Goodbye 2018

Another year, another squillion miniatures have passed through my hands. Some of them have stuck around. The lead pile has actually decreased (slightly) as I have clarified what projects I want to work on.
As you can see by my sidebar total, I haven't exactly set the world on fire with my painting total this year. And most of that was in November and December!

Italian Stallions

Italian 15mm was the major part of the beginning of the year. I swore that I would never paint 15mm again several years ago but the temptation of Battlegroup wafted past me by Man Cave Paul and Dux was too strong to resist. I bought most of my army pre-painted but as always happens, I just needed a couple more miniatures...
Needless to say, my man cave is now awash with tiny Italians.
Later in the year I decided it was time to finally bite the bullet and build some Napoleonic forces. encouraged by excellent games of General D'Armee with the Carpenter men and Sharpe Practice with Paul, Dave, Alan, Phill, Aled and especially Gavin.
As mentioned in a previous blog I took it as an experiment, used three different techniques and ended up with a process and a result I am happy with.
It didn't hurt that I had a beautifully pro-painted force to inspire me as well.

A gorgeous Indian Mutiny game

I had the chance to play a lot of games in 2018 (part of my don't let the opportunities pass by policy) including a cracking couple of huge games at Gavin's, a big Bolt Action and a superb The Men Who Would Be Kings Indian Mutiny game.

Marty and Paul both hosted terrain making and painting days. No better way to spend a lazy day than hobbying with good friends, helped along with adult beverages. Some really nice terrain was the result (despite the aforementioned beverage consumption!

Superb Sarissa built at Marty's

I can't forget Slaughterloo. Dave K hosted a 6 (or 8?) player game of my favourite system. And this of course inspired me to paint more forces.
The very end of 2018 saw me get involved in two Challenges; the first was the Painting and Sculpting Miniatures (in association with Footsore) 30 Minutes for 30 Days November challenge. What rollicking (and sledging) fun that was. And the discipline was was so helpful to my overall output.
I found that challenge the perfect lead in to The Challenge. I have decided that despite previous years' bad luck, I would give the Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge another go. I have been pushing myself to do at least the 30 minutes a day I started in November, helped along with painting days with Paul, Alan, Aled and various other Odinians. So far so good.

My first AHPC entry for this year

Overall, this has been an excellent hobby year, made all the more so by my great friends in Odin's Night Games Club. You people really make life more fun.

So many games, so little time to write

The last couple of weeks have been fantastically busy gaming wise. I have had the chance to play Lion Rampant, Saga, Bolt Action, Chain of Command and Iron Cross. As well as wrapping up the Analogue Painting Challenge and of course buying more figures for my ever growing armies.
My first game in this great block of dice rolling was a game of Bolt Action against my boss Ian. I have the great fortune of working in the games industry but this doesn't mean that I get to play games all day. Quite the opposite. However, Ian and I had an evening free a couple of weeks ago and decided that a game of Bolt action was in order.
Using Ian's terrain and miniatures I had a chance to play Germans as opposed to my usual Yanks, and Ian played the US. It was a rollicking game, with artillery initially favouring me and air strikes redressing the balance for Ian. In the end it was a narrow victory for Ian but we had a lot of fun and we got to push around some well painted toys on a table with great terrain. An evening well spent.
       The following week Ian ran me through Lion Rampant against his friend Ian 2 (there are three Ians in the gaming group. It does get confusing.) with us playing the Crusaders vs Ian2's Saracen army. this was a great game, it allowed me to get my head around the mechanics of LR and be confident enough to play moderator to a game with the lads at Odin's Night club the following week.
        I provided all the forces so they ended up being a mish mash of Empire, Brettonian, Norman and Saxon armies. This is one of the great things about Lion Rampant, you can build historical or non-historical forces and still have a great game. 

The victims of the murderous rampage.

As the Analogue Painting Challenge was still in full swing I even provided a unit of old Empire Halberdiers that Paul and Alan (the murdering b@st@rds) tooking great pleasure in hunting down and massacring. Poor little purple plumed fellas. All in all, a rollicking good evening. You know that you are having fun when your table's "Yay" of victory makes the eight tables of roleplayers stop talking and all turn in your direction. We even picked up a new member for the Odin's with this game, Aled. Welcome aboard the crazy express mate!


Since then there have been so many games that I have lost track of them all but they have included;

• Bolt Action one Sunday morning, Yanks vs Vichy French and then a follow up game on the same table using essentially the same forces but this time using Chain of Command. Admittedly we are not as familiar with CoC but the gameplay and results were hugely different. It was interesting to contrast the two. Both great for different reasons.
• A brilliant game of Lion Rampant between Alan (Dux) and myself using The Messenger scenario. I set a new record for the number of failed Activations in a row. It was still heaps of fun.



Dux  "Cassandra Mouskouri"

•  A four player game of Dragon Rampant. We were starting to get confident with the LR rules so thought that it was time to try the fantasy version. I have a couple (ahem) of painted Warhammer Fantasy armies so made up 6 different 24 point retinues based on the examples in the back of the book. Each player then chose whichever one appealed to him most. Once again, a brilliant day's gaming. So much fun that at least one historical stalwart was muttering "Must get some Dwarves, on goats or boars...." Dux had the "honour" of sporting the "Cassandra Mouskouri" wig of shame for predicting his own failing Activation roll.

• 

  Paul and new chum Aled show David, Stephen and I how to play X Wing.

• Last week Paul ran us through X-Wing (it WAS May 4th). This was my first time playing this and really enjoyed the simple mechanics of gameplay. I won't be buying any ships, my long time gaming buddy David has taken care of that for us!
• I'm sure that there were more games, I certainly saw more played but I can't remember which was when!

Lastly, time to update my most important Painting and Finished tally

Type	Painted	Finished
28mm Dark Ages Infantry	16	1
28mm Empire/Lion Rampant Infantry	8	32
28mm Empire/Lion Rampant Mounted	1
28mm Dark Ages Mounted		2
28mm Slaughterloo Infantry	4
28mm Fantasy Infantry		4
20mm WWII	18