Belated Season's Greetings

This is just a quick post to wish everyone a very happy New Year, and hope that it brings a lot more happiness and good things than the last one did.

I had a very quiet Christmas and New Year holiday due to the lockdowns in place - Tier 4 for most of it. As a result, I couldn't see the kids (one daughter caught Covid-19 but was, thankfully, hardly affected, and my other daughter was sent home twice from school due to class mates having it but, luckily, she never caught it - the boys have been totally unaffected so far (fingers crossed)) for my allotted period of custody, but we were able to luckily squeeze in a quick present swap just before Christmas between different enforced isolation events.

I didn't get much in the way of gaming stuff as gifts this year, but lots of nice things none-the-less; I am very lucky to have a kind and generous family and bunch of friends. However, I did get this little poster that now has pride of place above the reading chair in the lounge (apologies for the poor photo - there seems to be lots of relection and shadow due to the way the lighting is in the room)...

I really like it and it will show visitors (when we are allowed them again) what I am interested in, and hopefully spark some interesting conversations (and conversions to gaming?).

I managed to blog a couple of times over the holiday period about my ideas for a new Frostgrave campaign. I have still been tinkering away with this in the background but I have come to yet another impasse of sorts; a couple of problems in the form of a lack of adversaries and scenery.

Due to the nature of most of my gaming in the past, I have plenty of historical miniatures and a great number of human adventurers for fantasy games but very few actual monsters. As a result, I will need to tailor my forays into Frostgrave with the beasties that I have, namely: a few giants and trolls, some hobgoblins (two types at the moment), some kobolds and a few blister packs of skeletons.

With regards my scenery, I have mentioned previously that one of my cats took a liking to my gaming storage boxes as a litter tray and spoiled most of it (as well as a huge number of my paints).

I think I can see a way out of these predicaments though. Firstly, Frostgrave is promoted as a game that can be played using whatever accessories one has available even though there is an official miniatures range to support the game - it even mentions in a few of the supplements and rulebooks to use grey blocks as buildings and to proxy miniatures if those required for a scenario are unavailable. So, taking those words to heart, I bought myself a can of grey primer spray from a local car spares shop on Saturday just gone (Halfords for those of you in the UK), in order to spray up whatever detritus I can find in the recycle bins.

Secondly, with regards miniatures, I will create a narrative that will utilise the miniatures I have - if a scenario calls for skeletons but I only have hobgoblins, then that is what the adversaries will be. I will also set myself a monthly gaming budget in order to add to these in an orderly way. I will also need lots of paint, but I will get these a few jars at a time.

So, not really a set of New Year's resolutions, but I aim to try to achieve the following...

• Play games where and when I can, and not rely on having to have the correct stuff for it - proxy things to enable gaming to actually take place
  
• Use/re-use/recycle to make scenery items - base and add to them in time as I see fit
  
• Only buy new, or scour eBay for second hand, miniatures when required and stick to my allotted monthly budget
• Only buy paints when required and only those colours actually needed
• Paint whatever miniatures I buy within a month of getting them home/delivered
• Begin painting more of the huge backlog of miniatures I already have (Lord of the Rings stuff, I am looking at you here) and perhaps catalogue them so I can get an idea of the scale of the task at hand?
  

With regards projects, I have been reading several blogs recently and many people seem to be using the Rule of Three - i.e. only ever have three projects on the go at any one time to stop the butterfly (ooh, shiny) effect and to put a stop to too much procrastination. My current projects are as follows (in order of current importance):

1. Frostgrave - play solo adventures with whatever miniatures and scenery I already own and immerse myself in the narrative/world building
2. Lord of the Rings - try to get those armies painted and maybe some solo gaming done (rules will need to be resolved, but I have some ideas on how to achieve this)
3. Dungeons and Dragons - work towards a new campaign for when lockdown expires
4. And, on the back-burner - try to create a new play-by-email game set in my world of Doggerland

So, this means concentrating on miniature painting and scenery making for Frostgrave and Lord of the Rings primarily, alongside written work for the other two projects. Lots to look forward to, I just hope I can keep up the enthusiam and not get distracted too much by real life.