2022 Retrospective

Happy New Year to my reader. Last year was a year of two halves. It started well but finished very badly on a personal level. We're still dealing with the fallout of that second part and it definitely affected life generally, although I still found time to game. I hope this year goes better and that you have a good year too.

Last Year

As is traditional now, it is time to take stock of my gaming over the past year, and to consider what the next year may bring. As is also traditional, the latter will be wrong and I shall do something completely different and unexpected purely on a whim.

So, here is the list of all the games I have played over 2022, listed from most plays to fewest. To make the table easier to read, I have deleted the entries for the expansion packs to games so that only the core set shows.

Game	Qty
Warfighter: The Tactical Special Forces Card Game	33
Dungeons & Dragons: Temple of Elemental Evil Board Game	16
Thunderbolt Apache Leader	10
Five Leagues From The Borderlands: 3rd Edition	7
Warfighter: The WWII Tactical Combat Card Game	7
Calico	6
Scythe	6
Wingspan	3
Command Decision: Test of Battle	2
Firefly: The Game	2
Hnefatafl	2
Root	2
Scarlet Heroes	2
Warriors of the Four Circles	2
Fistful of Lead: Core Rulebook	1
Warfighter Shadow War: The Modern Night Combat Card Game	1

 

As you will quickly notice, Warfighter has the most plays with the modern version scoring 33 games and the WWII version scoring 7, while the Shadow War version only saw 1 play. Still, that is 41 plays for the whole system. Not bad. I have really enjoyed playing Warfighter, and found it even more appealing once I had bought hardcopy of it rather than playing on VASSAL. VASSAL is great for a quick fix of gaming but I work on a computer screen all day and need to give my eyes a break when away from work. You can read AARs and my thoughts about the game on the blog.

Temple of Elemental Evil scored the second largest number of plays. I played the campaign all the way through and enjoyed it. There were parts of the game that irked me a bit but overall it was a fun way to play D&D. Unfortunately, I did not write it up. One of the reasons I got this game was for the tiles and figures. I already have the tiles and figures from Gloomhaven and I thought I could combine the two to make up some dungeon-crawling figure games. I still could, but I think that plan has gone by the wayside now. I note that in last year's retrospective, I stated this intention and I really have to laugh at my optimism and ability to stay focused on my goals.

Thunderbolt/Apache Leader had a few more outings. 10 this year versus 11 last year. It's a good game and is likely to see the table again next year when the mood takes me, but it is not really a game for sustained play. I am more likely to pick a campaign, play it and then put the game away again for another year.

Five Leagues from the Borderlands is doing well so far thanks to me getting my 15mm figures out to join me in Norway. This is the main reason that the figures and tiles from Gloomhaven and Temple of Elemental Evil have not been brought into play. The 15mm figures are quicker to paint and cheaper so my 15mm fantasy set is expanding at a rate that a 28mm fantasy collection would not, unless I opted for paper figures, as I did with Warriors of the Four Circles. I may start using paper miniatures for some of the rarer monsters in Five Leagues, but I plan to use normal figures for the whole game in the end.

Related to my 15mm fantasy gaming, the entry in the table for Fistful of Lead actually represents Fistful of Lead Fantasy, not the Core Rulebook, but the former does not exist on BGG yet. FFoL Fantasy is the only wargame I have played against an opponent this year. The poor, long-suffering Steve met up with me to meet his doom twice this year and both times we played FFoL Fantasy. The game really suits our style and fits well with the time and space we usually have to spare for a game on my rare trips back to the UK. I find that playing it at 2/3 scale on a 2'x2' board is perfect for us.

Along with 2 solo games of Command Decision, one of which got written up, that covers it for wargaming this year.

On the miscellaneous other boardgames front, I feel that I have forgotten or not bothered to record all the games of Root and Wingspan that I have played using the Steam app. One of my colleagues has both and is especially keen on Root, so we got her partner involved and played a few asynchronous (effectively PBEM) games. Good fun was had all round, and I have played a lot of games of both agains the AI on Steam too in addition to playing Scythe solo several times.

Calico was a surprise hit with my wife. She is not a gamer, but the theme and the pattern matching attracted her, so it got a few outings. She was also keen to try Hnefatafl which she bought me for Christmas last year, but that did not engage her as much.

On the roleplaying front, the solo adventures of Broneslav Torenescu have continued and are massively underrepresented on the table. I just never logged all the plays, but you can catch up on his adventures on the blog. I got stuck trying to map the next part of his adventure in Campaign Cartographer 3 back about the time he created a whirlpool of death in the streets and need to return to it. Once I have worked out how best to do the thing, he will return.

Looking Back at Last Year's Retrospective

Yeah, I never achieved what I said I was going to do. No matter. I got lots of good games in just the same.

Actually, it is not all bad. As noted last year, I made the decision to be less fussy with my terrain, and I have managed to transition to 2D printed terrain quite well thanks to really engaging with Five Leagues from the Borderlands. I have plans for more, easy terrain to expand my gaming options there, and hope to continue the Five Leagues campaign while it still has impetus. This has also encouraged me to return to painting figures, so that is pretty good.

I successfully continued Broneslav's adventures for two thirds of 2022, which is pretty good going by my standards. I'll take that as achieving the stated goal too.

With 103 logged game plays, and several more not logger, 2022 was a good year for gaming.

Looking Forward to 2023

For 2023, I would just like to maintain the impetus I have built up. That means carrying on the Five Leagues campaign, and returning to Broneslav's Basic D&D adventures to finish the B-series modules that I have been working on. Taking a break after the B-Series before starting the X-series would be ok. I could spend a bit of  time working on the maps during that break before starting the new adventures.

I would still like to get The Dark Valley and/or War Without Mercy onto the games table, despite failing in 2022. I would also like to play more Warfighter: Shadow War to really get to grips with it. These can be ongoing goals.

Finally, I hope to take more figures back to Norway to paint and get them painted. I'm going to focus on the 15mm fantasy for this because they are easy enough to paint and can be used with various rules sets. The focus will definitely be on Five Leagues from the Borderlands, but it would be great if I could play Rangers of Shadow Deep more too. I guess that will depend upon when the Five Leagues campaign reaches a natural conclusion rather than swapping between the two.

There are other aspects of my gaming that I would really like to do, but I am not sure it is realistic to plan to do anything with them this year. I simply do not have the time for everything, and being split between two countries makes it harder to chop and change between projects. This last is actually a Good Thing(tm) but is still frustrating. That said, the extension of my role for another five years does mean that I have a better excuse to ship more things out, providing that my wife does not think this means I am permanently moving out!

So, here's hoping I achieve at least some of this and that you manage to achieve your own goals for the year, and, hey ...

A retrospective on 2021

 It's been a while since I felt it worthwhile writing a retrospective on my gaming year. The last time I wrote one was in 2017 and I . This year has been different though. I've managed to play a fair bit, although all of it was solo. The reason for this is that I moved to Norway to work in the middle of 2020 and have spent a large part of the last 18 months working from home thanks to the pandemic. The pandemic has meant that I have not sought out other gamers, and have focused largely on games that are designed for solo play or that have a solo mode. This has largely meant boardgames, because the pandemic has also meant that moving all my lead and paints to Norway has not been a practical option yet. We'll have to see what happens with my contract at the end of the current project to see if it is worth making the effort, assuming that travel becomes easier again in the future.

2021:

So, on to the games. I've copied and pasted the table below from BoardGameGeek. The numbers are the number of sessions of each game I played.

Game	Qty
Gloomhaven	122
Beneath the Med: Regia Marina at Sea 1940-1943	11
Thunderbolt Apache Leader	11
RAF: The Battle of Britain 1940	9
Field Commander: Rommel	7
Heroes of Telemark: Commando Raids in Norway, 1942-43	6
BattleTech: Beginner Box	3
Vikings: Scourge of the North	3
Rangers of Shadow Deep	2
Fistful of Lead: Starfighters!	1
Five Parsecs From Home: Solo Adventure Wargaming	1
Space Empires: 4X	1
Terraforming Mars	1

As you can see, Gloomhaven has occupied a massive amount of my time with 122 sessions this year and I wrote about it earlier this year. Each session is one scenario or one attempt at a scenario in the cases where I lost miserably. I have loved this game despite carrying it home from the games shop almost killing me. I have plans to use the components from it for other games, and I may well return and try the campaign again following the paths I did not take this time around.

Gloomhaven

Beneath the Med and Thunderbolt/Apache Leader each occupied 11 sessions. In the former case, I played through one campaign to the point where my sub was sunk and my captain died. I pushed my luck too far! I need to try this one again and be a bit more careful. It's an interesting game, fairly repetitive and much of the action happens in your head, but I think that the stories it encourages you to tell yourself are a large part of the fun. Thunderbolt/Apache Leader saw me play two short campaigns. It's a lightweight game with interesting decision making that feels a lot like watching Airwolf. Well, to me it does anyway and the theme tune plays in my head each time I play. I need to write more on each of these games later, so will try to write up each as I play the next campaign.

I finally bought the update of RAF this year. As you would expect, it is a game about the Battle of Britain. You manage fighter command and must allocate resources to the defence of England in 1940 to prevent the Axis forces from bombing the country into submission. I successfully completed this mission. One interesting aspect of the update is that there are options for taking charge of the Luftwaffe and also for playing this as a two-player game. I wrote up my thoughts on RAF earlier in the year.

RAF

Field Commander: Rommel saw me fighting my way to victory as Rommel in France in 1940 and in the Western Desert. For some reason I have never written this game up, but I really should. It's an interesting game, but perhaps not my top choice for pulling off the shelf. I think I need to be in the right mood for it.

I wrote about my experience with Heroes of Telemark earlier in the year so I shall not repeat myself on that.

Heroes of Telemark

I had a sudden urge to play big stompy mechs, for no earthly reason that I can fathom, so I bought the Battletech: Beginner Box and Battletech boxed sets this year. I've played all the scenarios in the beginner box, but not the full fat versions yet. My thinking was that I could use the mechs in the boxed sets and the standees as figures for games of Horizon Wars and 5150 No Quarter - Mecha Combat, as well as actually playing Battletech. I hope to organise myself properly to do that in 2022. We shall see ...

Finally, for the boardgames, I played a session each of Space Empires: 4X and Terraforming Mars. Both are fun, and I want to play them more in 2022.

Miniatures gaming has been much thinner on the ground this year. My miniatures remain in the UK, as I noted before, so I have only played miniatures games while in the UK. With travel being difficult, I only got back last Christmas and in the middle of the summer. And, when in the UK, my time is limited, so games tend not to get played. I played the first two missions from Rangers of Shadow Deep, flew a test space fighter mission in Fistful of Lead: Starfighters, and played one mission of Five Parsecs from Home. These are all games I would like to see on my table more, but I really need to sort my living  and work arrangements out properly so I have my stuff in the right place to take advantage of them.

Five Parsecs from Home

One thing that does not show on BGG because it is not listed there is the Scarlet Heroes RPG. I've returned to my solo campaign after a significant break and have continued from where I left off. Running it and writing it up is a fun way to fill the odd half hour. I also enjoy creating the maps in CC3+, although one of the reasons the campaign foundered previously was precisely because I found the map-making burdensome. I'm not sure what has changed, but it just seems to go together more easily now. I'm scheduling weekly posts for it, so that I can take a short break if I need to without the flow of the game being interrupted. This campaign is a massive hit of nostalgia, being set in the Basic D&D world of Mystara.

Scarlet Heroes

All in all, this has been a good year for gaming. I am very pleased that I have played each of my new games at least once, and have had good use out of several of them. That is a novelty!

2022:

For 2022, I would like to try to fit in more miniatures games but know that will be difficult unless I can arrange to move figures and terrain to Norway. I fear this will be more complicated with the rules that will apply to UK/EU/Norway goods transport from 2022, and I am wary of getting hit for import duties for moving my own stuff across borders. Also, the cost of postage puts me off sending some figures by mail and my luggage for the return is already too heavy, so that is not a realistic option. Yes, I am a cheapskate! What do you expect from someone brought up in Scotland and Yorkshire? This would all be a lot easier if the Newcastle-Stavanger ferry were still running. Despite it being cancelled in 2008, long before my move to Norway was on the horizon, I still feel this as a personal affront! We'll have to see what I can organise.

A simpler miniatures option at this stage is to use the Battletech stuff for a selection of mecha games, so there is a good chance that will happen. Hurlbat's reprint of Micro Ancients offers another option for miniatures style games, possibly using the rules that come with them, or perhaps Neil Thomas' One Hour Wargames.

Having received the Fantasy Fistful of Lead hardback for Christmas, I shall aim to use the Gloomhaven miniatures and tiles for some FFoL dungeon bashing. I have a bunch of other skirmish games that they might be useful for too. I'll have to see how I fare with FFoL first.

Fantasy Fistful of Lead Collected Edition

Related to these miniatures games, I am going to have to be less fussy about terrain and table. The Battletech maps will do nicely for mecha games, so it might be worth getting a few more of those, but I am going to have to be less fussy about terrain, table and miniatures. I should try printing out 2D terrain to make a readily portable terrain set that can be stored easily. Printable standees are also an option worth exploring, especially for the disposable baddies in my games. I am also tempted to create battle mats in CC3+ and print those out. I have long thought that it would be fun to create 18th-century style maps to play Seven Years War games on, and that idea could be extended to other periods and genres. 

On the boardgame front, I want to get The Dark Valley and War Without Mercy onto the table. Both deal with the Russian front in WW2. The Dark Valley has a chit draw mechanism that should make solo play easier. War Without Mercy is a fairly standard game so I shall just have to play it two-handed and try to be impartial or use dice rolls to determine how high command prioritises its attacks for each side. I am tempted to draw on Charles Stewart Grant's Programmed Wargames Scenarios for ideas on how to deal with this. Nothing too complicated, but at least it should inject some chaos into the proceedings.

Beyond these, I shall aim to play the various games I have more, rather than looking to buy new games. And I plan to continue the solo RPG. I've bought the D&D Rules Cyclopedia hardback and GAZ 1 The Grand Duchy of Karameikos softback from WargameVault to use with the RPG, having previously only had digital versions of both. It's just a shame I cannot get the Karameikos poster map easily.

So, that is the plan for 2022. It is fairly open with just a few specific games I would like to play, and as much of a moratorium as possible on buying new stuff. Hopefully, I shall be enthused enough to write a retrospective next year and see how well I have achieved my aims.

2017 Retrospective

It has not been a good year for gaming or for blogging. I have not lifted a paint brush in anger at all this year, which is disappointing after last year's successes. I have bought no new figures (this may well be a good thing!). I have not really engaged with gaming at all this year. Certainly no new plans were mooted or initiated and I found little inspiration anywhere. I fear I am suffering from wargaming ennui.

Picture from http://existentialcomics.com/

On the plus side, I managed to get in a few board games, but no figure games. The games I played were:

• Advanced Squad Leader (4 games)
• Arcadia Quest: Inferno (1 game)
• Fire and Axe: A Viking Saga (1 game)
• Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King (1 game)
• Border War: Angola Raiders (1 game)

This amounts to 8 separate gaming sessions, although the solo session of Border War: Angola Raiders only lasted about half an hour, so I'm not sure it really counts.

I returned from Ireland at the beginning of this year and moved to Nottingham which has hindered my gaming just as much as living in Ireland did. My regular figure-gaming buddy Steve does not often have Saturdays free, so the two of us managed to meet twice in the whole year, playing Arcadia Quest: Inferno and Super Dungeon Explore. Both games are similar concepts but different executions, and both are very enjoyable to play. AQ:I takes less time to play out while SDE really requires a longer session to finish.

Border War: Angola Raiders is a solo game. It's cheap and cheerful, but I found it a bit random in the game I played. When playing solo, I prefer to have a solid system to beat.

The four games of ASL were good. I have a keen ASL buddy Mal who finds it easier to play on a Saturday, so we managed to organise a few sessions. The scenarios we played were Russians versus Finns and Swedish volunteers in Finland. They were all enjoyable romps through the snow and extreme winter. It's just a shame that we could not organise more sessions.

I managed one game at the board games cafe in Nottingham where I work, but getting away from work in the evenings has proven to be particularly hard this year so gaming after work has not really been on the cards. Who knew that curating an exhibition about Vikings and sorting out a full public engagement programme would require such regular long hours?

Although I played no games in the Talomir Tales campaign this year, I did umpire it to a conclusion, so there was that to be pleased with. The campaign began in early 2009 as a vehicle for our fantasy gaming, and expanded to include half of the continent of Talomir. I am very happy that it lasted for 8 years and actually reached a proper conclusion.

So, that's my 2017. I have had too much work to do, and it has left me no energy for relaxing with a good game. I wonder if reducing the Unpainted Lead Pile (ULP) by just getting rid of most of it might not leave me more enthused to paint, but it is hard to decide what to focus on when I have such a butterfly mind, and time is so limited at the moment that I don't really feel I can sit down and sort through all my stuff yet.

For 2018, I would like to do that sorting. Hopefully work will not occupy so much of my time and I can sit down and have a guilt-free moment to sort out my figures properly. A good sort out and tidy up should put me in a better frame of mind for dealing with the ULP and actually returning to painting. I need to find something that will give me a quick fix, as it were, something easy to complete so that I see results before ennui sets in once more.

In terms of gaming, I hope to play more ASL. We are planning to start the big Red Barricades campaign again, so I hope to schedule monthly ASL sessions to get some good progress on that.

Other games/genres I would like to play this year are (in no particular order):

• 6mm Command Decision: Test of Battle
• 15mm science fiction 
• 6mm Great Northern War
• 6mm and 15mm Viking Age

I have armies for all of these, so they require little or no additional work on my part, which is a good thing given how little spare time I have. Actually playing them might encourage me to sit down and continue work on the remaining elements of my armies for these periods/rules.

One other thing I would like to work on is my terrain. I feel like I have too little terrain, and I particularly want to develop my 15mm sci-fi setting with new terrain to fight over. All those Mad Mecha Guy buildings won't paint themselves, you know.

Progress! January target met!!!

Yes, I have been making progress. I painted the last of the January target figures today. This means that I have painted two stands of knights, six or billmen and eight of longbowmen this month (= 456 figures). Hooray! On a whim I also undercoated four stands of knights this morning and got them painted this evening (= 132 more figures). That puts me ahead of target. The last of the figures are still drying and all figures are gluing to bases as I type, but photos will follow in due course. I now need to prep and undercoat the February batch in readiness for the task ahead of me next month. Oh, and add another few thousand words to my thesis before the end of the month. Now, where's the coffee?

2010 passes, 2011 begins

Things have been rather quiet on here this past year. I have posted some reports but seem to have been more focused on the Talomir Tales and Rather Large Towton Project blogs instead. Together with trying to actually write my thesis and starting teaching at the university, these time-sinks have occupied most of my time.

Looking at my painting log, I don't seem to have managed nearly as much as I did last year, where really should have made better progress on the Towton material. We shall be putting on the Towton game at Salute in April and still need to build the terrain for it. I also have rather a lot of figures to paint while still staying on course for handing in my thesis at the end of this year or very early next year. Sounds like rather a tall order to me. What it does mean is that I need to focus my efforts solely on painting figures for Towton and not to get distracted by any shiny new things that I happen upon or old projects that take my fancy along the way. Perhaps I should hire a time management expert to monitor my every move! One problem I feel that this year has suffered from is a lack of focus. I have known that the Towton project needs to be done and the rate at which I need to paint it. However, I have not really set myself any proper targets and deadlines. I think I should do this and allocate time to the project out of my meagre spare time allowance. This should keep me focused. I also think that this would be a good way to keep myself on track with the lead mountain after Towton is up and running. So, expect to see a return to the monthly project system this year.

Talomir Tales is a time-sink in a different way. The whole campaign is just fun and I want to spend a lot of time on it because of this. However, in the first quarter of 2011, I really need to focus on Towton, which means that all games in the campaign should only involve figures I already have painted, or I shall (shudder!) have to use them unpainted/ part-painted. I hate doing that and could never do it for character figures. I suppose it is just ok for the NPC enemies if I do not have time to paint them.

So, where does that leave me in terms of resolutions?

1. I shall get the Towton figures painted by the end of March.
2. I shall get the Towton terrain built by the end of March.
3. I shall return to the monthly project system.

With this in mind, I can map out the first quarter with the figures I need to paint for Towton:
January
1. Sir Alexander Hody's contingent (2 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).
2. Holland's contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).

February
1. Sir Lionel Welles' contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).
2. Sir Richard Welles' contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).

March
1. Lord Grey's contingent (2 stands knights, 4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).
2. Viscount Beaumont's contingent (4 stands billmen, 4 stands archers).

Right, better get myself organised for this. Once Towton is done, I can look forward to a variety of other projects, as well as more boardgaming. Some of the options for this year are:

* 15mm post-apocalypse (possibly with zombies and probably with a 70s theme)
* More 6mm 18th century (possibly with a lacepunk twist)
* 15mm sci-fi (Imperial Commander and 5150: First Contact)
* Lots more Talomir Tales gaming and new armies for the campaign
* Possibly finally getting my 15mm Basic Impetus armies started
* Painting my 15mm Qin Chinese army for FoG/DBA
* 6mm WW2 using Blitzkrieg Commander and/or Command Decision
* Aeronef and Land Ironclads

So much to do, so little time!

What's it all about, Alfie?

M'buddy, Steve, and I are easily led. We both suffer from the Ooh Shiny Complex. This is when your mind alights butterfly-like on a new project and you instantly take it to heart. It is shiny and new, so you want to do it immediately. All the old projects are forgotten, possibly even discarded, in the excitement of this shiny new one. Unfortunately, newer, shinier projects appear with depressing regularity. The internet makes this worse because it gives you access to so many obscure ranges that are appealing, but which you would never have discovered if the internet were not there. A typical conversation over the gaming table might go like this:

Me: "Hey, Steve, you know what would be really cool?"
Steve: "No, what?"
Me: “What would be cool would be gaming the Gran Chaco War in 1:39 scale.”
Steve: “Hey yeah, that’s a great idea! We could even have little miniature guinea pigs as messengers.”

Two hours later, the credit cards have taken a hammering and we have bought a vast number of new figures. We begin painting the new figures with great gusto for a week or two, but then at the next gaming session …

Steve: “Hey, Ruarigh, I have had a great idea.”
Me: “Oh yeah, what’s that?”
Steve: “Let’s do a game based on a lost tribe of pygmy Vikings in central Australasia.”
Me: “Hey, that’s brilliant. We can convert CheapMiniatures™ Dwarves to use as the Vikings, but we shall also need an albino U-Boat Crew and some wheels on the U-Boat so that they can take it overland.”
Steve: "Yeah, and we need a Doug McClure figure."

Two hours later the story begins to repeat itself. The miniature guinea pigs lovingly crafted from fur left behind by my cat now languish in the drawer beside the half-painted Bolivian army. No doubt the pygmy Vikings will go the way of all lead and find their way into the storage in the attic. The story repeats ad nauseam like the remains of last Christmas' turkey. But then suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, Dave over at A Year of Frugal Gaming posted about his quest to reduce his lead mountain on TMP and on his blog. I saw in his quest one that parallels my own needs. Times are hard (well maybe not that hard but the old wargaming budget is diminishing rapidly) and the lead mountain needs scaling. Time to cut back, methinks.

Me: "Hey, Steve, I have had a great idea. See, there is this guy, Dave, and he is blogging about his attempts to buy less, play more and paint more. Why don't we try something similar?"
Steve: "That's a great idea. How are we going to do this?"

You see, this idea, even though it does not involve buying figures, is a shiny new idea. Therefore we both became immediately attached to it. Our goals and New Year's Resolutions are:

1. To spend less on figures in 2009;
2. To paint more of the lead we already own; and
3. To play games using our newly painted lead

Therefore, we are resolved to try to complete one pre-existing project per month over the course of 2009. Each month we shall agree one project to complete for that month. At the beginning of the month we shall announce what we propose to do for that month. Each project will be chosen with a view to being achievable and realistic. I do not have much time for painting and the projects must take this into account.
Our first game of the following month will use the newly painted figures and preferably a rules set that we have not used before. We shall post a battle report for the battle on the blog and get on with painting the next project. Hopefully, by posting our aims on a blog, the threat of public humiliation will spur us on to complete each project and reduce the lead mountains. I look forward to seeing how it all works out and if we can sustain the effort required. Thus begins Mission: Ooh Shiny.