Pledge update - shopping, baaad.

Well, it's an opportune time to update this ,as there was a planned shopping excursion on Saturday that has radically effected my scores.

I went to Wargames Emporium (http://www.wargamesemporium.co.uk/) in Sheffield at the weekend. Probably the nearest real wargames shop to where I live. It enabled me to spend a happy hour or two rummaging through filthy boxes of shockingly ugly Warhammer models, in search of the last miniatures for my Dwarf army, and a bunch of new miniatures for my upcoming project. I didn't buy anything other than second hand figures, but still spent £52 on lead and plastic! Still that totalled 31 metal and 15 plastic figures, including ten cavalry and an artillery piece.

I also picked up my first of the new Axis and Allies expansion set: Task Force. More on them another time.

But anyway, how does this leave the painting tally; well, I chose to count that Predator tank as ten figures, it comprise ten separate parts, and terms of time spent, I could certainly have painted at least ten miniatures in the same time span. Additionally I finished off 18 half painted Jomsvikings, that were in my Viking box.

Total them together with my running score and I make that I'm now on:

• Bought: 58
• Painted: 165.

A ratio of 3:1.

21 of the figures from the weekend though are nearly finished; but I've committed to buying another 25 plastic spearmen and a unit of 10- more figures are urgently needed for my new project; a Border Patrol campaign, that starts next Monday!

Hopefully I can reign in the shopping after this activity, there is after all no short term benefit for me in massing figures I cannot use (a couple of the armies I brought out of storage are already going back in again, in preparation for our probable return to France). And anyway, I'd hate for my painting stats to fall below a 2:1 ratio!