Picking up

Yesterday was a good day. Returning to Crisis in Antwerp after three years it was great to meet many old friends and acquaintances. The most flattering meeting was with Sidney Roundwood, one of the most friendly and supportive people I’ve come across, who said he missed my blog posts. It is the best kind of compliment you can get and so here I am. I guess it’s mostly about getting back into the habit.

What have I been up to this year? I’ve mostly worked on the American War of Independence. This was the theme for the third painting project by the Dutch Miniature Wargames facebook group, which culminated in a day of battles late last August.

This marked my return to the painting table in the first sustained campaign in ages. I painted over a hundred miniatures since the start of this year, which is impressive enough for me. Of course I fell for the temptation of buying more, even after the project has ‘officially’ended.

Why, would you ask? Because despite my initial determination to stick to painting and not read any books on the subject, the opposite has happened. I’ve become enchanted by North American warfare in the long 18^th century (1700-1815), a unique mix of colonial rivalry, indigenous resistance and civil war.

You can see my descent into madness over the course of a couple of blog posts that I made on the Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy blog, which I will reproduce here in the coming weeks. I think the breaking point really occurred when I diverted from the AWI into the War of 1812 and several Indian Wars in this period. So I will be painting and reading on this a lot more in the coming months.

But I’ve also done my share of board gaming, including the annual trip to Essen. I’m digging through my book and game collections to make room. And there is the lure of new projects. Enough to talk about, I'd say.