A quick update

Hi all,

It's scary to think that I haven't posted anything here since July!
The last few months have fairly flown by and in that period my life has undergone a couple of changes; most significantly the birth of my son Arlo on the 12th of October. He's gorgeous, and I love him to bits, but I still can't fathom quite how someone that small, and who sleeps so much, can consume so much of your day...!?
The 2nd change relates to my work situation - basically a major restructuring at work provided me with the opportunity to take Voluntary Redundancy. Arlo's birth, a decent VR package and a desire to work for myself made the decision quite easy and I finished work on the 20th of November. I'm treating the time between now and the New Year as a bit of a holiday before knuckling down and getting my business up and running early in 2010.
Despite not being at work I've found it very difficult to actually find time to sit down and paint some miniatures although, as Janine is keen to point out, I still seem capable of finding more than enough time to buy more miniatures, rules and other "wargaming rubbish"..!
T'was ever thus!!

However, I have emerged from this gaming & painting hiatus; joining the Wakefield & Ossett wargames group. They meet weekly and play a wide range of games & periods. I've been along twice now, getting my 6mm Early Imperial Romans into action against Ian's nice 6mm Sarmatians one week, and controlling a couple of commands of some Chinese army in a game of DBM last week. My recent DBx gaming had mainly been DBMM, so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed playing DBM 3.1 (which used to make my head hurt) - compared to the myriad factors and bound specific outcomes of DBMM, DBM 3.1 was refreshingly straight forward and I look forward to playing it again soon (just as soon as I've unlearned some DBMM stuff!!)

HoTT-wise, I've managed to pick up another pair of old style GW Dwarf Gyrocopters which, once painted, will give me the option to field a significant aerial threat.
Other recent purchases are a bit "rule heavy" and include the Piquet: Hostile Realms Fantasy rules - they're en-route from the US, but I'll post my initial thoughts once I've got them and had a read through. I've also bought a copy of the Age of Eagles rules, which are based on the popular Fire & Fury ACW rules. I've read through them and they show a lot of potential - I'm playing Fire & Fury tomorrow night which should give me an idea of how AoE will work in practice.

During a visit to Go Outdoors with my dad in October I found, in their fishing tackle section, a Prologic tackle case which could have been designed with 15mm DBx armies in mind; 5x compartmented trays, 2x smaller trays in side pockets (perfect for dice, counters etc) and an A5 sized zipped top section (currently housing terrain) - as if all that wasn't enough it has an internal pocket which is the perfect size for DBA/DBM rules and army list books. No doubt it will strike some as a bit "nerdy" - getting excited by a "box", but I've always found storage of armies a real pain in the backside!! I'll post some photographs and more product details within the next couple of days.

Anyway, that's it for now..

Bob