Well, I got Bolt Action

...not to mention a couple of other things.

A few weeks ago I had some friends over to play Settler of Catan, and they brought with them the "Cities and Knights" expansion which I felt added so much gameplay to Catan that I went out and bought it for myself.  There's $45 of my monthly game money right there.

Then, while at the FLGS on International Board Game Day (or whatever it was) I spotted in the discount bin a defective starter box set of Bolt Action.  It had the rulebook, the order dice, 20 Germans infantrymen, and some terrain.  It was missing the 20 American infantrymen the box usually held, but rather than try to return it to the distributor the store had just knocked down the price to $60, which was less than what you'd pay for the rulebook and dice alone.  So I blew through $105 in a month, and pretty much wiped out the budget through the end of April.

The last time I was at Bill's house, a guy there named Robert (no relation) said he liked gaming any historical period up to World War II.  This keeps Bolt Action off the table, but between his comments and me facing the prospect of painting up twenty Nazis really got me thinking about where my own comfort level was in terms of wargaming and real war.  I had two grandfathers in WWII, one of whom had an admittedly easy time of it flying transport planes around the Middle East, but the other was at Normandy and suffered a head wound that left him paralyzed on the right side of his body the rest of his life.  I enjoy getting enthusiastic about my wargaming and hoping I'll win (or at least make a good show of it), but it takes a bit of emotional detachment to root for Nazi Germany.  It's probably one of the reasons why I like gaming periods like the Seven Years War or ahistorical "imaginations."  There's no strong moral compass at work in those situations, or at least enough time past to not be so personally affected.  I bought Bolt Action because I had heard lots of good things about it, and it was a steal at the price offered, but I'm already wondering if it would ever see the light of day, or if I might "re-skin" the rules for something different.