Winning ways continue

A month after my last post pimping his give-away, here is a post showing what I've won from Ray.  8  fantastic Victorian era figures. They shall undoubtedly be painted up very soon. 

Thanks Ray!

How soon is quite a difficult question. In the last month I have managed to do very little painting indeed. I painted a dozen Lord of the Rings figures for John, but didn't get a photo of them before he picked them up (I was still gluing on the static grass when he arrived). That was the last completed painting I have done. On the tray at the moment are two things - half a dozen Gallic slingers that have been sitting there for 2 months now, and 2 dozen Front Rank late 17th Century figures that I'm painting for Geoff as Huguenots.

The slingers have been bumped to the rear - again.

Painting has slowed down so far because the real world has just kept getting in the way. We have had mid-year exams which came at the same time as about 70 internal assessments to mark (bad planning on my behalf there). Then we've had to write reports. My wife's grandmother passed away at hte ripe old age of 87, and I was pretty close to her so that was difficult. The next day I was diagnosed with some carcinomas on my face, which is just bloody fantastic. I'm currently using edufex in an effort to burn off half of my face (not necessarily a bad thing in my case). These last issues don't stop me painting, but it has all resulted in a bit of a loss of my painting and gaming mojo, possibly linked to the fact that I am still trying to restabilise after last year's panic attacks and depression (yep - I'm a head case as well). As the marking load starts to ease now, I'm looking to reignite my painting spark tonight, and if anything can do it, it will be painting Front Rank figures from my favourite aesthetic period.

I've also been having a bit of a clean out as I continue to readjust my toy soldier collections to reflect the periods/genres that I am most interested in. Gone are the 28mm World War Two figures. What has appeared in their place?

na na na na na na na na... Batman!

First of all the rulebook and some reference material for the Batman Miniatures Game. I haven't invested in any of the lovely Knight Models yet, because I already have the figures I need in my Heroclix collection.

Bats and Rob, Commissioner Gordon and GCPD and the Joker Gang - all on the cheap.

I figured I would try playing the game before I invested in any new models. It means converting a few of the Joker's thugs to fit the profiles that already exist, but that is a lot cheaper than buying $50 worth of models for a game I don't know that I'll like. All of the stat cards can be downloaded from the Knight models website, and this has duly been done.

Next up, in the same vein as the Batmania, another old comic book favourite:

The Mega-History might be 20 years old, but it is a very interesting behind the scenes read

I already have Dredd, Anderson and the Dark Judges from Heroclix, so I bought the rulebook and a gang of punks. Again, I'm not over-investing until I've played the game and work out how good it is. I'm keen to get the East Meg Judges set, because the Apocalypse War is one of my favourite comics storylines ever. I may get them anyway just because they are so cool.

Dipping the toe in as cheaply as possible.

These little skirmish periods are not the only investment I've been making. I love the Napoleonic era but have not managed to complete an army for it since I was a teenager. I just get sick of the repetitive painting involved with large numbers of figures and can't find a set of rules that I like. But then I read some reviews and was inspired by Conrad Kinch's blog Joy and Forgetfulness to acquire this:

No painting, but I did have to put stickers on a lot of little blocks.

I haven't played yet due to the commitments outlined above, but I'm looking forward to its first outing.

Going the whole Commands and Colors hog, I also acquired a second hand version of:

Two games in one, but I'm really only interested in one of them.

I've got my 15mm figures for DBA, and the plan is to use these instead of the plastic 1/72 in the box, which were bloody painful to put together and quite brittle. I'll use mini-dice to record strength rather than removing individual figures.

Even more plastic to glue together

The forces for the Lion Rampant Wars of the Roses project have been accumulated now. Both sides have 1 foot knights, 1 mounted knights, 1 light cavalry, 2 archers and 1 billmen unit, and I have some peasants and carts etc. I've chosen to portray my forces as those of the Duke of Somerset (because the portcullis badge is cool, and he comes across well in the Conn Iggulden books I've been reading) and the Duke of Norfolk, because that is where one side of my grandmother's family originate from and I fancy they may have fought in his retinue (or at least shovelled dung for him). The livery badges are decals from Citadel 6.

Noble stromtroopers

I've also expanded my Star Wars collection so that I now have decent forces for the rebellion period as well as the Clone Wars. I have to thank Geoff for sourcing these extra figures for me:

Rebel Scum

They still need their bases finished.

The Star Wars cabinet - rebellion and X-Wing on the top shelf and Clone Wars below

I've reworked the FUBAR rules to be card driven and include actions. We'll see how these work out. The last games night we had at John's we played a couple of games of X-Wing. It's a brilliant little game and I'm going to try to convince my 8 year old daughter that she would like to play it.

I've also ordered a 15mm WWI Russian army from Lancashire Games, and the commission money from the completed Huguenots is ear-marked for Austro-Hungarians. I have scenery and Perry figures on the way for Ronin as well. All in all plenty going on - just not much gaming, painting or blogging. Hopefully that changes today.

Nate