Winter Blues

 I am looking out the window on a bitterly cold day at the snow which is getting heavier and heavier and covering the cars and now beginning to gather on the ground, I cannot see into the distance at all as it is just a light grey murk. 

 I had a weekend of wargaming planned with friend Matt who was coming up from Wells in cider country, Covid put a stop to that as he had been told to isolate, I have no clue at all as to the rules these days. I do know that the number of people whom I know to have had Covid has risen sharply in the past few months, however most have either suffered little or in one case had very bad flue symptoms, so I can only presume the vaccines help, I have now had three.

Perhaps with the snow and the storm on Friday night Matt dodged a bullet, my wife got caught in the storm due to being at a show in Kendal and twice trees across the road caused them to detour, a twenty minute journey turned into an hour and a half.

Cowboys at the club this week, I was stuck for a game and Jimi and Ed could not play theirs so asked if I could bring along Dead Man's Hand, which was fine as Duncan made up a fourth. It was a simple 'throw down' affair so Duncan's Lawmen in alliance with my Mexicans fought over the town against Jimi's Desperado's and Ed's Cowboys. I continue to take the Mexicans despite their terrible win or rather loss ratio under their less than fearful leader 'El Arana' (the Spider). In typical western style we came at each other from opposite ends of the town, there was no subtlety here, Ed took a more defensive posture while Jimi came straight at me flinging lead while I did the same, Duncan moved along the back alleys to engage Ed. For once my caballeros did what it said on the tin, Jimi's gang were whittled down and forced to retreat, slowly on the other side of Main Street the same was happening to Ed, as the clock struck Jimi and Ed surrendered. A nice way to pass a few hours.

 I have bit the bullet and ordered up more SYW troops and decided to stop at 12 infantry battalions for each side (French and British) and once Front Rank are back a couple of cavalry squadrons. In 28mm this is enough for my 9x5 table and Honours of War. I have finished my Byzantine Thematic/Tagmatic army list for War and Conquest but have still not put the seal of approval on the project.

I got an early Christmas present from the Memsahib the other day, a splendid carry bag for my Blood Bowl stuff, I also got two lap top cases for some of my other rules which I normally have sorted in carrier bags so that I can just grab them on the way out of the door and everything I need, well almost everything, is in the one place. For some unknown reason this caused great merriment with my significant other "You are going to have a bag for every rule set, you are mad, and daft" was the gist of the argument.

 As I sit watching the snow destroy the infrastructure of Main Street and contemplate having a look at a map project I was keeping until tomorrow I wondered how many maps I have actually drawn this year. The number comes in at almost 400 in 45 publications with one more month to go. This year the 'man of the match' is the period of warfare covering 1600-1800 mainly in Europe, although I have once again covered nearly all the big wargame periods in most corners of the world.

This coming week Ed asked me to bring along my Dark Age forces, so an introduction game on Tuesday.