Regular readers of this blog will be used to seeing ‘a final’ stream-lining and re-organisation of hobby post and yes, here we are again! The boardgames get a slight tweak and the figures get a wake up call!
First the easy one - board games. The principle of reducing the collection to being based on ‘series’ rules, covering ancients right through to WWII has been embedded for several years, but every now and then, one series will fall out of favour, replaced by another. The recent tweaks pertain to American War of Independence, American Civil War, with Napoleonics still under review.
My collection had an AWI gap and the problem here is that there are not many candidates to choose from, especially in the ‘series’ type of games. However, I have jumped (back in) to the Battles of the American Revolution (BoAR) games by GMT. I have been here before, but was not keen on the D10 Combat Table as D10 systems can tend to be a bit swingy - however, my view on this sort of thing has changed and I now see ‘swingy’ more as a mechanism to reduce the player having too much control of everything and instead leaving the local fight to the unseen colonels etc.
Anyway, I now have eight separate AWI battles on rather lovely maps - so I am looking forward to re-engaging with this.
For the American Civil War, I am returning to the Blind Swords series by Revolution games. Volume 12, First Day of Gettysburg, has just been released. The system does like its chaos and generally serves to reduce player control - something that I like. I did have the first four games in the series, but each had its own rulebook that was different in each set and that reduced my enjoyment, but now they have moved to a series based rule set for all of the games plus an exclusive rules book for each battle, which is much friendlier when playing across multiple titles.
I am starting with three new titles, The First Day at Gettysburg, Salem’s Church and 1st Bull Run. These games have replaced the ACW Battles series by Worthington Games, Rebel Fury by GMT and Great Battles of the American Civil War by GMT, which have all since been moved on.
Napoleonics have a slight log jam at the moment. I got rid of Hexasim’s Eagles of France series and dropped the Eylau series by Sound of Drums. I am left with two series, The Library of Napoleonic Battles by Operational Studies Group and Jours de Gloire by Vae Victis. I like both for different reasons, though both take longer to play than I really want, while the compact nature of JdG makes them easier to be left set up. The truth is, the Napoleonic series that I really want hasn’t been made yet. Regardless, to be true to having one series system per historical period, ideally one of these needs to go and one needs supporting, if for no other reason that then only one set of rules needs to remembered for good play.
I am still buying non-series games, but they need to work hard to justify the shelf space and wallet emptying.
Now the figures. Two factors recently gave me a ‘light on’ moment. Firstly, I have been collecting everything Epic (from Warlord Games) for a while. I had 7 of the large battle boxes covering 5 different periods, giving a total of 14,000 figures, with more Epic releases on the horizon and as a somewhat compulsive collector, they will be bought (the series mentality!)
I was painting these furiously and not particularly making big inroads into that stash and it was clear that painting, something I don’t like anyway, was becoming the predominant part of my hobby time. I was in effect becoming hostage to more painting than I could likely do in my remaining years - a painting treadmill.
Secondly I recently read on a blog (sorry can’t remember which one) that the blogger felt that collecting in two periods was pretty sustainable, but that going beyond this becomes increasingly less so! This really clicked with me.
Looking at my stuff in that light, the two army pairings that I like the most are my 28mm Napoleonic French / Austrians and my 28mm Lancastrian / Yorkist Wars of the Roses figures. These collections give me a lot of pleasure and they are (to my eyes) friendlier to paint. Both these collections are still on the smaller side of things, but I like the idea of just adding the odd unit here or there as the fancy takes me without feeling like I am a painting machine.
I have just prepped some units (built and primed) while the weather still holds good for gluing and rattle can spraying outside, with enough now ready for winter painting … and no doubt beyond. With just a few units in this plastic / metal ‘pimple’ (as David from his excellent GHQ blog refers to his small stash - see link below), for the first time in ages, everything feels a lot more manageable and not at all overwhelming, so much so, I have switched off from painting figures over the past few weeks and have turned to building some nice terrain - very enjoyable.
The casualty here has had to be the reluctant selling off of my Epic collection and I must admit a slight ‘sellers regret pang’ when I saw a YouTube video of Warlord Games recent Open Day and they had an Epic Jacobite battle on the table that looked …. well like a Jacobite battle should, but then I looked at the new Napoleonic 28mm farmyard that I am building and calm was restored - as the saying goes, you can’t have your cake and your bun!
I am not decrying the Epic at all, I have really enjoyed gaming at that scale and it could have easily worked for me with the ‘rule’ of just two collections, say Napoleonic French / Prussian or ACW and Hannibal Punic, but my mindset is such that I see them as a collectable series and must have everything, my loss I know, but it is the way it is.
In the mix of sustainable gaming is the fact that my time is in any case already split 50/50 between servicing both board games and figure games, so there are always too many things to do next!
After a number of weeks of selling, the shelf clearance has been shockingly successful with all the smaller figures and associated terrain gone. Even as the 28mm terrain expands (only by a bit), I will still be left with controlled storage and more importantly to me …. a less busy mind.
Of course, there are still periods that I want, but today I am recognising ‘want’ as being distinctly different from ‘need’ and I will not be dipping my toe into anything new until I am satisfied that both the Napoleonic and WotR pairings are more properly developed.
A limit of two periods also means that the fewer rule books needed can hopefully become more second nature in use. It would be nice to think that I could eventually just get by on two rule sets!
For Napoleonic rules, I want to explore my recently bought ‘Soldiers of Napoleon’, which I hope will work for me going forward. If not I will revert back to Black Powder or even my own home brew rules.
For Wars of the Roses, I am going to have a go at ‘On Bloody Ground’, if I don’t get on with them, I have Hail Caesar, now supported by their excellent WotR supplement.
I should admit that somewhere amongst all of this is a yearning to get a plug-in’ to those joys of wargaming in my teenage years, when collecting and gaming just seemed a simpler experience and what you had was, well, what you had and greater familiarity with it gave a more enjoyable experience ….. though admittedly I did seem to have a lot more grey cells then and that may have had something to do with having a fuller and easier grasp of whole rule systems!
I’m sure that part of the attraction of Epic for me has been that nostalgic connection with opening boxes of Airfix figures as an excitable youngster. Ready to go plastic figures …… no multi build stuff, unless you were a WWII gamer and had to cope with such things as those wheels / tracks on the Airfix Churchill tank :-)
Anyway, there you are, an attempt at an easier life / hobby balance, for me anyway. The point being, I hope to game more and paint less ….. a lot less!
For those who have been long time readers and recognise this as just another probable seesaw moment of re-adjustment with justifications and are rolling your eyes right now, you may be right, but in any case thank you for your tolerance of all this navel gazing :-) …… though surely there is another like mind somewhere out there that might see at least some elements of this as recognisable, please let it be so! :-)
Thanks to everyone who visits these pages (and my Commanders site). I know I have my Comments turned off and this may change in time, but it suits me for now and I do appreciate every visit and the time that you give over to reading these posts. Norm.
Resources;
David’s Tales from GHQ blog LINK
https://talesfromghq.blogspot.com
My other bit of web space …. COMMANDERS. LINK
https://commanders.simdif.com/dear_diary.html
