My blog about my wargaming activities. I collect a lot of 15mm miniatures for the American War of Independence and so collect a lot of rules for this period. I started miniatures with Napoleonics, so I have a number of armies in 6mm and 15mm figures for skirmishing. I have15mm WW II figures that I use for Flames of War, Memoir '44, and someday, Poor Bloody Infantry. Finally there is my on-again, off-again relationship with paper soldiers that I sometimes write about.

Thursday, August 09, 2012

Shaking Off Gaming Burn-out

It has been a number of months since my last post on all of my gaming blogs for a number of reasons. First, Cold Wars seemed to have scratched my gaming itch for quite a while. Second, I have been working on a new business model and so had to change my focus away from gaming and give my career skills a bit of a boost; I have been slacking for too long.

Since Cold Wars I can count the number of games I have played on one hand. Interestingly, most have been Borg (or Borg-like) designs. I have not even been gaming solo. Also, my painting and modeling can to a halt too.

Downsizing

My gaming buddy Don has been talking downsizing his miniatures collection and gaming effort. He mentioned dropping miniatures and sticking to board games (largely Borg designs), but I think he is just going to cut down his Flames of War collection. I doubt he is going to sell his new 25mm Ancients collection (or his old 15mm DBA one), or his 15mm Vietnam collection, but I am waiting to see if he sells the 28mm WW II collection, though. I am sure he is going to sell his various impulse buys like moderns, strange scales, and his excess Sherman's (do you really need 300 Shermans?).

For me, I am still debating selling off the 15mm AWI. I am still not satisfied with any set of rules I bought. To be honest, I bought them for two reasons: I like the uniforms, and that both sides' histories are written in English. To me the latter is a large selling point. If I sold the figures off, that would leave me with 15mm Flames of War, 28mm WW II skirmish, 15mm DBA Ancients, my old Warhammer 40K forces (which I will never sell), and all the wooden soldiers I can build.

AWI

The AWI rules that have worked out the best have been DBA or HOTT variants, but our one game of Black Powder was okay. If I use large enough hexes I could make a variant using Battles of Westeros (a Borg-inspired design) and use four bases per unit. But, if I do that I will just be perpetuating the problem and forcing me to keep the figures. :^) But, it might help re-energize me.

Flames of War

Now that I have sufficiently purged Flames of War version 2 from my memory it may be easier to make the transition to version 3. I am planning on running a game at home (to leave setup, if necessary) and trying to really get the rules down. I look forward to trying the Fearless Trained King Tigers from the Devil's Charge book. That might help re-energize me too.

I doubt that I will contemplate tournament play again though. Although I enjoy the WWPD podcasts, their content seems to be becoming very oriented towards min-maxing lists. It hasn't stopped me from listening though.


Well, enough babbling. Hopefully you will see something new from me soon, either a new AWI variant, some Age of Sail gaming, or a Flames of War report.

5 comments:

  1. Dale,

    Glad to see you back. You were missed, at least by me. Your posts are always interesting. I did wonder if/when you would be based on your comments on TMP, so happy to see the burn-out is easing.

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  2. Dale,

    Glad to see you're back posting. Any chance you'll start writing again over on your Solo Battles blog? I can't count how many times I've read and re-read many of those posts.

    -John

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  3. Great to see you back! I'm eyeing an 18th century colonial imagination project. All without finishing a single other project.

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  4. Thanks all. Sometimes you shout out into the ether and wonder if anyone else is there.

    Yes I will start up Solo Battles again. DBA may take a little longer to get into, until the rules actually ship. Not sure where Barker is taking them.

    ReplyDelete

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Huachuca City, Arizona, United States
I am 58 yrs old now. I bought a house in Huachuca City, AZ working for a software company for the last three years. To while away the hours I like to wargame -- with wooden, lead, and sometimes paper miniatures -- usually solo. Although I am a 'rules junkie', I almost always use rules of my own (I like to build upon others' ideas, but it seems like there is always something "missing" or "wrong").