Taking stock...

In the last few weeks I bought some more cupboards for the gamesroom (aka pack rat paradise).
So now that I have plenty of time with the holidays I started reorganising the stockpile and decided it was the moment to draw up a detailed inventory. Better call the boss for a few more days off...

So far I have gone through my ancients collection: a few 15mm DBA packs and a enormous pile of 20mm, mainly plastic 1/72 scale soldiers.

The collection of 15mm figures can be considered reasonable:
Spanish army (punic wars era) - 43 figures
Carthaginian army - 61 figures
Bactrian army - 54 figures
This makes a total of 158 figures, sadly enough only four horses are somewhat painted by yours truly. The previous owner of the Bactrian army had painted the elephant and crew, but that's it. The first symptoms of unpainted lead syndrome...

But it will only get worse!!!

I own (hangs head in shame and mumbles) 1091 20mm figures with a grand total of 5 (five!) figures that have met with a paintbrush...
Sumerians - 113 figures
Nubians - 42 figures
Sea peoples - 42 figures
New Kingdom Egypt - 208 figures
Gauls - 134 figures
Mercenary hoplites - 96 figures
Carthaginians - 303 figures
Indians (metal) - 152 figures
Persians (metal) - 1 figure (free give away, in case you were wondering ;-)

And then there still is the 10mm warmaster ancients army and a small amount of 28mm left to count.

PS I have been doing a little bit of painting as well: Uma and Micheal (see previous post) are progressing nicely...

Come Hell or High Water...

...or a snowstorm that practically shuts down the whole country, early this morning we got in the car to slide, I mean drive to Leuven to put up a demo game at the convention of the "Fallen Angels". Not exactly a big event on a normal day, let alone on a snow day like today. Several other clubs that weren't from the local area didn't show up. Quite understandable, not everyone is as mad as our group.

With one notable exception: the owner of the British forces decided to stay in bed and ride out the storm. And this caused a big problem: our demo game of the battle for Hechtel is a prelude to operation Market Garden and features Germans defending the town and crossroads against... You guessed it! We packed up some Russians and substituted Shermans with T34s, Carriers with trucks etc etc and just used the UK stats. Not the most elegant solution, but it was this or cancelling the game. More on the game with loads of pictures wil follow tomorrow...

I also picked up the last miniatures for this year. Nothing I really needed, but while browsing through the boxes with less commonly available (read: not Evil Empire) figures one blister in the Call of Chtulhu range caught my eye: a white collar survivalist. Or Michael Douglas in the movie "Falling Down". Further digging turned up a female assassin (Uma Thurman in "Kill Bill") and a hired gun (Lara Croft). Taking advantage of the "buy one, get another one free" offer I picked up two more figures that are suited as zombie games survivors and a pack of four hooded terrorists.

So even with the bad weather it was an enjoyable day out. We were able to play a great battle (though only halfway through) and I bought a few interesting figures at a discount. With two weeks of holidays ahead of me and way too much snow on the road to go out, I'm looking forward to do some painting, and maybe a solo game or two...

TAP TAP TAP, is this still working?

It's been a long time since my last post, waaaaaay too long. So what's been going on? Well, hardly anything, and that was the real problem. Because of a medical problem I had to be given a new job but the people at Human Reources were not exactly in a rush to do so. And so I was left without any real work for a very long time... By the time the summer holiday season arrived this was really starting to get to me, so much that when I got home in the evenings after a day of doing absolutely nothing I just couldn't be bothered any more about any thing... Including gaming.

About a month or two ago, someone at HR at last looked at my situation and invited me for an interview. Now that I at least got some perspective again, I started waking from my hibernation and started to look at painting and gaming again. I still need to get back to the pace of operations that I achieved earlier this year, but I'm getting back there...


After clearing the painting table, this is what is currently being worked on:
-Some Minbari ships for "A Call to Arms" (I even played a couple of games with these rules in the last month or so)
-The Romulan squadron box for the "Federation Commander" game (picked that game up at Crisis 2009 in Antwerp), flanked by the good ship Enterprise (an oldie by FASA)
-A five man squad of EE Space Marines
-A couple of UK Airborne 6Lbs AT Guns for "World at War"
-A handful of "Blitzkrieg Commander" Russian infantry and mortar stands
-A couple of 15mm Russian farms and the Perry 28mm farm.

I'll be working on these first while I'm thinking about what will be the main project I'll work on in the coming months. There are two main contenders for that (aside from the BKC army): dig up my stash of Starfleet Battles miniatures and boldly go where many other gamer has gone before, or will Hannibal at last cross the Alps onto the painting table and start up an Impetus army?

Only time will tell...

July Lookback

In one word: great! I met the "Less, More, More" program requirements with great ease last month.

Spend less: what can I say, I can never do better than July. I spent absolutely nothing on figures, supplies, magazines or rules... OK, I went into town last Saturday and broke the dry spell (magazines, paint and brushes only though).

Paint more: I'm keeping the production going slowly but steadily with a bit of a slowdown near the end of the month. But that I can blame on one of my buddies who is moving into a new place and needs a bit of help with transporting stuff etc... and who rewards the effort with a couple of beers. 'nough said, I guess? I finished a few zombies and streetfight scenery, my Bloodbowl team, some infantry stands for BKC and several squads of 15mm Russians for WW2. I'm starting to chip away at the unpainted pile...

Play more: Even though the club was closed for the last half of the month I played two games. The first was a tryout of Ganesha's new Fear and Faith rules. We'll have to look into that a bit more, the zombies just don't want to die... did we do something wrong? The second game was (shudders while remembering) WH40K. A new kid came along at the club and with the resident 40K crowd being absent I offered to show him the basics of the game. This forced me to read the last edition again and at that point I remembered why I put it aside after glancing through it when it came out. Afterwards I dug up the Rogue Trader era books again... resulting in me digging up my squats and going through the army list... They are now safely back in the closet, awaiting better days.

And August? I've got the Russian HMG and mortar teams left to finish and three tanks to do for my World at War force and then I'll keep doing Russians, dropping a few scales to add more infantry to my BKC force.

Stay tuned!

Current Ops

So what have I been doing lately?

The "one hour rule" wasn't really needed to keep painting over the past week or so. I have been painting a lot more without having to force myself. I guess seeing the progress that I'm making works pretty inspiring. And I haven't felt any urge to buy new stuff.

The project I'm concentrating on for the moment is a 15mm WW2 Russian army for skirmish gaming. Basing myself on the army lists in Mongoose Publishing's World at War, they are the nucleus for other games likes TWAT and IABSM by the Lardies. A while back I had painted one squad just for fun but last week I prepared three more squads for painting. I'm now putting the finishing touches on the last one while prepping some command figures and a pair of HMG teams. All I need to do then is paint two mortar teams, a T34/85 and a couple of SU85s to finish a 1500 point force. I'm aiming for the first club meeting after the summer reces to field this army in a game. That gives me a good two weeks to complete this task.

The army list:
Command section (without AT rifle team): 3 figures
4 infantry squads: 4 x 9 = 36 figures
2 HMG teams: 2 x 3 = 6 figures
2 mortar teams: 2 x 4 = 8 figures
1 T34/85
2 SU85

total 53 infantry and 3 vehicles

Insane Ramblings...

The human mind is something fascinating. I often wonder how I get from a normal thought to whatever I end up with. While going through my collection of unpainted lead looking for stuff to get rid of, I ended up picking out a few figures for a quick fix in between other paint jobs.

First was Mr T. But, hey, Foundry calls them the B-team for obvious copyright reasons, right? So I guess I have to call him Mr U? And how would the others be called? Over the coming weeks you'll see some guest appearances on this blog by Mr U at first, later followed by Scipio, Assman and Very normal Murdoch...

I also picked Britannia's Afghan insurgent leaders and started thinking about scenario's in some Farawayistan country. But then I was looking for a better name, be honest, Farawayistan isn't the catchiest name around. So I ended up with Ookerzistan. Didn't get it? Reed again slowly: Oo-kerz-istan... Then I realized something, the generic Middle Eastern government forces (by Combat Miniatures) that I also have tucked away, would be called in NATO-speak the Ookerzistan Armed Forces. OAFs for short.

Here you have a glimpse into the workings of my brain while cleaning up mould lines. Is this what they cal lead rot?

The Tibnin Twinkletoes

Here they are: the Tibnin Twinkletoes, my High Elf team for Bloodbowl. The paintjob is finished, all that I need to do now is blast them a couple of times with the matt varnish spray can and then flock the bases.


Being High Elves I went for a bright, gay (cheerful, I mean cheerful) colour scheme. They took quite a bit of time to finish, but in the end I'm really happy with how they turned out.

July half time report

This month is looking pretty good. I've been painting a lot and I didn't have any trouble with my new "one hour each day" rule. OK, so I missed one day, but thanks to the crappy summer programming on the TV, I've more than made up for that lost hour.

I'm literally hours away from finishing my Bloodbowl team, the BKC infantry bases I'm working on only need a little more work and should leave the table this week as well. So it's back to the zombies then (I still want to get through them by the end of the month) and more 15mm Russians. I'm in the process ofcleaning up three more 9 man squads and the first one ought to be on the painting table by the weekend.

Because of all kinds of unforeseen things happening it now looks that I'll be adding no new figures to my collection. Instead I'll be adding to my percentage of figures painted vs figures bought quite rapidly. Not to mention that I this year might end up with a decrease of my stockpile!

While I was checking my historical figures to look at what I might start on next, I came across a few boxes and bags that struck me as "this isn't going to happen". I'm working on those 15mm Russians for skirmish gaming, so what am I going to do with those 1/72 plastic figures? So out they go, waiting for the Crisis bring and buy stand. Same for the 10mm Carthaginian army for warmaster ancients. I still have a Corvus Belly 15mm DBA army and hundreds of 1/72 (Field of Glory?) stashed. If I keep my buying at current levels I will end up with a slight decrease of my collection.

Keep tuned for a Bloodbowl team picture, coming soon to a computer screen near you!

Crunching Numbers

Over the past few days the Monica Geller inside me showed up again and I started making a list. Monica just likes making lists...

A few days later and a lot of checking of my lead pile ,previous blog posts and my paypal account I found that for the year to date I purchased 380 miniatures. This ranges from the Perry American farmhouse (which is counted as one figure) through the small pig in the Pegasus box of farm animals up to the single 6mm figure from GHQ.

Opposed to this are 78 figures that are now removed from the unpainted pile. Most of those (63) because I finished painting them (a record year, and it is not finished yet), others never really entered the pile as they were bought painted at a bring and buy and some (remember the druids from a few posts back) were thrown out.

In other words, I've dealt with only 20,53% of my purchases for the year. This number must go way up! By keeping to the buy less credo on the one hand, I have nothing planned to buy until Crisis in November other than the figures that come with the Wargames Illustrated subscription and the blister of GHQ infantry that is being ordered about now. On the other hand there is the paint more part...

With the Bloodbowl team nearing completion for this Saturday's game, I can go back to finishing the zombies and starting painting my 6mm infantry. Those last ones will rapidly drive up the percentage.

If only I could end up with more than 100% by the end of the year. That would be a real achievement...

New: the one hour rule

As of today I'll be implementing a new rule: I will spend at least one hour each day on painting miniatures. By forcing myself to get a minimum of painting done I want to speed up my production.

I've been keeping track of today's work and after clocking up 45 minutes I have to come one conclusion: I am one slow painter! But by the end of the week I hope to have at least a few of my Bloodbowl players with a coat of varnish on them for next Saturdays BB tournament.

Heresy! and a quick update

Today was the first day of my summer Wednesdays off and I've been putting it to good use just relaxing.... and also painting a bit. I can now add another three zombies to the horde and I am now over half way through.

Between painting I also did something that can only be described as an act of utter heresy: I threw away some figures! Yes, I threw them away, I didn't sell them on ebay or a bring and buy... No, in the bin with them. The ultimate way to get rid of the unpainted pile...

OK, so it's not as bad as it sounds. I was cutting the figures from the sprues from a couple of boxes of Hatt Gallic command to save on space in my cupboards when I was confronted with what are about the most useless figures ever in a box of plastic figures. Druids! Every sprue carries two druids meaning I ended up with twelve of those guys. I kept two to possibly add to a FoG camp, but the others got binned. Ten figures less to do...

On the other hand ther will be forty other here pretty soon. I put in my order for the Wargames Illustrated subscription this morning and my Nappy Brits should be on their way to me by now. Given the speed that my buddy got his (order on Sunday from the UK, in the mailbax in Belgium on Tuesday) that should be taken literally.