End of the year, 2013
I've just come from several blogs featuring and end of the year wrap up, so here is one more.
The Figures
For the year in painting Napoleonics, I did manage nine Hanoverian battalions, one Highland Infantry battalion, two Royal Artillery, two RHA batteries, one Hanoverian battery, one KGL battery and one Prussian battery. Each battery of two guns and eight crew, so roughly fifty figures and 14 'tubes.' The infantry are in the 18 man configurations, and so count out at 180 infantry figures. Oh, and the six or so Dutch-Begian militia, and the one cavalry unit this year, the Scots' Greys. I suppose, if I only paint one cavalry unit, it's a good one to pick.
I've dabbled in a little Pulp and Cthullu based figures, about twenty or so in all.
In regard to the 20mm World War Two items, I've done a quick paint up of some five tanks and other vehicles, ranging from 1/87th to 1/72 in scale.
Finally rounding out the year were the rest of the Aquarian fleet, some dozen or so ships. The color schemes are rather bright, but they are exactly what I wanted.
Games and rulesets.
As for gaming itself, the year started out with some WW2 and SCW Bolt Action, followed by some Snappy Nappy and a few small games of PK Les Grognard for our play by mail campaign. I did not attend any conventions and the gaming dropped off considerably in the second half of the year, a couple of space-ship games and the start up of the Barbarossa campaign followed into November. Early in December I played in a Great War scenario, using my Sihks to assault some Turkish trenches.
I am happy with Bolt Action as a set of easily played WW2 rules; with some TLC you could port back to late WW1 and the Interwar years. They will lend themselves to a tournament if that's your bent, but have good potential for friendly, scenario driven games as well.
The Snappy Nappy rules did exactly what they set out to accomplish, a major campaign in a day....providing you have the physical space and a large number of players. They are of course a trade off in the tactical battles, I think Roger and I played out most every likely situation in our 'private battle' which was a real hammer and tongs fight on just one of the map sectors.
As for Napoleonics, I think the year was the first in a long time that I did not play Field of Battle, mostly due to not attending the warm up games for Historicon. Instead, I enjoyed a couple very asymmetrical games using Les Grognards. Le Grogs is still my ruleset of choice for the era.
Late in the summer one new game was tried out, the Mansions of Madness boardgame,( it's okay, you play it with miniatures) that proved a lot of fun as well as rather deadly to the players who are the investigators.
The new rules for the faction called the Aquarians in the Monday Knights rules for space (Galactic Knights) were interesting, the fleet will be a difficult opponent for the other fleets, when I learn how to use it properly.
The system itself is fun, I recommend it to anyone needing a ship to ship space game.
As for the other, task force sized battles in our Barbarossa campaign, the Command Decision:Test f Battle set is definitely going to be used again and again. The older editions were alike enough to have us feel familiar with the mechanics, the changes in the rules make the game much smoother in play than any of the older editions.
Blogging & photos
My blog count was down this year over last, but I hope the trip through the Hanoverian units was worth the electrons for you. I also was happy to get together the old and new information on the Swede's in the Napoleonic era together to share resources. The addition of the keywords to older posts and the deletion of the occasional 'hello' post are for your ease in looking up stuff on uniforms I may have gotten correct, at least that's my hope.
Oh, I did not post the recent paintings of the artillery units just done. Well either the first post of the New Year or the last of the old will show you how they look. .
Coming up?
Real life sent us a couple of "interesting" problems in 2013 and quite frankly I hope for a more boring year.
I will be finishing up a very few figures left for the Quatre Bras project, probably in intervals between other much smaller projects.
I do have some ideas for the Q-B scenarios, I'll explore them as we go into next year.
There should be some 'Very American 1930's War' games, a take off on the VBCW theme popular now.
There will also be more SCW games, probably with Bolt Action, especially if I can get a local gamer interested in painting his Spanish buildings soon.
Very related to the era and using many of the same figures, I plan on a couple of Pulp games as well. I like the chance to mix up the conditions for objectives and challenge the players.
We'll no doubt get in a few more Barbarossa campaign moves in, as soon as my opponent completes a set of 'real world' chores and has more game time. ( This real world stuff interferes greatly in getting games played, wouldn't you agree?)
Add in some space ship games and hopefully a couple of TYW or Eastern Europe 17th Century games and the year could look good. Dare I hope for a game or two set in Darkest Africa?
So many ideas, so little idle time.........
The Figures
For the year in painting Napoleonics, I did manage nine Hanoverian battalions, one Highland Infantry battalion, two Royal Artillery, two RHA batteries, one Hanoverian battery, one KGL battery and one Prussian battery. Each battery of two guns and eight crew, so roughly fifty figures and 14 'tubes.' The infantry are in the 18 man configurations, and so count out at 180 infantry figures. Oh, and the six or so Dutch-Begian militia, and the one cavalry unit this year, the Scots' Greys. I suppose, if I only paint one cavalry unit, it's a good one to pick.
I've dabbled in a little Pulp and Cthullu based figures, about twenty or so in all.
In regard to the 20mm World War Two items, I've done a quick paint up of some five tanks and other vehicles, ranging from 1/87th to 1/72 in scale.
Finally rounding out the year were the rest of the Aquarian fleet, some dozen or so ships. The color schemes are rather bright, but they are exactly what I wanted.
Games and rulesets.
As for gaming itself, the year started out with some WW2 and SCW Bolt Action, followed by some Snappy Nappy and a few small games of PK Les Grognard for our play by mail campaign. I did not attend any conventions and the gaming dropped off considerably in the second half of the year, a couple of space-ship games and the start up of the Barbarossa campaign followed into November. Early in December I played in a Great War scenario, using my Sihks to assault some Turkish trenches.
I am happy with Bolt Action as a set of easily played WW2 rules; with some TLC you could port back to late WW1 and the Interwar years. They will lend themselves to a tournament if that's your bent, but have good potential for friendly, scenario driven games as well.
The Snappy Nappy rules did exactly what they set out to accomplish, a major campaign in a day....providing you have the physical space and a large number of players. They are of course a trade off in the tactical battles, I think Roger and I played out most every likely situation in our 'private battle' which was a real hammer and tongs fight on just one of the map sectors.
As for Napoleonics, I think the year was the first in a long time that I did not play Field of Battle, mostly due to not attending the warm up games for Historicon. Instead, I enjoyed a couple very asymmetrical games using Les Grognards. Le Grogs is still my ruleset of choice for the era.
Late in the summer one new game was tried out, the Mansions of Madness boardgame,( it's okay, you play it with miniatures) that proved a lot of fun as well as rather deadly to the players who are the investigators.
The new rules for the faction called the Aquarians in the Monday Knights rules for space (Galactic Knights) were interesting, the fleet will be a difficult opponent for the other fleets, when I learn how to use it properly.
The system itself is fun, I recommend it to anyone needing a ship to ship space game.
As for the other, task force sized battles in our Barbarossa campaign, the Command Decision:Test f Battle set is definitely going to be used again and again. The older editions were alike enough to have us feel familiar with the mechanics, the changes in the rules make the game much smoother in play than any of the older editions.
Blogging & photos
My blog count was down this year over last, but I hope the trip through the Hanoverian units was worth the electrons for you. I also was happy to get together the old and new information on the Swede's in the Napoleonic era together to share resources. The addition of the keywords to older posts and the deletion of the occasional 'hello' post are for your ease in looking up stuff on uniforms I may have gotten correct, at least that's my hope.
Oh, I did not post the recent paintings of the artillery units just done. Well either the first post of the New Year or the last of the old will show you how they look. .
Coming up?
Real life sent us a couple of "interesting" problems in 2013 and quite frankly I hope for a more boring year.
I will be finishing up a very few figures left for the Quatre Bras project, probably in intervals between other much smaller projects.
I do have some ideas for the Q-B scenarios, I'll explore them as we go into next year.
There should be some 'Very American 1930's War' games, a take off on the VBCW theme popular now.
There will also be more SCW games, probably with Bolt Action, especially if I can get a local gamer interested in painting his Spanish buildings soon.
Very related to the era and using many of the same figures, I plan on a couple of Pulp games as well. I like the chance to mix up the conditions for objectives and challenge the players.
We'll no doubt get in a few more Barbarossa campaign moves in, as soon as my opponent completes a set of 'real world' chores and has more game time. ( This real world stuff interferes greatly in getting games played, wouldn't you agree?)
Add in some space ship games and hopefully a couple of TYW or Eastern Europe 17th Century games and the year could look good. Dare I hope for a game or two set in Darkest Africa?
So many ideas, so little idle time.........
Comments
Happy New Year!