Oh dear! Is it really six months?

As someone who mostly writes for a living I am not doing too well at writing my own blog.

I suppose it is a case of so much to do and so little time. Since my last post things have gone fairly slowly on the painting front but buying models and terrain pieces has progressed steadily and thus increasing my personal lead mountain.

I have however gone small - 6mm is making inroads into The Bunker. There has always been 6mm or 1/300 lurking in quiet corners. Last year I 'finished' - yes finished my 6mm Prussian Napoleonic army for Polemos rules. I say 'finished' as I took one look at all I had painted and decided that more cavalry was needed..maybe some more Landwehr? Definitely more officers and artillery and that box of Austrians could do with some attention too. I bought more Prussians and made good progress with the Austrians and then came to a halt about November time.

20mm Valiant WWII had become a priority for some Chain of Command games and a box of 60+ Germans took the field with British infantry close on their jackbooted heels. Americans next.

For Christmas I left subtle hints by making shopping lists of wargames items and leaving them around. It was an unnerving time on Christmas day as presents were revealed and nothing on my lists had appeared - note to self more lists and weblinks next year. However, the last present was on my list a copy of the Team Yankee rules. I was particularly keen to look at these.

Team Yankee was a book about a WWIII scenario set in the early 1980s, written by Harold Coyle. I was lucky to meet Harold Coyle (or HW as a prefence) in 2004 when I went to the Seven Year's War convention in South Bend Indiana and played in his game.  I subsequently bought and read the novel Team Yankee.

Reading the rules over the Christmas break made me realise that Battlefront had made some smashing figures and models but in the wrong scale to my way of thinking. I've never liked the close packed tank formations of Flames of War and although Team Yankee is based on FOW but some different mechanisms the look and feel of the games are similar.

So last weekend I went to Salute and played a game of 15mm Team Yankee - it was quick and fun - but I also picked up the Sabre Squadron rules for modern warfare. I have yet to play these but they have come highly  recommended. I already have Cold War Commander and others have mentioned Fistful of Tows as a good modern set of rules.

So whilst considering which direction I will go in with rules I have been building up 6mm Russian, US and Chinese forces for the 1980s using models from Heroics & Ros and Scotia.

 Today I printed out the Sabre Squadron supplement 'Seven Days to the Rhine' that I bought as a pdf. There are 138 pages of company level organisation for the Warsaw Pact in the 1980s. Yet more reading and more to write about soon...