The Hobby of the Mind

So I went up to the local gaming shop of choice this weekend to browse upon a Flames of War tourney. I did not know this was happening. In fact, I went up to throw down some heavy metal thunder in the form of Battletech. This did not happen.

Though I was enamored with Flames of War carnage wrecking axis and allied army lists alike and instead watched and critiqued with the tourney organizer. One guy couldn't seem to get past turn 2 without littering the field with his own burning tanks. Another mopped up with a simple Tiger and high tier Panzer tank list (like, 6 vehicles total) that met an untimely end against a well played US Airborne.
All in all, It's a fairly solid miniature war game set against WW2. All the major nations are represented with a little color being added to every nation. Italians don't have any concurrent troop quality. British have a couple "do or die" style flair. The Russians can use political officers to "encourage morale".

Dad would have loved it. I had even considered picking him up a box set of Russian infantry before the reality of it set in. This would never happen. I could never share this with him like I might of in the past. And as that train of thought came crashing to reality it was so thoroughly heart rending as to give me emotional pause, and perhaps just go home and cry.

I miss him very much.