January 2014 so far... and boobs

Time to draw from the biiiig book of excuses i.e. I've not posted at all or finished painting anything in the last week or so.  To be honest, I've simply not been in the mood to sit down and write anything recently.  On top of that, I work in retail and have just finished the busiest period in our year; Christmas, sale and stocktake. However, now that's past, my workload is a lot smaller for the next few weeks, I'm hoping to get back into the swing of things. Anyway, here's how January 2014 has shaped up so far.

Analogue Painting Challenge

Well, I missed one of my personal goals and didn't submit anything for the vehicle bonus round, thereby squandering another 75 points.  Two GZG mechs have been painted up, but the putty for the bases hadn't finished setting in time to get them primed and painted.

I'm still plugging away at my 10mm ECW stuff though, managing to pick up the brush most days, if only for a colour or two at a time.  At the risk of being accused of sandbagging, I think there'll be a fairly hefty entry once I get round to basing them.

This week, I'm aiming to paint up my next two bonus entries (heroes and casualties) and ***ahem*** base the first of the ECW infantry units.  Well. . . that's the plan anyway.

Gaming

I've been back on a card game kick this month. About a dozen games each of Android: Netrunner and the Lord of the Rings (both by FFG) have been keeping me pretty busy. Oddly enough, I now seem to be getting worse at A:NR (five games on Saturday, all loses!) but still absolutely love both games.  I introduced LotR to Adam at the club, but made the mistake of playing an easy quest so I don't think he saw much challenge in the game.  He's hinted that he would try it again though, so we'll try something more difficult and see if his opinion changes!

I also had another friend, Gaz, visiting for a couple days earlier this month.  About six more games of LotR (we won one) and a load of X-Wing, coupled with some beers and junk food made for a very enjoyable time.  Since we last played, Gaz dropped a lot of cash on X-Wing, so we had the full range of ships to choose from.  I tried out my two latest purchases; the Tie-Bomber (meh, ok) and the Moldy Crow (immense!) Still an outstanding game, but I'm not sure yet if I'll pick up either of the two large ships FFG are about to release, the freighter and the frigate.  Maybe.

Finally, I managed to finally run a game of Iron & Oak at the club.  Adam and I played one of the set pieces of the American Civil War, Hampton Roads.  Adam took the Confederates (shock) with the Ironclad Virginia, while I had the plucky Monitor on the Union side.  Much like our last ACW outing it was a hideous (and ahistorical) loss to the Union!  An enjoyable game though, looking forward to trying one of the larger scenarios sometime soon.   This week, we're going to try out the 1863 scenario from A House Divided.  Putting my foot down this time though, I'll be the Confederates and see if I can pull out a win for a change!

Writing

One of my goals for 2014 is to run more miniature games at the club (or elsewhere for that matter.)  The first one I'm planning is a naval Punic Wars game.  Frustratingly though, I'm struggling to find a suitable set of rules.  They're either too simple (Fleets of Battle) or too involved (Naumachiae) or just not fun (Salamis ad Actium.)  To fix that, I've started putting together my own set of rules based, obviously, on ripping off mechanics I like from other games!  I haven't done this in a few years, but it's very rewarding so far.   Assuming the enthusiasm doesn't wane, I'd like to get a game in around the end of March, start of April, but we'll see.

Reading

I've ploughed through three books so far this month.  Nothing unusual in that, except for the fact that none of them were actually print books.  Two audio books and a digital book on my kindle. All of them great, so expect some two minute reviews soon, but this whole no-physical-book is taking some getting used to!

Bowels

For the first time since 2001, I took a sick day off from work!  I had a takeaway meal one night, seeing as I couldn't be bothered to cook anything.  A couple hours later, it started coming out of one end, a few hours later still, out the other!  No permanent damage, but this really wiped me out for a few days!  Helped me lose some of that festive weight though, just not from the right places!

So that's been my 2014 so far.  Busy, but with not much to show for it!  Reading that back, there's a lot of "I" in there, so I'll sign off with what is becoming a common sight in the blogging community, hot chicks with guns!  (I'm blaming you, Loki, Fran and Ray!)