Happy New Year and a Brussel Sprout !

 When is it too late to wish people a happy new year, hopefully not the 4th January ? With the family at home for Christmas I haven’t managed any games and only limited painting time although of course I have been thinking about hobby stuff quite a bit. As the kids have now ‘flown the nest’ again and after a couple of days tidying up I have started to get back into the groove, although only a few bits are completed.

First up some Norman knights, mainly painted before Christmas but still needed quite a bit of work to complete them. Not absolutely certain what make they are chunky metal picked up secondhand at a show, lovely figures and easy to paint. I picked the lighter colour scheme as they are more likely to see action in the Mediterranean or on Crusade than in wet and muddy England. Picking these out of the lead pile I realised I have quite a few more Norman cavalry (units) to paint.

Secondly a small rebased unit of French Heavies. Picked up from a mate they only needed a little colour matching for future units. On the list for this year are two more full units of Curassiers and some Carabiniers. Not sure when I will get to these though ?

Some Christmas fun I picked up a copy of Xenos Rampant.

Turns out of course that I already have a number of potential forces from my 40k collection, this saw me tidying up this small force of Aliens (Tyranids) and I am half way through completing some Imperial Desert troops who had languished in a box for many years, these lend themselves to a fun mini campaign sometime in the near future

A new year and New project. Well it is a good time to start something new, not a spur of the moment thing I have actually been thinking about this for a while going through the challenge of deciding scales and figures etc. more of this in the future but the plan at the moment is something larger than a skirmish game. Luckily I had told my family what I wanted.

Another present this time to myself ordered off eBay ! I have been listening to James Holland’s latest book on the invasion of Italy and thinking about the use of my 15mm WW2 armies, I had convinced myself that I didn’t want to collect another set of 15mm terrain knowing that for the scale of battles I would need quite a bit. Then I made the mistake of looking on eBay and this set of terrain popped up ! It was an easy decision, this is absolutely the type of terrain I prefer simple but very flexible as it is all modular. It is slightly old school being cast from plaster but not showing any signs of damage. To be honest there is so much a few chips wouldn’t matter. As a test I have started repainting a few bits as below

These are just a couple of the components 

They stack to make multiple versions of buildings, from these couple of shots you don’t quite get the effect but when painted I will set it all up. This gives me the option to play 15mm in both Northern Europe and the Mediterranean.

Thoughts for this year, I’m not making a list as such but here are the things that are floating in my head at the moment

Expanding my 28mm Sicily battles, perhaps with Italians and paratroopers

Continuing to paint my Napoleonics

Moving the ECW armies forward

Samurai of course we watched ‘Ran’ over the Christmas break for inspiration

Moving the AWI campaign forward

Xenos rampant

Tidying up some collections and selling off some languishing Warhammer stuff

Most importantly I need to improve my health as I have been unwell far too much this year.

The weather has been dreadful over Christmas but we did manage a few shorter walks

And what of the Brussel Sprout I hear you say ?

I add this to make you chuckle or perhaps groan, my Father who is now 90 orders his food on line to get it delivered, we visited him over Christmas. In his pre Christmas food order he must have ticked the wrong box on Sainsbury’s website as rather than getting a bag of Brussels sprouts they sent him One !!!!!! For those that need it, this is perhaps a great example of the world gone mad. I can only imagine what the shop packer was thinking when he weighed the single Sprout and then printed and labelled it up 🤯

Thanks as always for checking by, let’s all hope for a peaceful, healthy and productive New Year with lots of Brussel Sprouts they aren’t just for Christmas !

Matt