New Year......new distractions!

As we usher in 2026, like many bloggers, I'm looking back at what was achieved and where we go from here.

2025 seems to have been the year of lethargy / inability to focus and generally not get that much done.  

One achievement and milestone is with the Soldier King project. 2025 saw me complete the armies of Waldow, Sinistria and Dupanen and add a cavalry brigade to Bravance, Argozia and Hrvatska to bring them up to parity with Arcadia, having managed to recalculate the army size and income. A tranche of reinforcements for Estavia await paint, the "rebels" / militia figures are part converted, which just leaves the Electoral forces to be boosted - to whatever will fill the boxes.

Sadly, I don't have anywhere to play with them at present! I also have numerous card/paper building to assemble and more importantly store...

Storage and clutter are a big problem and finding things is becoming a nightmare. As the offspring show no intention of flying the nest, until retirement, I cannot see much changing....

This has led to a revaluation of current projects and possibly more distractions. But first, a quick look at what else was going on. This year end saw me  escape illness although not lethargy, being exhausted from work. Little progress on flat Italian Wars, although I did read another couple of books on Pavia, and the main focus this year has been on 20mm Desert war with lots of modelling. The Jordanians for the 1967 Arab-Israeli war got some work as well.

At the end of the year, I dug out my old 15mm ancients, created for DBA and have spent my time off digging out figures and after a major excavation in the garage, my DBA terrain box. The realisation hit me, that at present I am limited to a 2' x 3' playing area, so we are looking at smaller scales, smaller armies or skirmish games if I want to actually play.

This set off a lot of cleaning up of 15mm Hellenistics with the vague idea of a Syrian War campaign. However, digging out painted figures has modified things slightly; I'm now contemplating something involving the Marian Roman armies and this has led to a modification. I can still scratch the Helenistic itch by working on Ptolemaics that took part in the Alexandrian War as part of the Civil War involving Caesar. This gives plenty of scope with the rivals Cleopatra VII v Ptolemy XIII with Arsinoe thrown into the mix of Achillas, the eunuch Gannymedes, remnant Gabinine legionaries, rioters etc.

Rediscovery of the Celts has got me looking at Caesar's Gallic war (coupled with a re-read of his accounts) - this was something I was planning all those years ago. While musing, I remembered I had a copy of the Decision Games Mini Game:

https://shop.decisiongames.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=1701

Ideal for conversion to DBA and as it is card-driven, good for solo.

My thoughts have also turned to the possibility of smaller scales for say Western Desert WW2. I'm undecided on this as I have never really "got on" with say 1:300th after some unfortunate experiences in formative years, although I can see the benefit. That said, I have lots of 15mm stuff and Martin Rapier https://tgamesweplay.blogspot.com/ seems to manage games on a small area....although not quite as cramped as 3x2 foot!

Maybe I need to become a microscale gamer.....