Normal service to resume. . . . Shortly.

Evening Blogeratti.  Sitting with a couple cold ones after day one of our three day move.  Today was all boxes (and up and down stairs,) tomorrow is the big stuff and Wednesday is getting rid of everything that is left over (like our old, battered couch.)  Annoyingly, we'll be moving again in June, so we'll be living amongst the boxes for the next few weeks.

As you can probably imagine, gaming time has been at an absolute minimum over the last couple weeks.  The notable exceptions were three games of X-Wing, the third of which I won!!!  Woot! That's the first game I've won in over twelve attempts.  It snuck up on me, but I think I'm getting better at the spacial awareness you need to plan your moves.  I have some photos so I might get a summary or two up.

In the evenings lately, I've been on a bit of a reading (and listening) kick and ploughed through a fair few books.  A few of my Two Minute Reviews should appear in the next couple weeks.

No gaming planned this week, but next week I've a game of 5150 Fighter Command by THW lined up.  I have the Star Navy rules, but have yet to try them; hearing nothing but good things about the new rules, so really looking forward to seeing how it plays.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for checking out the blog despite the dearth of content recently; although it's my Sophie Howard boobs post that still draws the most attention.  Until next time...

Packing up...

Today I performed the mammoth task of packing away the man corner in preparation for moving house.  Whew.  A hell of a job.  As we'll probably move house again before the year is out, I've separated my hobby essentials and a handful of projects (well, seven) into a sort of portable kit to take with me.  Kudos to BigLee for the idea.

The biggest surprise of the day was just how many miniatures I had tucked away.  The pic above is just loose figures i.e. everything that still isn't in a box or package.  Wow, no idea I had so much stuff!  There's a fleet of spaceships from GZG in there, USMC and Taliban figures from Elheim, 15mm Samurai from Musketeer and dozens of others I can't even identify.

Still, that's the corner packed up; I'd been dreading doing it.  Only another four rooms to go...

Cricket, WAB and eBay

A couple of non-gaming posts coming up, mainly because gaming and painting time is getting pretty squeezed by all the packing for moving home.

One of the year's big time thiefs arrived a few days ago, namely the Indian Premier League.  Now I know that I've instantly turned off a load of people reading by mentioning cricket, but the IPL is one of the highlights on my sport (watching) calender.

In my humble opinion, the IPL is almost the perfect TV sport.  Lots of action (and its not all batting, despite what many people say) and tension, exactly what you want.  The coverage also makes a refreshing change from other sports, in particular the commentators remotely interview players and umpires whilst they are still playing, and the video replay/analysis is usually excellent.

I've just finished watching my adoptive team, Kings Eleven Punjab, put a terrible Pune Warriors side to the sword, but its only another hour until the next match.  The Kings XI are a bit of a Dads Army team (the captain Adam Gilchrist is 41) and it always makes me feel better seeing people older than me still playing professional sport (dreading the day I see the first footballer younger than me retire!)

Being a cricket fan in Scotland, cricket is presented to me in a very England-centric way (not a complaint mind you,) but the IPL gives a glimpse of the wider world of cricket; aussies, kiwis, saffers and, er, windiers(?) are all present.  In fact, the only cricket nations you won't see much of are England (who haven't adjusted to the IPL yet) and Pakistan (politics.)  There are another five weeks of games, at least one per day for the next four weeks.  If you've a free afternoon or evening, you could do a lot worse than sit through a match.

Not played WAB in a couple years, don't remember the Romans being this crap!

Not that gaming has completely ground to halt.  I sat in on a game of WAB at the club last week, Syracuse against Republican Rome.  Despite an impressive number of legionnaires on the table, in proper manipular formation too, they didn't make much of an impact once they eventually got into melee with the Phalanx.  Great fun and a real blast from the past, although, I'd forgotten most of the rules; I was chided early on in the game for pre-measuring!  Thanks to Sholto and Carlos for providing the armies and Adam for whining a lot.

Carlos' Syracusian army (left) was built using two boxes of Immortal Hoplites
and one box of Wargames Factory Numidians - Bargain.

Lastly, the last of my eBay auctions go live tonight and tomorrow.  Mainly Warhammer 40K stuff (seriously, why do I still have this, haven't played in years,) but some rulebooks and some bits and pieces too.

Anyone interested in picking up a bargain?

I'm not a big fan of selling stuff though the blog, but I'll make an exception here.  Simply put, as we're moving soon, it seems a good idea to go through the man corner and sell off what I'm not really using.

You can find my ebay items here and a sample of what's on offer appears below.  I'm not really looking for huge lumps of cash for these, just something to help with moving costs.  I'd also like some of the stuff to go to people who will make good use of it.  So if there's something you're interested in, leave a comment or send an email (address on the right) and we'll see what we can arrange.  Some more going up over the next couple days too.

Getting rid of wargaming stuff is always a bit of a downer, but moving has given me a chance to have a look through my various projects and see what I'll put into storage and what will come with me.  It turns out I have a ridiculous amount of Infinity figures to get through!

Some Casual Games and A Wang-Shaped Castle

The last couple weeks have been consumed with house hunting and other preparations for moving home.  I need to get some kind of portable painting kit arranged so I can keep going with one or two projects while we're dealing with all the upheaval.

Still, I took an evening off on Tuesday and went along to the club as normal.  We had a game planned, but as someone pulled out, ended up sitting in the bar playing a few smaller games.  To be honest, I had a blast; none of the games were particularly taxing and served as a nice distraction from the stress.

First up we had a few plays of The Evil Dead card game.  Very quick and brutal, good with two players but probably a lot more fun with more.  There area lot of fun wee mechanics in the game, the best being the ability for your character to become evil, suddenly giving you different victory conditions.

Next up was a quick round of Carcassone.  Always an entertaining wee game, perfect for just throwing down on the tabletop and getting a game played.  A pretty normal experience for me; starting off pretty well, but getting completely trounced in the end.

At least I scored the moral high ground victory by completing a wang-shaped castle!

Finally we had another couple games of Android: Netrunner.  We're still playing with the two recommended starter factions, which are completely imbalanced in favour of the runner (hacker.) Now I didn't actually think it was too bad last week (as I won all three games as the runner,) but this week I was on the receiving end and, yeah, it's waaay off.  Considering there are another five factions in the starter box, Netrunner should have plenty of legs (particularly if I can get another couple folk involved.)

Today, after another round of houses, I felt the need to resort to my favourite comfort food; nachos with the works!

The Norman Conquest - Two Minute Review

In amongst the frantic packing/moving activity this week, I've eased through Marc Morris' highly readable narrative history, The Norman Conquest (TNC.)  Like the Persian invasion of Greece and the Punic Wars, the Norman invasion is something I don't get tired of reading about., just get more familiar with.

TNC follows a fairly chronological pattern, starting with chapters on the decades before 1066 in England and Normandy.  The Conquest chapters themselves are fairly by the numbers, but do go to lengths to present the different crises and rebellion as serious as they were at the time.  For instance, although the Danes invading turned out to be nothing but an irritant, at the time it was as serious as it got for William. 

Hastings comes and goes, with more time spent discussing the choices made and the options available to the two sides, rather than discussing the actual fighting.  The Bayeux Tapestry turns up and we get the familiar propaganda and updated in the 1700s discussions.  Still, Morris drops in enough that was new to me to keep this section interesting (first known depiction of a plough, it survived because it was regularly used, it's actually an embroidery.) 

Come the 1080s, we get to the Domesday book aka the other bit everyone knows about!  As most of the other Conquest books have explained it to me, the Domesday was a massive tax collection exercise.  Morris instead makes the convincing case that, although tax was a part of it's purpose, the Domesday book was a massive exercise in codifying feudalism.  As it was new to me, this it an extremely engaging chapter (a few online searchs imply this is an accepted viewpoint, but, as I said, new to me!)

The book rather arbitrarily sticks to England and Normandy, referencing other places, but not dealing with the consequences of the Conquest for the rest of the British Isles.  To be fair, the author acknowledges this as a choice he made, but I'd have preferred a bit more detail on William's sojourns to Wales and Scotland.

Although it's a very readable book, Morris doesn't skimp on the detail and, in particular, his sources. We frequently pause for a quick discussion of the merits of the various sources at hand, as well as discussing any author or time bias.

All in all, I can't really fault TNC for anything other than focusing solely on England and Normandy. The problem is, of course, that I now want to get a Norman army together.

Ronin #40

This guy was up over on Curt's blog a few days ago, so about time I posted him here.  He was part of a command blister of Samurai by Westwind.  A much maligned manufacturer (their Secrets of the Third Reich range was originally panned for the mould quality,) I love their Samurai and Dark Age range.

I went for a lacquered armour kind of look, with yellow cloth underneath and used red as a spot colour.  I quite enjoyed painting him as a one off, but would have liked to add a few more details and decoration to him.  Not sure I'd manage to paint a lot of these guys.

Not managed the output in the painting challenge I'd originally hoped, real life and a switch to a sci-fi project has limited my time.  Still a few days to go, maybe I can summon up one last effort with what's still on the painting table - especially as we've designated Sundays as our "no stress" days.