2015 in Review

Well… I played a LOT of games in 2015 – and most of them were just with my family. Overall we probably played less miniature games (which is, in theory, the subject of this blog) and less role-playing games – but miniature and role-playing games took some of the tops spots in terms of games played most often.

According to BoardGameGeek I played 413 games in 2015. Most of those (I’d say 90% – or more) were with my family. Of those 358 were board or card games (ranged from 6 minute games of Loonacy to 6+ hour games of Arkham Horror), 18 were role-playing games, and 37 miniature war games - over half of which were Song of Blades and Heroes (or other games from Ganesha Games using the same game engine).

The most played games were Dominion (15 plays), Love Letter (15), Song of Blades and Heroes (15), Savage Worlds/Realms of Cthulhu/Masks of Nyarlathotep (14), Sentinels of the Multiverse (14), Race for the Galaxy (13), Frostgrave (11), 7 Wonders (10), Hive Pocket (8), Eco Fluxx (8), Coup (7), Kaiser (7), Dixit (6), Loonacy (With Fruitcake Fun Pack) (6), Tales & Games: The Hare & the Tortoise (6), Carcassonne (5), Dungeons & Dragons (5th Edition) (5), For Sale (5), O Zoo le Mio (5), Pandemic (5), Rumpelstiltskin (5), and SET (5)

So while role-playing games and miniature games made up a small number of the overall number of games played – they were some of the most played games – and card games filled out the rest of the top 10.

Gaming Highlights

In January I had planned to go to Freezerburn  – an annual one-day mini-con hosted by my friend John – but ended up missing it as I ended up in  hospital for five days and missed it…

Also in January I started playing in a Savage Worlds/Realms of Cthulhu campaign. My friend Bruce was just starting up the classic Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign with his reagular gamign group (that had recently lost a few players) and asked if I’d like to join in. Amanda and I both got in on the action and a year later the campaign rages on. WE ostensibly play every other weekend, but there were a few weekends that had to be cancelled for one reason or another, so I think we’ve only played 15-16 sessions so far. It has been a hoot! For the last 15 years I’ve been running one game or another – role-playing or tabletop miniature skirmish campaigns – it was nice just to make up a character and PLAY in a game without having to prepare anything or have adventures or scenarios ready…

In February I had initially planned to host a  Song of Shadows and Dust Campaign for my annual WArgaming Birthday Bash… but that kind of fizzled as only Terry and Paul ended up showing any interest in it… In retrospect I should have gone ahead with it. My kids had factions in the works, I could have played, I could have convinced Amanda to get in on it and the six of us would have had a hoot! Alas…

Instead I did host a Weekend of Gaming over the Family Day long weekend and I played Fear & Faith with the kids on my birthday.

 A lot of the gaming I did with the kids this year had a historical theme to it as I tried to tie games in with our study of world history. You can read more about that in Gaming Our Way Through History Part One and Gaming Our Way Through History Part Two. We’ve mostly finished Volume Three (we've finished the reading, just a few games to catch up on...) and so I should be posting Part Three soon-ish…

In September I took The Boy to ToonCon 2015. It was a huge success. The Girl was pretty disappointed she didn’t get to go. I have a feeling she’ll insist I take her as well this year. Perhaps it will become a family thing…?

Painting

I didn’t paint as much this past year – compared to previous years, but I did at least paint MORE then I purchased! Until this last month when the Black Friday/Xmas sales started I had painted over twice as many figures as I had purchased! In the end I painted 748 28mm foot figures, 40 cavalry, 7 artillery pieces and 8 vehicles (and 8 microscale tanks and one ‘mech). Which is, actually, still quite a bit of stuff.

What was all that? Well I ended 2014 painting medieval stuff for Lion Rampant, followed by a brief phase of casting about trying to figure out what I wanted to do next. I painted some Micro Sci-fi – including some Epic Eldar and then some Deep Ones and . I briefly tried to get myself motived to get back on track with the Vimy Project by painting up some Great War Canadians (52^nd (Norhtern Ontario) Battalion and some support elements for the 3^rd Division… but that didn’t last long.

By February I was looking for some “low hanging fruit” projects that I could finish up and say; “There, those are DONE!” and the easiest looking projects were a bunch of my WW2 forces in 28mm. and straight through until may I worked almost exclusively on WW2 stuff - though I had no inclination to PLAY with any of them, I had a lot of fun finishing them up. I even bought a few more things – just to fill out missing elements in the forces I had. Before I ran out of steam I finished up my Soviets, Commandoes, British/Canadian Paratroopers, Imperial Japanese Army, Chindits, Wafen SS, and Early War French Infantry. I also cranked out a few vehicles before moving on (a Tiger I, a Puma, USMC Jeep, and a Reneault R-35). Hopefully I’ll get to using some of that WW2 stuff when I get to reading about WW2 with the kids in the upcoming months.

What did I move on to? The rest of the year was mostly Medieval (finishing up a force for Lion Rampant) and Fantasy stuff for A Song of Blades and Heroes and Frostgrave. I also got a bunch of Englsih Civil War stuff done and, in the last couple months, a bunch of 40K stuff – mostly Imperial Guard.

What did I buy!? Mostly WW2 stuff – to fill out missing bits in my planned forces, Some English Civil War stuff (mostly Scots and some artillery crews for the English), a fair bit of 40K stuff (mostly Imperial guard and most of it used off ebay), a bit of fantasy stuff (for SoBH and Frostgrave) and most recently some Foundry swashbuckling types in anticipation of the immanent release of En Garde. Oh, and there was all the left-over stuff from the Reaper Bone II Kickstarter - the stuff  that the kids didn’t want. (I made a few more purchases in the last week of 2015 – but as they have not arrived and are for 2016 plans I didn’t count them – more on that in my upcoming Game Plan for 2016!)

I also got rid of all my 20mm WW2 stuff this year. Traded it all away to Bob in Edmonton. He’s been busy rebasing them all for Memoir ’44.

That's about it... Now onto 2016!

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Game Plan 2016

Gaming Our Way Through History Part Three

Painting Updates with 40K Imperial Guard and Swashbuckling Swordsmen!