wise, in hindsight.

Online/writing stuff:

• More blogging. Does one a day count?
• I may look at submitting articles for one or other of the wargames mags. I have a draft for an article for MW, and I have two published in the TFL specials
• I have two supplement/scenario ideas for IABSM, and one for Quadrant 13. I still do, and another for Chain of Command.
• Lardy card deck builder web app. Nope.
• We will (really, really) get Sekret Projekt W off the ground. Hahahaha. *sigh*