The Waiting Game

At some point over the last week, I reverted to age 7.  Each day when arriving home from work, I whip open the porch door praying to find a cardboard box waiting for me.  Sure enough, each day, when opening that door, I'm greeted with nothing.  Trudging inside, I sulk over to the calendar and X off another box.  The wait continues.

It's a scene that the old man in me feels is played out all too rarely across modern day America.  These days, what with Amazon Prime and "Federal Express", one can acquire virtually anything from across the globe and with enough money, can enjoy it's appearance on their doorstep in less than 24 hours.  This, however, is not the case with the American Civil War miniatures in 15mm.  

The funny part is, I'm not totally sure that I mind this.  

At the beginning of this venture I knew that I would need miniatures, and lots of them.  Due to the fact that I don't personally know anybody who is as yet involved with this particular field of nerd-dom, I figured I would initially have to coax opponents to the table by providing everything needed to play and would thus have need of two armies.  Easy enough.  

A quick Google search reveals that there is no shortage of models available to represent all manner of Civil War participants.  Generals, foot officers, surgeons, supply wagons, wounded, signal towers and even souvenir hunters are all available by a wealth of different companies.  So, after running the numbers and doing a fair job of convincing my wife that her husband wasn't finally going off the deep end, I took the plunge and invested in Stone Mountain Miniatures.  They have a great selection of miniatures with some great sculpts for the size.  For the noob like myself, they also have a section of 'brigade bags' that are light on the wallet and make it easy to have a good-sized force from the start.

However, the great price comes with a downside.  In order to keep costs down, Stone Mountain keeps a very small inventory and most of the orders are cast on receipt which means there's usually a two week wait and for a large order like mine, three weeks.  Although these days, three weeks can seem like forever to wait, it wasn't all that long ago that you had to wait (brace yourselves, kids) FOUR to SIX weeks for just about everything that wasn't from the Sears catalog.  For some reason, this really seems to fit my impression of historical miniatures gaming.  A sort of 19th century, gentler pace, you know?

So, only a few more days to wait.  I figure since I've put this off for 30 years, what's a little bit longer?  

That's not to say I haven't been productive!  About a year ago, I purchased a box of 25mm Civil War infantry on a whim so in the name of testing paint schemes I painted a few of those up and even managed to win a couple of eBay auctions  Look for details of this excitement in the next few days!

Until then, I'll be taking a couple of days off from work because I've decided that it's interfering with time that could be spent waiting for the mailman.  

                     

Look Who's Back!

Well, according to the date of my last post, it's been about 2 1/2 years since I've put fingers to keyboard and talked miniature soldiers.  If you ask me, that's entirely too long so it's time to blow the dust off of this thing and get moving again.

I know what you're thinking...something along the lines of "well where the hell have you been?"  I've been here all along, still doing my thing but a few major life events derailed the whole process.  A wedding, two major ankle surgeries (thanks, soccer!) a new job and general laziness can count themselves among this number.  That said, I have still been doing the miniatures thing whenever time presents itself, although the focus has mainly been on fantasy miniatures for the multiple D&D games which I run and participate in.  I will post some pictures of these little guys and gals when I can but let me get to something else first, namely, why I decided to kick the tires on this old jalopy of a blog in the first place.

After 15 years of involvement on the Warhammer 40k front, I decided to branch out to a new (to me, at least) realm of miniature warfare.  *drumroll*

The American Civil War....in 15mm to be exact.

Why the change?  Well, it's pretty simple actually.  With the release of the 6th edition of Warhammer 40k and the emergence of flyers in particular, I just didn't have it in me to drop a couple hundred dollars on new miniatures and then continue to get my ass kicked by some pimply 16-year-old who doesn't have to spend his hard earned income on anything like a mortgage, food, bills, booze, etc.  No, I'm weary of agonizing over army lists, endeavoring coming up with ways to work around the overpowered cheese lists constantly employed by said pimply 16-year-olds, and generally seeing the game go in a direction that I can't fully get behind.  This is not to take anything away from the game though!  I played a few games of 6th edition and genuinely enjoyed them all, but it all just feels like it's becoming a little stale to me.  A change and a fresh start are clearly in order.

So, after considering my options, I concluded, "what could be fresher and less stale than historical miniatures wargaming??"  That just left the period of conflict, which after a recent trip to Antietam National Battlefield and then to Gettysburg to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the battle, became a no-brainer.

Since I was a child, I've always had a keen interest for the American Civil War and after watching through Ken Burns' aptly named series on the conflict while laid up on the couch recovering from surgery (twice, no less!) I decided this would be the war for me.  What could be more exciting than leading long, orderly lines of men across the field of battle while cannons pound away at the ranks and calvary charge their flanks?  The air is thick with smoke and the screams of the wounded as orders are shouted into the chaos and a desperate fight ensues at close range.  The objective is taken, lost and then re-taken again in a glorious final charge!  It might sound a little over dramatic but I mean, ultimately we're all grown men playing with toy soldiers.  You gotta add something in to spice it up...

How could any self-respecting wargamer say no to this??

So, in the next few weeks, you'll be seeing me stumble blindly into this storied and well-established hobby on my way to becoming a general of either glorious renown or ill-repute.  Whichever it ends up being, I'm sure it'll be a good time.