Fully loaded Wargamer Dad’s weekend

I had a full on wargamers dad weekend this weekend. My wife took our daughter for a weekend trip along with her godparent and I had full 48 hrs for myself.

So on thursday evening I prepared a garlic pizza dough for friday night, using the Kenji Alt Lopez recipe for NY style pizza, and mixed in the garlic part from Sam the Cooking Guy and topped it of with three types of peperoni to make it a meatlover style pizza (of course with my homemade tomato sauce). I'm so glad that I found that dough recipe, just look at the fluffy texture and air pockets.

And for saturday I picked up some spare ribs from my local butcher and prepared them with a dry rub overnight. Put them at 125° C in the oven at 10 am, and after 5 hrs incl. glazing they were ready. Had them for lunch and the leftovers in the evening on a sandwich.

But that was just the culinary part of my plans for the 48 hours. I had a strict schedule to get some stuff done. So on friday night I finished a couple of things that I still needed to complete some of the reviews. Primarely the finishing touches for the Black Seas themed week, that should start monday.

Beyond that, there is of course the summer project still going on and I managed to put on the washes and some touch ups. Quite happy with the result. If I was lazy, I would just give it a bleached bone drybrush and call it done.

And on thursday resupply for the review schedule arrived as well - the Aeronautica Imperialis package. And I managed to assemble and take the pictures for these reviews as well, so that will be the theme for the week after Black Seas (first naval than aerial combat).

Very fitting post by Tabletop Inquirer, capturing the fears of my wife, coming back and me just sitting in a big pile of miniatures and boxes that "just need to move aside a bit". Highly recommended page, a bit like Babylon Bee or Postillion for wargaming stuff. They are on Instagram and Twitter as well.

Of course having the opportunity to watch something longer than an episode without being interrupted, just called for some movies from my backlog. And I realised I went full grown up wargaming dad warmovie list for that.

I started with Midway around noon, a movie about one of the biggest battles in the pacific and possibly the turning point in the war against the Japanese, as it was the counter offensive after the attack of Pearl Harbor. The movie is incredibly heavy on the CGI effects and some are very obvious. Quite a few actors from The Man in the High Castle. It is very hard propaganda, and the americans patting themself on their own backs - quite hard. But the combination of action, incl. air battles, naval combat and even submarines is quite nice. Yet it is partially so over the top, that I expected for the Transformers to raise from the sea at some point.

After that I went on with Greyhound, which is available through AppleTV since friday. It is about a supply convoy from the States to the UK around mid-war, and we're following a Destroyer (callsign Greyhound) that has do defend the group of ships against a pack of german U-Boats. Quite the impressive pictures, with proper costumes and such. But that's it. The movie is quite short at just 1h 20m, but beyond that it is a rather generic Tom Hanks movie and you could probably use scenes by Hanks from Sully or Cpt Philipps and you wouldn't notice the difference. As for naval combat movies on the high sea, Das Boot is still the benchmark in that area.

Movie nr. 3 was Darkest Hour with a splendid performance by Gary Oldman. It is about Winston Churchill becoming prime minister before and during the events of Dunkirk, leading the UK into the war. Of course, not an action movie, but very moving character piece with interesting plots. I had a laugh when Herr Starr (Pip Torrens) from Preacher had a brief moment. A great movie, highly recommended. But after 6 hrs, I needed some lighter entertaining, and rough ozzy humour was just perfect to take care of that, so I watched Jim Jefferies Intolerant on Netflix.

Oh and this is going to be the last weekend update so far, as I want to switch that to a monthly update / sum-up. As for my remaining sunday, I'm going to finish today with some further details on the beastman and squeeze in a movie or two, and I'm looking forward to see my wife and kid again.

Have a good one and enjoy next weeks themed article series.