You might have seen that there hasn’t been a Wargaming Week for the past few weeks and the ones that have arrived are… lacking something. I’ll admit, the fervour that I once had for modern wargaming has pretty much dried up. I can blame this partially on some of the mental health issues I’ve been working through but I’m finding it incredibly difficult to give a damn about writing the once a week update post, especially when the hobby section is nothing more than a reminder of my lack of progress and the news posts are just not that exciting to see.
Frankly, and to stand on my soapbox for a bit, I’m finding there isn’t actually very much exciting news going on (and this started before the madness of 2020 began). Ultramodern releases have dropped to nothing – Spectre appears to be frantically trying to get itself back together after over-extending (taking resin production in house for a small two-person team might have been a bad idea), Footsore is charging way too much for a range that only barely stands out from other makers (and in a sculpting style I’m not a fan of), White Dragon is doing great work (if only their vehicles were the right scale) and the miniatures to the Ultracombat Kickstarter seems to be stuck in (semi-understandable) development hell to the point where I’ve lost all excitement over actually receiving what I’ve paid for. Empress has also diverted towards their Vietnam and WW2 ranges which frankly I can see the reason why (as Paul Hicks does fantastic work). There have been some interesting bits (Contact Front, Battlespace and a version 2 of Skirmish Sangin coming soon) but overall, there is nothing exciting to keep me going. Ultramodern gaming should be one of the most exciting and constantly evolving genres in wargaming but for a while, it seems to have plateaued for me personally – it’s a little depressing seeing so many missed opportunities flutter by.
The blog isn’t going anywhere (I’m definitely not going to delete it) and I’m still going to write stuff once in a while if it takes my fancy. I’m just not going to be doing it every week. And also this isn’t me quitting wargaming by any stretch of the imagination – it’s just that reporting about it every week is no longer as important as it once was.
Thanks to everyone who came along for the ride and kept reading these things. Hopefully you got something good out of it.