2016 in review

Another year done: largely a good one for me on the hobby front. Definite highlight: running my first substantial campaign. The Sinastras IV campaign saw eleven games, with some truly memorable ones among them: last stands, 'dungeon' crawls, and ultimately a grand betrayal.

Another highlight was running Pulp Alley at the revived Briscon. I do enjoy showing off the game and the stuff that I work on.

Pulp Alley was, once again, the most played game for me. Twenty-six games, playing 1930s pulp, gothic sci fi, Cthulhu, superheroes and even Wars of the Roses!

There wasn't a lot else: four games of To the Strongest and two games of Force on Force.

Blogging was up and down this year: the motivation really lagged in the second half of the year. But an average of one post a week is fairly solid.

Painting: least to most.

A couple of Battlefront Germans.

A couple of Grumpy Indonesians (for To the Strongest).

Three Khurasan Vikings (To the Strongest again).

A trio of Pulp Figures - the Nazis are coming!

An array of bits for medieval horror.

I had grand ideas for this using Pulp Alley, but it never really got off the ground. Bought much more than I painted. However, I picked up many Mordheim sculpts that I have loved and wanted for a long time!

Perry Wars of the Roses.

And, once more, a solid array of sci fi bits.

Obviously driven by the needs of the campaign, but more and more, this is what I enjoy doing.

And the pile of shame: stuff purchased but not painted.

Definitely not one of the highlights of 2016. I bought into a couple of new projects (Wars of the Roses and Mordheim-ish stuff), plus the usual ooh-shiny syndrome, mainly for sci fi. If I can resist the lure of new projects next year, maybe I'll have a chance of painting more than I purchase.

What's in store for 2017? As always, we shall wait and see. Ideas at the moment:

• It looks like we could be doing a Pulp Alley Wars of the Roses campaign at the club, so expect to see more of this.
• A couple of mates are talking a 15mm Normandy campaign (thus the two Germans above).
• The sci fi will definitely keep happening - so many miniatures to paint and ideas bubbling away!
• I painted quite a bit of Russian Civil War in 2014, but it never really got traction. The main issue, I think, was rules. Tried Red Actions, which are good rules, but a bit slow-moving for what I'm looking for. But I picked up Osprey's The Men Who Would Be Kings, thinking it might be adaptable. A month later, I found someone else on the web who'd done exactly the same thing, so this might have some legs!

Well, if you've read that far, happy new year!