End of the year sprint to the tape...

   Blimey, that's nearly 2018 done and it's been very, very good for me, hobby wise, and for other personal reasons too. I'll stick with the hobby stuff but I will say that I had the great good fortune to get married in September to a wonderful woman; wonderful in many ways but especially in being so understanding about my hobby. Understanding to such an extent that she has given me something I have desired for a long, long time. No, not that, she has given me a man-cave in our rather wee flat here in Glasgow. 

    We live in a tenement flat, a rather old style type of housing that was designed with bed recesses, to allow for more living space for the average sized families of years gone by. Each flat having two recesses, one for Mum and Dad and the other for the kids!!. And it is in one of these former bed recesses that my man-cave is located. From that description you'll have gathered that I won't be doing any gaming in it nor swinging any cats, for that matter but it does allow me to get all my gaming stuff; armies, terrain, painting area, books etc etc in one area and have my painting stuff  set up permanently!! Which has dented my blogging output somewhat as I have been over indulging in painting

Small but perfect...like Felicity Kendall's
bum used to be, back in the day..the man-cave

     So, now that I have been blessed with a wife AND a man-cave (I will need to give it a much better name than that; Danny has the Dan-cave (or Dannigrad) and Richie has Der Kriegschule Kampfbell so I need to name my man-cave....any suggestions, readers? ..clean ones I mean.... ) what have I been doing in it? Well you may ask: since it's inception in early November I have been as busy as a busy thing that's been given a deadline to meet in the middle of a particularly busy time of the year by a particularly nagging boss. Well, in the last few weeks I have managed to get the following painted up...  

Galloping Major's FIW British Line Infantry. Fantastic figures

Early Imperial Roman Auxiliaries from Warlord Games
for Hail Caesar. Shield decals by Little Big Man 

     Along with some other family members, we booked a holiday cottage for a few days to see in the New Year and I thought I should get some board games organised for them so I purchased a copy of Cluedo Super Sleuth which includes these rather lovely sculpts by Mark Copplestone that cried out to be painted

The usual suspects; Professor Plum, Mrs White, Reverend Green,
Mrs Peacock, Miss Scarlett and Colonel Mustard. Extra pieces are
Hogarth the Butler, Inspector Grey and Sooty the black labrador

In keeping with the season I painted up this Biggles
 type Santa that I purchased at Britcon. Not sure
who produced him but he looks the business

     Lastly, for this post anyway, I received amongst my Chrimbo presents a gift voucher for Static Games, here in Glasgow. Despite it burning a hole in my pocket I kept my cool as I wasn't sure what I wanted to buy. In due course I popped in to have a look at their stock with my mind set on buying a box of Warlords German Infantry (Winter) when I recalled one of the chaps from the Falkirk and District Wargames Club mention on their Facebook page that he had received Dungeon Saga; The Dwarf Kings Quest for his Christmas. I had toyed with the idea of getting this before as I am keen to get my poor, woe begone family playing games so, to cut a long story short...just for a change, I left Static Games eagerly clutching this...

     ...and inside it was all this....With only a few days to go before we set off too Northumberland to usher in the New Year it was nose to the grindstone and thank my lucky stars I had a man cave in which to rub my grubby nose against the grindstone....

     and after burning copious amounts of midnight oil, to my credit, I managed to get these done

The Heros

Skeleton Warriors

Zombie Warriors and plain, old Zombies

...and that was my rush to the finishing tape for 2018. Needless tp say thre's plenty more to come in 2019 including finishing my FIW British force and taking them to A Most Despicable Place in January; too whit Bristol and B.I.G. that's Bristol Independent Gamers to you, which I am looking forward to very much. As well as that, we're looking at another big game of Black Powder in March and I want to create enough terrain for a timber framed village and add plenty of English Civil War non-player characters to it and, last but not least, I have treat myself to an ocean mat from Deep Cut Games so all my Kiss Me Hardy Napoleonic naval stuff has moved up the to do list by several notches. Lots and lots to be getting on with and to be blogging about; that's nearly a year now...you would think I would be getting the hang of it by now...

     Look forward to engaging wih more of you in 2019, thanks to all of you who have taken time out to read my blog and especially those of you good enough to follow it.

All the best for 2019,

pip pip,

The General