Grand Designs

We all have them, those HUGE ideas that sometimes get turned into reality; the mega campaign that never sees the light of day, the army that if it gets purchased at all sits forlornly in a cupboard until several years later gets unceremoniously dumped on ebay or at a bring and buy. Over the years I have had my fair share of these but I have always managed to keep a core of interest in certain periods of history that I always seem to return to. Along with many other gamers I cut my wargaming teeth on Napoleonics and it is a period I have many fond memories of. My armies were plastic Airfix figures and I note that the plastics scene nowadays has an enormous number of figures available for the period - a far cry from the 9 sets originally available from Airfix!

Given my liking for what can only be described as stylised wargames (usually on grids) I am considering dabbling again in plastics for this period and even more so now that the Airfix Waterloo Assault set has been re released. There are enormous amounts of plastics available now and given that most people use acrylics for painting the major problem of paint flaking is minimised. I have a number of grid based Napoleonic ideas kicking around and so will give tis further thought. The fact that we have the 200th anniversary of Waterloo coming up in 6 years may give you a clue as to where this is going.........................;-)

The second large project (and on the face of it a lot more do-able) concerns the Jutland Fleets in 1/3000th. I was so enthused by painting the Balkan fleets that I am seriously thinking about producing the Jutland Fleets for use with a grid based adaptation of DBSA or something similar. It would be great for a club night and as I have a copy of the old Avalon Hill game Jutland (complete with four pads of plot maps!) very easy to set up.

In the short term though, I will get the Greeks and Turks up to 1914 standards; together with a Russian Black Sea squadron of the same era. I quite fancy some French as well if only to fight against a friends Austro Hungarians.

Much to ponder methinks.