And...we're back

I've been giving a lot of thought to the state of my miniatures hobby and the state of miniatures gaming as a subset of tabletop gaming in general. This merits a much wordier post of its own. (Please save your groans for after the show.) In the meantime, I thought that I'd reactivate this blog. ::waves at the two followers I've somehow retained:: This was my first gaming-related blog and I have fond memories of it. Plus, I think having a blog devoted exclusively to my miniatures hobby (as opposed to making it a subset of my RPG blog - I've migrated the last three years of miniatures-related posts [all 12 of them!] that I made over there back over here) will be a nice tonic for a sadly atrophied element of my overall gaming endeavors.

I want to make 2013 a year for reconnecting with the gaming part of my miniatures gaming hobby. In other words, I intend to actually play as many games as I can. Thanks to Two Hour Wargames and their solo-friendly rules, I think I can make this happen even if I'm still sniffing around for worthy opponents in my local area. And I'll still be keeping my expectations low. If I can get in a game every couple months, I'll count myself satisfied with a hopeful start.

Last year, I did clock one major milestone in this regard: my long-delayed samurai project finally resulted in some gaming! I'm nothing if not persistant, it seems. In the end, I ditched all the period-specific rules and simply based some of my samurai for DBA, using a rules mod I found online (scroll down to "Battle Phase"). Des and I got in two games of Takeda vs. Uesugi, all in a couple hours, and had lots of fun. If I can rustle up another interested opponent or two, I'd give some serious thought to running a campaign; that old Milton Bradley game Shogun (also called Samurai Swords) was a great favorite of mine in high school, and goodness knows I've got enough spare figures to put together a couple more clans plus some ikko-ikki. At any rate, enough talk. Here are some pics from our games! (I think we each won a game.)