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.

The Battle Raged To An End

It is hard to believe that more than two months has passed since my last post.  I had just started back into my Barbarossa battle, a German attack near Przemysl, when a bunch of stuff came up for work, and I had to do a lot of travelling, which kind of threw everything in life into chaos again.

I finally got back to the battle the weekend before Thanksgiving, and had time to really get back into the game for several hours, playing roughly 40 turns, reaching the tipping point in the battle as I ran out of time.  

This weekend, I got  to finish the battle, with the Germans finally destroying Soviet resistence. 

The Soviets again took a beating from German artillery, though did inflict notable casualties on the German recce forces and an infantry company.  A company of Stug IIIs made it into the battle, the first time in the campaign that we have seen any real armor elements, though they did little more than mop up a Soviet 76mm gun unit that had already been ravaged by German artillery.

I'm working on a full after action report now, and expect to post it by next weekend.  After which I think I will finally be able to get back to some regular gaming. 

Stay safe out there, and I hope you have a great holiday season.

Back to War

So after seven months away from the game table, last night I went downstairs and refreshed my memory about the battle and units set up on my table since early February.  I expect to play this out over the next few nights, so hopefully I'll have an after action report in a week or so.

This is the next battle in my Barbarossa campaign.  German motorcycle troops have just entered the near side of the table.  Various Soviet infantry and support units (including 45mm and 76.2mm guns) are deployed on the table.  This battle will mark the first use of German armor, a section of Stug IIIs.

Hopefully more soon.

A Note About Hasslefree Miniatures

I had read not too long ago that Hasslefree Miniatures was having some issues with some orders, despite this, I placed an order about six weeks back, as I had always had a pretty good experience with Hasslefree.

My Hasslefree order arrived with no issues this past Thursday, so about five and a half weeks turnaround across the Atlantic, and through customs.  Maybe a little slower than some past orders, but still faster than swimming or even driving.

So just wanted to share that Hasslefree is still chugging along making and delivering great figs.

I'll share some pics in the fall, when I make a window for some post apoc work.  Working on some other stuff right now. Maybe something to share in a couple of weeks.

Hope everyone is doing well, stay safe out there.

Crawling Out of the Fog

The last few weeks have been a rapid succession of damage control actions in my life, after three months of neglect.  

April is always a busy month with family birthdays and tax time here in the US, but this year had some additional stuff going on, so my world is really just starting to get back to normal after four months of chaos, and my hobby is starting to creep back into my consciousness.

Thus far, I haven't done a lot of hands on stuff, no building or painting, and that Barbarossa game from February still sets, ready to be played, on my table.

Most recently, I picked up that  Kroot Hunting Pack box from GW.

Aside from the original imperial guard, the Kroot are clearly the best thing to ever come out of GW.  Regretfully,  I missed out on some of the more interesting Kroot stuff years back, picking up only some plastics and a single metal fig.  At some point, maybe around September of last year, I picked up the Kill Team Kroot box, keeping a near future and/or post apoc idea alive.  Parting with the money for it about killed me, but at some point down the road, I'll be happy I picked it up.  I hope.

I've also ordered a bunch of Team Yankee 15mm West German infantry for my Cold War gaming (which to my surprise, is taking forever to arrive).  It will allow me to put together a company of West Germans.  I will need to sculpt and cast their rides and support, some SPz 11-2 recce and HS.30 APCs.  I'll probably scratch the Jagdpanzer 90 and Rakette SS-11 vehicles as well, though may break down and just buy the Leopard Is, not sure yet.

Another purchased is a small number of post apoc figs from Hasslefree and couple other sources.  I've heard that Hasslefree is having some hiccups getting orders out, so we will see how that goes.  I'm in no rush, so hopefully, however it works out will be okay.

The last purchase was a 32mm printed viking fig that just looked like I'd enjoy painting, figuring I'd work it into some fantasy stuff eventually, but it turned out to be a bust.  The fig is very nicely sculpted, but the sword is severly warped, perpendicular to the plane of the blade, and two large areas of the shield are simply missing as the shield was too thin to print properly.  Unfortunately, I'm once again let down by the printed figure experience.

Beyond ordering the figs, the only work that I've done is some research (photos and scale drawings) for the German vehicles mentioned above and the French AMX-VCI (or AMX-VTT) and the AMX 13/75.  I'll probably also do the AMX 13 with the M24 turret just for grins, but again, I haven't actually started making any of them yet.

Recently, I dug out my BTR-50P, which I started in December and is about half done, and my loose plan moving forward is to master several of these vehicles, and some other bits for various periods and scales, then order a bunch of rubber and resin and cast up everything all at once.  We'll see how that works out.

As I'm not a warm weather person (much prefering the cold and snow of winter over the heat and humidity of summer), and with the weather warming in coming weeks, I expect to retreat back into the basement and get back into action soon.  

Not Quite Back Yet

My work crazyness finally ended mid week, though it could pick up for four weeks at any moment.  Things had been busy since last October and stepped up at the start of the year, then picked up further until my day consisted of work, eat, sleep (3 hours most days), reset, for 43 days until this past Wednesday.  

I discovered that after four days of three hours sleep that my cogitive processes slowed quite obviously, so every fifth day or so became a 4-5 hour sleep cycle.  I seem to be able to function at a relatively high level on abut 20.5 hours per week over an extended period, which kind of surprised me based on sleep/exhaustion studies that I've read with respect to soldiers in combat.  Of course, I wasn't beng shot at while working, and wasn't cold, wet, and hungry, Well, not wet at least, or excessively hungry.  

By chance, some other "life" stuff has gone on in the background during all of this, and about five weeks back, I started adding in an "exercise" cycle into the day.  With the start of the new year, I had conciously altered my eating habits, which had been going well, with the excersive added in, I've maintained a fairly steady, but reasonable weight loss pattern and have dropped about 30 pounds at this point.  

There has been no hobby time, though for the first time in decades, ideas for some art projects started creeping into my head, and I began making notes about the ideas for a number of 2-D and 2.5-D projects (think involves depth/relief, but not full blown sculpture).

My return to normal life for the last four days has really exposed the general fatigue issues, and changes to my circadian rhythm are a bit of a pain.  I'm still sleeping three hours a night at this point, and have absolutely no fire for reading or anything gaming, which has left me kind of just floating in the ether.  And, I still haven't pulled out the paints or pencils for anything artsy, so not sure what is happening there.

Sooo, no gaming stuff to report, just sort of rebooting for normal life again.  In any case, I'm not dead yet, though not sure if that is success or failure at this point.

A Quick Note

Despite having the next battle in my Barbarossa campaign set up on my table for more than a week, peace has spread across my miniature world, as some stuff at work is simply consuming all of my time.  So, I just wanted to say that I'm not dead yet, and will return to blogging about pushing around toy soldiers as soon as things let up a bit.  Until then, I'm going to be a little scarce.

Stay safe out there.