Reading and other Miscellany

You'd think I'd get something gaming-wise done during a four-day weekend. Nope.

I had a couple things planned:

• I broke out my two Kill Team boards with thoughts of playing 8th edition 40K on them. Never got around to it, since the pieces have to be removed from three different boxes first, all of which are buried under the table. But I was looking through a Charles S. Grant scenario book, and realized that 30"x44" (the size of both boards together) is barely over half the size of the 5'x7' Tabletop Teaser maps. Add a drop cloth so the game isn't set on Mars, play at half move/range, and I can use the 18mm Wofuns just as I did for Blasthof.
• Jim Johnson is running his annual Christmas Carnage game at Das new Kreig Haus tomorrow. I can't make it due to a prior commitment, though if it finishes quickly I might be able to drop in at the end. Traffic around here is hell though on Black Friday weekend. We'll see.

On my reading list:

• Wargamer's Annual volume 1 - with a miscellany of articles on 17th-to-19th century topics - mostly by Charles Grant, Phil Olley and the late Stuart Asquith. Also lots of lovely Bob Marrion illustrations and other eye candy. This series is hard to obtain in physical form, and I was delighted to find this issue in pdf on Wargames Vault. I hope they publish more.
• Challenger, by Adam Higginbotham - about the space shuttle Challenger disaster, this was chosen by my former workmate for next month's book discussion. Looks very thorough. Sadly, the members were reticent (despite my assurance that it's not quite as technical as it sounds) and I selected something more "conventional," but I'll still read it, and maybe try to talk them into using it for January. The 40th anniversary is next January, and a manned flight to the moon (!) is scheduled for February. Good luck to them.
• Homer's Odyssey, translated by Robert Fagles - an old and spotted Penguin edition I weeded from the library collection. I never have read the Iliad or the Odyssey, might as well get to it now.
• Anzac to Amiens - an old classic by CEW Bean, a one-volume extract of the twelve-volume official history of Australia in WWI. Pretty good, though it takes a third of the pages to get past Gallipoli.
• Hero of the Empire, by Candice Millard - about Winston Churchill during the Boer War. A fine adventurous story with potential for TSATF games.

I've ordered some terrain by Games Workshop. With the reproduction of the "Old World" Warhammer Fantasy, their plastic hills, walls and fences are available again. The obstacles are 28mm, but the hills can be used with my 18mms as well. I hope to paint the obstacles up with speedpaint markers as those become available - the local shop has told me they will be getting a display in a couple weeks. They may not work for the hills as those are much larger and there's not much paint in the markers, but touchups and edges? Maybe.

Finally, a tempting project that Paperboys are planning:

A massive commemorative display game for the anniversary next year of 1066. I haven't done any papercrafting at all recently, but I could use the relaxation - provided I can source the required paper, card and ship the lot back to Peter Dennis afterwards - it is a community project to make a one-to-one-scale pair of armies. Would be cool to do, but a fairly massive project as it involves making one huge base with up to 300 figures on it!

Should I?