Update MAY 2016

I cant believe its been over a year since my last post and not much activity just prior to that either. Slacker!

Well I am back now and my hobby has changed a little recently. So lets see where things are at for my 5 main projects:

1. NAPOLEONICS

The 1st major change is my Napoleonic project going from 6mm Adler to 15mm. I did this for a couple of reasons:
     1. I want to pre-empt the move due to poor eyesight as I hear from others that as they age they move away from 6mm as they get harder to work with.
     2. My regular Tuesday night gaming group is starting to rub off on me and I am getting more excited about researching uniforms and painting my own figures and actually recognising them on the table.

Why didn't I go to 28mm like the rest of my gaming group?

The price and the size put me off. Foundry are around $3.00 before shipping and require a good paintjob and I still have a limited budget and painting skills. I am stretching even for 15mm but its a good compromise.

I put together a list of all my 6mm Naps for sale it totals over 20,000 figures! A couple of friends want first dibs at the list before the remainder goes onto Facebook and then ebay. I should be able to raise around $4000 putting half away for a rainy day and the other into 15mm replacements.

To begin with I will be focussing on 1815 100 Days Campaign by collecting French, British and Prussians. Then I will move to 1809 and add French allies and Austrians, and finally I will build armies for 1812 Russia.

So far I have collected 4 sample figs from a friend and am painting them up to see how my painting style and skill looks. Below is an Italian I painted as French:

My next steps are:

1. Finish the 4 sample figs
2. Secure sales of my 6mm
3. Order Prussian and French Infantry from AB and paint and base them up.

2. MODERNS

My next favorite project is ultra moderns. Here I decided to focus on:

ADF and coalition in Afghan
US in Falluja, Iraq

I was tempted to go to 15mm for these projects as well but was convinced to keep my 20mm collections. There is some advantages to moving to 15mm for price and size etc but the ranges of what I need just are not there yet and I already have a large 20mm collection.

So the place is to sell off all my 6mm moderns, and some of my 20mm moderns and then settle on those 2 areas above.

Next steps:

1. list and sell 6mm moderns
2. list and sell some 20mm moderns
3. continue work on ADF forces for Afghan

3. CRUSADES, ROMANS AND AWI

These are the 3 2nd tier projects I want to focus on from time to time. I have chosen to work in 10mm for each of these even though there are plenty of 15mm I could use. The cost and effort in painting them is not worth it when these are 2nd tier projects anyway.

To date I have a small collection of figs for each of these which I now need to focus on painting and basing before any more purchases.

Next steps:

Complete painting and basing all existing Romans figs
Complete painting and basing up all existing Crusades figs
Complete painting and basing up all existing AWI figs

TERRAIN

I am still focused on achieving good realistic but playable terrain. Moving away from 6mm helps because a lot of the 6mm terrain looks toyish compared to the 15mm terrain out there and a lot of any 15mm terrain can be used for my 20mm moderns and the 10mm projects. I am keeping my Cigar Box Battlemats as the basis for my terrain over contours and hills. I then aim to purchase and build scenic items to place on top and get to at least 50% coverage of the table.

Next steps:

Settle on contouring system for underneath the mats
Settle on woods and trees
Settle on roads and rivers

So, there you have it. A decent update and I hope to bring an update at least once a month from now on.

Comments welcome.