[unofficial weekender] When is too much too much?

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Happy Monday morning you lot. Sorry to anyone suffering from weird accents during the XLBS 😉 I’m in full swing for this years paintathon and I hope I’ll keep this momentum.

Paintathon 2020

[torros 23816xp 2]

No worries.  I can’t usually understand Lloyd anyway

[blinky465 17028xp 4]

Well, another weekend over, another week begins, another broken pledge. So let’s start with the questions….

• When is too much hobby too much? I don’t understand the question. Thanks to lockdown, I’ve done more hobby in the last six months than I’ve done in the last ten years. And loving it! Too much hobby? Does not compute. If I could take retirement tomorrow and spend the next forty years doing nothing but hobby, I’d be a very happy little nerd.

 

• Did you every experience a “oh I totally forgot how much fun this is” moment with a game/system you’ve abandoned long ago? Space Crusade is still a great game, especially with multiple squads all vying for victory points.

 

• Where have all the flowers gone? It’s nearly October, man. You know how seasons work, right? 😉 That said, we’re still quite summery here on the UK south coast – it’s noticably more autumnal as you travel northwards up the country.

Pledge: well, I started yet another project. A bit like @warzan with his HeroQuest board, I told myself it’d just a one-day thing and move on, but I kind of got drawn into it, so might just add another project to the BoW/OTT system. So this weeks’ pledge isn’t to finish anything – but to promise to not start anything new until I’ve completed at least one outstanding project!

Music? Get some 90s indie in your lugholes

And here’s where it all started. I made this.

And really liked it. A cartoon wood effect to go with my cartoon-looking minis (I’m not especially a fan of cartoon-looking, it’s just that’s the way the paint comes off the end of my brush so I’m trying to learn to embrace it). I thought I’d make some cool planks for something (dunno what yet) but cutting styrofoam with a knife is a nightmare!

So I got some scraps of MDF and some left-over vape-coil wire (from the mini smoke machine project from a few months ago – https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1420340/) and made a hotwire. I should have stopped there, but went crazy and added a power controller and LCD

I think I’ll build a table and mount it with a rail/fence tonight and then write the whole thing up as a project…

 

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Everybody else would have taken the scrap wood, wire and a 9V battery… but the amount of over-engineering… sure you’re not German @blinky465 😉

[limburger 21711xp 3]

@sundancer nah, every engineer worth his degree over-engineers his pet projects all of the time …

that doesn’t mean they’re closet Germans 😉

Like this bottle opener that Adam Savage did :

ok … so Laura Kampf is German, maybe it did infect him a little ? 😉

//

1) When is too much hobby too much? At what point do you go: f*ck this, I’m out!
interesting … maybe it is when I realise how many things I have to build and paint before a project is completed ?
Or maybe I’m just too easily distracted by new shiny, so I don’t get the chance to build momentum even if all the stuff I want is available to me.
It is something to think about.

2) Did you every experience a “oh I totally forgot how much fun this is” moment with a game/system you’ve abandoned long ago?
The few times I’ve gone back to old videogames it was more like ‘how could I possibly have enjoyed that?’
It’s why I probably don’t understand the retro-game craze.

Given that I never really got into any game I can’t say I’ve abandoned and rediscovered them.
I suppose Bolt-Action and FoW kind of could be like that as I haven’t played either of them since their respective bootcamps.
However I am looking forward to playing either again, but for that to happen I need to build me an army (or two).

With 2020 being what it is my chances of finding an opponent and playing a game are practically zero.

3) Where have all the flowers gone?
They got de-flowered ? 😉

Seeing all the progress in this thread makes me realise I’m procastrinating again … ok not really. I did do stuff like build a 1:1 scale ikea model.

I got my Soviet Bagration book, the unit cards, command cards and the basics of the plastic for my Soviet army.
I’ve also started a new (private) project to detail all the stuff I’m doing and have a space for my thoughts.

I think I’ve also gone down the rabbit hole that is historical gaming by ordering a few books that might help :

1. German and Russian Tank Models 1939-45
   Author : Mario Eens
   Publisher : Casemate Publishers
   ISBN : 9781612007359
   First edition March 2019
2. The Tank Book
   The Definitive Visual History of Armoured Vehicles
   Author : DK
   Publisher : Dorling Kingsley Ltd
   ISBN : 9780241250310
   First edition April 2017
3. Operation Bagration
   The destruction of German Army group Center, 1944
   Author : Ian Baxter
   Publisher : Casemate Publishers
   ISBN 9781612009230
   First edition October 2020

The last one is a bit of a gamble, but it promised pictures …
I don’t know when the books will arrive, but I hope to see at least one of them this week.

Reading the book and looking at the cards has given me a few ideas already :
(1) IS-2 tanks … they’re big, they’re brutal,they’re not tigers and might distract enough to use the rest of the army
(2) the ‘decoy tank company’ card looks interesting and an opportunity to paint captured German tanks is fun
(3) more infantry (I think the ‘official’ box has too few, so I may need more)
(4) maybe a couple of Stalins’ Organs ’cause they’re cool ?
…

I don’t know if it will be a historical correct army, but getting it build and painted is my first priority.
Should give me a few weeks of stuff to do.

oh … and with Orktober next month I might want to reserve time for my Orkz & Goblinoids too.

[blinky465 17028xp 2]

@sundancer :blushing: you flatter me 😉

@limburger 1:1 is the best scale for building stuff! In all honesty, it’s only because of groups like this I’m actually getting anything finished. Normally I’d get to the bit where it works or does the bare minimum functionally, then put it on my “shelf of shame”. It’s only through sharing progress on sites like this that I’m actually “forced” into getting a finished project (that said, I’ve now got three “open” projects just on this site alone!). If you’re happy with your own progress at your own pace, that’s really all that matters. I love seeing what everyone is working on.

 

[sundancer 42985xp 1]

@blinky465 as long as your “shame” is still contained to one room *cough* Gerry *cough* I think all is fine 😉

[blinky465 17028xp 2]

You said “house”, right?

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Computer says: No.

[blinky465 17028xp 2]

Houston, I think we may have a problem….

[limburger 21711xp 1]

nah .. simply redefine what a ‘room’ is and what a ‘house’ is and you’ll be fine.

Most of my stuff is contained to one room … which also happens to be 80% of my appartment 😀

*squee*
The big Tank book has arrived.
Lots of Tank Pr0n … 😀
I just wish the big two page spreads were posters, because a bit of detail gets lost in the fold (sp?) of the book itself.

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 3]

Hooray! I have received Kabaka K’wana from Nobleknight. I now possess a full pound (453 grams roughly) of white metal monkey business. Yep, this is a weighty figure that will be fun to work on.

@damon Myabe not green but the rest might be true

@oriskany Swanky way to get back into the swing of things. Bravo for jumping back into the pool with a cannonball. Now don’t tempt Blinky to start building mini dancing girls that really swivel. He’s liable to take on another crazy idea

@sundancer Weekender? XLBS? Damn, I knew I forgot to do something this weekend. Work has been crazy. My boss is crazy. I’m going … er… have been going crazy. More minis to try and assert some semblance of sanity. That’s my method of recovery in this cult when dealing with the forces of The Elder Things.

@blinky465 I think the appropriate phrase is “Houston, set course for potato”. With as much as you say you’ll stay on course we’ll stand by and watch you lazily teeter this way and that.

@limburger Egad! ORKTOBER!!! I need to get my project stuff together for it. Stuff the monkey and bring on the greenskins!
Now about the tank pr0n… it isn’t until there’s an anime anthropomorphic representation under Rule 34. I’ll stand back as the Slaaneshi Servers kick into gear in the dark, but fun, corners of the Internet

[limburger 21711xp 1]

@horati0nosebl0wer there’s enough crazy people on the internet for that to exist …

Panzer girls, right ?

I bet that was tame by crazy people standards, but I’ll take it …

[oriskany 60771xp 1]

The rest of the photos from my 15mm Iraqi 1991 Desert Storm force.

Here are some of the support teams. AT-3 Sagger ATGW tank killers, sniper, RPG-7 gunner with assistant, officer, and SA-7 AA missile

 

Side view of the force.

 

Bedrock of most Arab armies from 1970s to the early 1990s. T-55 tank (or variant), BTR infantry carrier, AT-3 Sagger (these killed an entire Israeli tank division in one day in 1973), and the RPG-7. Oh, and towed artillery. I handle that with off-board units, but trust me, they will be on the list (D-30 howitzers, mostly)

 

We’ll see how these guys stand up to my 15mm US Marines!

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

Morning lovely lot… It’s Orctober…. did anybody wake that singer dude? September ended…

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