How my wife laughed when the news dropped that our sons were adopting their father’s hobby! I believe she was thinking more girls’ coffee meetings rather than what has actually happened!

Well Saturday was quiet for a while! Sixty pounds for an afternoon? Suspicious eyes glanced toward my hobby room!

So far to be added to that bill is the cost of a replacement tablecloth ( damn you GW lids!) and seven or eight brushes left with paint on overnight! Then the question came, the sledgehammer dropped, “ how many models will they need?”

There is of course a definate decline in the number of miniatures that makes up an “ army” of course. Last club night we were treated to a run- through of Barons’ War. Fifty figures a side is definately economical but Sid did decorate the table with lots of period flavour.

Would a hundred pounds cover it? A Games Workshop starter army is one hundred and five! But, with historicals you get many more miniatures per pound. I must admit that the version two rules for Barons’ War is perhaps the most attractive rulebook I’ve seen in forty years. I am a fan of Peter Dennis though so could be expected to write that.

Are the days of mass battles well and truly over. One compromise is of course army level games, like To the Strongest, using about a 150 miniatures. Twenty manoeuvre units maximum for that big battle without household economic collapse. As I rebased the above unit I did wonder if I’d missed a trick in not singly basing the miniatures and put them on a sabot?

It’s been a strange sort of weekend, the good news is that I have two new gamers on the drive to the club. The bad news is a shared workspace and materials. Already they are eyeing up my rattle cans. To calm my nerves I finished the rebasing of my Renaissanc French baggage. If only GW did 15mm!

Have a good week dear reader!

May your overdraught be small and your sons into baking!

Miguel