Good, Bad, Ugly 2016

It has long been a tradition to briefly review events that myself and friends have attended, to categorise them under the heading of good, bad and ugly and I thought it could a suitable way to also review my take on 2016, so, here goes, some of my more notable GBU things of 2016 :

The Good

I once more attended a couple of wargame shows and despite there being only two, from the potential four (at least), local shows, I did  enjoy them immensely. In my hey-day of attending shows I’d have also attended Durham Wargames Open day, Border Reiver and Stockton. (Shildon btw is not really that local to me and fairly new).

It was a pleasure meeting Roy Williamson at Shildon, a fellow blogger (link) and a truly gifted miniature painter, he also introduced me to Dave Docherty (another blogger).  Whilst I haven’t met that many fellow bloggers (a handful at most) those I have met have always been very friendly.

Having the wherewithal to purchase items for projects, whilst not in the same league as other gamers, my purchases have been modest, but in comparison to the almost nil purchases I’ve made over the last few years was a step forward.

One of the things I particularly like doing is tinkering with rules, whether my own or those of others and my recent correspondences with another blogger to polish up his rules where necessary, make suggestions to content and wording etc. – I know this probably sounds more like work than pleasure, but to me it beats the heck out of painting figures or modelling!

The Bad

 Not playing a single table-top game over the entire year, has to be the #1 bad thing on the list.  I find it quite depressing having a fairly good set-up imo (my own wargaming room, permanent table and so on).

The explosion of “Boutique” games, (which I call games in a box). In case you don’t know what I’m talking about think of the many games played on a 3 foot square “board” (or smaller) with just a couple of dozen figures, some shiny (expensive) rules, lots of cardboard and so on. To me this is not wargaming, but is a form of step-up from boardgame to tabletop with all the inherent advantages and disadvantages they entail. I can see all the enjoyment from these types of games though and good luck to those that play them, but they’re not wargames to me!
I’m also under the impression that many new sets of rules have been dumbed down –but that’s just a feeling.

Not having a regular opponent, despite a couple of false starts and realising that my historical interests can’t compete with Orks, Space Marines and all things plasticky. Solo gaming just isn’t for me!

The Ugly

The use of the term “28mm Scale” has always bugged be and imo it’s a way manufacturers can get away with not having figures made to an actual scale. I know that many refer 28mm as 1/56th scale which would make a figure representing a six foot tall man at about 32mm – so why 28mm ?

Seeing models of grey rocks, castles and walls still annoys me, though I’ve grown to having to accept them - I guess. (I still feel the same shudder seeing ‘eyes’ painted on miniatures less than 72mm tall too).

I find I can’t keep up with the multitude of blogs I follow. It’s so easy to miss someone’s latest blog

Post and I seem to be forever playing catch-up.

A Zombie Forum that I’m a member of has slowly been dying a death for the last year or so; it had such potential but the many interests of the members outside of the Zombie gaming genre is another nail in its coffin, sadly. I haven’t posted in over a year, which probably hasn’t helped, but then again neither did the moderators giving out offencive comments.  

Whilst my enthusiasm for this hobby is up and down  like a Bride's nightie most of the time I am looking forward to 2017 and getting my Wargaming room back !

Have a happy and pious New Year one and all and here's to 2017!

Merry Mithrasmas

So another year and another seasonal post, this year though I've purposely avoided using the usual "merry Xmas" or "Happy Holidays" in an attempt too avoid the usual artificially inflated page-view figures, after all we have the Russian spam-bots for that sort of thing,
It's been an interesting year on blog, one I've,  at times, struggled to get out a post to the dozen or so followers who regularly comment (for which I'm very grateful). I also can't recollect when I gained any new followers either, despite losing several earlier in the year when blogger had some sort of update.
I'll be looking at the past year in next week's post but for now the purpose of this is merely to wish you all a very Yule,  Mithrasmas, Saturnalia  or any other pagan holiday or religious festival you follow at this  time.



As always, your comments are both welcomed and appreciated.

A Ship (and more)

As real-life continues to deploy obstacles in my path to foil most of my attempts to do anything
significant on the hobby-front but I thought I'd show a vignette painted and assembled by a good friend that died earlier this year. Thanks to his spouse I've come into possession of a large number of his models (mostly 54mm), mostly painted, but some requiring assembly and paint. They include a fair number of the old 54mm Airfix figures and a large number of Historex figures. My favourite amongst all of them is a 7YW Austrian (currently packed away with his chums), but this particular vignette has been on semi-permanent display. and was thus easily accessible for posting about!
I can't tell you much about the two figures represented, but no doubt the more knowledgeable will know!
I can't foresee any time when I'll assemble (let alone paint) the large amount of figures and sadly haven't found a single one of my acquaintances that is interested in obtaining any of them .
Anyone that is interested, please get in touch!

(As usual, sorry for the poor quality photographs, but I'm still unable to replace the photographer)

Front of box

In other news I purchase a toy "pirate ship", for the princely sum of £10 from "The Works". I'd scouted this model but couldn't decide if it was a good enough size, so armed with a tape measure I went off and ended up buying one (now regretting not buying at least one more).
There's a fair amount of usable 'accessories'  including a 'longboat' (should have been called a shortboat) that wasn't apparent at first inspection.
Of course the figures are huge (about 60mm) and their weaponry and other things are completely unusable , but the model still has a lot to offer. I'm currently taking is apart, removing bit and pieces and deciding how I'll  progress with it.

Rear of box

My daughter's temporary residence within our household has had a very pleasant side-effect of her

My new paint station

being disgusted at the state of my paint-table and design to do something about it. I've ended up with a very pleasing set of drawers as the table (hiding and sorting just about everything I'd want hidden and sorted)  and with the additional bonus of being on casters, means it can be easily moved about, keeping my scalpels away from the inquisitive hands of my granddaughter (seemingly the two are not a good mix).
The helicopter that is prominent in the foreground is the only physical object I've been working on this last week and I've manged to make a little progress on the paintjob on it).
Most of my hobby-related progress has been using paintshop to design eight 'shops', (mostly originals) for a project I've been thinking of for a few years now.

And that's it, little to nothing done, but even a little is bonus to me atm!

Thanks for taking the time to visit and peruse what I'm up to and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated! 

Spinning Plates

Ground floor and first floor of the new build.

This week has seen a major upheaval in my household as we have my daughter and her family living
The outcome of this is that we have a lot let space and a lot of my own projects etc have had to be stored in my wargames room (now very crowded), but there are is also the more important tidying up to do after any hobby-related things I do - no more leaving things out until tomorrow!  It seems that scalpel blades and 3 year-olds are not compatible!
with us (and all that that entails) as she has had to vacate her own place and has to wait for her new home - probably sometime early next year.

Some of the ground floor walls

I am still managing to get a few things done though!
I've made some progress on my new build (The Federal House from Stoetzels) but wasn't that inspired reading through the initial instructions that it could take some two hours or more to build. The initial cutting out of the ground and first floor floors walls etc. (and edging them too)  took at least that amount of time! (and there's an attic too).

A very "wrong" wall

My wry smile took  a down-turn as a worked my way through the model and realised that one wall was mistakenly labelled and there ere also a host of other minor (very minor) 'problems' with the model. I'll talk about these though later, but as an example, one of the walls, (shown right) has a major 'problem' with it (though easily fixed), as it's an internal corner but allows for a wall attached to it (the blue rectangle).

Aaarrrggghhhh!

Further work on this model had to be halted as I ran out of glue and when I came back to the build, after tidying up I'd accidentally stuck  a scrap of foamboard to two walls - duh!
I couldn't repair the damage and now I have to await the re-printing of these two walls (luckily though they're on the same page - so just one copy needed.)

Undercoated chopper, with Sid for scale

I did manage to grab the chance of a clear day to undercoat my helicopter, so that's coming along slowly but surely - though I'm not entirely sure why I used #2 son's gloss black instead of my own matte black as an undercoat !

My solitary palm tree

 In other news I have started to try and accumulate some scenery for my pirate project as I didn't think my single (rather pathetic) palm tree would hack it.
Evil- bay was my friend in this and I found some very reasonably priced palm trees for about  £4.50 (including p&p) for 2o of he. - each approximately 13cm (about 5").
The most surprising thing was that they were from an English supplier (from Basildon IIRC) and cheaper than some very similar models from China , so I went ahead, splashed the cash and bought two bags of them!

40 Palm trees - woohoo!

Sid and the Palm trees

I guess for the price, you get what you pay for, they're bright, very plasticcy and have a shed-load of flash on them, but they'll do the job just fine imo.
I'm as yet undecided as to how to base them and will be considering all the various options carefully an will also be awaiting further varieties of palms sometime next year. (who knew that there were so many different varies and models of palm trees ?
It also turn out that plastic palm trees can be waved bout with great abandon and glee, though whether as fairy wands or dolly feather dusters, you'd have to ask my grand-daughter
(they're in a safe place now though).



So, progress then, and although little has been made, in the quieter moments I've been working on my abstract ship-to-ship rules -something which I enjoy but is made difficult without having a friend as a 'sounding board' for my ideas and checking the rules generally.
 I also been busy designing some builds for a project I (and probably every other Zombie gamer) has sought since I started  down this track, but more of this as I make some proper progress and have something tangible to show!

That's it then for this week - things can only get better - right ?

Thanks for reading through or at least for visiting and looking at the piccies and as always your comments are both welcomed and appreciated!