Out of Kilter

My life has been out of kilter lately. You can thank my Mother-in-Law for that. You see, she's been staying with us for over a month as she recovers from major surgery to fix her broken hip.

Oh, we've been getting along just fine. So I won't go into Mother-in-Law Bashing mode. It's just that having another adult staying in your home messes with your usual daily routines and really twirls all aspects of your life into unexpected directions. Couple that with the fact that I spent many October evenings watching and rooting for my Phillies in the major league baseball playoffs, and not a whole lot of tabletop gaming, mini-painting, or other extracurricular stuff was being done.

Of course as we all know, the Fightin' Phils won the World Series (WOOHOO!!!), their first in 28 years, so it was entirely worth it. But I'm glad the series is over; my heart couldn't take much more of that nail-biting, gut-wrenching excitement!

Anyway.... I've had no time or desire to blog lately. Hopefully, that will change sometime soon, once my life returns to normal.

At least one major gaming thing is on my horizon.... I'm heading off to FALL IN this weekend! Looks like all of my miniature wargaming buddies are off doing family-related things this week, so I'm going solo. That's a bit of a bummer, but such is the life of 40-something gamers.

This time around, I'm going to focus my wargame shopping on some cool stuff that I've consciously backed away from over the past year or so. Namely, unpainted miniatures. I already have overflowing tubs full of unpainted figures to paint, but it has been awhile since I've added anything new to my cache of tiny tin men. But it's time to unshackle my slobbering inner lead junkie and have at it. SULTAN... NEED... TIN... slobber slobba drip drip....

I recently became a member of the Old Glory Army. This shopping club, which costs $50 per year, entitles you to 40% off most products sold on the Old Glory website and at HMGS East shows. You're also entered into regular prize drawings for free goodies and get a set of 12 free specialty figures with your first order. You need to spend $120 bucks to break even, before you start realizing large savings. But that's not very hard to do, especially since Old Glory has their own massive miniature range to pick from, and you can buy models from Crusader USA (great line of ancients and dark age minis), Blue Moon (cool pulp, horror, swashbuckler, and Robin Hood figures), West Wind (love their Dwarf Wars and Gothic Horror ranges), and Ghost Miniatures (some classic fantasy figs -- great dwarves, ice trolls, orc, and barbarians).

But the thing that really sold me on the Old Glory Army membership was their recent release of Old Glory Painted. These are painted versions of some of OG's metal minis. They're initially releasing Romans and Zulus, but within the next few months we'll see a host of new historical periods offered (including Vikings, Greek Hoplites, Persians, Macedonians) and even Dwarves and Orcs. NICE! The jury is still out on the quality of the figs & their associated paint jobs, but I'm optimistic and hope to see some of the Romans for myself at FALL IN.

Besides whipping out the Old Glory Army card and spending money on the previously mentioned stuff, I'm definitely interested in visiting the Eureka stand. In addition to their awesome warrior Frogs (gotta get some!), I'm smitten with their new range of Beowulf figures which are truly excellent sculpts and full of character. The Empire of the Petal Throne stuff is also enticing. I'm hoping that Age of Glory will still have some Front Rank medievals on hand (they're not going to be carrying them anymore -- damn shame). These are my favorite models for 100 Years War and War of the Roses by far. And finally, I need to check out the WarGods stuff for assorted goodies (Anubi, Sebeki, Spartans, Typhons, Yeti, etc.).

Okay... almost finally.... I forgot about the cool stuff from Bronze Age and Hydra Miniatures. I'm not a huge sci-fi gamer, but some of their stuff is too cool to resist. The Hydra minis have a retro sci-fi feel that really pushes all the right buttons for me.

As for painted stuff, I'll definitely visit Stan Johansen's stand, as his fantasy stuff is beautiful and reasonably priced. Plus, he's a great guy and I love supporting the truly good people in this hobby.

Anyway... Enough rumblings for now. I'll report back here once I return from my journey down to Gettysburg and FALL IN 2008. It will be VERY interesting to see if the piss-poor economy has a negative impact on the convention. I hope not, but I fear it will hurt somewhat.