The wargamer's spring

Spring weather is starting to settle in here in Japan now and it is my favourite season of the wargaming year - prep time!  This not-at-all-onerous process involves sitting down in a cramped airless space to cut and file excess lead off a huge pile of figures, then to wash them - making sure that those which require horses can sit upon them fairly comfortably and that those which require shields and weapons affixed have them so affixed - and finally to put them on strips of cardboard in readiness for spray undercoating when I can get some time and good weather.

So far I've cleaned and prepped a hundred Xyston Spartans, a hundred Old Glory Persian archers and slingers, a hundred more Strategia e Tattica Romans, twenty-odd horse archers from OG and Essex, and there are a number of large boxes and full carry-cases to go. 

Well, it's the price we pay for buying so many figures throughout the better part of the year, I suppose :)

It little profits that an idle hand
At this grey desk, among these loaded shelves,
Matched with an aged knife, I cut and carve
Unequal lengths out of a leaden race,
That bend, and break, and fall, and know not me....

(with apologies to Alfred, Lord Tennyson)