April Hobby Summary (Mostly Star Trek Related)

I'm still limping along with a crippled computer, a problem that I'm likey to fix next week given that all of my work travel cancelled for next week.  So, still no pictures for the time being.

Towards the end of April, I played my first game of the year.  A Starfleet Battles game of sorts, but using my own interpretations of ships from the Axanar "universe".  I started working on gaming some form of Axanar a year or so ago, picked up ships, primarliy from Studio Bergstrom, and finally got around to creating ship system displays for most of them. 

The game/battle wasn't from FASA or the Axanar movie timeline, but more of a check for "balance" in the conversion of the ships into the Star Fleet Battles "language".  Weapon types, quantity of weapons, and ship systems were translated into the mechanics of SFB, and this was the first game to test them out.

We both had a variety of ships amounting to about half a dozen per side, wit the Federation taking more than they gave, but managing with some expert maneuver to not lose any vessels.  The Federation ships not being designed for war, were either under-armed, under powered, or both, while the Klingons vessels were clearly warships from the foundation up. 

The game was a good time, with the new ships working pretty much as intended, and ending with the Federation doing what they do best; running away!

Regarding the Axanar project, I picked up the old FASA "The Four Years War" booklet, and plan to build some sort of campaign for the war eventually.  I also will bring together campaign notes and all of the ship compositions for use in the SFB system and make them available for anyone who might want them once I get a real computer.

I am bringing together elements from independent sources and dissimilar game systems, so "purests" of any particular canon will likely be unhappy.  My goal is to bring together a sort of fluid and "believeable" timeline, featuring a "logical" progression in ship design. 

This means picking and choosing bits from other peoples ideas, and blending them into my own version of a pre-TOS universe.  Ironic, given my distaste for re-inventing Star Trek, that I'm now part of the "problem".

Ultimately, all of this was made possible by the mniatures offerred by Studio Bergstrom, who offers a range of ship models with many being a sort of not-Axanar range of designs.  The models are beautiful, I mean just absolutely beautiful, and service has been fantastic,  If you like Axanar, Star Trek, or just magnificent starship models, you need to check them out.

In other news, I painted over a hundred miniatures in April, with my total for the year climbing to 473 completed, mostly cold war micro-armor.  My Federation and Klingon fleets both expanded to forty some vessels each (and continue to grow a little this month).  Surprisingly, this has been a great year for figure painting, and is likely to be my most productive since 2019.

That's about all I have for now.  I do have a backlog of posts with associated photos waiting to be shared, and expect to start catching up soon.  Stay safe out there!

I've Been Keeping Busy

I've been pretty active with hobby stuff over the last couple of months, just not keeping up with the blog unfortunately.  All of my computers are having problems posting pics to my blog.  Sometimes the pics just never show up, other times I get error messages, but never any photos.  I have actually written about half a dozen posts, before being stifled by the photo gremlin.

In any event, I've been busy planning, researching, ordering miniatures, and painting. Studio Bergstrom has been supplying me with starships, and the shipyards have turned out dozens of ships for Star Trek/Star Fleet Battles gaming.

My Federation and Klingon fleets both number around 45 ships and a few more arrived a couple days ago.  Plans involve an Axanar-ish campaign built around the Klingon/Four Years War, as well as adapting the Axanar type ships into the SFB universe as earlier ships/classes within those mechanics.

I've also been painting some odds and ends additions for 6mm Barbarossa.  Just things that I've managed to pick up to round out units a little better.  Finally got some Valentines for the Soviets!

Additionally, quite a number of 6mm miniatures for my eventual 1982 NATO-WarPac campaign  had been collecting and setting around, so I started painting a bunch of those to get them down and put away.

Lastly, I started cleaning and basing a platoon of Elhiem 20mm PAVN for Vietnam, which will probably hit the painting table this weekend.

I will continue to try to get photos posted, and when I figure it out, I should have a bunch of posts in short order.

Stay safe out there!

Reflecting on 2024 and Considering the New Year

Hey everybody, hope all is well and that your holidays were wonderful.  This past year was a bit of an anomaly for me.  I basically stepped away from gaming altogether for 8 months.  It was like a switch was flipped.  After the last few years of nearly total immersion in my free time, I just didn't "feel" it for quite a while.

I stepped away in every capacity, painting, building, playing, researching, stopped reading histoy and sci-fi, stopped blogging, almost completely stopped reading blogs and forums.  I don't have an explanation.  

Outside of gaming, life was good, though a lot of things changed, lie eating and sleeping habits.  I started getting up at 4:00 am, often starting the day by doing walks in the park as the sun came up. Did a lot of hiking, little bit of bike riding, and a touch of weight lifting.  Dropped forty pounds, actually a little more, but put some back on as muscle.  I'm not down to fighting weight yet, but feel better than I've felt in decades.  

Anyway, back to gaming.  So my gaming year ended the first week in February, and really didn't pick up again with any gusto until the weekend before Thanksgiving (mid-November), really gaining steam in the last three weeks, despite a 77 hour work week in there somewhere.

Gaming accomplishments for the year are way down, finishing 15 projects in January and adding none since (that's like 6 months of an average year).  I played four games for the year, painted 123 figs in January/February, and received 176 over the year, so lost a little ground in figure painting. I completed my year long Barbarossa game in December, and spent a ton of time the last couple of weeks reconstituting weapons cards for Cold War and WWII gaming that were lost in an encryption error/failure.  Lost multiple copies all files dating back through June of 2021 and many as far back as 2001.

The glass half full part of this, is that I finally got a bunch of errors, ommisions, and incomplete bits that had ben collecting for years fixed.  And I feel really excited about all of this.  This week at work involves a bunch of travel and testing, so the week is lost with respect to gaming, but I'm looking forward to setting up and starting the next Barbarossa campaign game next weekend.

Additionally, as soon as a have time to finish sorting through and editing pics, I'll get that last Barbarossa AAR posted (sorry Im so slow).

I just want to thank those following my blog for hanging with me over this last year.  I think the hobby has changed a little for me, but given where I'm at right now, I once again feel the fire for gaming and am making time for it, so the blog should be coming back to life a little.

Stay safe out there, and hope everyone has a fantastic new year.