Update on the move to the new studio
Last weekend was the major part of our move, bringing over the furniture and most of the boxes. It is weird to see your studio go more and more empty, but it certainly gives you feedback on the progress. Along with my wargaming stock my lego collection went with us. And I have to say, not only am I incredibly thankful for the very practical estate car, but the carport as well, as it made us far less prone to the weather.
Twelve months, 20,- Euros – Part 6
Kamoley, half a year has already passed! If the second half of the year is also coming up so fast, I really need to get busy to finish my Mortal Gods project this year.
Admittedly, this is difficult for me at the moment. No, that's not because of my motivation, in fact it's quite strong at the moment. However, my family's demand for time with dad is high right now, which is absolutely fine since I enjoy spending time with my kids very much, but the hobby therefore has to take a back seat for a while.
This is reflected in my painting output this month - three models have received a touch of color and perhaps this shows another reason for my poor progress - there are three models from three different systems. So the realization matures that you also need a certain discipline in the hobby and have to stick to one thing until you have at least one milestone completed.
May review
Another busy month, only a few new articles published, two reviews - the Warmaster Titan and the Tiger II by Rubicon models.
Twelve months, 20,- Euros – Part 5
May is over and as expected I haven't had that much free time due to my new job. But as the saying goes, sometimes class counts more than mass. Following this motto, I managed relatively early in the month to paint my leader for the troop of Greek mercenaries and Corinthians.
Since he got a completely new miniature, I also gave him a new name: Diamachos. The name is derived from the greek word for quarrel (diamachi) and is supposed to represent that this fearless mercenary captain lives from the conflict of others.
Twelve months, 20,- Euros – Part 4
The good news first: I found a new job and am more relaxed about that issue now. On the other hand, of course, this means that I have to concentrate on learning the routine and, at the same time, my hobby time is melting away.
So, I'm not surprised that I easily stayed within my hobby budget in April and again only painted one miniature. Since I was somehow not satisfied with the first iteration of Dromeas, I painted another model with the same background story in mind.
Twelve months, 20,- Euros – Part 3
March is always a great month because it gives me the most opportunities for excuses (yes, I know how that sounds). At the beginning of the month I turned 40 - all the more reason to throw a little money out the window. Or is it?
Last month I was thinking about what I wanted to spend my monthly budget on, and that it would probably be a play mat. I've hesitated between four mats from PWorks:
Twelve months, 20,- Euros – Part 2
February is known to be a bit shorter than the other months, so you would think that mentally there would be a bit of pressure to finish painting planned minis. Well, maybe it was like that at the beginning, because I finished the last group of skeletons for my Mortal Gods Army of Hades pretty quickly. This surprised myself so much that I just tried to finish the remaining group of zombies and managed to do so, which completed the army.
With 300 points for the Hades faction, I was satisfied. Now it was time to completely assemble another faction so that I would no longer have to play games with ugly proxies for Mortal Gods.
Miniature swap – travelling wargame box
In 2021 I participated in two travelling wargames trade boxes, and the first one, the "Kramkiste" (stuff box), arrived. A bit lighter than I expected and with the modest trades of the participants before me, I didn't really knew what to expect.
After the Brexit, right into chaos
Brexit is here, and that seems to be a bit of surprise for some. Who would have guessed, that it would actually happen and even have an impact?
It is february and after some hick-ups and problems between Calais and Dover, for the essential things like food and medical supplies, it has arrived our lovely little hobby. Some of the parcels that were sent last year didn't make it within the pre-brexit time windows and thus were lacking the document for a proper export. And many of the traders couldn't be bothered to supply these post-brexit either, resulting in all kinds of fees, additional costs and delays for the customers.
That caused some discussion, where people exchanged their experience and suggestions on how to avoid these, as you can read the experience of several wargamers on Lead Adventure or Sweetwater. For example paying 30 EUR of fees ontop of a 50-60 EUR package of miniatures. Making it more than just unappealing to order from the UK. Please keep in mind, that the majority of miniatures is produced or at least distributed from the UK. So this is going to hurt the demand of miniatures, or at least consolidate towards those who can supply. I was aware that this could happen, and so I ordered in November Empress Miniatures through a german wholetrader. A couple of emails in the old year, and guess what still hasn't arrived? I won't pay the uppricing and will probably step back from my order - if / when somebody gets in touch with me. But those are the smaller traders and shops. Some even have so ingenious suggestions like "split your orders to below 50 GBP and customs won't bother you" - yeah, that's playing russian roulette with fees and highly unprofessional. Especially from a commercial trader.
As for supply. Some traders didn't receive new stock / novelties this year, even from the larger companies. And if you remember how some of the store shelves looked in spring last year, this might be something that might happen with wargaming as well.
Bitbox-Stand In, miniature swap with Gregor / SirLeon
We hoped that we would be able to meet in some kind of way to exchange some stock within our hobby group, but due to being spread across Germany that wasn't possible. As I had some bad experience last year with DHL, I hesitated to use postal services to exchange the miniatures (especially, even if they would reimburse us for lost stuff - which they don't - with some of the OOP items that wouldn't be much help anyway).
Anyhow, as it doesn't really seem that we will have a time slot coming up, that would make a personal meeting happening and the boxes (yes, plural, in the beginning it was one box labelled with Malkränzchen, but over the months it became individual boxes for each one, to keep track who receives what) grew in size. So we had some video chats, talking about what we're looking for, what would end up in the boxes and prepared them for shipping. It is post christmas, it's national tracked packages, so the risk should be a minimum.
Gregor already wrote about some of the items that I sent him over at the German board Tabletop Welt in his project log "Jenseits des Steinbachs". But what did I receive? Some 90s goodies from Middlehammer 🙂
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