What should I have been doing this afternoon? Well either painting some more US Airborne figures, or some of the six alien races for Q13 I have on the go at the moment, or uploading more 19thC battle reports to this site so that I can get that section finished and move on.

What have I actually been doing? 

I've actually spent a very pleasant afternoon re-organising all my US forces for IABSM, amending the photo galleries of the Rifle and Tank Companies to bring them properly up to date, and finally getting around to constructing the gallery for the Armoured Rifle Company. Seems like I need an awful lot of half-tracks of the M2 and M3 variety, along with a handful of 1.5 ton trucks!

But seriously, I do think that properly cataloging your troops is an important part of our hobby...a part that's sometimes sadly neglected. I have a master spreadsheet of all my figures (all 15,000 of them) by period and unit, which also notes how many times each unit has been on the tabletop. Dividing one figure by the other then gives you a master efficiency quotient, so that I can see which of my armies are the most cost-efficient!

Then I have OB workbooks, where I list each force I've built by order of battle. This is really useful when playing pick-up games, as I can just print out a force's OB, then add or subtract units as required. The galleries on this website are a reflection of these spreadsheets: so far they're complete for my WW2, Vietnam and sci-fi armies, but I haven't even started on my 19th century, ancients or fantasy collections yet!

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I keep a workbook with how I painted each army in it. Very useful when adding extra units to an already existing force.

Nerd?

Maybe so, but then to me the spreadsheets are all part of the fun!