It's all gone quiet over here!

 ...to coin a taunting football chant. It's been over 5 weeks since my last post and no dice have been rolled in anger. No paint brushes have been lifted either. My Italian AWS campaign stopped before it started. I called a halt initially at the end of January because I had a spell of busyness (i.e. a couple of longish drives to watch football, amongst other things). Then I realised that I didn't have enough lettered 'beads' which I was intending to use as tokens to mark competing forces on the map - under my scheme I would have 2 beads for each force (1 for the map and 1 for the 'magical activation bucket') x half a dozen 'factions' x however many forces each faction divided itself up between. Whilst I prevaricated over this, a trip up to Cleethorpes to watch Grimsby exit the FA Cup at the hands of Wolves* used up more time and energy than I had to spare. Then followed by a week's trip to Spain during which I became ill - nothing serious, but it left me blown out and too tired to do much after work for my first week back.

* For the benefit of non-UK readers, this refers to Wolverhampton Wanderers, an Association football club, not a pack of canine animals of that name. For the initiated, Wolves appeared more like a tribute act for Wycombe Wanderers (Adebayo Akinfenwa vintage) than the Old Gold heroes of the past. The players' physical stature and their method of play looked more like a League One side than a Championship-bound Premier League team. But as a League One side they were too good for League Two Grimsby. The best team won.

Had I got my act together before going to Spain I could have taken my map and bits and pieces and at least played out some initial map moves and play-tested my scheme. Thinking about this I had the idea of Having some 'block armies' out there to play tactical games during quiet evenings.

So this evening after work I checked the range of products in Flying Tiger Copenhagen and the closing time of the local branch. Bingo! They had what I wanted and were open until 7pm so I made use of my old folks' bus pass to flit down there.

What I went for

What I also came back with - these come in 2 lengths: 9cm and 15cm

And I also came back with these. The 'Jenga style' blocks suitably re-styled will be the basis for the 'wargame armies in exile'. 

In theory I could leave the blocks unaltered as they come in 6 different colours, but the pastel shades are somewhat 'unmilitary' to my mind. The measurements are 7.5x2.5x1.5 cm - longer than I would have liked, but they'll do.

The other box looks like a 'Mastermind-style' game. Handy in itself, but I have a vague notion of using it as some sort of tracker (like Charles Wesencraft's weather tracker).

There was one piece of tangentially 'wargame-related' activity on Friday. I met up with David-in-Suffolk at the National Army Museum for a lunchtime talk on the training regime of the British, Dominion and Empire troops in the Second World War. Not my core area of interest by any means, but these things are always informative and it's always good to catch up with young David.