Phoenix rising

Well you might of noticed it has gone very quiet around here recently and in truth I've done very little on my hobby for some time. 2011 has seen the economic realities of the world bite home in our household. Threat of job loss, cutting of overtime and a whole host of household repair bills (motor bikes, car, tumble dryer, oven the list goes on). Has seen the family finances get rather ropey to say the least.

The wife and I decided we need to act clear our debts and sort out our finances. We re-negotiated better deals on our mortgage, fuel bills and insurances which saved quite a bit of money but to really benefit we needed to clear some debts to. In the end we decided to sell of some of the family silver which included ..............my wargames collection.

It wasn't an easy decision but it had to be done for the sake of the family so everything went to an ebay reseller for a price I was happy with. Well not quite everything I kept my painted AK-47 and Rapid fire Germans because I couldn't bare to part with them and a new unpainted Mantic elf army and 20mm US task force for rapid fire. I also kept all my reference and rules books, my paint and model supplies and a few board games. All my other miniatures and scenery went.

It was quite upsetting at first but now my wargames room is clean and tidy and I don't have unfinished projects staring at me from every corner it is also quite liberating. I now have a new 125 motorbike (the old one had cost me more in repair bills this year than it was worth) bought out of the money I got for my wargames stuff and the family budget is now in credit again each month. The result of this is I will now have a small hobby budget each month of about £25.00 (yay).

I've decided to re-evaluate my hobby too with a few rules that will hopefully allow me to make the most of my hobby budget and not leave with lots of half finished projects everywhere.

1) I need to drop down to smaller scale miniatures. It's time to admit I have neither the time nor the fiances to put together Wargames magazine style uber games in 28mm. It's what I've always aimed for and failed to do repeatedly.

2)I like painting 28s so will use them for skirmish games only (no more than two dozen miniatures aside say). For larger armies It's time to go to 20mm for ww2 and 15/12/10mm for other periods where I can get more for my money and paint up quicker.

3) I need to stick to a project and see it through to the end. No more jumping around to one shiny new thing after another.

4) I need to try stream line my scenery collection in to something that will cover as many period's and scales as possible.

5) I need to provide both sides to any conflict so don't have armies without opponents.

6) everything has to be kept cheap.

So like a phoenix rising from the flames my new wargames collection starts to day. I'm going down the wargames room latter today to look through my rule books and choose a new project which it quite exciting I have to say, the wargames world is my oyster (within budgetary constraints of course)

Cheers Jon