Still More Stuff

 Back when I first started wargaming, I learned that you should NEVER buy a new box of miniatures until you'd finished building and painting what you already had. I don't think any wargamer can say they do that successfully.

I also took a seminar for work yesterday on organizing your work and avoiding procrastination. There were some tips surprisingly useful for gaming projects as well, including links to a book titled Eat That Frog. This basically means to break down your tasks by priority, and do the most crucial ones first. The problem is that gaming is never a priority - it's relaxation. I have plans for gaming at work, but the pandemic's interrupted that.

While I loved assembling Games Workshop's multipart kits back in the 3rd Edition era (They're not nearly as customizable today), I was not much of a painter. Honestly, I hated it, and you can probably tell already I'm easily distracted. The fact that I played Fighting Tigers Space Marines wasn't much help. Though I will admit, if I forced myself to work on a project regularly, it was possible to fall into a rhythm and get through dozens of figures in a sitting when I'd only intended a handful. I mean, I already had the paints out.

Peter Dennis' Paperboys make that easier - you don't have to paint them.

Wofun makes it still easier - you don't even have to cut them out.

That leads to difficulties.

Another wargamer maxim more honored in the breach than the observance is "Never start on a new project before you've finished the first one."

If you've read even a handful of my blog posts, you know that ain't happening either. There are five (count 'em) aborning projects in this photo alone.

1. A small English Civil War army, with which to try:
1. Peter Dennis' and Andy Callan's own beginner rules from his ECW Paperboys book.
2. Wally Simon's even shorter rules from Secrets of Wargame Design.
2. A small War of the Roses army, with which to try:
1. Test of Resolve.
2. Another Peter Dennis/Andy Callan set, played on a gridded board...
3. ...Like the one visible under the figures. There are actually three two-sided boards, 24"x36". Even marked up (with included pens) as two-inch squares to contain the 20mmx30mm bases, this is 12x18 squares, much bigger than the chess boards I initially used. This will enable me better to try some of Bob Cordery's Portable Wargame rules. They advertise as non-staining and easy to clean, which if true will work better than the vinyl I first tried to run DnD on back in the day.

(After a bit of trial and error - pikes are tricky to punch out of plexiglass!)

Here's most of the English Civil War starter set - assembling cannon from MDF is a challenge, and I may use guns from the other sets as "light" artillery. There are two extra New Army regiments unmade. I'll also have to pick up a couple more toolboxes from the hardware store to keep them in - luckily, the spaces are deep enough that the pikes won't rise past them.

That's two of the three deliveries I've received so far this week. The third is a copy of For Whom the Dice Rolls by Graham Evans of the Wargaming4Grownups blog. It's attractively designed and an enjoyable read so far. I know little about the war save some of the aviation and some of the folk music that came out of it, and I certainly have no minis. I had half a mind to run it for my club, which among them should have enough early-WWII models and figures to proxy, but one of the members kindly offered a small collection of Spanish Civil War figures I'm now waiting on. As a division level game where the smallest unit is a company represented by a handful of figures, that should be enough to play small games.

Well, with the day off, I know what I'm doing today...