Current & Future Projects

At the moment I have four current or planned modeling projects.

SPQR: An Early Imperial Roman Legion in 1/72 scale, with 1 figure representing 6 men.
History: The Roman Legion numbered about 6,000 men, usually accompanied by a like number of auxiliary troops and numerous supporting slaves, camp followers, etc. At the moment my TO&E has about 13,500 people and 5,000 animals, not counting supporting naval units for the scenario.
Scenario: The Rebellion of Cyrene. This province on the north african coast has rebelled, with the leaders drawing inspiration and support from many of Rome's foes, past and present. A mixed army of Carthaginian, Egyptian, Cyrenican, and European forces has gathered, armed with everything from slings and clubs to full brigades of phalanx and elephants, along with a small fleet. A Legion with its auxiliaries along with two squadrons of galleys has been dispatched to crush the rebels. The idea is to have both a naval battle and one or more land battles as part of the campaign. The rebels have superior force, but a divided command structure and most of their troops are individually inferior to Roman infantry.
Status: I have the lion's share of the combat units of the Legion, and a good sample of the non-combat units. Several hundred figures are painted or in work.

RCT: A 1944 US Infantry Regiment (European Theater of Operations) in 1/285 scale, with 1:1 representation.
History: A US Infantry Regiment had about 3,200 men, and included no armored vehicles, no aircraft, no heavy artillery... in fact, it seems a rather flimsy formation to go up against the typical image of German Panzer forces. I started out just trying to find out what a US Rifle Platoon could really expect in the way of attached or supporting units besides its own organic structure as part of an effort to more realistically generate units for the "Ambush!" family of single-player board games. I became fascinated with the massive variety and numbers of non-divisional combat and support units that the US deployed in the ETO, and decided it would be fun to use MicroArmor (1/285 scale) to show just how a fragile a straight TO&E infantry force would be augmented into a monster in the field. At the top level, I have generated an Order of Battle for the fictional XL Corp. XL Corp has over 90,000 men, over 1,800 artillery pieces, over 12,000 vehicles including some 2,000 armored vehicles, and is supported by almost 500 aircraft. It includes the 24th Armored Division, the 183rd, 197th, and 204th Infantry Divisions, and over 50 other units of battalion size.
Scenario: None, really, though I've collected a range of data for German units of the period.
Status: I have about a battalion's worth of 1/285 figures and vehicles on hand, none painted.

OPM: The naval forces of Operation Masticate, a division-sized island amphibious assault in late 1944, in 1/2400 scale with 1:1 representation.
History: This project is a spin-off from the RCT project, and has much the same purpose: what would a cross-section of the forces in the Pacific War have looked like? Just as with the RCT project I've set aside the 'spotlight' units: there are no paratroopers nor B-17s in XL Corp, and there are no fleet carriers assigned to Operation Masticate. There are just over 400 ships and nearly 500 aircraft in the OOB, including four battleships, nine cruisers, and seven escort carriers, with a total of over 1.7 million tons of ships. Aboard those ships are over 130,000 people, including some 40,000 troops for the assault.
Scenario: This is more a scenario first and a force second than the other way around; that's the nature of naval combat vs. ground combat. The target is the (fictional) Anymaki Island, a strategically important island in an unspecified area of the Pacific.
Status: a sampling of ships on hand, none assembled or painted.

ODF: The Olympian Defense Forces Space Arm in the late 2260's, at 1/3000 scale and 1:1 representation.
History: The what, when? Well, there's a board game called "Attack Vector: Tactical," which tries very hard to be scientifically accurate in its mechanics while maintaining good gameplay. They've developed a future timeline, called the Ten Worlds, for three-dimensional space combat. The planet of Olympia is one of the players, and the Space Arm has a few hundred ships, some of which have miniatures available.
Scenario: I doubt the ODF(SA) will ever fighter together; the nature of interplanetary warfare means that small groups of ships, or lone vessels, will fight their desparate actions in the endless black, far from their fellows.
Status: I have the game pre-ordered (a new edition is in the works, so I'm waiting for that).

It is snowing in Hell

For all of those who, like me, assumed the senatorial race in Massachusetts was a foregone conclusion, you might want to take a look at the news.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/01/our-opinion-massachusetts-senate-vote-fires-shot-heard-round-political-world.html

I didn't believe it when I got the news last night until I'd checked three different sources.

I grew up in Massachusetts, and I suspect that most of the 11.4% of the population who are registered with the Republican party would be Democrats in most other states. Still, that state will now be seating its first Republican US Senator since 1972.

The consequences are probably going to be less radical than the press is playing it. Sure, the 60-vote block in the US Senate is broken. But I think this functioned more as a warning shot across the bows of the Democrats that they need to be gearing up for the mid-term elections rather than the first stone of the avalanche.

Drawing to a close

Well, after much debate and agony, Kaylee will be going back to her breeder on Saturday. I'm not at all happy about this, but believe it is the right decision. I'm just not cut out to raise a puppy the way one should be raised.

There is one potential bright spot - my mother has asked the breeder to consider her as a new owner. She met Kaylee over the holidays and took to her as I did. She also has rather more experiance raising children than I do. :-}

So perhaps Kaylee will remain in the family, just not with me. Wherever she goes, I hope she will be happy.

My $0.02

I literally gave someone my $0.02 yesterday.

I was at Trader Joe's, stuck in line behind someone who had their husband get in line before they were finished shopping, and had to get 'just one more thing' before they could be checked out. Once she finally got the last thing (well after the cashier had rung up and bagged everything else), she had some sort of problem with a debit or gift card, and as a result she was able to pay all but $0.02 of her bill. Now here's the best part: neither she nor her husband had any cash on them whatsoever. So she sent her husband out to their car to get some.

At this point I intervened and handed the cashier a quarter, telling her I'd cover the $0.02. She rung up the last two cents and gave me $0.23 in change.

Really now, I know that credit and debit and EBT and gift cards are everywhere, but who doesn't carry ANY cash?

Catching Up

Well, it has been quite a busy few weeks. Some highlights:

My mother visited just after christmas, and brought with her one of those gifts that keeps on giving: a Wii. Of all the game consoles I've seen/tried out, this is the only one I've actually considered getting myself, so I'm quite glad. I claim the title of cow racing champion of people I know. :-) I managed to log ten consecutive days on Wii Fit before work started up. Hopefully I'll be able to get in some time on the weekends.

Kaylee continues to grow, and has finally reached the point where she can sleep through the night. That doesn't mean she always does, of course, but it is a milestone. She now weighs in at about 20 lbs, at least 10 lbs of it pure energy. Yes, I've created a Mii for her on the Wii. Puppy class continues to introduce both commands I knew off (sit, stay, come) and commands I didn't (stand, go, leave-it). Overall her level of training and obediance is improving, but she's still wearing me down.

We've had the first two sessions (start up, rules intro, character development, etc) of a Star Wars RPG (West End, thank you, not WotC) that I'm GMing. I'm going to have 6-7 players, which is a new record for me. The party will be a group of 'honest merchants' trying to make a living on a... special... freighter during the time of the movies (Episodes IV-VI, thank you, not the travesties that masqueraded as Episodes I-III).

Planning for Ursulmas continues, and the floor plans are firming up, though changes are still being made.