It's a brand new day, yeah the sun is high.

That was perhaps a slightly longer crash than I'd expected!

The first few days of this past week were dominated by a real-life, non-wargamey situation which left me stranded in a house without internet access, while the last couple of days I've been bowled over by some heinous gastric shenanigans that has left me with the vim and vigour of a ten-day old dead kitten.

I've spent much of this time reading and re-reading GASLIGHT and the GASLIGHT Compendium, picking up on all the little rulings I got wrong on the Big Birthday game, and those that were in the Compendium and not in the original game. One rule that I missed was that a natural Save roll of 20 always results in Critical Damage, even with small arms against armoured vehicles. So while players on Sunday decided that infantry was effectively irrelevant in a battlefield dominated by armoured machines, in actual fact sustained volleys of rifle fire have a half decent chance of getting that "golden BB" effect, which may prove to be an unpleasant surprise for someone at the next game.

So once I'm back on my feet, what's next? I've got a number of "high priority" projects

1) Continuing with the 28mm VSF for GASLIGHT. I have figures on the way to build up the British and Evil Genius forces to match the Germans, plus the beginnings of Fenian and Russian forces, to cover all the planned participants in the "Invasion England" campaign setting. I've also got a number of vehicles in various stages of conversion & construction and an overwhelming desire to put together some air power for the game. On the terrain front, I'd really like to try something more urban or industrial based, inspired largely by Thunderchicken's awesome Gasworks layout on the Lead Adventure Forum.

2) 28mm Zombies - another "starting from scratch" project. Over the last couple of months I've picked up a sizeable collection of undead lead (and plastic) which would need painting, plus some suitable city terrain (which will either be Matakishi-style cork buildings, or more paper models over foamcore) The terrain would also double for urban "Street Violence/Near Future SF" gaming. The 28mm scale means this is going to be a "wargames club" game, rather than a "fit on coffee table" game.

3) 15mm Zombies - this was the scale I originally planned for zombie & "Street Violence" gaming, with a view to playing solo on a large coffee table. The downside is that the zeds have a lot less personality in this scale. Again the terrain for this would overlap nicely with the 20th century Imagi-Nations project, with the city terrain being built to double as Port Au Nice, the capital of Paradiso.

4) The Portable Wargame Napoleonic project. A strictly solo affair, which will only(!) involve painting up a few dozen 1/72 plastic figures to be used on the Heroscape terrain. For some reason that I can't quite put my finger on, I feel strangely hesitant to kick this project off.

On top of these, Jonesy (mi hermano ambicioso) is planning some 1/72 modern gaming using the Force On Force rules, preparations for which I am pledged to assist.

Of those four options, I'm still feeling highly enthused about VSF, but the desire to try something new draws me towards the zombie/street violence projects. For those I'm truly torn between the practicality of 15mm and the improved aesthetics of 28mm.

At the moment I think I'm going to continue working on the VSF forces, building on the existing momentum, but with the zeds (in one scale or another) as an ongoing side-project. Working on the figures and terrain for the Big Birthday Battle has taught me how important it is to maintain focus on a project. The best way to get a large number of figures painted is to make yourself sit down at the painting table and paint... something. Maybe just one or two figures, maybe one unit or maybe even just one detail on a unit of figures. Next time you sit down at the table you paint a little more and then a little more and so on until you find the army is finished. But if you don't discipline yourself to sit down and put at least some pigment to primer, that army isn't going to paint itself.

Regardless, any work will have to wait until the gremlins quit jabbing my intestines with red hot pokers. Being ill sucks.