Thursday 25 April 2013

The Project Progresses

The Assyrians are coming along slowly. That's because I am now working once again, and only have a few hours at the weekend to crack on with painting.

However, I am finishing some units. The Auxiliary units are complete, save for a unit of a dozen Archers.

The Assyrians still have a long way to go, but I finished one unit of Archers and a unit of Slingers, and a good start has been made on the second Heavy Infantry unit. The third Heavy Infantry unit, some reinforcements for the unit of Archers, and another full unit of Slingers, have now been primed.

Whilst I have made a start on the Heavy Chariots and the Cavalry, they remain on the back burner as I hate painting animals! I know it's easy once one gets back into the swing of it, but I have always hated painting them. As far as numbers are concerned, I have decided to get another box of Heavy Chariots, and I also have another box of 12 Assyrian Cavalry lying around somewhere, which I shall probably paint up later as Royal Bodyguard. And that will do for the Assyrian project.

On other fronts, I made a start on the New Kingdom Egyptian project and purchased some cheap Caesar Egyptian Infantry on eBay a while back. I am thinking twice about this source of figures for future purchases though, as the P&P charges of some sellers has gone through the roof. When you are being asked to cough up £9.50 for a single box of plastic figures, it's not even a bad joke. I won't pay those kind of prices. I am going to look at mail order shops like Hannants in future.

I also found a mint copy of Bolt Action, the WW2 skirmish rules, for almost half price. They are essentially 40K WW2. Very gamey, very lightweight. Having said that, the rule mechanisms themselves are okay and one can easily disregard the sillier stuff, especially the scenarios, which are dire. If I ever do end up gaming WW2 then I will certainly use 20mm instead of 28mm, and these rules might do the trick for the fast, small scale tactical games I want.

I have aborted at least 3 WW2 projects over the last five years, and I am not sure why. It's a period that attracted me to wargames all those years ago, so why is it I find it so hard to get back into it? I still love reading Charles Grant's Battle!, but just can't seem to get the enthusiasm. Maybe it's the boring colour schemes...?