The Never Ending Battle

The last couple of weeks have been kind of quiet for me on the gaming front, not having gamed or really worked much on anything.  While the Ukraine war has rather cooled my jets on Cold War gaming for a little while, I've certainly not lost interest in the hobby, and have been sort of taking inventory of where things stand with my various projects and interests.

Despite having significantly purged projects and periods a couple of times in years past, I find that I now game more "periods" than ever, and functionally have interest in adding half a dozen more to the list.  A lot of the priods are interrelated, providing for some overlap in terrain, buildings, and armies; for example, gaming the cold war in two scales and over four decades, yields eight periods of play and building at least portions of 48 different armies and four sets of terrain.  

In all, there are 39 periods or subjects of play that I hope to ultimately put on the table.  And yet, I struggle with understanding that I need to somehow reduce the overall scope of what I game due to space and time limitations.  

I've come to realize that I derive less enjoyment from gaming post Cold War, third world subjects, such the Irag and Afghan wars, as my immersive style of play is not well suited to playing Taliban, Al quida, or ISIS types.   This was not something that occurred to me, while building armies for these conflicts, and I also always saw the use of the allied armies in other hypothetical settings.

I could cast off a few of these armies as a result of this realization, but it would only rid me of maybe three boxes of figs.  Less than a cubic foot of storage space opening up, as my Soviet-Afghan Mujahideen and African imagi-nation armies make up half of the forces, and none of the terrain used in those "ultra-modern" conflicts is unique to them.  Also, little work remains to be done for them, so my "to-do" list would not shrink either.

It would take some greater purge, such as deleting a period and scale entirely, eliminating 15mm WWII or 6mm Cold War would make a big dent, but would feel like losing a family member.

Additionally, it would mean getting rid of periods for which I've done the most work and that are the most complete.  To shorten my "to-do" list, and reduce the heap of unusable figs and stuff, it would make more sense to eliminate near-future sci-fi, post apoc, fantasy, or other 28mm periods and projects.  They take up a lot of room, require the most intensive work, and in their current state offer the smallest gaming options or chance of immediate return.

But then there is the consideration that I most enjoy working on 28mm figs and terrain.  For me the larger the scale, the more fun the work.  Eliminating the most enjoyable part of creating the game doesn't seem like a wise choice.

The fact that I've made more progress on the smaller scales is a function of time and gaming dollars available over the years.

And then there is the passion I feel for the various projects.  Giving up World War II, the Cold War, or my African imagi-nations would feel like amputating a part of myself.

So I ponder how to reduce my gaming footprint, while eagerly awaiting an order of 15mm PeterPig late war British infantry to use as the base for my 1958 British Cold War infantry, and look forward to next weekend's model kit show, in hope of finding more aircraft for 20mm Vietnam.

For this battle, there is no end in site.

Recent additions for my 20mm Vietnam gaming.