Hello 2025, goodbye 2024! New Year ruminations

A happy New Year to any followers of this blog!

As is traditional amongst bloggers, I've looked back at 2024 and thought about where I'm going in 2025. One of the good things about blogging is that it allows you to establish exactly what you were doing on a specific date without recourse to fallible memory.

Looking back to this time last year, I see I had a raging chest infection! It has obviously become traditional for this time of year....

I was trying to plod along with the Soldier King project but didn't finish Banst until the simmer of that year. Each year I think to myself that I really should get this 30year old project finished. Having being within a whisker of completion, I eventually worked out a logical recruitment and maintenance system from the game translated into VnB units. Having then applied this to the armies, I found that Estavia, the Imperial states and non-electoral states all had room for increasing the armies.....

This resulted in the equivalent of a whole new army.....

Psychologically, this derailed me a bit; the thought of cleaning up Spencer Smith figures and then getting very mixed up and focussed on storage, meant it all went on the back-burner. I have since realised I actually have more HMSO box files so some of the reasoning was utterly irrelevant!

This year, one of my goals is to get the armies finished so that I can actually start a campaign.

Last year this time was also focussed on the Six Days War project. Not much has been done on that   over the course of the year.  Partly due to real world events and more likely due to new distractions.....

In February I commenced on the Italian Wars project using Zinnfiguren flats. This has resulted in a new painting technique and project creep from a modest aim of DBA sized armies to refighting Pavia at 1:100 scale! The realisation of it being the 500th anniversary was what did it. Looking back, I have made some progress with the French  and Swiss but there are a lot more to do.

I also got distracted by embarking on a long desired WW2 desert project. Despite having a lot of 15mm stuff, this was in 20mm - the 15mm being organised for platoon scale games means there are multiple 10 tank model battalions in the lead/plastic/resin pile. 20mm offered the attraction of 1 model tank = a battalion....there has been some project creep here following the publication of NQM.

I'd like to get the Pavia project done; I suspect it won't be in time for the anniversary (February) but hopefully before the end of the year. I'd also like to make progress on SK and the C20th projects.

One bright spot has been the VWC which continues to inspire, motivate and bring companionship and goes from strength to strength.

I had also forgotten that I'd re-kindled interest in my very old SYW and FIW projects, leading to some purchases (mostly terrain or painted figures).

So as is traditional, a parade. The Prussians: