I'm very tired today. We had a day out at the Royal Armouries in Leeds yesterday, partly to look around the museum and partly for my lad and I to go to the 'Fiasco' wargames show. The museum was, as ever, 'a grand day out'. The show wasn't half bad either. I bumped into a couple of people I know and had nice chats. I also met a couple of people I'd only 'met' via the internet. First of all James Roach (Olicanalad) who has a blog with some gorgeous stuff on (link here) and the Ilkley Lads, who were playing a rather attractive ancient naval game, using a Piquet variant - very interesting. Also Brian from Mutineer Miniatures - I saw some master castings for his forthcoming Indian Mutiny range: those are going to be very hard to resist! But the weather was atrocious (lashing rain and strong winds), and so the drive there and back across the Pennines was really hard work.
I bought a couple of paintbrushes plus a copy of the Piquet Master Rules and the 'Archon II' ancients supplement. I haven't read much yet, but it looks very interesting - may well be worth trying out. I think its major advantage over more conventional rules is the move sequence, using initiative rolls plus decks of cards, the combination of which seem to give a fairly tense game in which it's hard to predict which (if any!) of the opponent's units will move next. It seems as though the way it works means you can't think to yourself 'if I move there, then next move he will move there and then on the following turn I'll catch him in the flank' - that sort of problem is inherent in most turn-based wargames.
I also saw some beautiful Japanese buildings, from a company I hadn't heard of before: Oshiro Model Terrain. For a few moments I was tempted to start a new project! I have some 28mm samurai in my lead pile somewhere - I've even painted a couple. Samurai are a fiddle though, and I'm not sure that Quick Shade would really make painting them any easier or more pleasurable. Maybe I should have a go at a couple sometime.
I have had an idea for a future project. I've been toying with the idea of doing the Punic Wars again, because I quite fancy a Republican Roman army again. The thing putting me off is the idea of building a Carthaginian army - I don't fancy it much. A throw-away remark from Keith at Aventine Miniatures gave me the idea of going back a bit further into Rome's history and doing Rome versus Pyrrhus and the Epirotes. Pyrrhus was one of the more successful of early Rome's enemies. It'd also give me the chance to do a 'Greek' army, which I quite fancy - and more jumbos! That's likely to be a while off - I've still got a lot of 'Fire in the East' to do!
So now it's back to painting Roman artillery. My blistered finger is feeling much better, so I've cut the rest of the bits out for the sabot bases.