Catching up

Hi,

Regular readers will have noted that the usual progress of the blog has gone rather to pot of late.  A number of factors have contributed, from a rather pleasant trip out East to see the Cub, to the far less pleasant, successive, bouts with some kind of malignant grot.  The latter has left me with little motivation for anything in the evenings but sitting around, getting caught up on Breaking Bad and Sons of Anarchy.

That said, life continues, and I've got at least a few things on which I can report.  First up are a couple of completed Blood Bowl figures for my growing human team.  Not much to show for going on three weeks, but better than nothing.







I'm actually cautiously pleased with these, as they're conversions from the stock lineman figure.  Lacking the number of Blitzers I'd need for a full team, marke was kind enough to donate some spare humans he had kicking around, and I greenstuffed them into Blitzerly glory.





As I've squeaked my way into the local league playoffs, these guys should be hitting the table soon.  With a bit of a push, I'm hoping to finish the team in the next month or so; I'd definitely like them in the "completed column for the year.

I also managed a stop at the Halifax Citadel when visiting the Cub.  The first time we went, in the spring, a fair bit of the fortress was closed off to the public.  This time most of the fortress was open, and a number of staff were present in period costume.  We managed to catch the firing of the noon cannon, as well as a musket demonstration.  Cub was intrigued by the school-room built into the fort for the benefit of the soldiers, and we were able to get into both the interior of the walls (accessing some of the deeper gun emplacements), and the moat that surrounds the fortress.





Another bonus was that the small museum based at the fort was open.  It's got a decent range of military gear spanning from the mid-1700s through Afghanistan.








I was frankly flabbergasted when I turned a corner in the museum  and discovered this:

Yeah, that would be Wolfe's cloak.  You know, the one he wore on the 1759 campaign that determined the future of North America.

The one he died in.

So I'm standing there, and I can actually imagine the man huddling up in it against a wet breeze off the St. Lawrence.  I tried to give the Cub a sense of who he was, and what being that close to something that was there, at a pivotal moment in history, meant to me.  He's 7, so much of it went over his head, but I think he caught a bit of my mood.

In completely unrelated news, Reaper's announced their second Bones Kickstarter.  So far, I'm feeling iffy on this one.  While the first offered more minis than I'm likely to ever paint at a not-un-supportable cost, the second offers quite a bit less (at least so far).  They're being cagier about expanding the base package, and instead are offering expanding add-ons; so the $100 pledge grows, but more slowly, but if you chip in another $50, you get an additional set of models which will expands as the pledge count does.  They're also staggering shipping (the current buy-in ships Dec. 2014!), and they're charging actual shipping to Canada (plus presumably customs duties).  The upshot is that to get about the same amount of figs as last time, I'm going to be dropping about twice as much money.  Given that I've yet to actually paint any from the first batch, I might have to sit this one out.  If they post up any of their mind-flayers, I might dip a toe in, but that's about it.

I'm hoping I've shaken the last of the grot, and things start getting back to normal around here.  We've got some newer guys who've contacted the club about playing Bolt Action, which is good news, and I've been itching to get some work done on my Impetus and Musket and Tomahawk forces.  Unless work / life goes more haywire than usual, things at the blog should be settling into more of a routine.  Until then, take care.

FMB