Gaming Focus

Recently I have been having various discussions about gaming with several of my gaming friends about gaming in general.  Now all of this is just my personal feelings.  I realized a long time ago that no two gamers see the hobby exactly the same.  I know gamers that are even more easily distracted than I am (which says a lot), gamers that seemingly never get rid of anything, others that have a lot of unstarted projects but only play one game, and others that play only one or two things and are happy with it.  Much of this goes back to something I have struggled with for quite some time:

• The "look shiney" or "squirrel" effect of jumping into new projects before old projects even see the table, or before I have a feeling on how a game actually plays or whether my friends will truly be interested in playing.

The conversations with my gaming friends have just really reinforced my new found mantra of doing what makes me happy.  I believe I am going to cut back some on the number of games/systems I play.  I feel that it may be difficult for me to not get distracted and remain focused in doing so, but in the long run if I can overcome that struggle, I will likely be able to accomplish more of what I really want to do focused on rules/periods that I really enjoy and am familiar with. 

Another issue that drives some of my gamer friends crazy is how I divest/get rid of stuff.  Meanwhile it drives me crazy to have: 

• Armies sitting unused for extended periods of time (years in some cases);
• Projects sitting (again sometimes for years) not being started or started and never worked on to completion because someone else has more than enough stuff for me to game; and,
• Not playing a set of rules or similar rules on a frequent enough basis that I don't have to keep thumbing through the rules to look stuff up.

I have always seen my hobby materials, figures, rules, etc. as "currency" in effect that I can sell or trade off to fund the next greatest thing.  The wheeling and dealing I do is part of the hobby to me, and in the past I have sold unused projects to fund new projects frequently; in some cases I have even gone back and reinvested in scales/periods/genres that I had previously gotten rid of.  I regret the time lost painting and basing when I do this and it is something I did myself, but if it is something I paid to get painted then I certainly don't have the same attachment.  I think this will continue, but since I will be narrowing my focus it is more likely to mean getting rid of some stuff for projects my heart isn't into or possibly changing scales to better fit what I want to do.

The difficult answer I have to come up with now is where to start?

10mm For Gaming Ancients & Medievals - A New Start

When I first started gaming ancients & medievals, I used 15mm because that's what the group of guys that introduced me to DBx were using.  I later migrated fully to 28mm as I became fully involved in Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB); this included getting rid of my 15mm armies to fund 28mm.  When Warhammer Historical was shut down I really felt it as a punch to the gut; not only would it become next to impossible to get new players into WAB, but all of the time I had spent working on (play testing, proof reading, etc.) the 100YW supplement, the Successors supplement, and others was lost...time I would never have back for wonderfully written books that will never see the light of day because of how the company that "owns" the material operates. My 28mm armies just sat unused.  I tried to get interested in other rules, but interest seemed to die off locally as well.  Eventually I sold and traded my 28's off for 15mm again.

Last year though I started to shift my perspective on gaming and heed the words of a friend..."do what makes you happy...", so here I am starting over again when it comes to mass battles for ancients & medievals.  I am keeping 28mm for skirmish games like SAGA, but for big battles I am moving to 10mm.  My first test is in the pictures below.  I bought a painted army based for Warmaster Ancients off of ebay and realized that this will give me an opportunity to have units be a single base instead of multiple bases like in many games.  I fiddled with frontages and depths before arriving at 100mm by 50mm for infantry and 100mm by 60mm for cavalry, warbands and pike phalanxes.  I think this gives a nice massed look, allows the units to be handled by the bases instead of the figures (something that always drove me crazy with the Warmaster basing and most 15mm basing conventions), allows for for more diorama style basing (like adding some casualties or skirmishers in front of a unit of heavy infantry), and will still allow me to play a wide variety of games since most rules really just depend on similar basing for units.  Now, I did think of basing skirmishers and horse archers, etc. on narrower frontages in order to fit as "small" units for Hail Caesar, but decided against it in the long run.  Since this is a solo project where I intend to build matching armies and host games for my friends which they won't have to contribute anything except for their time, I will simply have unit rosters noting the unit size when/if needed...no big deal to me.

So, here I am...doing something that I have thought about for a long time...finally...and enjoying it.  The pictures don't due these units justice as I didn't feel like setting up the photo box today.  More to come as I get painting on this project...