Curahee

Welcome back, the emergency exits have been sealed to prevent your escape.

So following on from my previous post about the decisions to be made...and the astute amongst you having seen the title. You can guess how the process went.

Or possibly not.

You see, simple as it sounds...life is anything but.
Shortly after posting, my long suffering fiancee offered a deal. Now anyone in my situation would know deals involve IF's or BUT's. Anyone with a gamerchick for a fiancee also knows there is no pulling the wool over their eyes regarding purchases.
But i digress and must go back to the point.
Carol pipes up and says 'I will make you a deal. I will buy your entire US Airborne army as a very early birthday present (5 months early)'.
This was then followed by the dreaded 'BUT'.
Now i don't know whether Panic had kicked in here, or self preservation or some primordial instinct. But like a fly in the spiders web i waited with baited breath for the clause.
Then it came.
'you can't buy anymore models or games until after the tournament' (6 months away).
Now anyone who follows this blog knows that i have incurable ADOSS (Attention Deficit Oh Shiny Syndrome).
Sweat beaded on my brow, the nervous twitch of the eternally slow painter battled with the magpie gamer in a war of time. Turn the offer down and face less time to paint the models, but have more shinnies or take the offer and start longingly as the new toys i will not have.
Well the painter won. Concessions were made to things like paint, scenery/materials for the army display board.

So what followed was a frantic working of a list, some fluff chasing and then a trawl of several games companies for the right miniatures.
In the end the £120 cost of the army was split between Northstar Games (Artizan) and Warlord Games.
Order placed i waited with glee....well actually it was more like the death throes of a 100 a day smoker as a virus has the better of me. But again i digress.

Now at this point i am going to wax lyrical about the games company Warlord Games. I have done it in the past and I'm going to do it again. Not because i have any endorsement or affiliation with them. It's purely because i believe good customer service deserves a mention in this day and age.
So why you may ask.
Well the army was ordered at 11pm Thursday night. At the same time i was chatting on facebook about the lack of a Airborne 81mm mortar, a fact that meant i had ordered a standard US army one and intended on mocking up a crew.
Well about 2pm friday an email notification pops up with 'order despatched'. Now anyone can agree that's pretty darn quick, what makes it faster is that the order had a warning 'some models are cast to order and this may cause a short delay'. So to see such a quick dispatch was a surprise.
Not content with this small achievement though. A certain David Mathews who works at Warlord, (i should mention has great community interaction) pops up in my facebook chat. We had spoke about the 81mm mortar situation on the boltaction page on fb and he had pointed out the US Army one to me.
David then proceeds to inform me that 'he has picked out a scratch crew of US airborne models from other airborne weapons to make up an 81mm mortar crew and put it in with my order for free'.
I can't really say how much gestures like this make me feel appreciated by a games company.
It's above and beyond the call of customer service in my book.
Of course many thanks were warmly extended to David, i would have offered him my Mrs for the night, but i could sense the impending slap lol.

So Saturday comes.
The door rings and look whats in the posties hand

(barring the Historicon 'Day of Days' Dick Winters model) which was already owned. See i do have a 'Dick'.

So that's one very happy gamer, with the next 6 months of my life sorted out (albeit without the madness of new model purchases...but that may be a good thing).

So whats the plan you ask.
Well with the Dick Winters model.
It can only be the men of Easy Company 506th Parachute Infantry, supported by a Hellcat from the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion.
The force is solidly based and themed around the Battle of Bastogne/Ardennes. So much research of winter basing and scenery techniques will be needed (especially for the board).
I have even gone as far as including a Medic in the force to represent Eugene Roe who has probably his finest moments in the show during the battle for Bastogne.

So that's the plan. Now for some frantic filing, cutting, filling and eventually...painting. But that's another blog post for another day.