The Year Ahead...

Last year I finally got round to discovering exactly what Flames of War was all about. I had been interested but unsure for a while. The turning point I think was hooking up with Stu through his website and discovering that there was a group of people, similar to me, that were already playing.

I had envisioned being the only person over 20 playing Flames of War, but am now happily aware that 30-somethings can play too.

I needed an easy and quick way into Flames of War, as I knew nothing of the game mechanics, or even how to set up and Army, So I sold my X-Box and games and bought a German Grenadierkompanie Boxed Army, and paint sets.

My choice of army was purely one of economics - it was the cheapest one available.

Painting 15mm turned out to be a tad harder than I had envisioned - especially the dark uniforms of the Germans. I discovered that I had no where with decent lighting to paint at night so had to steal the odd occasion on the weekends to get some painting done.

This random, uncertain approach to painting has left me with a mostly unfinished army.

So my first aim for this year is to finish painting my Germans. Not all of them mind you, just the ones that I need for my re-jigged army.

The Artillery will have to wait.

Once my missing pieces have arrived from Battlefront (note to self - always phone up about missing or miscast pieces - the response time form emailing them is appalling!) I will glue my 2nd Grenadier Platoon to their bases, base them with GIB and paint them.

This will be a quick and fast paint job (well, probably not what most gamers would call quick) just to get them ready to play with.

My MG Platoons however will be lovingly painted with camo before basing.

And the I'll have to finish my Marders and Assemble and paint my Tiger.

Once I've done all of that, I should have managed to save up some money to make my first British Airborne purchase.

I'll be looking at an initial 600pt Army, so that I can have some quick games at home and teach my girls how to play, but will slowly build it up to a full strength 1500pt Army.

Of course this will mean creating a 600pt late war Army out of my existing German Grenadierkompanie, but that should be easy.

In fact coming up with Army lists is quite easy, so I might have a good look at Daniel's D Minus 1 book and make up a couple of Army options so that I know what to build towards.

So that's my primary aims for this year - finish my Germans, and slowly build up a British Airborne Company.

Of course, I have been vaguely promising Stu I'd come up with a .45 Pulp scenario so that he can play a game intead of running it...