Man Dollies and Miniature Wargaming

It's only taken 5 years, but I've finally started my miniatures blog on Blogger:


panzerschreckdesignstudio.blogspot.com

If playing with toy soldiers, painting and photography is your thing, please feel free to drop by.

Pete

Time Just Flies By

While I was unable to access this blog, a small but significant anniversary occurred. Although this (Blogger) iteration of the blog is relatively recent, my first ASL related post was back in September 2004, a capsule review of a pretty decent book and ASL Third Party Publisher .

 So I am now in the 10th year of posting, even if it's only an average of 1 post per month. The other anniversary is that this particular site started in October 2009 and 103 new posts have been added in that time.

The other achievement is that we've now reached our 10000th page view, the last 4000 of which came in the last year.

Just as an aside and because I have often promised pretty pictures, here's a graphic of where my small but valued group of blog readers are located (it';s the most recent 100 visitors):

Thanks, people.

Some celebration is in order and what better way to celebrate than to post about actually playing ASL?

So in the last week, I have started and played to completion two scenarios, started one live VASL game (in progress), set up two ongoing series of live VASL matches against players I've never played before, restarted one live VASL game, restarted two PBeM games and set up a face to face game for the Paddo Bearz meeting next Saturday.

Once all these games get underway, I expect to be playing around 2 sessions per day for the three days I am not working each week.  That doesn't even include the ritual loss to the Cleavinator that occurs every three months.

It's good to be back, but even better to be able to write about actual ASL play.

Pete

Be Verry, Verry Afwaid...

I'm back! Sans a working storage drive for now (just using the SSD as a temp) as I ended up losing the 1TB storage drive as I had feared.

VASL is installed, only 1 monitor up and running so far, but the prognosis is good. Hopefully will be able to start playing from tomorrow morning onwards.

Upcoming attractions and rants

I had hoped to post much earlier this month, but the current Australian Heatwave cioupled with real life work commitments have meant I haven't had the energy or indeed the time to do much other than play ASL in what free time I have had.

A lot of ASL goodness has arrived in the last two weeks, some of it outstanding, others being fatally flawed, but more on that over the weekend.

In two weeks time I will be at CanCon, playing ASL in canberra for the first time. I will remember to take photos. In preparation for one of the rounds, the Cleavinator will be playing me in a game of FB12 on the weekend. As I don't yet own Festung Budapest (trust me, I already regret placing other ASL purchases ahead of this) I am looking forward to breaking my FB duck.

And I now own Journals 3 and 6, so I have knocked off a sizable proportion of my Holy Grails already.

A lot to review from now on, even if only as an overview.

Some Tweaking and Updates for the New Year

ASLOK XXVIII

 2013 is the year I return to ASLOK after a three year gap since my initial attendance. It's been a long wait until I could confirm my attendance for 2013, and Pre-registration was my Xmas present to myself. It helps that Kirsty has signed off on attendance for 2015 and 2016 as well, so I'm all set for ASLOK XXX and the subsequent 30th anniversary ASLOK as well.

Now all I have to do is generate a decent and attractive playlist so I can maximise my chance of games. There are a few ASLers I have promised games against, and I am looking forward to those games in particular.

New Blogs

I've had a quick look around and added a couple of Blogs to my blogroll:

Firstly Davide Bendazzi's Wargames Journal . I played Davide in a game of FrF30 Biderman's Escape which despite some appalling rules gaffes on my part (RST Tanks firing MA and CMG while CE, anybody?) was a superbly enjoyable game. Check out Davide's well crafted AAR when you have a moment.

Secondly, Lauchie from Scotland's Snake Eyes blog. Have a visit, let him now he is not alone out there in Blogland and even better, see if you can arrange a game.

New Stuff

I've ordered a few more HASL packs from overseas, surprisingly mostly from Critical (mis)Hit, but I feel pretty confident I will get value out of these, particularly as they were at reasonable prices courtesy of Mike Dean at Fine Games.

2012 Games

 I'm hoping to finish off my game with John Knowles this coming weekend, and hopefully I will get one more VASL Live game completed before the New Year.

Upcoming in 2013

I have been pretty remiss in writing up AARs for this blog, especially given I play so many PBeM games during the year. The usual obstacles of time and aptitude do put a hindrance in the way, but 2012 had some great games for AAR purposes, even if the skill levels were not of the highest.

Funnily enough the scenarios that I enjoyed the most were the shorter, more tourney oriented types. So I'm working on preparing AARs of BFP30 Melee Near the Coast, FrF30 Biderman's Escape and FrF45 Totensonntag. If I can get these three AArs done in January I will be happy as it will then allow me to look at perhaps adding one AAR every two months after that. The trick is playing around with the graphics as I am a complete tard with graphics programs.

Other projects in 2013 include creating a couple of T-shirt designs I hope to have ready forr ASLOK 2013 and potentially a bunch of games on the King of the Hill map, if I find they actually work for me.

Lacking Wisdom...

As I have a day off thanks to yesterday's dentistry, I thought I'd be relatively productive and do some updating on my blog courtesy of my new toy, an old but very useful iPad 1.

I've been pretty quiet since May on the ASL front, primarily because of work commitments not permitting much time during the week. I have managed a few games online and at JunoBear with the usual mixed bag of results, although I am sure my game has improved markedly in the last twelve months.

With an income again, I've been able to start catching up on the releases since last ASLOK which means I am almost up to date on my ASL collection. Now for the Raaco, Hozan and BoxBox storage orders.

A brief update, but one designed to test this blogging app.

 

Posted with Blogsy

The Half-Squad that could

Many thanks and welcome to my fanatic half-squad of blog Followers, one of whom does more promoting of my blog on Gamesquad than I ever do. Much appreciated as I'm actually not great at promotion stuff like that, feel a bit self conscious about pushing my own barrow, but peer recommendations carry a lot of weight.

I think that folowing Ian's example in posting regularly and illustrated even minorly has helped me in sharing my enjoyment of ASl as a game., which in turn has allowed me to rediscover my enthusiasm for actually playing rather than just collecting and reading about ASL.

It's been particularly cathartic of late as I've been able to switch off mentally from real life issues (with the support of SWMBO it must be said) and retrieve some work-life balance.

And silly me is probably going to pick up the major two AK releases just for the large mapsheet (the overlays will need to be colour edited) and the nice counters.

Why this blog?

 NB: ASLOK XXV AARs now have photos.


In the last year or so, there's been little or no progress on the miniatures side of things, thanks to a combination of several factors, not the least of which has been a resurgence in interest in all things ASL and the demise of the local wargames club. It's always been part of my overall plan to separate the ASL and boardgaming from the miniatures side of things and as my blog on Wordpress was primarily focused on miniatures while the original Hex & Violence wordpress blog was stuck in limbo, I thought i'd start again from scratch.

Most of the ASL blogs I read are on Blogger already so it made sense to open a new Blogger account particularly as it's linked through Google now which makes accessing it very easy. I've spent most of the last day porting over the ASL wordpress content and I'm taking the opportunity to flesh out some of the posts with decent AAR pics and photos from ASLOK.

It also allows me to add more detail and correct a few errors in the original posts, plus I have better recall now of minor details that make for a better ASLOK AAR.