Power nodes?

Not so much found, but seen right in front of me!

Warrior Knights

After hobby days for the last two Wednesdays, it was back to board games last night. This time we pulled out a long owned but not played 2nd edition Warrior Knights. As it was the first time trying out the game it went rather slowly, as we worked our way through the rules. A word about the rules, they lack cohesion! Too many side notes, that contain information of note, rather than just writing clear rules.

More importantly, we had an issue with the starting set up/ As per the rules we randomly destroyed 11 cities. Then starting with the chairman we selected our starting cities. Almost by chance my opponent selected the single best city on the map. As his stronghold he was able to add 400 troops to the cities 400 troops. The next best available city started with 100 troops. Quite the difference! It pretty much assured my opponent that I would not be attacking his stronghold anytime in the game...

We did play a full two person game, with the end condition being met somewhere around 12:30 am.

"Our land now succumbed to the Red Weed"

"It began to creep like a slimy red animal across the land"

So, some time ago, not even this past Halloween, I picked up some 'spider web' Halloween decorations. I bought two rolls, one black, one purple (strange spider webs?) basically for no good reason, just cause I might find a purpose for them sometime in the future.

Christmas in January

Some newly arrived 15mm Sci fi tanks from Alternative armies

So Christmas delayed some of my orders a little bit, no issues, and as of this week everything ordered prior to the holidays has arrived! I had ordered a wide variety of stuff, from 15mm sci-fi, to English arches, and Victorian buildings, to 20mm early war British tanks, & finally some mad scientists, and fungoid creatures!

Prepping for this weekend

Working on a few items for this weekends games day at my place.

 

First Sentinels games of the new year

New year, two games played, but with all to familiar results!

 

 

    Our heroes for the night

Blast from the past

While doing an inventory of my great pile of unpainted miniatures, I stumbled upon these old scratch built 15mm vehicles. Clearly, judging bu the dust, it has been quite some time since they saw the light of day Also they certainly have seen better days s all of them have taken some damage!

First post as I enter my new retired 'fulltime' gamer career

So, the first full day of my retirement draws to a close and it feels good!

As we are still in the holiday mode, the amount of time available today to devote to my 'career' was very limited. I was able to spend a couple of hours working on my 15mm Sci-fi figures, doing an inventory and assembling 20 or so speeder bikes, and a couple of scout grav tanks, but really no major progress.

The inventory was the big thing, something that I am trying to do for all the genres that I have figures for. The main reason for the inventories is twofold:

1. First off, there is my overall determination to reduce my expenditures and to concentrate on completing existing projects, and most importantly playing a variety of games as often as possible.
2. Secondly, there is the simple more practical aspect, and that is the fact that with my new retirement status, there is also a reduction in disposable income. 

So each should feed the other, hopefully.

The idea of cutting back on adding to the great pile of unfinished models, and projects has a real appeal. Hopefully I will be adding posts showing finished projects. Still, I sense that trying to wean myself off the spending habit will be very hard. Even now there are two last orders to be made that were to have been made before the new year, but were delayed. Once done I plan to impose a moratorium on new purchases.

The plus side is that I am rarely tempted by new games. Yes the hype will impact on me, and yes they can be tempting, but by cleverly dragging my heels, I have, in the past, managed to elude the temptation. Gangs of Rome, and any number of recent Warlord games spring to mind as examples of games that I have resisted. The genres that I have, and the scales that I play are pretty much all that I really need.

One weakness that I do have, is that I do like to buy and read new rules (playing is another matter) However, even this habit will be resisted. To help in this matter I have deleted some gaming news feeds, to try and reduce the temptation.   

Now to be realistic, this is not a lifetime ban on purchases, that would be impossible, but a major reduction in spending and acquiring new stuff can only be considered a good thing. In addition to the reduction of new purchases, I am looking at reusing and re-purposing existing stuff. Case in point are some American Vietnam M113 carriers that will hopefully see a new life as Sci-fi low tech troop transports.

More on that later...