Back again!

Hi all!
It has now been almost 14 months since my last blog post - the last year has been rather hectic!
We had the arrival of our third child (and first boy) at the start of September, Sebastian.

As a result of the new addition, in the lead-up (and also after the arrival of) we did a major renovation of our downstairs area to better accommodate visitors and the growing mountain of toys for the kids.  What was once an area open to the weather and vermin is now a lovely sealed, tiled and painted addition with an extra bathroom, two extra bedrooms and a big rumpus/lounge area.

I did manage to convince my wife that we needed a new shed to house all the stuff which had to come out of the house while the work was being done.  This will (eventually) be converted to a "man-cave" once everything is moved back into the house!

4.5m x 3m of shed-based love.  Note the roof is straight - it's just the camera angle!

On the hobby front I got very little actually done due to having downstairs packed up for most of the year, and even now all my wargaming stuff is still in the shed, and I can't really do anything on any of my old projects.

I have observed that a lot of the time when I finally find the time to get together with my mates for a game, we end up playing a quick pickup game like Munchkin, rather than anything elaborate on the tabletop.  So until the shed is done and I can present people with a multi-player scenario ready to go, I will only be wargaming solo.

Having made the connection though about what we do play when we get together, I've been hunting out card and board games that fit the bill.  As a result I actually got a couple of games of Dreadball and Super Dungeon Explore in, which we new purchases for the last year.

I also got on-board with my first Kickstarter projects this last year with the following:

• Achtung Cthulhu - Cthulhu Mythos Roleplaying game set during WW2.  Purchased for the background material to hopefully leverage into pulp WW2 wargames.
• Myth - Massive Fantasy Board Roleplaying Game with a lot of cool minis (28mm) and innovative mechanisms.  Really looking forward to this one.
• Ghosts of Hefei - Cyberpunk Tabletop skirmish set in a future chinese factory city.  I'll be playing using the 15mm figures.  My first Goalsystem game, so keen to see how it plays.
• Deadzone - I broke my cardinal rule about 28mm and bought into this 28mm sci-fi game from Mantic.  Currently cleaning and assembling the figures from the first shipment that arrived at Christmas.
• WarGods of Olympus - I've always been fascinated by the WarGods games, but I've never had a chance to play.  The KS offered the chance to pick up the new game and the old games (Aegyptus and the Wendigo book) as PDF.  The Artemis sculpt I received is wonderful, but I just couldn't justify further spend at 28mm.  I actually plan to give these rules a go in 6mm!
• Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed - purchased again as a background resource for some planned pulp-y mythos-y tabletop games in the future.
• Weird Wars Rome - Unspeakable Horror during the age of Rome.  Again a source of material to inspire some interesting "ancients" games. 

I also funded some board and card games for myself and a couple with an educational bent for the kids.  

The major KS spend however was an FDM 3D Printer - RigidBot.  Delayed by manufacturing issues in China, but hopefully here before the middle of the year.  The purpose here was two-fold.  I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I was keen to try printing a variety of items for hobby purposes and around the house.  In addition though, I'm keen to see what the kids make of the technology and what they come up with as they grow up with access to this sort of technology.

Thanks for sticking with me through the hiatus.

There will be more regular updates soon.