Below are my five most recent miniatures related photos. These used to be freshly painted miniatures only, but now include game photos as well.
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Now that I’m finally getting on track with my life again (moving to a barely finished house tends to monopolise one’s available time), and now that we have a fully working broadband connection again (we were back on dialup until a week or so ago), the pieces are finally in place once more for me to do some posting on TTM, which I admit I have been neglecting a bit (apart from squishing the ever increasing amounts of comment spam). Those of you who enjoyed the silence will have to go elsewhere now, I’m afraid :)
Anyway, the latest Wargames Illustrated fell into our mail box today (now that we have a mail box :) ), and I am fairly impressed with it. Some time ago I expressed some pessimism regarding the state of wargame magazines (well, WI), agreeing with Ray Lucas that most of the articles in the magazine were nothing more than barely disguised advertisements - “adverticles”.
The current issue of WI (#212 - May 2005) can be accused of falling in the same trap, but there are some articles I find very interesting in there, something which has not happened in quite a while (jaded veteran wargamer that I am - ahem). To name but two, there is an adverticle on Rapid Fire 2 (which gives a good rundown on what’s new and helps one decide whether one wants to buy the rules — I’m tempted) and what looks like an interesting battle report on a Byzantine vs Sassanid WAB game (adverticle for the release of Beyond The Golden Gates, the latest WAB supplement, but nevertheless quite nice).
Anecdotal evidence for all of this came when I was reading the RF2 article - towards the end I got a genuine ‘aha’ experience, when I read a good scenery tip (although it probably was not meant as such by the author). One chipmunk does not make a nut party, but this does give one hope for the future.
Oh yes - the scenery tip: apparently, Faller (well known German miniature railroad scenery manufacturer) proportionally reduces the dimensions of the upper stories of their buildings, so that they look better while still not becoming too large. That certainly goes some way towards explaining (along with my lack of modelling skills, of course) why my scratch built buildings (yes, both of them) look distinctly out of place and crude next to the professional ones. Something to try for the next building!
The last issue of WI was ok, but the one before that wwas indeed a dissappointment. There was an article about a guy who was using some sort of wristband to reduce his backpain, while it was in fact a plain stupid ad … shameful!
That same month MW included a booklet with ‘Useful tips for gamer’. They said the booklet was first published in 1992, but that all information was still valid. Yeah right … especially the section on roleplaying games was completely outdated, containing references to games which have not been in print for over 10 years. What a waste of money!
Sorry to be so negative, but those two issues really made me wonder whether I should still spend money on wargaming magazines.