Off to Crisis and my timetable for the next few months

Now the time has come to hit the road and head off to Antwerp, to actually play the game I have been preparing for ages. Hope to see many of you tomorrow, so to those of you who are going to be there, please drop by and say hello! (I will be at table 4a15.)

But there is a football (soccer to the American readers) saying here in Germany “nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel” which can literally translated (taking into account the gaming jargon) “once you are done with a game, you need to prepare for the next one”. So what are my plans for the upcoming weeks, months and year?

Well I shall have a lot of free time coming up in November (I will have compensatory time off for the next five weeks), and shall not touch a single Napoleonic mini for the rest of the year, since I feel I need a change of theme. So up next I shall move to something different.

Up first I will paint the Tau for Warhammer 40K. Now this is somewhat bittersweet. As some of the long time readers will know I decided to get into 40K sometime in 2012 and after long deliberations decided to go with Tau. But by now, I have really lost interest in the topic (not Tau per se, but 40K in general). So I actually doubt, I shall ever play with them. So why am I going to paint them anyway? Well looking at the prices one can expect for an unpainted 40K army, I would be loosing a lot of money, so that way I hope to at least break even. Plus I can really use the money in the near future!

Tau XV 25 Shas´vre with fusion blaster

I really hope to finish them soon, for there is one SciFi project I am really eager to start and that is Warzone Resurrection. Now I played both the first and second editions of the game and loved it. So I was eager to hop on board when Prodos Games launched their Kickstarter this year and pledged big time. So big my pledge will most likely be one of the last to ship (I am on a pledge level where everything will be shipped in one go and there are a few items that are still in production). So I just hope I will finish the Tau before my huge parcel arrives, since I would instantly drop the Tau to get the first faction or two painted!

But with the end of the year approaching, it will also be time for the next installment of the Analogue Hobbies Challange. Now part of the rules, all the entries have to be historical, so I shall shift my painting back to the real world in late December. This should fit in nicely with what I have in mind for Crisis 2014. 2014 being the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings, I want to tackle just that. It will either be the landings themselves, or the battles by the British vs. the SS (Caen area, Carpiquet…). Now my minis for the former consist of about as dozen infantry and the later are rather a nucleous force at best and partially themed for the Ardennes anyway. So that should give me a chance to build those forces. If there is still time left during the Challange (which I doubt) I will also tackle some early war German tanks and 1939 Poles… let’s see!

British WWII Snipers

And afterwards? All of you who have been following this blog for some time now will know that short term plans only are not my thing! Same for next year. Obviously Crisis 2015 looms on the horizon (what are two years right) as well and with it the inevitable bicentennial of Waterloo. Now I shall rather go for something small this time (whatever small means in Napoleonic terms). I will be able to do with less painting this time on account of the minis painted so far, but will still be a lot to do. So I hold no illusions, that I will have to start painting for it sometime in 2014 and for those of you who follow this blog for my Napoleonic minis… well you can expect new ones throughout the year.
And then there is terrain. Except for the river and Napoleonic era buildings for the village of Möckern I did this year (pictures coming in November as well), I really neglected that field. So and I have a nice number of 4Ground buildings, the inner city ruins from the Commision Figurines Kickstarter and Bolt Actions Pegasus bridge lying around, plus I will need to do some hedges / low Bocage (like that found in the Caen area).
In addition I will have to finish those Tau (if I do not do so next month), put some more work into Warzone.
And if there still is some time left I would like to make a dent in the lead pile for my modern minis.

So do I have my work cut out for the next fourteen months? Not really, right! 😛