Time, Space and Dave

Like many things keeping up entries to this blog are proving to be part of the juggling act that managing my time has turned into. I've done the more basic time management courses for work many years ago and got to the what do I remember - err, make lists and prioritise those items and manage interruptions, with not a lot else still sticking in my mind. Recently the Getting Things Done school of time management is getting a lot of press, from what I see it has nothing revolutionary, but like any other methodology relies upon application. Time to investigate it to see if it helps with my overstretch.

Miniatures - a lifelong obsession

I've recently started on the potentially futile exercise of getting all the miniatures I own in all the different scales (30mm, 25mm, 15mm, 6mm) into a state where they can be used for gaming or else selling them off on e-bay or at conventions bring and buy sales. The other aspect of this is actually cataloging all the many that I've aquired over the last 28 or so years that I've been doing miniatures gaming.

The main thing that has struck me has been the steady growth of figures in the supposed main scales of 25mm up to 28/30mm and 15mm to 18mm, usually with a welcome increase in detail and sharpness of casting, but making older figures look a bit undernourished in comparison. I've particularly seen this with the fantasy figures where my old Ral Partha and Citadel metals look tiny compared to the Reaper figures that I've bought recently.

The other part of this exercise has been to start to try and paint everything I'm going to keep and get them into a usable condition for gaming or display purposes, this is going to take a long time and it's a good thing I enjoy painting minis or else I'd be going crazy at the thought of how many thousand of the things are there to be worked on (possible exaggeration, but well into three figures). Initially my focus is on my 15mm armies from Peter Pig for the Hordes of the Things rules from WRG, and my 25/28mm figures for the Duel from Alternative Armies and Warhammer Fantasy Battle by well, you know who.

Actually as well as being enjoyable this exercise is proving to be a productive one, with me starting to realise just how much is available in terms of painting advice on the web. There is a definite feel of satisfaction in seeing figures arrayed in painted ranks on their bases and its helping to keep me working at it.

Board and card games

Like a lot of other gamers I play a mixture of things as well as RPGs and miniatures games. With the card games its mainly been Munchkin in recent years, with a mixture of Chez Geek and its spin off games and also Up Front. With the fun type games Munchkin and its different versions have been favourites with my group for times when we are not able to play Roleplaying games due to time or availability issues and it is highly recommended.

Board games have included the usual family type ones, mainly Scrabble, but with my gamer friends its the old Judge Dredd game which Games Workshop produced many years ago and is incredibly good fun. For two player board games it often tends to go back to a military theme with Ogre from Steve Jackson Games, originally Metagames who produced the edition I have, and Avalon Hill's Squad Leader designed by John Hill. In fact this post was inspired by my having seen the release of Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit 2, which piqued my interest as up till now I've steered clear of ASL due to its sheer size and investment required (especially to use the Brits), but this could be a winner for me as it contains British, Italian, and Allied Minor Nations as well as the Germans and Americans. The mix of artillery included is a little disappointing in having the German 88, but not the Brits iconic 25 pounder. Even so it still goes onto my to buy list.

I've found using Board game geek useful and its been interesting to be able to see easily what other games people have designed and what the history of things is. Its also nice in having lots of information on games including user reviews, pictures of mapboards and counters and content lists such as scenarios.

With card games I've not been a huge buyer of the Collectible Card Games, with only Illuminati New World Order and Mythos ever being purchased by me. With INWO I took the easy route and bought the big boxed set with all the cards rather than buy lots of packets and get into trading. This has always meant me avoiding like mad the M:tG and Pokemon fans.