Rainy day

We've popped back up to Auckland for the weekend so that A can spend some time at home as well as to relieve her flatmate from the responsibility of rubbing Margaret's (A's kitten) tummy. The forecast is bad once again, so with a view to spending quite some time inside I packed a shoebox with miniatures so that I can clean them and wash them ready for when I get home.

I brought a Commonwealth Rifle Platoon and all of my Infinity Haqqislam miniatures with me. I'm halfway through taking flash and mould lines off the rifle platoon and I'm taking a break. I must say that I detest this job, more than any other part of modeling. It's fiddly and I don't consider myself to be very good at it. To be honest I'm not sure how to go about doing it any better with my attention span. Basically what I do is remove the really bad and obvious flash and vent holes before starting work on tackling the mould lines with the back of the knife blade. It isn't the most effective method for removing the lines but I'm not really sure how to do it more effectively within the limits of my abilities. I'm too nervous to cut with the edge of the blade for fear of damaging the detail. Consequence being my miniatures do end up being left with a few mould lines on them.

After a full breakfast at a cafe up the road I dropped A off at home to get to work on her uni assignment and headed into Modelair Newmarket to take a look at their flames of war range. I haven't spent much time at all in model shops since I was a kid due to my relative geographical isolation from retail centres and my having dropped the hobby during my university years in Wellington. Modelair was a great little store packed with aeroplane, vehicle and ship model kits, both civilian and military, as well as a small range of flames of war.

The store really brought back memories and reminded me of when I first took an interest in toy soldiers. When I was a wee chap there was a tiny model shop at the North end of Thames which stocked little tamiya and airfix models and miniatures. I had a bucket full of the cheap plastic army men (some of which I painted with Tamiya enamels, others I set on fire with gunpowder and a magnifying glass - such fun). I began to supplement this collection with better quality miniatures during our regular trips to Thames (frequently to the hospital - I broke a lot of limbs as a kid). I remember having 1/72 scale kits of British paratroops, Fallschirmjager and French line infantry. I guess a musket is as good as a bren when it comes to bagging the hun, eh?

Getting a new box of models was such a highlight and I used to love going to that model shop; Modelair really brought all of that back to me! This was really my first exposure to miniatures or of using them in games. I used to sculpt battlefields in my sand pit with a hose and then fight over them with the army men - with destructible terrain of course (often followed by a scolding when the hose washed all of the sand out of the bottom of the sand pit onto the pavers...). I had no discernable rules, and most of the action was played out in my imagination. Most of the games took the form of some kind of "Guns of Navaronne" type mission and the good guys always won. Fast forward to my teens and its easy to see how my first White Dwarf magazine had such an enduring effect on me!

A friend up the road has twin boys aged roughly two (not so good with the exact details). I'm really really looking forward to them being old enough for me to buy them their first army men (and probably commando comics). Probably as an excuse to spend some money in modelair!

Cheers!

My attention deficit and a new year update!

It's been a while since the last post; work, energy and distractions have been conspiring against me I think. This post has been developing in draft form over a number of weeks so it is a bit of a ramble. I should really break it up into a number of posts but as I've been writing this on the blogger Android app it's in the too hard basket!

So what's been happening? Work has been pretty manic since I got back from holiday with a lot of report deadlines and presenting to Council, community boards and the local iwi forum. Fun and games really, I managed to avoid public speaking for my first 18 months in the job but recently the floodgates have really opened. Anyway, things aren't likely to quiet down at all in the week before Christmas.

I did manage to have an unexpectedly long weekend though, the lovely A being sent to hospital on last Wednesday afternoon with suspected appendicitis. Two days off work hanging around hospital with a very hurriedly packed bag devoid of wargaming entertainments ensued. Thank heavens for smart phones! Result being a very sore and drugged up A feeling like she's been whacked in the stomach with a bag of apples. The poor thing, very definitely un-fun and not to be recommended. Hooray for Tramadol! (Not the nicest of drugs as it turns out)

Along with this excitement, my adventures in Skyrim and football management heroics in FIFA haven't left me much time for painting. To be honest, around 5-a-side football and late evenings at board meetings I haven't really had the inclination to paint; a few virtual premier league fixtures or an icy dungeon of two being a bit more attractive.

FLAMES OF WAR

I have started to get back into the swing of things, though much of what I've been doing has been in the imagination department without achieving much that's tangible. I picked up a paintbrush last weekend while A was working on a uni assignment, and black primed the bases on my Mortar platoon. I'm learning things as I go, such as why its a good idea to moderate your usage of grit on bases. I went a bit overboard with the consequence that the bases sucked up paint like nobody's business and the process took about 4 times longer than it should have. More surface area and I guess it has the effect of making the surface porous. I hope to finish these bases soon - so hopefully you will get to see photos of my first completed unit! Looking forward to that post, I can tell you.

The terrain that Garth and I ordered a while back has started to arrive. I'm impressed with the ruined Italian monastery; the pre-paint is nice and I'm looking forward to seeing it on the table. We've also had two sets of battlefield in a box rural roads arrive. Equally impressed with the quality, though I fear we may have gone overboard as there are a LOT of roads! Unfortunately Waylands was out of stock for the battlefield in a box rivers set so we were refunded. Will keep an eye on availability as I do intend to purchase them.

The next step for terrain will be trees, walls and probably some home made hills. If anyone could recommend products/brands we'd appreciate it; we're not really sure where to start when it comes to trees. We're also waiting on the release of Italian buildings by www.gamesofwar.net; if their north African range is anything to go by, they look to be good quality and very reasonably priced.

I've been listening to the "what would patton do" podcast during my commute to work and the frequent trips to Auckland to see A. I've been getting through their back catalogue at a fair rate of knots; I'm currently up to episode 20 out of approximately 30 episodes so far. I'm learning a lot from the podcasts, though given my lack of experience in actually gaming flames of war it's mostly been lessons in theory. It has REALLY been getting me amped to play this game, which is certainly at odds with the lack of progress I've made in the painting department.

I'm going to try and use this as motivation to get back on the painting wagon over my three week Christmas break. We've deliberately got little planned for the break; A and I are both a bit worn out from work and our 3 weeks in America at the end of October so we are looking forward to taking it easy and not spending money! We're camping up the top of the coromandel for new years, but apart from that I think it'll be a bit of hiking, relaxation and I'm hoping a bit of painting too. New Years update: despite the forecast I reluctantly succumbed to the others' enthusiasm and pressed ahead with the camping trip. They didn't bring wet weather gear and their tents leaked. Consequence: we left after the first night while we could still get over the ford. Lesson: don't let others' enthusiasm override the weather forecast and your own experience of local conditions!

My pace so far makes me regret somewhat opting for infantry as my starting army - there is so much to get through! I just need to keep my eye on the prize and get to it I guess! Unfortunately Garth won't be making it up over the summer so we won't be able to have a game together for quite some time. He has done a lot of painting and really is in a position where he can start gaming. I'm going to try and encourage him to pick up a game or two down in Wellington - he might as well receive some benefit from the hard work he's put in while he's waiting for me. The happy side of it is that it buys me more time!

One of the advantages of my army selection (NZ rifle company from the Cassino book) is that the miniatures will to a large extent ( subject to varying support options) be interchangeable with the early war source books such as hellfire and back and burning empires. This means that with some additional effort ill be able to play late war Cassino as well as early war Crete and Greece. Crete has got me particularly excited - I'd love to sit down with the hellfire and burning empires books and Anthony Beevor's 'Crete' and work out some historical scenarios. Kiwis vs Fallschirmjager! Perfect!

Lastly, the terrain mat from theterrainguy.com has finally arrived. We ordered it at the start of November and it just happened to arrive at the family business on the Saturday of Christmas Eve. After another attempted delivery after boxing day I went into panic mode a bit and left a note on the door for alternative delivery. At roughly $50 USD shipping wasn't that keen for it to be returned to sender! I must say that I think it's worth every penny it took to get it here. It looks great, appears to be very hardy and should be a much better and in-theme option than the old flimsy GW flocked-paper mat I have already. My only regret is that we didn't opt for a mat bigger than the 6'x4'. Oh, and that we didn't wait with basing so that we could match colours to the board. I definitely think that I'll go to them again for similar products. When we eventually make it to playing north Africa I reckon a large desert mat would be awesome!

INFINITY

Well I haven't got anywhere yet with infinity other than acquiring a starting force of miniatures. I bought human sphere recently and I've barely had the chance to open it! It's a pity really as the mechanics of the game excite me; I just can't quite see myself getting a force painted any time soon with so many flames of war miniatures at the front of the line. I have set myself a small goal for the summer, though, and that's to get the miniatures cleaned, prepped and primed. That way I can even have a go at trying the rules out on the table if the opportunity presents itself! While I haven't played it yet, I do see Infinity as a great game for my circle of friends (none of whom have expressed interest - yet) given its low buy-in cost, aesthetics, flexibility and cinematic mechanics. The sooner I get some form of miniature on the table to demonstrate the better!

Unfortunately, I'm not realistically going to be able to participate in the infinity tournament that's being organised as a part of a larger tournament in Auckland early next year. There has been some discussion of it amongst kiwis on the infinity forums for some time now - in fact (and a bit embarrassingly) I think it was my discussions with community members about starting infinity that partly prompted the discussion that lead to the idea to include an infinity segment in the tournament. Feel bad for not making it, but unless I have a painting epiphany in January I can't see it happening!

In other Infinity news, I read on the interwebs that a campaign/scenario supplement may be released in early 2012. I waxed poetical on the matter in an earlier blog post, and I must say I'm still that enthusiastic. I may not be close to getting infinity on the table, but I'm a sucker for rules books!

WARHAMMER-HISTORICAL

Well I'm still waiting on the warhammer historical books I've got on order - Trafalgar, two old west supplements and the two warmaster ancients rulebooks. Bought and paid for might I add. They hadn't arrived after a good 6 weeks, and after a few weeks of not having my emails replied to I sat up late so that I could telephone during UK opening hours. The guy on the phone was apologetic and polite, and arranged for new copies of the books to be sent by priority courier, the tracking code for which he would email to me. Well I haven't yet recieved an email with the tracking code, and three weeks on the books haven't arrived. Understandable perhaps given that it is Christmas time, but I really don't think there is much excuse for the poor customer service. Frustrating! I guess I'll sit up late this week and make another phone call. New Years update: still no sign of the books and no contact from them. Looks like I'll be making another phone call in a week or so. Really, deeply disappointed in their performance. In this day and age it just isn't acceptable.

That's probably enough for one post - I've other things I'd like to post about but this has been languishing in draft long enough! And sorry to ignore your advice re: aesthetics on this one Frontline - I'll make more of an effort when I'm not posting off my phone!

I hope to talk about my historical gaming interests, board games (of the wargame variety), video games and blogs that I've found particularly interesting and inspirational during 2011.

Happy New Year and cheers!

Glorious distractions

Just a quick update to explain away my quietness on the blog over the last two weeks!

Having not been properly gainfully employed for too long (I was quite some time at university) the novelty of regular pay has not worn off even after 22 months in the job.  I don't expect that it ever will!  Up until late October I'd only taken about two weeks of my annual leave entitlement; we get 4 weeks each year in New Zealand so I'd managed to accrue a fair bit.  The great thing is that it's paid leave so I came home from my three-week holiday to the Americas flush! And promptly went and built myself a new gaming PC...

I did do my best to justify the purchase, at least rhetorically!  My older PC was a Core 2 Duo that I built back in 2005/2006.  It certainly wasn't on it's last legs and could play most new games that came out - though on low settings (thankfully I'm mostly a fan of RPGs and strategy games which aren't spec whores like cutting-edge first person shooters).  But I thought what the hell, I'd got 6-7 years out of my old computer, I don't know when I'm likely to have extra cash in the future, and to be honest with the way compute technology is at the moment its the perfect time to build a gaming computer.  The technology race has slowed down a bit to the point where brand new upgrades only give minimal improvement and there isn't a whole lot of contrast anymore to affordable PCs.

Anyway, the connection to wargaming is that I've been a bit distracted by new games over the past two weeks, while also getting back into the swing of things at work after my holiday.  My gaming purchases are the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and FIFA 12.  The consequence of this is that I haven't actually achieved anything in the wargaming field since Garth and I ordered some terrain from Waylands back on 13 November.  I'm going to have to get disciplined and at least try and do a little bit every night.  We shall see.

As for the games, I'm really loving them.  I haven't been able to play anything at the top end of the spec spectrum in a very long time; it's just wonderful how smooth and beautiful the graphics are.  I guess a fairly chunky graphics card, a Core i7 and 16Gb of RAM do that!  Yes!  16Gb!  Just insane.

Skyrim is so very much better than Oblivion; I'm very impressed.  The world is so much more interesting, and the atmosphere and flavour of everything really pulls you in.  It's the first Elder Scrolls game that I've really enjoyed playing.  I dabbled with Morrowwind and did my best to get into Oblivion (Morrowind was certainly better than Oblivion in my opinion), but neither of them had the combination of aesthetics, gameplay and atmospherics that Skyrim has.  The ambient sounds and tension as you work your way through wight-infested barrows really are very immersive - and the fights are a lot of fun.  Anyway, enough gushing.

What is in the immediate future for wargaming?  Well firstly I'm going to finish basing my Kiwi mortar platoon.  Secondly I'm going to finish cleaning and prime a Commonwealth platoon and then into the grind of painting.  It isn't going to be a quick project, especially with Summer coming up, but I'd at least like to get those two things done before Christmas.  I'd also like to make a start on one of my Infinity miniatures.  All that beauty in a box and it's just sitting there.  Need to get onto it.  I've also got terrain to make and a table to build.  It does seem a bit insurmountable at the moment, especially considering that this weekend just been was my first weekend at home in two months.  Hopefully I'll have a quiet Christmas holiday!  I'm taking three weeks off so in between hanging out with the lovely A I'd like to get some painting done.

In other matters, the books that I bought from Warhammer Historical in their sale have not yet arrived (I ordered them on 5 and 12 October and previous parcels have taken under three weeks to arrive).  I bought Trafalgar, Warmaster Ancients, Warmaster Ancient Armies an two of the Legends of the Old West supplements.  To be frank, I'm a little pissed off.  I've sent two emails to Warhammer Historical over the past two weeks and have not yet had a reply.  Today I posted a message to them on their website.  If I don't hear from them in 48 hours I'm going to give them a call - not my preferred option given the time difference and the cost of calling international, but I probably don't have much choice in the matter.  It's a little bit frustrating really.  I love the products but the retail service they provide really isn't up to the modern standard.  Their books are probably overpriced, and their shipping definitely is.  I'm willing to pay full price for the books because they're great products, but when you pay premium dollar you expect premium service.  I'm not really pissed off with the staff; I'm sure they're understaffed and get minimal support from GW, including investment in an adequate online shopping solution.  I'm so used to receiving automatic notifications and prompt customer support that it really gets up my nose when an online store doesn't provide it - it's got to be a fundamental aspect of conducting business online I reckon.  So the punchline is, if you're going to purchase products from Warhammer Historical be aware that you're not likely to get much customer service.  I'm unlikely to shop with them again.

Anyway, enough of a rant.  Best wishes to everyone leading into Christmas, I'll let you know of any progress I make with the painting!

Viva Las Vegas and no habla espanol

Well I made it back safe from my trip! Didn't get arrested, mugged or sick (well, sick that wasn't related to jagermeister and my debut cigar) so I think it was a success!

The short of it is, I really didn't like LA, Vegas was fun but crass and exhausting, Oaxaca was beautiful, and San Agustinillo on the Oaxacan coast was simply amazing. I'm not in a hurry to go back to urban America (though I'd love to go back and do the western national parks), but I will definitely go back to Mexico. Such a great place with fantastic cuisine, friendly and hospitable people, and some must see sights. And pretty cheap too!

So things have obviously been a bit quiet on the wargaming front. I've got 400 blog posts to catch up on in my Google reader (along with 300 work emails to catch up on during the day) to begin with, and I haven't managed to get near any painting since I've been back. I did have to go down to Wellington for a course on my first day back at work, so I stayed with Garth and in between beers we ordered the beginnings of our terrain table. A work in progress.

In other news, much of my time this week has been spent ordering and putting together the components for a new pc. One of the joys of paid annual leave - you come home flush! I'll post some details when its done, but suffice to say, skyrim will be beautiful!

I'll leave you on an interesting note...I went to the gun store in Vegas and shot an MP40 and an M249 SAW. Good fun! The MP40 was pretty soft, certainly a spray weapon. I shot a pretty tight group with the SAW though so happy with that!

Hasta la vista!

Well I'm flying out for Los Angeles first thing in the morning, so I won't be posting on the blog much over the next few weeks.  It's possible that I will get the chance to post something while I'm away, though I won't be doing anything related to wargaming other than thinking idly!

We've got two days in LA, during which the lovely A intends to hug a few cartoon characters, before picking up my brother and his girlfriend from the airport and driving to Las Vegas.  We're heading there to a wedding of a highschool friend of mine, and will be there a week.  There will be some pretty epic piss-ups there I'd say - it's not every day you get to have a stag do in Vegas after all!  We'll be doing all of the usual things, including a token bit of gambling (I'm not a gambler), a trip out to the grand canyon, and going to a show of Cirque du Soleil.  Should be fun!  I'm just really looking forward to some time off work and being able to relax and blow some money without a conscience.  I've been saving for quite a while for this trip so have really been skimping.  It'll be a relief to just let loose.  Fortunately I'll be getting paid while I'm away (this working thing rocks - paid annual leave!) and the back pay for this year's pay review will also be deposited into my bank account while I'm away.  I'll be coming back more flush than when I leave!  Not a bad place to start with some purchases for my wargames table eh?!

So after Las Vegas we're flying to Oaxaca for 4 days (splitting off from my brother and his girlfriend who are spending some time in Mexico City).  We're doing a cooking course with a local chef and will hopefully make it out to see some of the local artisans.  After that the girls are heading home and my brother and I are heading to the coast to a place called San Agustinillo on the Pacific coast.  I gather it's relatively secluded and totally relaxing!  Should be a nice change of pace before we get on the long flight back to New Zealand.

Anyway, back to wargaming.  Not too much has been happening, though I have made a bit of progress over the last week.  I've started basing my mortar platoon. I've built up the bases with a polyfilla product, glued grit on top of that and sealed the grit on with another coat of watered down PVA.  Now that the PVA has dried (and when I'm back from holiday) I'll brush undercoat it with primer, apply a base coat or two of green ochre, and dry brush light flesh over the top (see Garth's photographs below for the effect of this paint scheme - I rather like it).  I've got various flocks, static grasses and shrubbery to apply to finish it off.

I've also started cleaning my first Commonwealth Platoon.  Sadly I didn't meet my goal of having the whole platoon primed before I leave - I've just been too busy!  I have really got back into the bug over the last week and I guess the opportunity to do some more painting is something to look forward to for when I get back from my holiday.

I've made a few more purchases towards my NZ rifle company over the last few weeks.  My 2nd and 3rd Commonwealth Rifle Platoons arrived, along with a pack of snipers.  I've subsequently ordered and received a blister of Royal Engineers (with the intention of incorporating them with the sticky bomb figures from the commonwealth platoon to form the company pioneer section) and another pack of PIATS.  I should have enough to really flesh out the infantry part of my company as well as some of the optional choices.

In other news, in a moment of weakness I went and ordered Infinity: Human Sphere while Maelstrom still had it in stock.  It arrived about a week later which is pretty impressive!  I haven't had the chance to look at it yet; it's now waiting for when I return from holiday, after which I'm heading straight to Wellington for a work seminar - perhaps I'll take it on the plane.

The only thing I'm waiting for now is my order from Warhammer Historical.  Garth's has arrived; hopefully mine hasn't gone astray.

Anyway, I'd better go and get a bit of sleep before the long flight tomorrow.  I've just returned from a dinner at a great Japanese restaurant, complete with Sake - so I've got a bit of a glow on so I probably need the sleep, and a bit of hydration!

Take care guys, cheers!

Warhammer-Historical kaput?

I've gone a bit mad over the past few weeks with the 50% off sale at warhammer-historical.com, picking up copies of Trafalgar, Warmaster Ancients, Warmaster Ancient Battles and two supplements for Legends of the Old West.

I'm glad that I did.

I wrote to the people at Warhammer-Historical when they shifted to telephone only sales on the core rulebook for legends of the old west asking if I could still obtain a copy. They wrote back three days later to tell me that it was now out of print and unavailable for order. I replied with a question as to whether there was any likelihood of it being reprinted in the future, to which question I got the answer "sadly this is highly unlikely".

I surmise, then, that this sale was probably designed for the purpose of clearing out all remaining stock in anticipation for warhammer historical shutting its doors. This is only guess work on my part, mind you. It could be that they're discontinuing their support for earlier rulesets, or as I have seen suggested on various blogs and forums around the internet, as a precursor to a pdf only business model. These latter two options seem strange when you consider that warhammer historical have only recently published a number of titles. Why else would they be liquidating their stock if not in anticipation of closure? I confess that I don't know enough about publishing or retail to answer this question. Perhaps one of you might.

If this is indeed the end of warhammer historical, I'm sad. It's been around a long time; it was certainly around back when I first started wargaming back in the late 1990s to early 2000s. To me it represents a part of the company that still gets pleasure out of making games for gamers. Without warhammer historical and the specialist games, all we're left with are the cash cow core games and abominations such as dreadfleet. As far as I'm concerned, no thanks.

I do wonder what possessed GW not to make a go of their warhammer historical line. The books are quality products which they could have sold to gamers of their core games looking for something new (who would likely still consume their hobby products lines if not their miniatures), or anyone else who happened to see a book on the shelf of their FLGS and pick it up, having been sold on the impressive production values. It must have been able to make money for them. They effectively just choked the products off by only making them available on their website. I think the problem is likely to be that the products do not fit within the business model of GW's retail arm (if you'd like to pursue this discussion further, please see an excellent article on the topic on the frontline gamer blog, see my blogroll).

I also feel for the talented folk who have poured their time and energy into these products. They're clearly passionate about what they were doing, and equally clearly they wanted to share that passion with us. A pity they didn't work with another publisher willing to give their products support.

I hope that I'm wrong; if I'm right, it's a shame. In the meantime, Garth did manage to pick up a copy of LotOW! Phew!

(p.s. sorry for any formatting issues, I'm blogging from my phone in bed and it's possible that the paragraphing won't pull through.

Cheers!

Despatches

It's about time that I reported on my wargaming goings-on.  I've had a busy few weeks around work and trip planning.  Unfortunately my painting output has been very low; I hope to remedy that and get at least something done before I head on holiday in two weeks!  So what have I been up to?

I've been acquiring the necessary materials for basing my mortar platoon for flames of war.  This has meant purchasing various types of basing grit and flock from Waylands, as well as grabbing more mundane items such as PVA glue and Selley's "filla".  Now it's just a matter of plucking up my courage and having a go at it; having not used the filla material before I'm a wee bit nervous about how easy it will be to apply and fearful about ruining the miniatures.  Probably nothing to worry about!

I made some progress with my read-through of Waterloo over the weekend (though not much).  So far I'm finding it very easy to follow.  It's got enough of the Warhammer mechanics to make it familiar while at the same time being very reflective of the period.  Definitely a bit less of a mouthful than General de Brigade to begin with, and I look forward to trying the rules out.  I'll post some more detailed thoughts when I've finished my read through; though my comments won't be of much value in respect of its worth as a ruleset given my relative inexperience!

The courier man has been busy on my behalf over the last two weeks.  The Flames of War supplement "Hellfire and Back" for early-mid war Africa/Mediterranean has arrived, and I must say I'm very impressed with the quality of the book.  It is beautifully hard bound and not much smaller than the Flames of War core rulebook, which is a bit of a beast in itself.  I haven't really taken too much time to look into it yet as it won't be providing the list for my first Flames of War army (I'm going late war Cassino for that).  I think the book will provide the list for my second army though - either an adaption of my late war kiwis into early war Div Cav, or a British Armoured Squadron for the desert.

The first of the Commonwealth Infantry platoons I ordered from Wayland Games has arrived, with two more and a sniper blister still on the way.  I haven't done anything more than unpack them and arrange them into their stands.  I'm very happy with the sculpts; they're very dynamic and characterful, and I'm glad that I decided to go with them over the late war Rifle Company miniatures.  I've been playing around a lot with the list on Easyarmy.com, and I'm just not sure what else I'm going to take.  This is the difficulty in not having played any games yet (well, no proper games) and not having a firm idea as to the relative strengths of different units.  At the moment I'm thinking of keeping things fairly balanced, with some mortars, HMGs, AT guns, artillery, recon (armoured cars or carriers - I'm quite enamoured of the Staghound) and an Armoured Platoon of Shermans.  I'm a bit worried that this is spreading things a bit thin though.  I think I'll get this army together, run it, and then make changes accordingly.  That way I'll have the full range of options right from the get go and so will have plenty of flexibility.

My order of Infinity from Maelstrom Games has also finally arrived!  It appears that the parcel was missent to Vancouver.  Not sure how Vancouver could have been confused with the Maori name of my home town or with New Zealand; I'm just glad it got here!  It'd taken quite some time for the items to get back in stock with Maelstrom, and when they shipped Garth's order of Nomads shipped at the same time.  His arrived 2-3 weeks ago, and I've been watching the post anxiously ever since.  I've taken a look at the miniatures but little else.  Once again I'm impressed with the level of detail and the dynamic poses of the miniatures "in the flesh".  I don't think I'll get to painting these in a hurry as I'm trying to prioritise my Flames of War so that I've got something on the table to game with.  The temptation might get me over the summer though, we'll see.  I've had a private message from a kiwi on the Infinity Community Forums about having Infinity at the next Battlecry.  Sadly I'm unlikely to be in the position to play in time for the tournament, but I'd very much like to attend just to take a look at Infinity in action as well as seeing the other games that people play.  I've had very little exposure to other gamers yet other than Garth given where I live, so I'd definitely like to take the opportunity to "get out".

I've also been caught out by a 50% off sale at the Warhammer-Historical website!  The sale popped up just after I'd bought the Waterloo book for $80.00.  Typical!  I couldn't really resist though, and picked up Trafalgar, Warmaster Ancients and Warmaster Ancient Battles all for half price.  Garth picked up copies of Waterloo and Legends of the Old West (he's since gone and bought some Black Scorpion miniatures - they look cool!).  I bought Trafalgar because I'm a sucker for the period and because Garth already has a copy.  We're pretty keen to give the game a go in the future, though it will be a while before it makes it's way to the top of our priority list for miniatures.  I bought Warmaster Ancients because I'm in love with half a hundred historical periods and I really doubt my ability and attention span as far as painting them all in 28mm goes!  Hopefully at some stage in the future Garth and I will be able to branch out into some 6-10mm wargaming.  I'd love to do War of the Roses to begin with!

Garth is looking at Legends of the Old West as a campaign skirmish game to replace his old love Mordheim.  We played a lot of the game in high school; sadly we let all of our miniatures and the original terrain go.  I remember enjoying the system a lot, though we did think that there were some limitations to the rules.  I like the idea of getting back into this kind of "progressive campaign" skirmish gaming, though.  To this end I went back to the Warhammer-Historical store a few days later to consider purchasing the rules; sadly they were only taking phone orders for them as they'd largely sold out.  Oh well.  I'm not sure I needed to buy another rule book - I've comprehensively failed in my resolution not to purchase any more!

So what else is on the cards?  No more miniature purchases, for a start!  Garth and I are planning on picking up a bit of terrain for Flames of War when I get back from holiday in mid-November.  I should come home with plenty of change, so I'm going to divert a wee bit of it towards a gaming mat (I'm thinking from theterrainguy.com) and some pre-made terrain.  That will give us the foundation of the board, and we can work on making anything else we need from there.  Given my slackness with painting over the last 2-3 weeks (I've just been exhausted after work and weekends have been busy) I've decided to set myself a realistic goal for the two weeks before I go away.  I'm going to base my mortar platoon and have them finished, as well as clean and prime my Commonwealth Platoon ready for painting when I get back.  This is a little bit of work, but shouldn't get in the way of my trip preparations.

Speaking of priming, and as a closing note, I popped into one of Games Workshop's Auckland mall stores a few weekends ago to pick up a spray can of black primer (unfortunately no one will ship these to me, and I don't often get the chance to go wargames shopping in person).  While the lovely A stood outside and stared in horror, I negotiated my way through the melee and managed to reach the counter.  I sympathise with A, I really can't stand those stores and couldn't even when I used to play Warhammer/40k.  I think it's something to do with the concentrated teenage enthusiasm.  Anyway, when I was going through the motions of paying $30 for a can of black primer (when did things get this expensive?) I had a yarn to the GW staffer and he was a really nice guy.  We talked about the Waterloo book that had just been released (I think I sold it to him, haha!) as well as a wee chat about Warhammer-Historical's Kampfgruppe Normandy rules (he tried to sell these to me as an alternative to Flames of War for the WWII period - failed).  It goes to show that while I'm not at all a fan of the company, they do employ some nice people!