Review of 2019

Gaming

A fairly busy year in which I took part in 68 gaming sessions.

• Test of Honour (10 played, 6 refereed)
• Chain of Command (10 played, 2 refereed)
• Kings of War (9)
• Sharp Practice (6 played, 2 refereed)
• Dux Britanniarum (3 played, 1 refereed)
• Mortal Gods (3)
• The Men Who Would Be Kings (3)
• To the Strongest (3)
• Et Sans Resultat (2)
• IABSM (2)
• Soldiers of God (2)
• Dux Britanniarum Troy (1)
• Gaslands (1)
• Kill Team (1)
• Warcry (1)

Hit game of the year was Test of Honour, which I came across somewhere on the Internet in July.  I liked the look of the game and  spent some time reading and watching videos about the game before  getting my big box of Samurai down from the top shelf where they’ve been living for a long time.    I’ve had a collection Dixon Miniatures Samurai which I’ve built up over 30 years and I was ready to try out the game as soon as I got the rules.  After the first game I was hooked and since then I’ve spruced up my old troops and created two forces with distinct visual identities, which can be used as opponents or fight together on the same side.   I’ve also been putting together figures to make up a force which can be used as Bandits or Wako.

Painting

A busy year for painting and I managed my highest score ever, 2,220 points, in the TooFatLardies Painting Challenge run by Bob Avery at Vis Lardica.     But I failed spectacularly with most of my plans for specific projects.

My  biggest success was in getting forces together for  15mm Blitzkrieg French and Germans for Chain of Command.   I painted over 200 figures and 26 vehicles and have now got together enough models to give me an extensive choice of forces for CoC and a few choices for Big CoC.   For the French I can put together any single platoon listed in the CoC Blitzkrieg supplement, with the exception of a cavalry platoon for which I just can’t find the figures in 15mm.  For the Germans I can muster at least on of every type of platoon from the front line divisions, but I can’t do Fallschirmjager or troops from the less well equipped divisions from the later waves.  I also have a fairly extensive collection of armour for both sides.   Much of  this painting was aimed at getting together forces for a game of Big CoC which I ran  in late September at the 100 Years of War event in Falkirk.   Another few tanks and I’ll be calling this project complete, at least for the present (I quite fancy doing some British).

I also painted rather a lot of fantasy figures during the year, the vast majority of them being skeletons or other undead types.  Most of these will be used in my Kings of War Undead Army which is getting quite large.

PICTURE OF KINGS OF WAR UNDEAD

There was also a Legions of Nagash warband so I can play Warcry with my son.

My favourite undead this year  are probably these skeletons from Wargames Atlantic which I just had to have as soon as I saw them.   I’ll be using these with the Mythic supplement for Mortal Gods, currently on a Kickstarter run by Footsore Miniatures.

I blame the film, Jason and the Argonauts and the splendid stop motion animation of  Ray Harryhausen,.  That film made a huge impression on me when I saw it at the age of seven.

 Scenery

My big effort on the scenery front for 2019 was to get some scenery done for Test of Honour.  I’m trying to get together two tables, one a Shinto shrine complex and the other a Mountain Village.  You can see some of what I’ve done below and there’s more elsewhere on this blog.

Tabletop of Cover

Back in 2018 I put together this set of scenery which I called Transportable Terrain, a group of 28mm buildings 2 or three stories high that could be taken apart to fit in a 4L Really useful Box.

I’ve now got most of the buildings I want to do finished, but I want to do some more on scatter terrain, a path for the shrine complex, and things like paddy fields and vegetable plots for the village.

I showed these to my mate Michael Scott of Supreme Littleness Design and suggested this concept would make the basis of a good produce he could produce in mdf.  Well he’s refined the idea and done the detailed design work and I’m proud to say that his version is now on sale by 4Ground Publishing as  a “Tabletop of Cover”.  A bargain at £47 for enough terrain for a 4’ x 4’ table.   I’ve got a set which is pictured below.