Back again

D'oh! So I haven't updated for a while. As can be seen, I'm not very good at following things through. So I haven't got round to building Blitzkrieg Commander battlegroups for the invasion of France 1940, or finished (or even really started) building some early Anglo-Saxon and Romano-British armies for DBA in Dark Age Britannia. Never mind. New year, new start and all that.

So, a quick list of things I want to do this year, more for myself as a reminder to see them through...

• Explore the alternate history of 'A Very British Civil War', a fictional conflict arising from the refusal of Edward VIII to abdicate in 1936. This would be a good way to explore the history of my hometown, Middlesbrough. Whilst not much to look at now (trust me!) it was once an important industrial town in the North-East of England. From this heavy industry background we can easily imagine unions and Communist parties protesting when Oswald Mosley's government supplies General Franco's Fascist armies in Spain with Teesside steel. Blackshirt thugs and royalist army units are sent in to break the strikes, and the violence rapidly escalates... civil war comes to the North Riding of Yorkshire! This un-civil conflict will feature such imaginative fictional factions as the Communist rabble of the Popular People's Liberation Army of Teesside, the Fascist thugs of the North-Eastern Division of the BUF Blackshirts, along with royalist regular army units from the South rushed up to quell the insurrection. But help is at hand, for the dashing horsemen of the Tyne & Tees Yeomanry have declared for parliament and the people, and ride to their aid against the Fascist thuggery!
• After reading 'An Improvised War' by Michael Glover I have been inspired to brush away the dust from some more of the lesser-known and obscure corners of the Second World War. The campaign in East Africa of 1940-1941 has always been overshadowed by events in France, Greece and North Africa, but by all accounts it was a remarkable campaign featuring all manner of weird and wonderful colonial units and irregular forces. This book is without a doubt essential reading for this theatre, and would be a wonderful addition to any amateur historian's book collection.
• Start and finish a small collection of Dark Age Britannia miniatures to represent Anglo-Saxon and Romano-British armies for DBA. When time and money are stretched thin, it would make sense to get into a wargame that doesn't require many figures and takes less than an hour to play a game to a satisfying conclusion.