Ninth year anniversary

Last Monday this blog reached it's 9th birthday.  It's 3 years older than Hugo and, as of 16 February, 6 years older than Monty.  I find I look back to the pre-children years much less frequently now.  I wouldn't be without the boys for anything and wargaming has now contentedly learnt to fit around them.  In a way, having children can be quite liberating as I no longer have the disposable cash to fritter away on new figures, coffee-table books and other impulse buys that are, ultimately, a waste of money: less clutter, less money thrown away.  Last year I made a deliberate attempt to buy as little as possible (I think I bought about seven Perry packs in total) and rely on the lead- and plastic-piles for my painting.  It's worked pretty well and this year I'm intending to carry on in that fashion.  I have a couple of ideas for new periods, or at least new collections; but those will have to wait until (a) my piles are almost gone and (b) funds become available that don't have to be put towards the house or the children.

So 2016 looks set to be: more AWI, particularly British and loyalist infantry; finishing off what's in the First Carlist War pile (just a couple of units, I think); ditto for the NZ Wars leadpile (more Maori and British sailors).  I don't have a burning desire to paint any more 1815 stuff at the moment, although I have a few French light infantry on the go, but I expect that will change later in the year.  In the meantime, I have several French high command stands still to base and I've just finished painting another of the Perry Waterloo vignettes.  So that's the plan for this year.  In terms of what I painted last year, I think the tally is as follows:

 - AWI: 136 infantry, 25 cavalry;
- Napoleonics: 38 infantry, 27 cavalry;
- NZ Wars: 26 infantry;
- First Carlist War: 12 infantry;
- The Sudan: 4 infantry and 1 gun;
- Other: 4 cows (yes, really).

So that's 325 "points" in total.  I painted a lot of cavalry and the majority of the infantry were plastic figures.  The painted figures came from Perry, Eureka, King's Mountain, Gringos 40, Foundry and Redoubt (for the cows), which is a broader spread than usual.  I only had one game this year, but the first I've put on myself at home - Freeman's Farm when Chook came to visit from NZ.  The photos in this post are from that game.  The only show I got to was Salute (which I see this year falls square on my birthday), and I can't see myself attending any others this year.  As well as catching up with Antipodean friends like Chook and Melbourne's John Baxter, a highlight of the year was seeing the much-awaited 4th AWI scenario book published by Caliver.

In terms of blogging, things slipped badly at the beginning of last year but the blog saw a resurgence in autumn.  I'm really going to try harder this year to post regularly.  Having a large backlog of stuff to post about will help.  If I can finish off my Stonewall Jackson command stand I'll even post about the 150-odd ACW figures I've painted over the past 4 years!  I do intend to make a real effort to post at least once a week, even if it's just boring "wip" stuff.  With that in mind, here's a bad photo of my latest Waterloo vignette.  Better photos in due course...


In previous posts of this nature I've made a note of the wines my family drank at Christmas.  I don't have a label for wine posts, but there are plenty in this blog.  This year's champagne was from Pol Roger and the reds included, as per usual, something from NZ boutique producer Puriri Hills.  Having had a bottle of Chateau d'Yquem 1997 each year for the past 11 years we are now down to our last year.  Due to an unfortunate accident, most of the vintage Dow's 1983 port ended up on the floor; but I had a glass and it was superb.   Happy New Year!