T.G.I.F

 THANK GYGAX IT'S FRIDAY!

This week, I've racked up a stupid number of hours at my desk, to the point that I am staying out of my studio all weekend.

The massive workload means that I am going through audiobooks at a fair clip, and I have put two books by food writer and critic Jay Rayner to bed and I am well into White Heat by Dominic Sandbrook, whose mix of political and social history I really enjoy. This latest volume covering the 'Swinging 60s' weighs in at just under 40 hours and is very enjoyable indeed.

I've been thinking a lot of my previous life as a game store owner in the mid to late 90s, as 2025 sees the 30th anniversary of being offered managership of what became my own store a few years later.

I thought it might be interesting in future posts to write honestly about my experiences in that and how it almost ended my marriage and indeed almoset ended your correspondent's time on this mortal plane.

That said, it was also arguably the greatest time I ever had with my clothes on unless you you count the odd al fresco fuck, in cold weather where retaining clothing was essential lest you become a strange death report in the next day's newspapers - but as always, I digress.

I've placed my order with Redoubt Miniatures for my 30 Years War project which has weighed in at 15 artillery pieces, 971 infantry and 314 cavalry, plus sundry officer and the like.

Whichever way you cut it, that's a lot of cavalry for the average wargamer - although I'm far from average, but you know what I mean - and a decent amount of foot to boot, giving me over 25,000 troops at 1:20 ratio.

Which brings me to my next point.

You seem to rarely, in these days of sk.. skir... Oh, those games where a figure is a single person and where 30 models are termed 'armies' or - and Gilder forgive me  for such language - 'factions' see much reference to figure ratio.

It was one of those things that for me has always been at the heart of my hobby and whilst I generally shun games with figure removal or button counting, I always try to make my armies bear resemblance to historical counterparts, both in basing and composition and it's a given that two opposing armies must look reletive to each other in terms of unit sizes. 

I sure I can't be the only person who gets all pissy about those pictures in Black Powder where you have universal units with no visual resemblence to theor real life counterparts and where Napoleonic line units look as if they are in open order.

Sheer asininity...

One of the joys of my 30YW project is that whilst I have built numerically balanced forces to get things rolling, one side has less but larger units than the other, as did their contempraries in the real world which, will hopefully make them interesting armies to use, each with their own tactical twists and kinks. Without model to man ratios this becomes impossible. 

Another thing which has rubbed me the wrong way was a comment on a popular social media platform that if I wished to 'go big' I should play games in Epic Scale.

Firstly 'Epic' is not a scale, so knock that off. Secondly, although I paint some of the nicest small scale stuff you will ever likely see, I am a 28mm gamer and I want to see individuals making up a larger formation, not rows of what look like hair slides for Barbie dolls.

No sir, I'll have me my fine metal miniatures in Gilder's Own Scale at a ratio of (usually) 1:20 which is aesthetically pleasing and gives you a regiment which, if stuffed in a hiking sock, can be used to slug anyone who speaks in terms of 'factions' and 'builds' and other such Gen-Z waffle. 

That said, I've just bagged a large set of OGRE miniatures on that auction site. 

OGRE is one of those classic games which has gone from being a pocket game with simple card pieces to a deluxe miniatures based boardgame with an offshoot set of tabletop rules.  Yes it's small scale, but that's because the eponymous OGREs, giant cybernetic tanks capable of wiping out entire brigades of  more conventional troops are effing ginormous.

I do like small scale stuff because you have a gods-eye view of a battlefield, but I like my Renaissance in 28mm and nothing is going to change that for me. I'd accept 15mm for a collection of 2500 models or more, but ONLY Mike's Models because they are gorgeous and something nobody seems to buy in these days of figures that look like they have been force fed a Paleo diet at the point of sculpting.

I've also this week, come to the conclusion that I really don't want any more large armies. Now, you may be thinking that I am losing my mojo, but quite the contrary. I just don't need to constantly buy massive armies anymore. I have refined things so that I am acquiring stuff that I can play happily, time after time, for the rest of my days.

I'm going to probably buy the odd matched set of armies now and again, but I will try to work with 300 or so models per side. This is reasonable as I can see forays into Dark Age and Ancient subjects and maybe some early Medieval along the way. Those kinds of armies don't need to be large, so why spend time and effort in buying massive forces that are surplus to requirement for a day's gaming with a friend or two (I think I have 5 friends at present... Maybe 4 unless the bribes and blackmail pan out).

Well, Ive been typing this for a while now, and the smell of a rather good (if I say so myself) ragu using some rather nice smoked garlic I bought the other day is drifting from the oven - tip: use a tagine to cook ragus and similar as you retain so much more flavour and use less liquid at the outset - and the promise of spaghetti and sauce with an alcohol-free beer and several episodes of Happy Days is luring me in. 

Enjoy your weekend, whatever you decide to do...

TTFN