Hello to an Old Friend and a New Year

I finally received my new copy of DBA 3.0 - my Old Friend -  from On Military Matters. No surprises ensued as I have been avidly following online the development of this latest iteration of the "rules that brought me back to wargaming" and which remain, hands-down, my favorite wargame. I like every change made; see this review if you're interested in knowing more.

Lately I have been ruminating over all the varied rule sets and projects I've either started or bought figures or models for and feeling the need for some new prioritizing. It is purely coincidence that I've made some decisions at the beginning of a New Year, but I am just going to roll with it. . .

1. I have some more terrain to build and miniatures to varnish and base for my 54mm French and Indian War project. Getting close (wink) to having the "toys" completed.

2. New main focus is DBA/HOTTs in 28mm. I've already started to adapt some of my French and Indian War terrain for use with DBA/HOTTs and will build some more. Then I want to paint some more armies; Punic Wars- and Norman Conquest-era for DBA, and Orcs, Elves and Dwarves, not to mention completing the Undead, for HOTTs. I also have figures for the Greek and Macedonian Wars with Persia, the Republican Roman Civil Wars, Sengoku Jidai Samurai (and I want some Koreans!) and even Aztecs and Conquistadors! DBA/HOTTs just seems like the best way to make these armies possible.

Oh, did I mention John Carter and Barsoom? I have always admired The Stronghold's approach to Barsoom, but I have always thought that the world of ERB's John Carter should be played in a skirmish/RPG format. After playing around with several rule sets and feeling daunted by the kind of terrain I would need to build, I re-read the first five books. . . and realized that there are an awful lot of full-on battles described in the books between armies and navies outside of the great walled cities. Between the Leviathan models I described in an earlier post and the figures I've purchased from Bronze Age and Tinman, I can do several HOTTs armies in a similar format to those shown on The Stronghold, but in 28mm vs. 15mm. And perhaps even in this lifetime!

3. Oh, and World War 2 with HOTTs?! I found an adaptation of HOTTs for WW2 a few years ago here. I wasn't convinced I wanted to play with battalions as the basic maneuver element, but Field of Battle: WW2 has me rethinking that. . . I have lots of MicroArmor that need some impetus for completion!

4. And how goes my butterfly infatuation with Star Trek? Still going. After enjoying a couple of cool new books. . .

. . . and watching a handful of TNG episodes (not as easy as it once was!) and doing a bit more research, I find I prefer the movie and TNG "world" as opposed to the Amarillo world (see my previous Star Trek post if in need of reference). So I gave the Star Trek: Attack Wing game another look, because that is the game that features all the ships I like, especially the Klingon and Romulan ships, and what do you know, I kinda like it. Rules are simple but pretty elegant, and the individual ship/crew builds, which kinda turned me off at first, make a lot more sense to me now. Still want to use the 1/2500 scale models - I got some for Christmas! - instead of the included models and make the scale/ranges longer, but otherwise I'm still interested. We'll see if I get any models built in the near future : )


Best wishes for 2015!