Society of Ancients Committee Meeting

On Thursday Roy and I took the train to That London for a committee meeting. While not perhaps the most riveting of reasons to pass through as little of the nation's capital as we could manage, it nevertheless had its highlights. Some swag:

And:

Both are available from the Society of Ancients webshop here: http://soa.org.uk/joomla/

Until now, my activities have mostly taken the form of editing the journal, which means a lot of email traffic. Not so much in the way of face to face communication, though, because time is tight. Cheltenham is a good location, and now that things are settling down at least a little I am hoping to be more able to take advantage - hence the trip to London. It was a good opportunity to meet people with whom I had only corresponded previously, and this is something I'm hoping to do a little more often. Now I just need to cover all of the playing pieces in Gladiolus with clear plastic and unleash my kids...

On the painting tray: August 2017

More Warband type German nutters:

These are coming along quite nicely. Originally, the intention was to keep the campaign going via email, but the Glasgow group has had a series of unfortunate health issues plus summer holidays, so nothing has been happening there. It's possible I might have enough Germans painted soon to play the next campaign battle myself, since I already have the Romans. Above shows the start I've made on the close formation warbands that make up the bulk of the forces; when these are completed, I'll have five units of 48 figures, and I'll need another three plus some other types.

This one shows the painting queue. From the left as you look at it there are some finished guys ready for basing, and then a production line of figs at various stages of completion. I used to paint in batches of six to eight figures at a time, but I've found that with work being so heavy I'm not able to commit to regular ongoing gaming. In turn, this means that motivation is dipping, not to mention time and available energy. The compromise is to paint three at a time, which produces an illusion of faster progress. It takes longer to get a full unit on the table, but I find that, psychologically, a quick turnaround of a smaller number of completed figures is now working better for me, because I can at least see some results reasonably quickly. Whatever works...