Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a great New Year's Eve too!! Let's bring in 2016!!!

I hope whatever traditions you follow this winter are not disturbed and make you happy. I hope you get to do what you want to do and everything is good. If it's not may it be corrected by your own hand.

My current tradition is a movie Xmas Eve (tonight it's Star Wars… yeah that one). We'll go to the local place down the street from us, The Roseway. Dinner will get fit into there someplace, something simple. Then we'll go to bed to get some rest for the big day.

Xmas Day, though changed up a bit this year due to the family patriarch moving to Tacoma for work, is a busy day. It will start with an early rise and gifts at our home. Gretchen will make some breakfast and I will get a fire started in the fireplace. We'll feed the cats and open their stocking (cat nip and cat toys). This year, for our little trio, we got one big gift, a Playstation 4. This is the big family gift. Normally it's Jewelry for the Wife and clothes for the Kid. This year it's a PS4.

This year, due to my Brother In Law moving to Tacoma and other factors, the adults of the family drew names. This, frankly, allowed me to buy a PS4, a good one, as I am not made of money.

We will all gather at my Mother in Law's place at noon and do the big gift exchange and dinner there.  Dinner will be a roast, beef loin (NY Strip roast) I presume. I have offered to help pay for that. The name I drew was my Brother in Law and I got him a bunch of Thundercats stuff as he collects those things. I ordered a belt buckle, wall clock, and foam sword. The wall clock has not been delivered yet and it has been 2 weeks. The seller has been notified and my BiL will have to live with 2/3rds of his Xmas present for now.

For dinner it will be a prime rib roast and I'm planning on bringing some whiskey to share. By evening, hopefully, the cool games I want will have loaded onto the PS4 (Battlefront and World Of Tanks beta) and we will be home full of red meat and whiskey and I can play a game until the wee-hours (which is 10 pm now).

When I was young my Xmas was a bit different. My Mother was Thai and my Father decidedly anti-Xmas. I looked forward to New Year's Eve when we'd go to the restaurant and celebrate like good Asians do – gambling, kids serving grown-ups who were drunk and full of gambling money, some gifts, and a ton of Thai food. That was my Xmas… New Year's Eve. I'd always come out of NYE with a pocket of cash ($40-$60 - big money for the 80s) and a few gifts. I learned to play poker and blackjack this way too.

Today NYE is a bit calmer if not more austere. My Wife works at Starbucks and tends to work New Year's Day, like around 6:00 AM. The buses don't run well in Portland that early (all that "Portland Mass Transit is awesome" talk? Not true for years) so I give her a ride in. Normally I'd go to Percy's for Orchish Sabbath for the day – that's where the smoking, drinking, and gambling take place – this year I might stay in though. We will be doing our annual NYE Dinner at NoHo's. It's a local Hawaiian place that has been around for a while. The one on Fremont has an annual luau and an all you can eat dinner buffet.

The past 3 years I have taken time off on Xmas-NYE week, about a week and a half. I took Thanksgiving week off this year and the following week (2 week vacation) so I did not take off my usual. I also have caught a cold the last  3 years right on New Year's Day. This year I caught it a week early! Maybe I'll not be sick this New Year's.

In the wargaming arena things kind of slowed down post Saga Tournament in October for me. Not any kind of "lack of wanting to play" from me, far from that. My urge to play is stronger than ever. I just had a lot of stuff bump into that.

My aforementioned Brother in Law moving was one. I had some stuff in his basement in storage. He had to move and put his house up so my stuff had to go. My den looked like an episode of Hoarders

for a month. I had all my stuff in there and was going through it. Found some cool stuff and also threw a lot of stuff in the dumpster. Goodwill made out like a bandit too. This lead to my "Man-Corner" becoming a staging area and organization work bench for that month-long project.

Then there was 2 weeks of Thanksgiving vacation. A week in Orlando at Disney World and Thanksgiving and a week at home – that last week was spent cleaning and reorganizing my Man-Corner.

JUST got back into painting about 2 weeks ago. In the time off I had to reassess my time and whether I had things I need to do over things I want to do.

My Saga Scots were put aside over finishing my Lion Rampant Agincourt English retinue. Those English are first (and I'm down to my last unit of billmen).

I have not been very busy with Bolt Action play so my Finns got put aside. I can finish those in a week though; Just got some tank details and one last infantry squad to do there really.

I want to get started on my "Dark Ages Commons" line. Basically, I want to sell bondi/militia level Vikings and Saxons. Tunics, pants, spear, shields, maybe some axes and a helmet or 3. Speed-painted of course so no show pieces.  I think there is a niche to fill there for some pre-paints. Having painted that kind of stuff for the past few years I know I'd sure as heck buy some if they were available. Painting common spearmen is just boring and seems to be one of the stumbling blocks. I do not plan to take commissions as I want this to be off the shelf.

x12 Viking Spearmen (Bondi) for $60 sounds reasonable. No bases, buyer base on their own as to fit needs. Speed painted, "dipped" in Army Painter Quickshade, matte varnish. I'll have some out at Enfilade's Bring and Buy. Who knows I might even expand beyond the beaches of England and out of the Dark Ages.

Speaking of Scots I've just started a unit of Scots Lancers from Warlord Games for some English Civil War action! I've sourced my muskets and pikes and command already so those are a go. I just ordered some field guns, all I need is crew. After that I am fully painting Scots Covenanters for ECW via Pike and Shotte rule-set. Also getting ready for the Lion Rampant version for ECW skirmishing.

Romans! Who don't need Romans? I sourced (via Old Glory of course) 60 Caesar's Gallic Wars Legionnaires. The big plan is to have a good host of Romans ready for some big battle next fall in Salem. Or maybe not. I just think that having an army of Romans in 28mm sitting around is a good idea. It's like a requirement for your Grognard card 'aint it? Plus, since I decided on Romans it seems everyone else I play with is putting up barbarian hordes to go against them – big meanies!

Did you see Dragon Rampant is out? Cool. I got a gift card to my FLGS and am itching to spend it on Dragon Rampant if they have it. This means all my fantasy figures are now viable for some games.

Welp... I'll be getting back into the sing of things post Holidays here. Much to paint and my lead mountain has grown. Happy New Year's and thanks for reading y'all.

-Gabe