Red letter Day

In three hours I head off to Centre Parcs near Penrith, an hour up the road, to sit in a queue for another hour before I actually get in to the resort as it is a Bank Holiday and I am arriving at the wrong time. The family have already left and as I feel a strong sense of duty to my customer, sorry, customers, I will go when the PO shuts. So no 'View from the Window' this Sunday for my regular readers, I will say this as an aside to last week's tirade, National Grid are fascists, there, that's out of the way.

Why is it a Red Letter day, well for a start I got an email from TerrainMat this morning, my roads are at last on the way, looking forward to getting them next week. I also received my two mats from Game Mat in Czechoslovakia, one 6x4 for normal gaming and one 3x3 for X-Wing, I will review all this stuff with pictures next week. I have just put the last corrections to the 118 maps for Barbarossa Derailed and promptly received another commission to do with airship attacks on the UK in WWI.

 I am also enjoying getting ready for the start of my Roman Army, I have a few books coming and have stocked up my paint tray, I am now at the point of choosing the figures. It gives me tremendous pleasure looking at new soldiers, deciding which one's to use, trying to figure out which mix will make my guys stand out and best reflect my own ideas. I have also had to decided whether the troops will be from the West or East, this of course will be reflected on the bases more than anything else, I normally simply grass the bases with a smattering of tufts, stones and flowers, but I have made my mind up these guys are from the East, so a desert/arid base this time. The bulk of the army will be from Aventine Miniatures and Keith at Aventine kindly answered a bunch of questions I had a few days ago, I have more for him before I actually commit to buying, which will happen in the next week or so as I cannot hold in my enthusiasm for much longer. Only one unit of Saxons left to finish, the skirmishers don't count, yippee.

And there is more good news, well for me obviously, not sure the missus will be chuffed, I am going to go for Late Sassanid after the Romans, and while I was talking to Keith he mentioned that next year there could be Belisarian Byzantine on the table as opponents for the Aventine Sassanids. Like the Romans I have always wanted a Byzantine army, probably more so but I never thought my generalship could handle such a complex and flexible force, that is no longer true, not that I am much more of a general but under the W&C rules I think I can manage. So, like the motorway to Manchester Airport as far as I am concerned there will be delays to normal life until 2017!