The Game Room on Dec 30, 2023; a shell, but a sound one…  

…compared to the splendid set up of in March of this year.

As is the tradition, here is a post summarizing the blogging/hobby year past. I think the two images of my game room say it all: this has been a disruptive period at Meanderer Central, to say the least, and the intermittent blogging activity is reflective of its impact on blogging.  For those who wish to really dive into the story, you can visit my very proud post of March announcing the completion of the clear out and reorganization of my hobby space. Which then I had to tear down and clear out in order to replace the skylights (which had begun leaking), Many twists and turns ensued; to make a long story short, we finally achieved closure on the project in early December of this year, and the room is now as you see it in picture #1. Mixed in with this tribulation was a rushed preparation to move house that wound up getting nixed at the last moment. These events have caused us to be in a sort of limbo, and having gone through the considerable task of clearing out and storing my entire hobby collection, I’m reluctant to unpack it and re-occupy the game room until we achieve closure on our own plans.  In the meantime, I am using the room as a project space, and do intend to run games again by making trips up to the attic to pull figures and terrain as needed. 

Looking ahead to the new year, I have started using the space again: on the table is the latest project; I’m working on a new Konnigratz Kriegspiel map in preparation for the Bloody Big Battles game I’ll be running at the Mayhem 2024 convention in April.  I’ll have more on this project in a future post. 

I have put my comfy chair back in  place, and am putting it to good use. Here you see the notes and scribblings for my Chocolate Box Wars (CBW) rules, which have been sidetracked for too long. I’ve had something of an „aha“ moment in November and have been making good progress on them since. I am determined to get them done and up on this blog within this blog year.  My actual intent is to get them up by March, but for the record (and given the way that life can intervene), I think I’ll just say by this time next year….

…and here is a bit of tangible evidence of work in progress beyond my scribblings and notes: several sets of print and play CBW armies.  Necessity being the mother of invention, I wanted a quick and space efficient way to playtest my system without having to unbox and pull down my miniatures. Not being happy with just symbols or colored markers, I worked up these from various and sundry sources (more details on this project will be the subject of another post).