The Second Coming

The recent nomination of this blog as Wargame Blog of the Month in MWBG (Miniature Wargames with Battlegames) is entirely thanks to Phil, as my own last post on this blog dates from over a year ago. The reason behind this is that my wargaming hobby has been at a very low ebb the last year.

As it always does however, the pendulum is now slowly but surely swinging back in the direction of wargaming, and this post is the first small inkling of things to come. The past year, the majority of my free time has been taken up by the resurgence of an old hobby of mine, hobby electronics. I've been playing around with resistors, oscilloscopes, opamps and microcontrollers instead of toy soldiers and paint. To wit, this is a picture of my workbench area in my cellar:

As you can see, fully half of it is now taken up by various electronics paraphernalia. One sure sign of the resurgence of the miniature war-games part however, is the fact that the other half, which until half a week ago was also filled with electronics stuff, is now fully dedicated to painting again:

I've moved my paint supplies back into pride of place, down from the shelves where they were gathering dust in the gloom, and dug out some 20mm WWII paras to paint. The next game I'm planning on my home table will be a Crossfire game set during the Arnhem campaign (probably the German assault on the Westerbouwing heights in the southwest corner of the Oosterbeek perimeter), and these figures will feature in it. Also on the painting desk are some Reaper Bones fantasy figures (mushroom men) and some GNW figures: Ingermandlandski pikemen and Sodermanlands Swedes.

So, slowly but surely, the wargaming hobby is becoming active again, and I fully expect that this year's Crisis will provide the final injection of enthusiasm to finally kick it into gear again.

Oh yes - the title of this post? That's the title of one of the most well known poems of my favourite poet, W.B. Yeats. The subject of the poem is the cycles through which human society and history goes where things always repeat themselves and come back. You get the link to this post's subject.