New Year – Same Old Me

This is the beginning of a new year, the time when people make resolutions. They start a new life, sign up for the gym, start a healthy diet, ditch alcohol and tobacco… and before the end of January, they get back to their old routine. The gyms that were full of new year resolutioners are back to the regular guests, snacks and comfort food find their way back to the more and more liberal diet plan and a good pint or a drag of a cigarette still does the magic.

I never really believed in new year resolutions and dramatic changes, but there are a couple of things that work for me:

  • Learning from past achievements and mistakes
  • Determining what needs to be done differently and making the necessary changes
  • Planning the next period

    • In this case, it’s not for my life in general but for my hobby only: the games I play and the minis I build and paint.

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    SELWG 2019 – A Slightly Delayed Report

    I had one more wargames show left to visit this year, the South East London Wargames Group’s SELWG 2019 on 20th October, in the Crystal Palace Sports Centre.

    After the relatively fresh experience of visiting COLOURS 2019 in Newbury, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect, which made me feel a bit like a seasoned veteran of wargame shows: the halls were filled with traders and the demo games were exiting, so the situation was reassuringly familiar. Compared to COLOURS, SELWG felt a bit more spacious, which was partially due to the bigger inner height, but also due to the slightly lower number of traders, demos and a smaller crowd. I really don’t mean that as a negative, the location and venue itself was nice, there was a decent range both of games and merchandise. I’d rather say that the whole show was more of a manageable size.

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    October Haul Report 2019

    What a busy month I have had! I played two weekend games (not complete weekends of course but Saturdays, to be more precise), ran a whole day RPG session, visited SELWG 2019 (stay tuned for the report!) and played two evening games. With all this, it’s not a big surprise that I have not made too much progress with miniature painting.

    But hey, life doesn’t stop and wait for you to catch up. Lots have been going on on the market that forced me to spend a bit of my hobby budget:

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    Carts before the Horses

    In my previous post I briefly talked about the difficulties with following schedules in my hobbies and this time I have another perfect example of how strict plans have to be abandoned sometimes. When it comes to miniature painting, I always face a huge scheduling conflict. Should I work on the army I started painting for a wargame, or rather paint the minis that are needed for the RPG campaign I run, or maybe paint these miniatures that are not really needed, but look too much fun to skip?

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    SPQR – Review and First Impressions

    In my professional life, I do my best to be logical and organised, I have detailed plans and schedules. However, when it comes to my hobbies, it’s a bit different: I still make a reasonable effort to be logical and organised… but I have to be careful to find the right balance, because if I overdo it, it just kills the fun. Therefore my hobby plans are a bit fuzzier, and I allow plenty of room for changes, unscheduled activities and impulse buys, which is what this post is about.

    When I visited Dark Sphere in Shepherd’s Bush, I didn’t have the slightest intention to buy anything, but I run into a pile of new stuff with ancient battles, Roman legions and Gauls… I really did my best to resist, but the Roman legions are my long-time favourites, it was a complete starter set with a rulebook, and even the price tag showed a reassuringly low number, so I’ve bought a box of SPQR Starter set.
    I also purchased a box of Legionaries with swords and slings as ranged units are a must have, a Scorpion team, as artillery is useful too and the Gaul Heroes, as they also deserve a bit of a boost.

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    Painting with My Nieces – Summer 2019

    Undeniably, it’s autumn. Summer is gone and it’s time to recall a happy memory from July.

    After our December visit to the family and our painting session with my nieces, it was beyond question that we would have more of these. Both of them and I enjoyed it a lot and I got the mission to find a decent Gryph.

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    Colours 2019, Newbury

    There is a first time for everything… and in this case, it was my first visit to a proper wargame show: Colours 2019, in Newbury. For those, who are not familiar with it, Colours is an annual game show, organized by the Newbury & Reading Wargames Society at the Newbury Racecourse.

    To be perfectly honest, I was hesitant to go: it was a very busy period, I was working my way through a massive backlog of miniature painting, and it took more than an hour to get there by train, but a veteran gamer friend convinced me to take the trip. I didn’t really know what to expect, as the closest thing I recently participated in, was Fighting Fantasy Fest 3, which was focusing on one single line of games.

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    Fighting Fantasy Fest 3

    There are things in life that influence you: books you read, movies you watch, and people you become friends with. Some of these are just short impressions, while some of them have a long lasting effect and might even become an important part of your life.

    Fighting Fantasy was published in Hungary in 1989, starting with “Deathtrap Dungeon”, “The Warlock of Firetop Mountain” and “Freeway Fighter”.

    Little did I know then that these books would inflame a new passion of mine. I was still in primary school and my classmates were talking about these new books that you can play. A book you can play? It just didn’t make any sense, but when I opened one of them, everything was clear. After reading the first few pages, there was no turning back: I became a fan of Fighting Fantasy.

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    Painting with My Nieces – Christmas 2018

    Being an uncle is entertaining – you bring presents, you know all the cool stuff, and you are a lot more fun than the rest of the adults.

    Since we live in the UK and my nieces (6 and 8 years old) are in Hungary, I can see them only twice a year, so I try to make every visit special and memorable. Instead of just heaping them with random gifts, I always buy something that improves their creativity or their skills. To give a few examples, we have made gypsum mermaids and butterflies and we have painted them together. I showed them how to mix colours, I explained them colour theory, and I taught them techniques like edge highlighting, drybrushing and extreme highlighting. They are always curious and receptive, and the most rewarding thing in this process is that I can see that they use what they learnt earlier.

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    The “Oscars”

    The local RPG club, where I spent several hours every week in the past year either playing or running a game as a DM, has recently become one year old. There were loads of ideas on how to celebrate the anniversary: throwing a party, having a cake, a charade, etc…  – everyone was excited and busy with organizing the event.

    We decided to give some kind of an award or memorabilia to gamers who have really outdone themselves. There was a surprise only two of us knew about: Crooked Dice Studio had a miniature with an uncanny resemblance to one of the iconic members of the club. The head, the pose and the cargo short were spot on, so we decided to paint them in gold, silver and bronze and make them our “Oscars”.

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