The year in review…

And so another wargaming year draws to an end and we turn to the retrospective post bemoaning the lack of painting and gaming throughout the year soon to be followed by the ridiculously over optimistic post with plans for 2016! This time last year I was making the same plans: http://blog.belisarius.org.uk/2015/01/the-year-that-was-and-the-year-to-come.html. At some point in the year I obviously took down the ‘Master Plan’ so that doesn’t bode well!  So lets look at each section in turn…

You can see the new Master Plan to the right. It’s quite conservative. I want the unit painted for Ayton and maybe a few ‘characters’. The units needed for the Partizan game are only a few and are a good driver for getting more added to my ImagiNation forces. This bodes well for a hopeful return to the C18th for Ayton 2016! I’ve got plans for a new 10mm Sudan project and have done some sample figures. I hope this will keep going this year as 10mm and Sudan is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I’d like to finish the other couple of units of my 20mm WSS but until there is another game planned it’s not a priority. And I have NO INTENTION OF STARTING ANY NEW PROJECTS!!!!

There were a few successes there. I got what I wanted done for Ayton which was another unit of Spencer Smith FPW types. I was SURE I had posted pics of these and of the Ayton weekend but it appears not! I shall remedy that soon! As ever, it was a great weekend and I’m already looking forward to 2016! And 2017! Having already done the extra command stands for my C18th units to allow them to be fielded for the big AMG Partizan game in May I only needed to add one cavalry unit which I did achieve…

The 10mm Sudan project stalled. I blame Essex Boy for confusing me over basing…. 🙂 But more on this one anon….

And the less said about “And I have NO INTENTION OF STARTING ANY NEW PROJECTS!!!!” the better…

Any other painting I do will be just to add to existing projects. That leaves plenty of scope! I want to try and finish some projects off, paint the last odd unit, dispose of surplus lead. Punic Wars, AWI, Modern Micro armour will all fall into this area. And I’m knocking a couple of projects on the head: 6mm Arab Israeli and 6mm WW2 North Africa. Both will be up for sale soon!

The big success from this bit was the selling of all the GHQ stuff. This all went in one batch and netted me a tidy sum…that all went on kids holidays etc…  I still have lead to dispose of and some progress has been made on the Modern Microarmour. The Punic War 15mm will see an outing this year and the 15mm AWI may well too….

Games – nothing major planned other than the usual excellent Ayton and the big game at Partizan, both of which I am really looking forward to. March will also hopefully see a mini gathering in Newark and Lincoln which should be most enjoyable. I’m also going to try and get a few games in at my club. Honest…

Ayton was great and the gathering at Partizan of the AMG Forum members was a day to remember! http://blog.belisarius.org.uk/2015/06/amg-at-partizan-2015.html

March saw myself, Essex Boy, Word2Dave and Goat Major gather in Newark/Lincoln (at W2D and GMs homes) for two excellent days gaming. First off was a 6mm FPW game at W2Ds with excellent terrain and figures (as expected from Dave!): http://blog.belisarius.org.uk/2015/03/march-2015-gaming-weekend-part-1.html

And then the next day we took up residence in GMs new games garage for an excellent C18th game of Sharp Practice.

Both were excellent games and it was a pleasure playing on such beautiful tables!

More games at the Club? Nah… I managed to make the Christmas WW1 game two weeks ago and that was it. However, the beginning of the year saw the start of a new club in Whitley Bay, the Whitley Bay 3D Gamers.  This has been going from strength to strength and owes a lot to Neil Smith’s excellent organisational skills in promoting and help organise games each week via email and Facebook. This keeps everyone engaged and sees a good selection of games on each week where often you can just book a slot and turn up and play thanks to other members supplying the terrain, figures and often umpiring. Very well run. And I’ve made four games this year. It’s on a Tuesday evening which works better for me than a Saturday as weekends tend to be tied up with kids. I hope to make more sessions this year and even put on the odd game!

And finally, I want to re-vamp the blog a little. I want to start moving the static content over to a normal website so I can play round with the format a bit more. And hopefully spend some time sorting my collection and photographing more.

I’ve started this. Slowly… You can see the current status here. And I’ve not done anything for a while… The plan is still the same though… As we have a Punic War game coming up in 2016 I might dig them out and finish that section first… The tricky bit will be writing a gallery page that accesses the existing galleries on the WordPress blog and allow me to move those over en masse.

So, there we are. We shall see what transpires!

So that covers most of it. Overall it was a little poor on the painting front. Apart from the stuff for Ayton and Partizan that was pretty well it. I did manage a 6mm Dropship:

And some more Belgians…

The highlight of the latter part of the year was the Lion Rampant weekend organised by Goat Major (Simon Tonkiss) at the Foundry venue near Newark in November. A day of Lion Rampant followed by an excellent game of Chain of Command at the Goat Residence. Well organised weekend. Great fun. Beer and curry. What more could you want!

So…all in all a most pleasant year if not a hugely productive one. The four games at the Whitley Bay club were excellent as was the WW1 Christmas game at the Tyneside club. I did manage a few shows (York, Partizan, Durham and Border Reiver) but missed the excellent Battleground show.

What will 2016 bring? What are my plans? We shall have to see. More in a couple of days…