Monthly Retrospective 2

Another month down and not as much to show for it as I would have liked.  Still, I like to take a look back to catalog the progress; it helps me to keep motivated.

I only got twelve models painted.  That's way below my, frankly tiny, goal of twenty.  Even if I add in the models from last month it doesn't average out to 40 in two months.  So, a bit of a failure there and it makes me somewhat sad.  On the other hand, I finished my Haradrim army for Lord of the Rings, so that is something to celebrate.  I'll hit them with some matte varnish this afternoon and be done with it.  This actually slowed me down because I didn't have another project queued up to work on.  I'm still doing conversion work on my Elves and I'm still assembling the Celts.  So, lesson learned.  Have projects ready to go on the paint table.  Second lesson:  paint consistently during the month.  Not exactly ground breaking, I know, but there you have it.

On the playing front it was a pretty slow month.  I got four games in of Lord of the Rings and none of anything else.  I am working on setting up a demo game, or two, of Force on Force.  I've no interest in playing actual conflicts for that game, since they all seem to be Iraq and Afghanistan, both wars I actually fought in.  It's way too close to home.  I've begun designing a campaign setting for them, which will be based around the collapse of a modern state into to competing statelets, which can fight it out using whatever hardware they can lay their hands on.  Even if I don't get around to running it, it's fun to imagine it.

New models.  Yeah.  A little bit out of control here.  I got in my 104 Romans and 43 Celts from Warlord.  I ordered, but have not received, a box of sci-fi USMC from Defiance Games.  Hopefully they are close to sorting out their mold issues.  I also bought two desert gaming hills from Gale Force 9 and three sets of props from Kobblestone Miniatures.  All very nice pieces and covered in their own posts.

Boardgames.  I bought Lord of the Rings Risk.  This has been on my want list for a long time, so I can check that one off.  I haven't had a chance to play it yet though.  I also bought Castle Ravenloft for Rhys and I to play.  This seems to have scratched his itch and is a hit.  He is remembering a surprising amount of the rules and loves playing the game.  It's a bit complex but a few more games and we'll have it down.  So this was a good month on the boardgame front.

New Rules.  I bought Saga.   I'm impressed with how simple, yet flavorful they are.  The key to that is the battle boards.  While they have been dissed by some people, I like the way they give each army its character.  I'm not at all impressed with the price of their dice, or with they inability to keep them in stock, but there you go.  I wouldn't be a gamer if a company wasn't pissing me off somehow.

So, over last month I painted less, played less and spent more money.  Not a great trend.  I had planned to get the Romans assembled.  That was scuppered by their not arriving until the middle of the month.  I did get a lot of Elves assembled and converted, with more conversions ongoing. I'm going to put March in the marginally successful column.

I'll finish the Celts this week so I can start on the Romans.  I'll also get the Elves basecoated so I can begin painting them.  This month I intend to play some Saga as well as some Force on Force.  In the rules department I'm looking at buying either Force on Force or Tomorrow's War, as long as I enjoy the demo games.  If I don't like the system, then I'm not sure what I'll be looking at.  If I do buy the rules then I'll probably pick up one pack of 20mm dudes, just to see how they look.  I was digging through my FoW stuff and 15mm just is not that exciting to me.  I'm trying to wrap my brain around it, I really am, but I am still not seeing the attraction.