Reflections On The Year.

 I like to see how many views my blog gets and this last month broke the record with 28625 views! The month before that was only 6000.

It is nothing to do with anything else I said but here are some early 20th century AIP Japanese, some of my best painted troops, I think. 

  My main toy soldier related activities, during 2023, were completing another fantasy campaign and collecting from a new brand - ElastoWit from Ukraine. The Retro SF has especially got me hooked. I have ordered the Space Opera and Planet of the Apes sets and already have the first two sets of each.

  My other projects include continuing to 'restore' old hollowcast leads and I have some Britains Royal archers I bought replacement bow arms for. I am also finishing off a unit of hollowcast and homecast Confederate cavalry that I'll place in the next ACW game. ACW will be the way of the next few games, mostly as the rules and set up I have are very simple fillers until I finish the herculean task of organizing the next fantasy campaign. 

  Last wargame: Confederate Hispanic cavalry charge Union Colored infantry.

An MPC POTA gorilla was subject of a home mold. I am experimenting now, with resins to make some spare parts. What I would really like to do is to get some old out of production figures, add some bits and pieces, and cast them. Ones I'd like to do are a Lone Star Marine, with added campaign equipment for imagi-nation armies and the Timpo AWOI firing and Roman figures, maybe just the heads to use in some alternate time-line stuff.

  For the next fantasy campaign I have been painting additional Italeri and converted mamelukes for the Fezian light cavalry. They are intended as flintlock pistol armed regulars. The Fezians will still have mounted bowmen available but I will give the Mamelukes higher leadership.

  I also have to make howdahs for an apatosaurus and stegosaurus for my Aztecs. (Yes, these are Aztecs but not as you know them). The Aztecs will be fighting Fezians.

  New Years Eve. I rarely 'celebrate New Years Eve and being a bit on the antisocial side always try to be asleep before the clock stuck 12! I didn't quite manage that this time as I first watched the Barbie movie with my daughter and then I was absorbed in painting ElastoWit figures, something I am also doing now, and much better as it is daylight. I am sitting in my favorite place at home - in my garage at my workbench and under the skylight watching Popeye cartoons on my laptop. I suggest to those who can, to so do their painting in natural light as it is much more conducive to detailed paint work.

  It seems my daughter was more hostile to the Barbie movie's 'wokeness' than was I. I forgave it a lot considering its creative toy and popular culture references, not to mention the gorgeous Margo Robbie, but by the time I got to the last twenty minutes of 'female liberation lecture' I wanted it to end. It was fun, though, while Ken introduced the 'patriarchy'.

  Anyhow, every other blogger and his dog seems to be doing it so HAPPY NEW YEAR and may it bring many toy soldiers.

  Beneath: Beneath the Planet of the Apes, Gorilla artillery, a reference for my ElastoWit piece, as yet unassembled.