In an attempt to avoid the wall to wall coverage of the wedding, the Mrs and I had a wander into town for a bit of shopping.
I was pleasantly surprised to see this sitting on the shelf beside Wargames Illustrated and White Dwarf:
I was a regular reader of Wargames Soldiers & Strategy (WSS) until the Spanish publisher pulled the plug on the English edition last year. Now it's being produced by a Dutch publisher being edited by someone called Guy Bowers.
It's a very promising issue. It has a nice, unified style to the printing and layout and is printed on nice quality, though not premium paper.
The content is fairly varied with a nice mix of reviews, articles and scenarios spanning a wide timescale (ancients to WW2.) The theme of the issues is the 1688 Glorious Revolution, which while interesting, is not something I'd consider wargaming. Fortunately, the theme articles take up only a quarter of the issue (much less than, say, Wargames Illustrated.) They have an interesting review/battle report using the Operation Squad rules. Lastly, there are entertaining columns from Rik Priestley and Richard Clarke.
I would have liked to see the issue stretch to a few more pages, especially as it's bimonthly (it's only 74 compared to usually over 100 for WI) but that's a fairly minor grumble.
On the whole, I'm very happy to see this back on the shelves and I'll definitely be getting future issues.
A couple weeks ago, I had a bit of a whine about the service I received from Maelstrom Games. After posting that, I decided to contact Maelstrom direct; not with any real expectation in mind, more to just have a grumble.
I was surprised to receive a very prompt reply from Dan at Maelstrom, making a couple comments and offering an apology for the hassle. I was really impressed with his responses, as Dan had cleary read each one and replied with the reasons individually. They also gave me a small voucher (not much, about 5% of what I originally spent) which I've used on a couple of decent quality brushes.
So, overall, an excellent outcome from Maelstrom and really impressed as to how they responded to my problem.
I've been a bit under the weather this week and, unfortunately, accomplished bugger all.
In between watching every Futurama and Big Bang Theory episode, I had a good look through some rulebooks and have decided to try and better organise my painting and modelling projects.
Like most gamers, I generally find myself working on multiple armies for multiple games and, as a result, find progress glacial.
So I've decided to try something a bit different, starting with my armies for Hordes from Privateer Press. I've come up with two 25 point lists that share a couple common elements. The plan is to finish painting one list, then when I start painting the second list, half the models already painted! Simples.
For those interested, here are the two lists:
Absylonia, Terror of Everblight
Carnivean
Scythean
Shredder
Shredder
Harrier
Forsaken x 2
and
Thragosh, Prophet of Everblight
Carnivean
Typhon
Shredder
Harrier
Shepherd
Forsaken
This means four models would be used in both lists and, if both list get finished, it would be really easy to build either caster upto a full 50 point list. I've finished the Shredders, one Forsaken and I've started Absylonia. Next up is the Shepard and Harrier, before moving onto the heavies. Let's see how this works out!
Not a huge amount of progress on any projects this week. A bit too much time spent doing DIY, arguing with the tax office and spending Wednesday hungover.
On the desk at the moment is an SS platoon for Flames of War. I wanted to try out a few of the different camouflage patterns the SS used, so I split the miniatures into groups of five and painted each group in a different combination.
They don't look too impressive at the moment, but I'm quite happy with how they are progressing. Once I've finished the camo, it should hopefully be a simple matter of batch painting the remaining details.
Finally finished this HMG platoon for Flames of War.
Althought there are only fifteen individual figures, these guys took all week to get finished. Partly because I tried a new method of painting WW2 German uniforms, and partly because I kept having to go back and paint parts I'd missed earlier.
I also tried some new static grass and some tufts from Army Painter. I think they've turned out quite nicely.
Hopefully I'll be a bit more productive this coming week.
What a great day we've had today, marred only by Chelski drawing and Sri Lanka losing at the cricket.)
The Mrs was perfectly happy doing a little shopping and baking, then playing a lot of World of Keflings on the Xbox.
I watched the Sri Lanka innings then flicked between the Indian innings and the football. All the while I pottered around with some Flames of War figures (just about finished a Heavy Machine Gun platoon.)
The cat, meanwhile, followed the sunbeams around the house all day, stirring only to scrounge for the odd treat!
A takeaway and a couple beers should finish the day off nicely!
I'm currently ploughing through Scott Lynch's "Red Seas Under Red Skies" - part of his Gentleman Bastard series of novels.
On the whole, I'm enjoying it (but not as much as the first novel) with one major exception:
Minor Spoiler Alert!
The two main characters, Locke and Jean, are poisoned early on by one of the villains. If they don't do his bidding, then no antidote! Furthermore, as the poison appears to be permanent, the pair will have to return to him every six weeks or so to get regular doses of the antidote, otherwise it's wooden box time.
I HATE this as a plot device. It's been done before and I've never seen it resolved satisfactorily. Ever. Possible solutions are:
i) The pair die (unlikely.)
ii) The pair has to cope with this throughout the rest of the storyline (and another five planned novels.)
iii) There is some kind of deus ex machina plot device that turns up; curing the poison and all will be well.
iv) The author will simply let this drift and eventually slip the whole thing under the literary carpet.
Ok, they're not all the possible solutions, but they are the most commonly used. The Mrs has already read the book and tells me not to worry about it. I'll keep reading, but for the moment this is really bugging me. Fingers crossed Lynch is able to surprise me and pull a decent solution out of the bag.
