That Was The Year That Was...

So 2012 we come to the end...

Looking back at 2012 from a hobby perspective I haven't achieved anywhere near as much as I wished.

In the plus column I finished an army - the Athenians! I also painted up a number of Orc army regiments plus some odds and sods including a pile of old 40K Imperial Guard.



In the minus column the Zulus, a pile of brown undercoated miniatures, stare at me accusingly and I never progressed with my 28mm moderns as I wished (and we'll just skip over Wessex Games projects).

So bit of a mixed bag. If one lesson has been learn it is that I need to identify what projects I intend to concentrate on and stick to the plan and endeavour to do some painting (no matter how little) each day as every little helps (as they say). I just need to plan the first few months of 2013...



Anyway, off to see The Hobbit in a while so as this is the last post of 2012 I'd like to wish you all a peaceful and prosperous New Year!

Nice Looking Rack...

I spent part of Friday trying to get at least one of my Zulu regiments ready for dipping before the year ended and found myself spending more time trying to find the particular Vallejo paint pots I wanted (my current system of them all dumped in a clear plastic ziplock bag leaves something to be desired). Indeed I reflected my whole workbench/painting area is a complete and utter mess.

So the time has come for action!

Following an inspiring post on Belisarius's blog I have purchased this...

This is stage one in clearing, reclaiming and reogranising my workbench/painting area rather than trying to work amongst the detritus that has spread across all but a minute part on the area.

Once I have done this I will start to reclaim the wargames table with the aim of having a more organised and hobby orientated year in 2013!

Gerry Anderson RIP

It was sad to read the news of Gerry Anderson's passing today. To many of us of a 'certain age' his TV shows defined our youth, in my case Stingray and Thunderbirds...



A few years back I bought a complete set of the Konami Thunderbirds models with the idea of creating an International Rescue type game. An idea to dust off in 2013 perhaps...

Merry Christmas

Hoping you, your family and friends have a peaceful festive period and that Santa brought you lots of shiny new wargaming presents and not too many socks!

The model is Scibor Miniatures' Snowman Slayer, a companion to last year's Santa Hunter, lovely miniatures both...

Sharke's Aquila

Craig Andrew's has uploaded my annual contribution to his Orcs in the Webbe advent calendar which you can read here.

This year I have gone back to exploring the possibilities of gameworld crossovers with the Orc Rifles from Flintlqoue ending up in the world of Pax Bochemanica where, rather confusingly, orcs wear skirts and carry eagles...

Back to the present wrapping...

The End Is Nigh...

As the Mayans haven't been considerate enough to advise whether the world ends today at GMT, EST or even PST I thought we could all do some music. I'll be painting some Judge Dredd figures on the off chance they are wrong... ;-)

 

The Great DreadBall Fumble...

I wasn't going to post on this topic again but my blood pressure is rising the more I look into it...

Allegedly all the Kickstarters have now been shipped. I say allegedly because on 26th November Mantic posted that "all trade is shipping at the same time as the Kickstarter pledges!"

 A few days earlier they posted: "Just to keep you informed we will be shipping out distributor orders next week as well, so if any are super quick they may hit shelves next Saturday – but they should be arriving at the same time as yours the following week – though obviously without the MVPs and the other goodies you'll all have in your first shipment!"

This is why I am upset with Mantic. I accept crap happens and things get delayed but they are making decisions and moving goalposts without explaining why directly to the people who put almost half a million quid in their bank account at the end of September.

I don't know why they have not done what they said they were going to do on the 26th November. I'm also a bit confused how some UK Kickstarters got their stuff two weeks back (one two separate parcels) which contradicts either waiting for the MVP stock or sending overseas orders out first (which I don't mind if I believed that was true as it clearly isn't)

I appear to have been quite restrained in not getting miffed until two weeks after it went on sale with retailers having now come across the following interesting blog posts from November:

Frontline Game: Dreadball Launch

Meeples and Miniatures: “Mantic have the ball, it’s the last rush of the game, they must score…wait…FUMBLE!!!”

Incidentally it didn't arrive today...

A Dread(ful)Ball Experience...

I must confess to being a bit jacked off...

Back in October I told you all how I'd been seduced by Mantic's shiny new Dreadball project and had been looking forward to painting up the miniatures and having some games. I was planning to paint up two of the teams and give it to Saul as a Christmas present, but it looks like that won't be happening.

Mantic collected over $700,000 from gamers who invested in the project to get it off the ground, but since collecting the money they have treated the Kickstarters pretty poorly.

First off was the decision to supply retailers before the Kickstarters. They have tried to justify this as part of building a gaming community for players by getting it into shops where the game could be played but many of the retailers they supplied don't have shops. North Star, an online retailer and wholesaler, received their sets of DreadBall on 28th November and anyone who pre-ordered from them received their copies on 3rd December. Dave Thomas (who also doesn't have a shop) even had some on his stand at Recon on 1st December...

Eventually Mantic told Kickstarters that the game was shipping to us and it arrived - first in Malaysia... then New Zealand... then Canada.... It is 141 miles from Nottingham (home of Mantic) to Bristol (home of me) but apparently it is easier to get an order 11,299 miles to the other side of the globe. 

On the DreadBall Fanatics FB page one UK Kickstarter posted he phoned Mantic today and was told that half the UK ones were sent yesterday, half are waiting to be collected today. Except other UK Kickstarters have received theirs. Cambridge last Thursday, Arbroath last Friday. So that's a bare faced lie to a customer...

I appreciate that Mantic have probably been overwhelmed by the response to DreadBall but they have seriously dropped the customer service ball and I am not a happy bunny.

In contrast Reaper's CEO emailed all the Bones KS customers when they had a problem with the paints and offered refunds for anyone not happy with the delay. Similarly Matt Sprange at Mongoose has been straight up and communicated any delays with the Judge Dredd Kickstarter items, even taking a hit on postage by shipping out partial orders to make sure we got something asap rather than waiting for everything to be in stock...

A Sailor's Life For Me?

Still merrily coughing away here in Blease Towers so I haven't picked up a paintbrush for nearly a fortnight now though I intend to slap some metal work on the Zulu blades tomorrow. In the meantime, whilst SWMBO watches The Forsyte Saga she has discovered on ITV Player I've been looking at Lead (& Plastic) Mountain and thinking about next year's projects...

For a few years I've fancied having a crack at WW2 naval but have been put off with experiences with modern naval using  Harpoon twenty odd years back and the prospective "joy" of painting lots of grey models. A couple of years back I picked up a copy of Mongoose's Victory at Sea on eBay and a pile of Axis & Allies ships. They may not be brilliant, but they are painted (after a fashion).

These have (unsurprisingly) sat in a drawer for the last two years until I noticed Mongoose were planning a second edition of the rules and releasing a set of 1/1800th miniatures (the same size as Axis & Allies I believe). This piqued my interest until I saw the price (gulp!) but with my enthusiasm raised I then decided to revisit what could be done with the pre-painted plastics.

Of course I need to decide on a theatre of war and whilst I stocked up on piles of 1/700th planes many moons ago the Pacific is not very inspiring (despite reading an excellent book on it), as I want my ships to shoot at each other not just launch waves of planes.

A big of research and the Mediterranean seems the place to go...



Of course checking the pile of plastics and whilst I have a nice batch of British I only have one squadron of Italian destroyers (for some reason I have a lot of Germans, I think I was looking at doing a hypothetical Battle of the Atlantic). However it all seems jolly interesting and I have spent most of two episodes of The Forsyte Saga researching the Italian Navy, what it did in the Med and what models Axis & Allies have for them (quite a lot it seems).

All quite tempting, I think I need to find a good book on the subject...

The Joy of Six...

I think it is Big Lee's fault, yes, let's blame him! You may have seen on Big Lee's Miniature Adventures the start of his 6mm North Africa project which started me mentally reminiscing about the "good old days" when 6mm WW2 was the only game in town (well apart from WHFB2). This in turn led to some perusing the Cold War Commander forums and me wondering what was lurking in "Lead Mountain".

A bit of rummaging later I found...

A lot of Soviet late-WW2.  GHQ T34/85's, Su-122's etc and a few PzIvH's. Battle of Hungary anyone?

A lot of Cold War era models including some 1967 or '73 Arab-Israeli War (Chinese Farm?) and piles of GHQ Soviets, probably enough for Fulda Gap and Afghanistan. I also have a GHQ British battlegroup I bought for my 2ECW project who could also fight the Russkis...

Also a few bits of Scotia South African armour. Some interesting CWC Angola lists here whet the appetite...

A few pieces of near-future Twilight 2000 inspired armour...

And piles of SF, mainly Copeland and Brigade.

I really need to pull it all out and sort it out into some armies but there is enough here, certainly enough Soviet whether 1945 or 1989, to get on with something concrete next year.

Thousands of Them? Where?!!

Zulus? What Zulus?

Well "Zulu Month" came to an end with zero Zulus painted (well finished, 24 are close to dipping stage and 48 are base coated). The dreaded lurgy is still here (office Xmas dinner missed) and I am still coughing and spluttering. So a slight revision of the 2012 plan, December will be Zulu month with some Judge Dredd miniatures to break the brown monotony. The War Between the States will be pushed back in 2013...