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!

2015 in review

So that's 2015. One hundred and one painted miniatures (plus scenery). Nineteen games. Sixty four blog posts. I started posting to the blog New Year's Day, and I'm happy I'm still at it.

Here's the painted stuff: smallest to largest amount.

One solitary warrior monk (Northstar).

Two Gripping Beast knights.

Vikings (Khurasan Miniatures).

Three figures, a hill and ocean views for Pulp Alley.

A stand of Napoleonic Austrians (AB).

A unit of byzantine kavallarioi (Old Glory).

Some FIW Provincials (Galloping Major).

Reds for the Russian Civil War (Peter Pig).

And a decent array of goodies for Pulp 40k!

And here's the pile of shame - purchased but not painted for the year. I'd really like this to be a lot smaller next year.

2015 was, like 2014, the year of Pulp Alley in terms of games played.

• Pulp Alley - fourteen games
• Red Actions - two
• Force on Force - one
• Lion Rampant - one
• Muskets & Tomahawks - one

2016? I expect to see a lot more Pulp Alley - painting and playing. I think I'll have a couple of Pulp 40k campaigns on the go, and it's an easy game to pull out at the club as well. Besides that, I'll see what the kids end up wanting to play - they do tend to hop from one thing to another.

Happy new year to you all!

Vikings!

I've begun rebasing some 15mm Vikings. I painted these for Saga and individually based them at the time. However, I find individually based figures a bit fiddly for 15mm, so I'm moving to element bases.

They won't be much use for Saga anymore, but they will work for Lion Rampant (really, it's the fantasy version that I'm most excited about - the upcoming Dragon Rampant). 'Lion' is not as picky about getting figures into combat - if the unit fights, the whole unit fights. I will need to use casualty markers, but it will only ever be two per unit and then you take off a stand. The other nice thing is that units drop in Combat ability once they're reduced to half strength - that translates neatly to losing one or two stands depending on the size of the unit.

I reckon that 15mm is the ideal scale for these kinds of games. Because the figures don't fight as individuals, its OK that they don't have the personality of 28mm figures. Besides, they're cheaper, quicker to paint, and don't takes as much room for a game (all important considerations for me).

The Vikings, by the way, are from Khurasan Miniatures.

Little Lion

I climbed aboard the Lion Rampant bandwagon on the weekend. 15mm Normans vs Anglo-Danes. The Anglo Danes were attempting to escort a convoy of wagons across the table. The Normans were aiming to prevent them.

The Anglo Danes got off to a terrible start with his activation rolls, enabling the Normans to well and truly close the noose around them.

Norman bidowers harassing the wagons.

Norman knights moving in.

One of the few bright spots for the Anglo Danes. The
outnumbered warlord beats off a charge of knights.

Normans from Khurasan miniatures and Anglo Danes from Khurasan and Splintered Light.