2017 In Review
Not a good year for blogging, I only managed three posts, But I did get quite a lot accomplished otherwise and there are a few blog posts I still want to write based on what I did during the year. I’m fairly happy with the wargaming activities I managed during 2017.
Painting
I completed a few of my declared plans for 2017, mainly those relating to WWII and I Ain’t Been Shot Mum. I expanded my collections of 10mm models for France 1940, rounding out my Germans and putting together a fairly large force of French, and my 6mm forces for North West Europe in 1944-45 were reinforced with anti-tank and recce assets. I also managed a few supports for my 15mm Chain of Command Germans.
My Mutineer forces for Sharp Practice are now usable, but I didn’t get anything done about providing them with any opponents, while the British forces I planned for Sharp Practice in the Peninsular War remain unpainted, though
Fantasy: I painted a few figures to reinforce my Undead army for Dragon Rampant and had some more fun painting fantasy figures when I got side-tracked by Games Workshop’s Shadespire game in the autumn.
Another unplanned diversion came from AK47 Republic, a game I played an awful lot back in the early 2000s. I was invited to play in a big multi-player game down the road in Prestonpans and the whole experience just reminded me just how much I like that game. I got all enthused and rebased hundreds of the troops that have been lying unused for about twelve years from squares to circles and painted up some more tanks, five T34s and five T55s, all from the Plastic Soldier Company. I now have enough troops to do any two forces for the game, with almost all of their reinforcement options.
I also updated the old Ztum-Setum website that I made for the AK47 Republic campaign we ran at the South East Scotland Wargames Club and I transferred it all over to the AK47 Ztum-Setum blog on WordPress.
A final diversion came at the end of the year when I got all excited by the new Gaslands game from Osprey. I spent half of December and most of the Christmas holidays having huge amounts of fun converting Hotwheels and Matchbox cars for this Mad Max inspired car combat game.
Overall it was a good year for painting and I got my highest ever score, 2057, in the TFL Painting Challenge run by Robert Avery of the Vis Lardica website. You can see most of the painting I got done during the year on my Gallery page for the challenge, though a few of my pictures seem to have gone missing in action.
Scenery
I managed to put together a Spanish village using the rather nice building from Charlie Foxtrot’s Pantile range, a couple of 6mm houses for IABSM and some scenery for Gaslands. Still needing sstuff for my 10mm WWII stuff and I still don’t have enough 15mm bocage.
Games
I made my target of averaging at least one gaming session a week and had 56 of them during the year, some of these involved more than one game. Games played and refereed were as follows.
- To the Strongest (7)
- Sharp Practice (5 played, 2 refereed)
- What a Tanker (6)
- AK47 Republic (5)
- I Ain’t Been Shot Mum (2 played, 3 refereed)
- Shadespire (5)
- Battlegroup Panzergrenadier (4)
- Chain of Command (1 played, 2 refereed)
- Dragon Rampant (2)
- Men Who Would be Kings (2)
- Soldiers of God (2)
- Spectre Operations (2)
- WWI Chain of Command (2 refereed)
- Check Your Six WWI (1)
- Et Sans Resultat (1)
- Frostgrave (1)
- Gaslands (1)
Funny to see To the Strongest at the top of that list as I don’t have any models for it. But there’s plenty of people at the club who do and I’ve been playing with their toys (thanks Jack). To the Strongest is quick and easy to play and it’s a great deal of fun. An excellent game for a club night which doesn’t need much preparation.
That’s a bit of a recurring theme for the year, I had a fairly busy time at work and didn’t have much energy for scenario creation. Games which can be played with minimal preparation have their uses and I’ve played a lot of them during the year, To the Strongest (7 games), What a Tanker (6 games) , AK47 Republic (5 games) and Dragon Rampant (2 games) are all in that category.
Events
I ran Deep Fried Lard for the fifth year in a row and I was in in charge of arranging demonstration games for the South East Scotland Wargames Clubs Claymore 2017. A quiet year for shows, all UI attended was Carronade, Claymore and Targe. No trip to Crisis in Antwerp, which I missed greatly.
Misc
Wrote an article for the TooFatLardies Summer Special and did some proofreading for IABSM campaign packs.