Happy New Year!

I don't have much to say other than to wish the folks that read this a happy New Year.

As usual, nothing happened gaming-wise during my annual Christmas trip to Chicago to visit family. I was coming off of a head cold when we got there. I was hoping to have a game involving my nephews, my wife's cousin who was visiting from Utah, and my friend Karl. I found out that Karl was sick, my wife's cousin wasn't there long enough, and I spent most of my time driving here and there doing errands and being a chauffeur. We almost came up with a skirmish game using my younger nephew's Star Wars LEGOs figures, but it never happened due to me running around doing errands, and the fact that my nephews were in school up to the Friday before Christmas. My younger nephew and I did go to Games Plus, but that was the extent of things.

Hopefully, 2012 will be fruitful gaming wise for everyone.

Stay Creative

I saw a post on TMP this morning that led me to this blog: sidneyroundwood.blogspot.com. There are a lot of good suggestions about how to stay creative in the gaming world. Sometimes, I think that its not so much staying creative, but 1) finding the time and energy to express the creativity and 2) finding the resources needed to take the next creative step.

Issue #1 is pretty straight forward. I think a lot of people have more ideas than they have time to carry out. Plus, often at the end of the day, I know I am too tired to do anything.

For issue #2, I am not talking so much about the financial side of the hobby. I am talking more about the ability to learn what I need to learn to accomplish what I want to do. For example, all the way back in the 1970s, I thought it would be great to sculpt my own figures. I gave it a try, but the results were awful. Had I had some brains back then, I would have looked into taking a sculpting class to learn techniques. Nowadays, I still have a yearning, but the educational resources are rather spotty for what I want to do. You might be saying, "oh, but there are all kinds of sites now for sculpting minis!" Well, yes, if I wanted to do larger scales then I am all set, but I want to do microarmor. For example, I really want a model of the Australian Bustmaster APC. No one yet makes one. Oh, to be a fly on the wall of GHQ, just to learn how to make wheels in 1/286 scale! I hope this doesn't sound like a complaint, because its not. It just seems like even with all the information now out there, there are still some "holes" that have not been filled. Its more of a frustration than anything else. Yes, I could sit down and probably work it out, but that goes back to issue #1, the time to actually do it.