Onwards and Upwards

 Up early this morning, too early for a Saturday, it used to be you had to fight to get someone to come for whatever, now I have tradesmen wanting to come before I am awake, cooker guy today, bang on 7.30, suppose I shouldn't moan at least he turned up.

After the great battle at Keetsville the campaign has moved on now to the vicinity of Elkhorn Tavern where once again the Confederates have been brought to bay, 'Old Pap' Price really needs to win here if he wants to maintain any hope of keeping the Rebel cause alive and rescuing his tarnished reputation. I will hopefully deploy the armies today and might get started tomorrow, so all to play for.

 I have almost finished my Early War Germans and apart from the odd figure here and there they should be done in the next couple of days. I am still waiting for the Russians I pre-ordered from Warlord to turn up so expecting a bit of free time I ordered up the first of my EW vehicles for Barbarossa. The Russians got a Trenchworx T28, along with aT26 and BA10 from Rubicon, the Jerries a Rubicon PAK 36, yes I have one for late war but it is not grey (mad, moi?) also still to come from Blitzkrieg Miniatures are a SdKfz 233 armoured car, a SiG33 Bison and a Panzerjager I, and I nearly forgot the 76mm infantry gun for the Soviets from Company B. These are Phase I, the Phase II wish list contains a StuG III, BT7, PzIII and maybe a PzIV, these additions should bring me up to the end of 1942. I don't think my finances could take another lockdown.

 With the prospect of a face to face game receding until mid May I have got an iPad clamp for the wife's music stand and a small tripod for my iPhone, I am determined to give 'online' gaming a go as so many seem to enjoy these virtual games. I have a couple of volunteers already and hope to get something off the ground after the ACW campaign.

 I am awash with map work at the moment, Helion must be a busy place just now, this past week it was the Italian Wars, the Argentine Navy in the Falklands, the Sino-Russian conflict, next week is WWII Burma, the Atlas I hope is hurtling towards the end as well having just drawn the siege of Yorktown.

I am now on book 5 of The Expanse and still enjoying them, I have also started on the TV adaptation Season 5, nothing startling yet but good entertainment and I am becoming less patient with the Belters. Fighting for something else to watch I found 'Der Pass' which was a surprising hit, I took to the Austrian detective character right away, highly recommended. On a Continental wave we gave 'Tribes of Europa' a look, what a crock, terrible acting, ridiculous story line and every cliche in the book. The nice eco friendly Originees thrust into confronting the evil world outside the forest and harking back to the tales of the wonderful Europe which was destroyed, bucket please. Having said that I would watch the second season simply to laugh at the god awful over the top bad guys and of course the even badder size 6 women, The Crows, this lot fall into the category of so bad you have to watch. You have been warned. Last night it was 'I Care A Lot' on Netflix, a movie lauded but I had to give up, I did not like the premise or the characters, all of whom deserved something dreadful to happen to them, maybe it did, I didn't care. I did cheer myself up with another run at 'Open Range' a great western with one of the best gunfights ever.

 I now have the deployments so off to set up Elkhorn Tavern.