A long hot summer and other musings...

It has been entirely too long since I posted anything on my wargaming blog. I intend to rectify that this weekend. Though it has been a ridiculously hot summer with very little gaming or work being done on miniatures or scenery...I did manage to get a few things off the workbench.

Several projects in the works at one time:

WWII Italy: working on a platoon of 28mm Crusader Miniatures Fallschirmjägers and Mid War British. So far, one squad of each platoon completed. I am very happy with the camo on the FJ. I want to revisit my old Continental Hotel scenario with some custom scenery for a potential Wargames Illustrated article down the road and maybe re-run it at another convention.

American Civil War: a few Rebs done, a house and barn from JR Miniatures (I cut the roofs off these suckers with a hacksaw), and some snake rail fences which, while fairly easy to do, made me realize just how many of these damn things I will need...I already blew through a whole bag of my wife's bamboo Kebob sticks.

On the rules front...not much going on. I have been stuck on my 1:1 individual combat system for months now. I am beginning to realize that I just don't like the idea of gaming at that granularity except for certain genres like Pulp or Zombies. I don't think 1:1 action works for modern military combat. I am sure there are lots of perfectly legitimate realism justifications for that kind of system...but that's my mental block right now. Partially it is also because I simply don't know where to stop with content. I wanted to originally stick to 1:1 WWII. Then it became modern combat in general. Then I was considering modeling SWAT actions and CQB and other stuff like that...before I knew it this thing had gotten out of control.

I have begun work on my ACW skirmish set with a little bit of progress. I need to finish some minis and terrain and do some preliminary testing first before I get much further, but I feel that this is a doable project. I'm just not sure when it will fully develop. I want to base the book on one of the tactical manuals of the period, but I find myself with a loss of confidence in my knowledge of a period known for full on hard core pedantry with these kinds of things. If there is something even slightly wrong I will never hear the end of it...even more so than anything I have ever done WWII. Still, I like the title a lot. So there's that.

True to my too many irons in the fire style, I have also started working on a 1:1 Company scale game for WWII. This is something I began thinking about when I started playing games in 15mm and how neat the ground scale looks. It made me go a step further and start looking at doing 1:1 in 6mm scale and how I could distill the DH system into a new kind of game. I came up with a new unit based firepower system and new ways of using morale, training, cover, suppression, and maneuver that combines the playability of regular Disposable Heroes but at a higher level. So far, out of anything else I am working on, this one I am pretty excited about.

Some preliminary testing needs to be done, but I think it will result in a neat, realistic ground scale appealing game that is tactically fun and easy to play. We shall see...

So that's all for now. I need to fire up the camera and take some pics to post. I hope to do that soon.