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 ...