A New Leaf

I know I've already blathered about my goals for the new year, but I want to share a little bit more about them and some of my reasons for them.

My goal is to buy very little in the way of new figures this year. I have a few important reasons.

First, I have piles of unpainted lead. Here is a perfect example. For the American Revolution I have the figures to paint the following units:
2nd Maryland-32 figures
1st Virginia-40 figures
2nd Virginia-40 figures (well I don't actually have them but they should arrive from the WarStore on Wednesday-A Christmas gift so I don't have to blame myself)
71st Regiment-24 figures
23rd Regiment-24 figures
Von Bose Regiment-32 figures
Converged Grenadier battalion-24 figures

These don't include literally hundreds of less organized miniatures I have for this period. It would be nice if AWI was the only period that was stocked so well. Unfortunately all of my 25mm periods of interest have similar piles o' lead. 15mm projects are a little more scanty, and I can actually see adding to them, but I can simply jump from one 15mm project to another if need be.

2. I simply don't have as much money to spend and I'm embarrassingly in debt. A lot of that "free money" went to pay for my piles of lead that I haven't painted. My goal this year is to reduce my debt and not spend an unnecessary centime on a figure. Any money I do spend on figures will need to be on an as needed basis. In other words, if figures are needed to literally wrap up a unit or even wrap up a project fine, if not, I'm not buyin' it. On the other hand it does cost money to even paint in this hobby, so expenditures for primer, dullcoat, paint as needed and Litko bases are expected.

Finally, I hope to be able to support my mother-in-law if she needs it. Rita has been very good to me over the years-and has gotten me some nice gaming goodies at Christmas and birthday times. I lost my father-in-law a couple of weeks ago which will leave her in challenging straits. It will be tough on the budget, but it's a lot more important than having the latest miniature I may not paint for years. Geez, I may have to wash out my mouth with soap on that one.

There are few purchases I can see myself making:
1. A few more planes from Reviresco for the Spanish Civil War (assuming I paint the three I have first.)
2. A few more 1/600 WWII gunboats for Action Stations from PT Dockyard. I've actually painted all my stock, and would like some more Fairmile B class vessels. At the present time I don't have any unpainted gunboats. I do have three unfinished destroyers, and I have some clean-up to do on LCS-1, but the bulk of my small boats are all done.
3. Last, but not least, I would like to add more units to my Spanish Civil War project, mostly Republican militia and Communist troops, but I also need some Spanish Foreign Legion battalions. Likely I'd purchase Peter Pig figures from Brookhurst Hobbies. But, I'd have to finish what I have first.

I've also reset my painting logs to reflect not only figures painted, but figures purchased. Then readers can see if I'm sticking to my plan. I'll be honest, I promise. My blog is kind of my confessional.

I included a few pics. There are a couple shots of my painting table as of today. The redcoats are Old Glory figures. They'll be the 64th Regiment. I hope to have them done by the end of the week-we'll see. There are also some 15mm SCW figures to work on. The unprimed horsemen are 25mm Hundred Years War figs. They are lightly armored horse who could be hobilars or even free company horse that might make an interesting single figure scenario. I also included a picture of what I like to call my "drawers of shame." I have a pair of four-drawer storage units that are literally full of unpainted figures. The two I have pulled out are my AWI drawer and one of my HYW drawers (I have two.) In addition to these eight drawers I have other little caches of minis in my den and in the garage. It may not be the worst collection of unpainted lead ever seen, but it is ridiculous.