The Demise of GW

NO, not Games Workshop, but the store I managed: Great White.

After shaky spring sales were followed by a disastrous May, the store in Calgary closed its doors for good at the end of June–just in time for me to go on a two-week vacation! (I had no choice: the flights had been booked months ago; and in the stress surrounding the store’s death rattle, I managed to forget to change my flights; luckily, the trip was visiting family, so it was a holiday on the cheap!)

R.I.P.

With some decent job prospects coming my way closer to the end of summer, at the moment things don’t look too grim and dark for me. My goal is now to get more hobby and game time in over the summer.

Responsible? Not really. Irresponsible? Also…not really.

So Where Does this Leave me?

What better time than summer to suddenly get bucketfuls of spare time? It’s like summer holidays back when I was in junior high school: being broke but having plenty of free time. 

So instead of always feeling guilty and thinking I should be doing something more productive whenever I pick up a model to start painting, I’ve decided this layoff presents me with an opportunity to pay real attention to this blog again. My goal is a minimum of one post per week (and I can’t see much reason why I couldn’t squeeze another one or two smaller weekly posts in as well–once I work the blog back into my routine). Because this blog has been about the gaming industry and my hobby, to jump-start it I’ve decided I should be pursuing the things that have taken a back burner this year: namely painting, gaming and (perhaps) tournament-event running / attending. With the initial shock of being unemployed now passed, it’s time to get back in the saddle with my hobby; who knows where it will lead me?

My Hobby Landscape

Before my job went down the tubes, I had resumed working on my mid-war Canadian infantry army for Flames of War that I bought a few (four?) years ago–and hadn’t even looked at for the last three years. I’m pretty serious about getting the army up and running for the game now that I’ve found some people who play it—and they’re people I also enjoy being around and gaming with to boot: bonus!

I also have other projects and ideas rattling around my head: there’s the Strange Aeons stuff I have to finish up so I can grow my investigator team (plus increase the number of Lurkers—bad guys—at my disposal). I’ve also been thinking about doing some slight changes to the paint jobs on my War of the Rings Orcs. (It should also be mentioned that I’m regularly scheming and discarding painting projects for future War of the Rings armies.) Last on my “current” project plate, as it were, are the Space Marine Terminators I’ve been leaving on the back burner for the past while.

Pipe Dreaming

A Snapshot of my Painting Table

As far as other things that I’d like to make progress on but fully realise there’s enough for me to do already, there’s the Eldar Dire Avenger models (among others) that I want to paint…but can’t summon up the desire to get done (that, and I’m feeling like I should just wait for their codex to get redone before adding anything else into my force). My Empire army is also in a similar place as my Eldar: I want to paint up more so as to make what I have done already (about 3500 points) work better in the newer edition, but I can’t seem to motivate myself enough to care enough to get started.

Should I have some spare hobby time, I also have a few side side projects: scenery for Flames of War—the Messina table-progress pictures I  found over at the Unfinished Armies blog have me thoroughly inspired! (Though I think I’ll also save my pennies and wait for Battlefront to release their pre-made Italy terrain later in the summer.)

Messina was a key objective for Operation Husky: the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 and a precursor to the Italian campaign.

And then there’s Heavy Gear Blitz. This is the pipiest of my pipe dreams: to finish painting the two or three squads I have for Heavy Gear Blitz, finish the scenery I started building and start getting people into the game. Heavy Gear is the game I really would like to get more involved in—not because I think the game is leaps and bounds better than other mini games, but because the game is different enough from a lot of the other games out there that it excites me (and not just because the game has a serious nostalgia hold over me: I bought the first RPG book in its first printing back in 1994—years before the computer games came out!).

SO, if I keep myself motivated to paint all the things I’m kinda’ hoping to work on, this period of unemployment will hopefully not feel properly like being out of a job.

Here’s hoping!

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