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.