I'm Still Alive (OK, OK, Stop Groaning...)

It's been an eventful month and a half...

Firstly, after a very relaxing three weeks holiday I returned to my studio and hit the ground running which is usually enough to make me put fun on hold, but we also had the builders in to add remove an old and small conservatory and replace it with a gaming room cum second dining room (note that it will only be used as a dining room for maybe 3 days per calendar year, but it was the only caveat that the memsahib placed on the whole 15K project. I countered with a demand for a full set of Denby 'Imperial Blue' dinnerware and an accord was reached.

The table is 8 feet by 3 feet and so it's a matter of moments to drop some terrain boards across it and get on with some gaming. The best part is that because the room was built for that purpose, games can be left in situ for 362 days of the years. . I really did not want the traditional 'swords and heroic paintings' feel. My wife actuall suggested we mount my claymore and a few nice pics I have, in there, but to be perfectly honest I find that a little gauche, and so I chose a couple of my favourite works by Ian Warwick King from the collection we have put together over the last decade and put them up. My sword is destined for the 'scullery' where we have put in some darker furniture, two rather splendid armchairs and some decanters, filled with decent spirits.

The table by the way weighs somewhere around a quarter of a ton and the floor is triple thickness and tiled.

As I said, I wanted to avoid the military cliches. I want to relax when I game, enjoy perhaps a decen wine or port. I do NOT want to be looking at pictures of 'heroic' last stands or be distracted by people fingering my weapons. Put wargamers in a room full of such stuff and I find you have an instant 'wanker factory'. 

The original plan was a cabin on the site of the old garage, but to be honest, we decided that neither of us wanted to have to go outside to game. The cabin wil be built, but it will be a place to go and write and do other creative things as we see fit. Besides, the troops may be upset if they are left out in the boondocks.

Now, as if the disruption of builders was not enough, our eldest and most beloved Scottie was also diagnosed with inoperable cancer during the first week, which meant that it was not a very comfortable environment. Happily, Dougal is doing very well indeed and is looking better than he has for a year or so. He's lively, eating well and enjoying his old age, so really, what more can we ask for? It use came as a bit of an unexpected shock and knocked us sideways.

On the 17th of October, my next Kickstarter goes live, adding the Great Goblin cavalry mounted on boars. Martin Buck has really done the business on the sculpts and as with the infantry, they are multi part models and fully interchangeable with the previous releases for a frankly ridiculous amount of variety and customisation. 

My own gaming's been somewhat limited as a result of all of the above, but I am going to get on with building some new boards and also get back into a few projects.

I'm tempted by 15mm Cold War gaming but not with the bloody awful Team Yankee rules. It's something I've mulled for a while.

My old buddy Roger has me interested in Vietnam again, but I have not yet found a rule set that I'm happy with these days. Additionally, I am having real issues with scale. I cannot decide between 20mm and 15mm. 20mm is my traditional scale of choice, but the availability of snap together air assets for 15mm, has me pondering the smaller scale. I really need to do some serious thinking in this regard.

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to the excellent Grognard Files podcast and was hooked by their report on the Numenera RPG. It had what sounded like some innovative mechanisms and a rather beguiling setting of Earth a billion years in the future, wherein 8 entire civilisations have risen and fallen, the game being set in the ninth... It is a sci-fantasy setting but one which actually feels 'just right'. Anyway, I bought the £90 slipcase set of rules amounting to 832 pages. I would add that most of that is background. The books are sumptuously illustrated in a manner redolent of Roger Dean or Chris Foss. Anyway, I hope to have it running soon and will report further after we get things going.

As you may have surmised if you follow this blog, is that I am obsessed with the 80s popular and social culture. Now, my youth was generally peppered quite liberally with the music of Marillion, Rush and Jethro Tull, as well as a late period dalliance with old school Goth bands such as The Sisters Of Mercy, New Model Army, The Mission, The Cult etc and an ongoing love of more outre outfits such as Men Without Hats, Haysi  Fantayzee and The Teardrop Explodes, via Soft Cell and...

Well you get the idea.

But, like many gamers I also found Clannad to fit the bill nicely for 'mood music' but never got to see them live. Frankly, the idea of sitting in a venue packed with pseudo-folkie types all pretending they knew what the Gaelic lyrics meant, was not for the young Hides.

However, I bagged tickets for the farewell tour in 2020 and I am looking forward to seeing them live and not giving a monkey's nuts for the bloody lyrics. It'll sound great I am sure.

I also bagged tickets to see Heaven Seventeen next year, but the twist is that playing the first two Human League albums on the original instruments. This is a brave and somewhat eclectic undertaking and as they are only playing two dates, I'm pretty lucky to have tickets.

And that's about it. Now that things are back to normal, I'll be blogging more regularly