2014 in Review and Looking Ahead

The wargamer and friends fend off  attacks from minions of Real Life as they try to get a few games in.
(Frostgrave art from Osorey)

Despite a terrible first quarter of the year for me, we actually managed to play a total of 25 games in 20 sessions this year, which isn't too shabby.

As with the previous year the actual games we played differ from what I expected: OGAM turned out to be less fun than what I expected, we never did continue our RPG campaign, and our Dystopian Wars project still hasn't taken off.

Most of my painting and buying this year was for Warhammer Fantasy: I painted or refurbished close to 300 figures for three separate armies, and have another couple dozen (count as) (The) Empire figures to paint and over a hundred Night Goblin figures to refurbish. We had a couple of practice games this year, and should be in a good position to play some big games next school holidays.

And once again, a highlight of the gaming schedule was unexpected: WW2 Chain of Command. Despite me having to start from scratch and delays due to a mix-up by the seller and what I suspect to be a dishonest postman, Martin and I really enjoyed our short campaign.

Looking ahead I am hoping to play another couple of Chain of Command campaigns: an Arnhem campaign against Martin's British Paras, and the "29, Let's Go!" campaign with fg's US once they are painted. So far I have found a couple of sites with campaign outlines and scenarios for Arnhem, so once I have finished reading "A Bridge Too Far" I should be ready to scale them down for our purposes.

fg and I still have an ongoing Blood Bowl league; Blood Bowl is always a load of fun and an easy option when fg and I are the only players available for a session.

I have also ordered the Black Powder rules and their first Peninsular War supplement, and if Martin and I like them we might be doing some 15mm Napoleonic gaming next year. For this period we have enough French and allies and British and allies painted, but Age of Eagles, our current set, demands too much prep time in the cutting and pasting of the unit labels, and we haven't got as much mileage out of the figures and rules as we have hoped for - perhaps the more "fun" nature of BP is what we need.

One other period I might buy some figures for is our Macedonian War project - the new War & Empire figures may be released for general sale early next year, so I might just get a couple of packs of figures to supplement my Pergamene army.

One thing I am really looking forward to is the release of Frostgrave. Unlike with OGAM, fg and I were playtesters for the rules and so we *know* we like the rules. I hope Frostgrave will fill the niche of the "small warband" fantasy skirmish game which we hoped OGAM would have done - it certainly will be easy for everyone in the group to get into since we already have many fantasy and medieval armies in 28mm to use. The only hard parts for me for this project will be waiting for the rules to be released (hopefully Osprey's acquisition by Bloomsbury will not change the released schedule) and deciding which figures to use for my warband.

A couple of other side projects which may also happen are gladiators and Bronze Age heroic warfare. While we haven't actually found a set of gladiator rules we like, fg is interested in the period and we already have several figures painted, so when we do find one it will be easy to start.

Bronze Age heroic warfare is something I have been meaning to get into, and to that end I have bought several Redoubt Trojan War figures. Perhaps they can be the focus of my painting in the new year.

Well, that's the plan. Let's revisit this post at the end of the next year and see how far off the mark we are!