2011 So Far...

It's not quite halfway through the year yet, but now is an opportune time to examine the state of my hobby. The wife and our three kids will be heading out of town for five weeks soon (my wife is German and spends summers over there when she can) thus I need to make sure I have all my ducks in a row for what will hopefully be one of the more productive periods of the year. In all honestly, last year was not a very productive time. My theory was that there weren't three crazy kids and a wife to need relief from. just me and the dog. Anyway, let's review 2011 in light of my January goals.

1. 15mm WW2. My number one item in January was WW2, and so far, 2011 has followed. I have painted six assault teams of the 29th Infantry and made fair progress on the landing craft. I'm satisfied there. I do have the following future ideas:
   
   • Beach bunkers. Waiting for Historicon for this to decide exactly what I'm going to do. The Battlefront pillboxes look nice and economical...I'm not sure I'd prefer them over the traditional open top. And I'll have to think about how I want to represent a sea wall... Not happening until after the family is back.
     
   • Defenses. Barbed wire, mine fields, dug in counters, beach obstacles...definitely doable anytime. Planned to make some progress here.
     
   • Piquet. I haven't done much with Piquet, although I've been thinking about it...I need to finish my new FoB bases and make a PoA: Blitzkrieg deck. Both of those should be easily doable, so Planned.
     
   • Italians for Sicily. New interest. Operation Husky seems like a logical expansion since I already have US Airborne and Germans. With some Italian gear I could start doing the Combat Jump Sicily book. Not a priority, although I might start categorizing forces and see what I'll need.
     
2. New interest: Blood Bowl. A lot of my hobby time so far this year was taken up by something not on my radar in January-- Blood Bowl. I consider it legit, as party planning kind of pushed it to the fore. I have several teams to paint if I want to, but nothing planned right now. Our league continues.
   
3. New interest: The Roman-Dacian Wars. Actually, not really a new interest-- I picked up scads of Romans and Germans at Fall-In! last year for me and my son. Honestly, this should have been listed in my January plan for the year, but was an oversight there. Before I bought them, I called our main Ancients guy in the group and asked him if he had any 25mm Roman plans. He mentioned he'd considered Romans vs. Dacians, under Domitian and Trajan. The other day, once Number One Son was out of school, I mentioned these to him. He got all excited and said he had been reading about the Romans fighting the Dacians in one of his books! So, we started assembling plastic Germans. I think this is an official project now, although I'm not sure how much I'll do on my own without him. A possibility. I'll probably pick up cavalry and Dacian models at Historicon.
   
4. Tusk: Number One Son and I finished up our dogs and a Smilodon, and I'm planning on getting another Mammoth or two at Historicon, as well as other Pleistocene animals. I will probably pick up some Copplestone "Cro-Magnons" and even some dinosaurs.
   

...and that's all I've actually worked on. I do, however, have an active imagination...

5. 15mm Napoleonics. I did actually inventory my unpainted figures. I have plenty to do, so I can always paint more. I am short of cavalry both painted and unpainted, so I probably need to put in an order.
   
6. New interest: Ancients. A while back I started reading the Kagan's Peloponnesian War. That and the History of Rome have really piqued my interest to at least paint something. On my own, that is, not with Number One Son. So, I'm thinking of Greek Mythology. I just rented Jason and the Argonauts for the kids, and Number One Daughter is ga-ga for mythology. I see Matakishi is one step ahead of me, so it mustn't be a bad idea. I was considering the SuperSystem rules, but Scott just released Labors of the Gods, which is designed to do just this! I picked it up already...the art is kind of weak, but otherwise, looks good.
   
7. 40mm Napoleonics/AWI/FIW: Yeah. Probably not happening soon. But, always there.
   
8. 40mm Hellboy: I bought the Graven Images Hellboy, Abe and Roger a while back. Never did anything with them, but recently picked up a passel of German and Russian zombies on eBay...might just be time to turn to this. Again, SuperSystem?
   
9. Superheroes: While we're looking at SuperSystem, I still have several unpainted supers, and I could always use more...
   

So...five weeks of making 15mm WW2 landing craft, obstacles and 15mm Napoleonics, broken up with some Supers and Hellboy figures...sounds alright.