It's been a year already.

That went by quickly didn't it?

It has been a year  (well a year tomorrow but I'm too busy to post tomorrow night.) since I started waxing lyrical about lead and plastic soldiers, dice, board games, terrain (I love the smell of fresh laser cut mdf in the morning.) and even the odd recipe. I wasn't sure I would be able to keep it up but looking at the stats I have managed an average of just over two blog posts a month. Not bad.

What have I learned in the process? What have I done? Well, just some of the highlights....

People around the world have read my blog, people in Moldova are interested in what I waffle on about. Hello Moldova!

There are other bloggers out there that waffle about toy soldiers too. Some of whom I have met in person as well.

I have attended a couple of shows, UK Games Expo was my first visit, other shows I'm an old hat at.

I have written for Wargames Illustrated, yes it's book reviews for their website, but it's still legitimate. I'm calling it a win.

I've not nearly painted enough, although writing this blog has encouraged me to get some painting done. I'll be the first to say I'm not an amazing painter and some of my models are painted just to a tabletop standard and don't photograph all that well, so they don't end up on the blog but I'm okay with that. Some I am proud of and I have learnt a bit about photographing models.

Recently I have been mostly painting livestock. It's been a running joke with one of my fellow gamers that every time we go to a show he buys me some random animals. (I'm not sure how or why it started but tradition is tradition.) So when the DM of my D&D group requested if anyone had random 28mm scale animals I declared I certainly did and a frenzy of animal painting began. Geese, sheep, badgers, bunny rabbits, pigs, partridges and cows are not the kind of thing I thought I would be painting back when I first bought my first Space Marine paint set.

So what will the next year bring? Well, I've still got plenty on my painting table from show purchases. Some Frostgrave soldiers still in the box, some dungeon scatter terrain from Bad Squiddo, a copy of Blood Red Skies to open and peruse, a whole Prussian Napoleonic army still to even start! So, plenty to keep this old grumpy wargamer out of mischief.

On the horizon the Illustrious Wargaming Opponent has agreed to assist me in a demonstration game at Colours 2020 (if they'll have us) so that is a target I have set us to work towards. Giving myself a deadline for a project means I'm more likely to get something done so tasks that need doing for that include:

Writing some wargame rules

Painting some models

Building a tables worth of terrain

Writing some background flavour text for the whole shebang.

Nothing like setting a challenge. It's in black and white now though, so we have to do it, my Wargaming Opponent has agreed to assist as long as I do all the public talking and let him just skulk in the background. That's fine with me, I just need him along for his extensive model collection and ability to build awesome looking terrain out of yoghurt pots and sticky back plastic.

And finally.

In case anyone is still paying attention, I just want to state that Playing With Lead is going to slow down just a little bit. I'm still going to blog but just not as regularly. I always knew that I wouldn't have as much to blog about after a while as some of the things I have talked about are things that have simmered in my head for a while before I started and now I'm only going to have things to blog about when they happen. Obviously just like everyone else, I don't spend all my day wargaming, painting and role-playing, but Playing with Lead isn't going to stop. I also have some other projects on the go that will take up some more of my spare time. But I will still be photographing anything I finish on my painting table and hopefully soon the Illustrious Opponent and I are going to squeeze in a game of Blood Red Skies, so I can report back on how that plays. (He will be reading this blog and finding this out for the first time, but it's Okay I know he can't resist coming over if I promise to do roast lamb.)

Vandalism with no reason

I felt compelled to write something about this horrible event. Although not wargaming related, I'm sure we all can relate to how these guys felt when they discovered  what had happened Saturday morning. Market Deeping model railway club had set up their displays for their annual show ready for Saturday only to discover Saturday morning four young vandals had systematically destroyed the entire event.

Now as hobbying goes, there is a lot of crossover with our hobby (there is always a lot of flock involved and talk of scales) so I immediately knew exactly how the club felt. I am also the son of a train modeller,  so my childhood  home had Hornby train sets in the loft. It doesn't take a lot to transpose the event in my imagination to one of the many small wargame shows across the country and imagine how it would feel if it happened to our community. Some of these club members had spent years on their models and I can imagine no amount of financial compensation can mean they can be replaced exactly as they were.

Now I know there are more important things in this world than toy trains and toy soldiers, of course there are. I'm not so naive as to claim this is the crime of the century. To some people though their hobby is what keeps them going. I am sure that we all probably know a fellow wargamer or hobbyist whose mental health is improved by their hobby. I think an excellent example of getting into the mindset of a hobbyist is watching the TV series The Detectorists. I know nothing about metal detecting, but that show explains exactly what it feels like to me to have a hobby. I definitely recommend binge watching the lot.

The warm hearted feeling follow up to this story comes now though. The club started a just giving page to raise £500 to recover some costs after the incident, last I looked it's at £67,000. There are multiple comments from the wargaming community as well showing solidarity by making a donation.

I can only hope the culprits learn to understand the impact their actions have had, I claim to be no expert in the field of punishment but I feel maybe they should be made to contribute some of their time to the restoration of some of the exhibits. Maybe they will then understand what effort goes into them. We could jump on our soapboxes and talk political about youth culture, crime and punishment, lack of funding for youth clubs, etc. Let's instead take away from this the fact the because of the power of the internet, this small group of "train geeks" ( I call them this with the greatest of affection) had a horrible thing happen to them, that last century if it had happened, that would have been the end of it. In the 21st century though, they have been told by the internet that they are not alone and we love that they love their hobby as we love ours. They can stoke the firebox again and eventually rebuild.

You can read the news story here.