Goodness, it’s 2008 already! Time for a little reflection on the past year and my second Annual Roundup. So what did I achieve in 2007? Here’s the highlights month by month.
January to February
Frustrated by the latest Games Workshop Asia/Pacific price rise I started looking for online re-sellers with a reasonable discount and found Scrap Dragon in Australia. I also had an interesting conversation about shipping to New Zealand with the owner. Alas I’d pretty much stopped playing GW games when I discovered Scrap Dragon, which is unfortunate because you can get around a 17% discount over NZ GW retail prices by ordering from them.
I finished an original 15mm 1930’s building facade for Flames of War and then painted a couple of different buildings using the facade. First an intact building and then a bombed out one in February. The buildings turned out so well I started making additional window pieces for a second facade of different design which I started in April but have yet to complete!
March
March started a run of 28mm Pulp painting which lasted six months before I tired of writing and running .45 Pulp Adventure scenarios towards the end of 2007. However as I find painting a single range of figures dull I also finished some 15mm German captured lorries for Flames of War.
April
Month two of the Pulp painting frenzy saw me painting some wildlife as well as More Pulp Painting and several more zombies – can you ever have enough zombies – for any game system?! Inspired by the lack of decent cheap crates for Pulp gaming I also whipped up a set of resin cast 28mm crates in April.
May
Of course once I’d molded the crates I had to cast and paint some for gaming. However rather than paint individual crates I created three different crate stacks and cast and painted a bunch of them instead. They’ve pretty much been regulars on the Pulp gaming table since then! Pulp painting continued too, with the start of an angry mob of Cairo civilians.
On a whim I also made a couple of rather random purchases in May. First was a discounted box of 1:35th Dragon Fallschirmjager because I was interested in trying larger scale display painting. I’ve since assembled two of the four figures however none have seen any paint yet. I also picked up a copy of Advanced Squad Leader Starter Kit #3 from MMP which I played happily for a while before I started to feel a little overwhelmed by the complexity of this classic war game, and went back to playing with toy soldiers rather than cardboard chits.
June
My Pulp crates turned out so well, and generated a moderate amount of interest on a couple of forums that I investigated setting myself up to do some white metal casting. However the cost and difficulty involved with casting white metal either myself or via a bespoke overseas caster means I never took this any further. Anybody know a good New Zealand white metal caster that can do detail game pieces?
The crates were so successful I was also motivated to sculpt myself some 1930’s 28mm Pulp Luggage, mainly because I wanted to populate a train station with luggage for a scenario. To round the month out I painted a few more Pulp figures and we had our second child! Another healthy wee baby boy!
July
Despite the fact there was a new baby in the house I still managed to get a reasonable amount of modeling done in July but I note in the following months my hobby output naturally started to slow down. July saw me resin cast and paint up several sets of Pulp luggage which turned out very nicely. Several more pulp figures got painted along with the luggage too.
August
Baby induced sleep deprivation really started to kick in in August and all I really achieved of note was finishing the cab of an Ebob Opel Blitz for Pulp gaming.
September
Continuing with Pulp painting I finished a BAM 28mm Sdkfz 222 German scout car. I also entered a friendly competition on the Back of Beyond Pulp forums to scratch build a 28mm scale Tramp Steamer. Mine came together pretty well but hasn’t been painted yet and as such ended up being another incomplete project!
All this incomplete work induced a bout of ‘hobbyist malaise’ in the end of 2007 which found me slumped over my paint station wondering which project I should actually finish. Recklessly I started a visitor poll to pick the next incomplete project to work on. Really I should have guessed how the poll was going to go, since by November visitors had picked the largest, most incomplete project I have outstanding. Guess I know what I’ll be doing in 2008!
October, November and December
A new job, a growing baby and several stellar PC game releases (Orange box – Portal restored my faith in PC gaming) meant I really didn’t get a heck of a lot of modeling done in the last quarter of 2007. I did make some minor progress on the Hirst Arts Cathedral after changing to a much better glue. I also constructed a row of OO scale brick terraced houses as an Xmas gift for my father in law using Linka molds.
Overall 2007 wasn’t a bad year in terms of modeling, I certainly got a fair amount of 28mm scale Pulp figures, vehicles and terrain painted. However I would have liked to have achieved more and feel it’s definitely time for a change of scale. I suspect I’ll spend a fair amount of time working on my 15mm Flames of War and Ancients collections (yes and the Cathedral) in 2008 but I’ll guess we’ll see in the next annual round-up!