Return to Blogging … I hope.

 It has been an eventful year.  I had resolved to get back to blogging last summer and actually got so far as to post twice in June.  Sadly, just after that last post, my mother fell on the 1st of July and struck her head.  She went into the hospital to be checked out, had a massive stroke before being released, and passed on the 11th, at the age of 85. That left my father, eight years older than my mother, living alone for the first time in over sixty years.  Wrapping up my mother’s affairs and ensuring that we had a system to support my father has been my highest priority since then, although things have gradually gotten easier as we came to a sustainable system.  As a silver lining, I have been spending a lot of quality time with my father this past year, as I have generally been staying with him about a week each month.

This level of support has been made easier by another major transition since last summer.  I retired after 42 years with my employer, on the 31st of December, so I have been free to do more or less as I pleased these past eight months. It has taken some time to develop a new routine, and my first attempt to do so required some adjustment when my wife also retired, unexpectedly, at the end of May. 

As I started the year, I resolved first to play more games in the time that was available to me.  The HAWKs, my club, ordinarily meet on the 1st and 3rd Friday evenings of each month, and I have been aware that the group’s retirees have been meeting for morning games on Thursdays after each club meeting. These “unofficial” meetings are fondly known as the Geezer Games.  I am now a regular attendee.  I have also made a more diligent effort to get out to the “official” meetings as well.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

As a result of these new opportunities, as of this week, I have 46 miniatures games in my log so far for this year, so I certainly hope that I will pass the usual 52 game annual goal with games to spare.  The curious thing is that I have not been able to make time for any solo gaming.  I may have to declare December “solo gaming month” or some such; I have a small stack of specifically solo games piling up, as well as another stack of new games I’d like to try out.

I have been running some games as well as playing other people’s games.  At the last HAWKs meeting I attended I ran a little Dragon Rampant game using my 1/72 scale fantasy collection, which I entitled “Strange Women Lying in Ponds…”, involving two rival factions attempting to seize the kingship by convincing the Lady of the Lake to give them the royal sword.

I have not been doing a lot of painting lately.  This summer I have been bicycling a lot for pleasure and my health, but I expect that there will be more painting time as the weather becomes less conducive to biking. I did most of the painting on a 6mm castle from Total Battle Miniatures, but have yet to complete its basing.

I have done some work on 6mm fantasy figures intended to expand the Fantastic Battles games we have been playing.  Shown here are a couple of stands of ogres from Microworld Miniatures.

I have also been working on some Prince August home cast fantasy figures, such as these, but that deserves a post of its own, hopefully not too far in the future.

In the interest of getting this posted, I’ll stop here. I have a Gen Con report I’d like to write, and I have been juggling with the inspiration for several different projects, if I can keep myself to working on them.  More soon, I hope …

Encounter at the Old Stone Bridge

 You know that your family is deep in geekery of various sorts when the activity for the morning of your son’s wedding finds you setting up a skirmish game in the hotel room. (Of course, the groom and the groomsmen were engaged in a game of Magic: The Gathering at the time...). My brother and I are running two sessions of Osprey/Oathsworn’s Burrows and Badgers for Gencon, and we thought that it was an opportune time to practice a bit more before the convention.  Happily, a work desk in the room allowed us to set up something about 2 feet by 3 feet.  We just used the basic battle scenario, looking to rout the opposing warband, and entered along the road from either direction.

The Battlefield

My brother chose a warband led by Reynard the highwayfox, with Red Sam the armored squirrel as his lieutenant, backed up by three mice, one of whom was a magic user.  I had a troupe of six, led by Blacknose the otter, with Wild Ned the highlander ferret as his lieutenant, a mole landsknecht, a crossbow-weasel, an herb-hedgehog, and a highlander mouse.  Reynard’s band advanced quickly and began to cross the bridge, but were met by Wild Ned who engaged in an extended fight with Red Sam.  As other beasts piled into the fray, Reynard attempted to wade across the river, only to be sorely wounded by a crossbow bolt from the weasel.  By the time he finished wading across, it only took one more bolt to drop him.

Reynard’s beasts reach the bridge...

At the bridge, beast after beast joined the fray, and soon it was too much for Sam.  A final blow from the mole put him out of action, and the battle was over.

...but the ensuing melee doesn’t go well for them.

It was probably just as well, because it was time to get dressed for the wedding.  So, we ended the day with a beautiful ceremony and the addition of a new member to our family.

And then there was a wedding....

An Aviation Digression

With the wedding this weekend, the whole family is in town.  My father has always been an aviation enthusiast, so we took the opportunity provided by a quiet morning yesterday to make a visit to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Facility out near Dulles Airport.

My brother, my father, and me at the museum in front of the Boeing 307 Stratoliner

I have to say, if you have any interest in the history of aviation or space travel, it is worth a visit.  Just to give a flavor, I took this shot from the upper deck in the center of the hangar space, just looking in one direction.  There was at least as much stuff behind me, and the space equipment hangar is off to the left from here.

A view from one of the upper balconies

Transitions

This past Saturday I dropped William off at school. It's an easy drive of an hour or an hour and a half away, so I can get more stuff to him in a pinch. However, until we do, that stack is all of his worldly possessions. There is a painting kit buried in there, but I don't really expect to see much painting in the near term.




His last pre-departure project was this steampunk mad scientist. It is a Reaper Savage Worlds/Deadlands figure, one of several samples I picked up the other week pursuant to the Reaper Bones Kickstarter project. He was inspired to paint it, so I thought it best to get out of the way and let him do that.
Norman is due to be home this weekend. We hope to get some NQSYW casting done. The recent game has stirred some demand for additional figures.
As time permitted this weekend, I worked on my storage box upgrade. I'm working on getting everything into the 4 and 9 liter sizes of "Really Useful Boxes". Most figures up to the 40s will fit in the 4 liter model, and the 9, which has the same footprint for easy stacking, will take the tallest figures I routinely use, 40mm Renaissance pikemen.




Thinking ahead to the Reaper-based fantasy skirmish makeover, I printed out a sample card building from MicroTactix yesterday (obtained from DriveThruRPG). Building it was my lunch project today. I haven't done much card modeling lately, but the necessary skills came back quickly. I am thinking that a) I should try the free models before investing in any PDFs, and b) if my miniatures are going to be plastic, it would be nice to keep the haul weight of the whole project down. I also had time to work on a stick of Bones kobolds, which I'll post when they are closer to being completed.

Transitions

We enter a period of transitions here.  My elder son (aka the Prince Palatine of Wachovia) graduated from college yesterday, and is spending some time at home.  I found my dining room table covered with painting equipment today, so I'll be turning his attention to the fortress of Adelheim in the very near future.