A Room & a Change of Scale.

Well, once again it's been a while, made so because of working shifts, changing shifts, doing extra shifts, home life and a rather good week in Sunny Majorca! I think that should be our last foreign holiday for a couple of years as the old bank account is starting to complain. And as the Euro seems a tad strong at the moment, it's home country holidays for the foreseeable I reckon, and perhaps rightly so too, considering the country's current financial problems.
So, I've been getting my spare room sorted out to be .. A Wargaming Room. At long last, as was the original plan when we bought this house ten years ago, after being used as the boys playroom and then the Father in Laws room, I'm finally getting on with it. The room has been cleared, the walls are freshly repainted and the wood flooring is down. A new table has been delivered c/o Ikea, and I just need to decide on the table top board size to buy from the local MKM. That's proving a bit difficult for me to decide on, but will probably be an 8ftx4ft playing surface, to allow a comfortable amount of room around it for the gamers, the room being a good 15ftx10ft size. I may of course buy more than just the one board, to allow various widths & depths for different games. And of course, we'll need space for pie plates, ashtrays and suchlike. Shelves are now going up, books are being gathered up and placed on said shelves, and my gaming stuff has been piled together, from storage in the spare bedroom upstairs, under the bed, the understairs cupboard, the farthest recesses of the garage, and oddly I found yet more in a kitchen drawer.
Probably like yourselves, I didn't realise I had quite so much of it. Some of it I don't even recall buying. Some of it, I wondered just why on earth I had it. So I've had a bit of a clear out, sold a few bits and so on, but the main change is that I've disposed of my 10mm Napoleonics. I looked at what I had painted up, and what I still had unpainted, and thought, "I just don't want to paint that scale anymore". It's an odd feeling, but once you've had it, and it's persisted for a while, then you know it's time to move on to something else. And, I realised, I'd hardly painted any of them for the last two years.
So, wanting to keep it all easy and stress free, I contacted that pleasant Mr Hinds by email, we agreed a price and proportions for swaps and so on, and a few weeks ago I trotted off to Derby to see him. What a treasure trove of figures he has in his house! I was rather taken aback at just how much there was. But, over a cup of tea and a natter, we had a pleasant exchange of figures and cash, all done without fuss and with fairness on both sides. I know these things can be difficult, maybe it depends on who you deal with, but I can certainly recommend Mr H for openness, honesty, and reasonableness. I'd certainly trade with him again. So I came away happy, with a large quantity of painted 15mm Napoleonic Prussians, Spanish, a few French, along with a fair number of painted SYW figures, for use in my newly remembered Village Wars project.
The next weekend it was Derby Show, and along I went with cash in hand. I was delighted to see Mr Grubby Tanks, he of the stacked green boxes full of painted 15mm Napoleonics! The figures are his own production, have a certain style & character that I like, and were a mere 80p each. Painted. Well, I thought, I can't be turning that down really, so I duly bought 8x36 figure Btns, of French Allies, Saxons, Westphalians and the like. Being mostly white uniforms, that will save me a lot of painting pain, as I just don't like painting white. I'll definitely be seeing him again, and buying similar. Whilst there, I had a nice chat with Andy of Old Glory, and could not resist his new 15mm Marlburians, so had to buy just a few, to do a DBMarlburian type game. Nice figures, quite large, easy to paint, and, the same Blue Moon range is rumored to be bringing out Napoleonics in the same style next year. Nice one. This also led to a couple of books on the period being obtained from Caliver books, which seem to have all the info I'll need to get going.
So, with bases purchased from ERM, I've started the task of rebasing all these Napoleonic figures. Now, I want to do GdB, but also in our local group, we do DBN, so there's a bit of a problem as the basing is different. I don't want to be having separate armies for each set of rules, that would just be plain silly. So I came up with the easy and rather obvious solution, which is to base them on 40mm frontage bases to fit in with the DBN, and use 4 bases to a normal GdB Btn, 2 bases for a GdB Squadron, and so on. Sorted. Or it will be, when I've got them all done.
Talking of GdB, I recently ordered & received The Gent's Edition of the updated rules.
To say they are rather nice, just does not do this set justice. Apart from the very playable updated rules, there are pictures galore in this book, mainly of 15mm. That may have been a final deciding factor in my change of scale I think. I really can't praise it enough, it does, to me, set a new and high standard for a set of rules, hardback, neatly laid out & explained, wonderfully presented and with enough eye candy to make your retina's ache. If you haven't yet got one, be quick and speak to Caliver Books to obtain your copy, before they sell out.
So then, gaming wise, our group is getting it together again after the usual summer break, and we were recently treated to a very tightly played Waterloo DBN game put on by Alex at his hotel, along with some rather fine culinary delights. The game went to the wire, and was thoroughly enjoyed. Also, Richard put on a rather fun & quick moving Zombie board game, along with a delightful home made steak pie lunch by Mrs Richard Snr. Frankly, if Mrs R ever opens a pie shop, I'll be in there daily.
A swift welcome to Fran & Angry Lurker, latest Followers, thanks for joining, appreciated, and I hope you both enjoy the Blog.
In the near future, our group has games on at the SmoggyCon & Recon Shows, which are both really good show days out to be looked forward to, and worth attending if you can. Also, a couple of us are lucky enough to be at the large GdB game, Wellington Barracks, this coming weekend. Organised by the good Mr Brown & Co, having been to previous games, I know that we have a quality game & weekend coming up, along with perhaps more than a few beers with some old chums. I'll be reading those GdB rules on the train as we travel down on the Thursday, to take in some sights & museums, and to sample a pot or three of London Pride before the game starts....
Regards,
Peeler