Game Plan 2018

It’s good to have a plan… 

Having looked back at 2017, It's time to look ahead to 2018! 

GAMING

25x5 Boardgames

So, last year my big long List O’Games to Play didn’t really work out. Partly that was due to the renovation and not having time and space to play – but another large part of it was the fact that it is a daunting task to read all those rules (especially when one reads as slowly as I!). As most of the games on the list were ones I’d either never played or only played once or twice (some time ago) I definitely WOULD have had to read (or re-read) the rules.

Why did I try to make such a big long list of games? I think the big long list was fostered by the guilt I feel owning so many games that never get played and I wanted to play as many as I could to somehow justify to myself the need to keep them… I just have to chill and know I will get to them all eventually.

As the end of the year approached I saw a bunch of people on the BGG facebook group mentioning finishing up their 10x10 challenges. I had never heard of these, but basically a person or group selects 10 games and tries to play each of them 10 times in a year – which ends up being 100 games played – one game every 3.65 days. I really like this idea, it seems totally doable AND you get to play a game a bunch of times within a year, which I find really helps with remember the rules and strategies. So, I thought I’d try and do something similar to this.

Of course picking JUST 10 and sticking to that seemed utterly impossible. So I came up with the idea of 25x5. The family picks 25 games that we’re going to play five times each. We still get to play a bunch of games we love (or really want to get a chance to learn a bit better!), but still have a bit more variety.

So, the 25 board games we shall endeavor to play at least 5 games each of are:     

Hero Realms

COIN game(s) Fire in the Lake and/or A Distant Plain

Bios: Megafauna

Pax Renaissance

High Frontier

Carcassonne

Firefly: The Board Game

Railways of The World (Eastern USA, Great Britain, Mexico, Canada)

Star Wars: X-Wing

Arkham Horror

Super Dungeon Explore

Shadowrun: Crossfire

Mice & Mystics

Viticulture

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle

Legendary

Sentinels of the Multiverse

Five Tribes

Space Hulk

Splendor

Nations

London

Dominion

Terraforming Mars

In a few cases these are either catergories rather than single board games or games we will play different versions of or with different expansions. The COIN games, for example – I have two of them. I didn’t want to put BOTH on the list (well okay, I DID WANT to put both on the list… but there were more games I wanted to put on there MORE… and I couldn’t decide between then… and most of the COIN games are similar enough that we should be able to get through both without feeling like we’re having to learn two entirely different games. Railways of the World – it comes with two different maps (Eastern United States and Mexico) and I have two others (Great Britain and Canada) so we’ll play each of them once and one of them a second time. I have a bunch of expansions for Arkham Horror that I picked up relatively inexpensively and have never tried, so I think we’ll play once with the base game and then each of the others try out one of the expansions. Similarly, I have one of the Big Boxes for Carcassone – with five or six expansions (most of which we have not played with yet!?) – so each game of that we’ll add in a different expansion.

All of these games fall into one of two categories; a) games that we love but feel like we just don’t get it on the table enough, or b) games we’d really like to learn, but really feel like it needs a few plays less than a year apart to really LEARN the game…

Of course we will play other games as well – there were a lot tha were suggested but we axed because they were generally shorter games which we know well enough that when we have a spare hour and want to play a game and want to play something different we can pull out and just play it…. Like Race for the Galaxy or A Study in Emerald – we’ve played both enough times that we can get a game in in under an hour, so the were left off.

Miniature Games

Even with 25 this was STILL pretty hard to hash out what games we were going to try and play… and we didn’t entirely succeed as we decided on 25 BOARD games – and then had to add five MORE Miniature games!? There were a BUNCH of miniature games I'd have like to play. I would love to do a 10x10 challenge of miniature games! In the end the five we'd really like to concentrate on are as follows: 

Warhammer 40,000

Shadow War: Armageddon

The Pikeman’s Lament

Song of Blades and Heroes

Dragon Rampant

I plan to run a campaign of Shadow War: Armageddon in the new year to get us going on something.

The kids are actually excited about 40K at the moment and both working on their respective forces. Finnegan's has a Gorkanaut, a Truck, an aircraft of some sort, and some Boys to assemble, and has some buggies, Killa Kans and Bikers to paint up. The Girl is working on some Harlequins and Swooping Hawks and Jain Zar (elder Phoenix Lord - founder of the Howling Banshees aspect warriors) and is currently reading a book about her. 

After getting so many English Civil War figures finished last year I'd really like to get some more games in with then - and hopefully it will inspire me to get back to painting them and finish off the collection - there isn't THAT much left to do. 

The kids also said they'd like to get back to playing Song of Blade and Heroes and Dragon Rampant. I'm kind of tired of traditional medieval fantasy settings... but perhaps I could use my 17th Century Pike and Shot/Swashbuckler figures with those systems and have some fun. 

Role-Playing Games

It's been fun playing a few games of Tales from the Loop with a mostly new-ish group through the fall - even though it was difficult to get them all together at times... I'd like to finish up the Tales from the Loop mystery we'd started and move on to something else. 

Bruce has been taking about getting the Friday group back together and playing... something... Bob has also talked about running Numenara or some Cypher System game for either the Friday group or the Saturday group. I'd like to run Rogue Trader for one or the other... 

I'd really like to run a game for the kids as well. In the past I've prepared a single campaign and run it for an adult group and a group including the kids and that worked out well... perhaps I'll do the same with Rogue Trader. 

Saturday Games

I do hope to get a lot of the games played on Saturday afternoons. Now that we have a dining room again and a little less chaos, that shouldn't be too much of a problem. 

ToonCon

Oh, I will be attending ToonCon 2018. And I will definitely be running SOME sort of event there... I'm just not quite sure what exactly it will be... 

PAINTING

50 weeks

I know, there are 52 in a year... but I figured I'd probably take a week or two off at some point or other - to go on vacation or something... 

I started thinking about what I should endeavor to do – as a project - this year. It’s kind of hard to plan out an entire YEAR because... well… y’know… interests change (OOOH! SHINY!!). But I started thinking about what might be FEASABLE. I was trying to figure out what I could get done if I painted one unit of 10-15 miniatures a week (a Squad for 40K or a unit for Pikeman’s Lament, Men Who Would Be Kings, LionRampant or Dragon Rampant) and managed to stay focused on one or two projects for the year.

The forces I was thinking I’d like to finish up (AND PLAY WITH) this year are a few Kill Teams for Shadow War: Armageddon, the 40K Tallarns, and maybe my English Civil War stuff for The Pikeman’s Lament. I was also thinking, if there were time, I could maybe get a start on the Eldar Force for 40K or some units for either Dragon Rampant (Dwarves and/or orcs) or The Men Who Would Be Kings (British, Zulus, Boers, Germans, Americans, Martians or Chinese Boxers!?) and work on other assorted Sci-fu stuff (like the Astropolis crew).

I have a Tau Kill team to paint for Amanda, plus two larger kill teams of 15-20 for Chaos and Orks (5 weeks)

I do still have three Shadespire warbands to paint for John (3 weeks)

The largest project – that I would definitely like to finish this year is the Tallarn force for Warhammer 40,000. For that I have still to do:

3x Leman Russ Battle tanks (3 weeks)

3x Roughrider Squads (9 each – 3 weeks)

10x Heavy Weapon Squads (3 teams per squad - 5 weeks)

4x Special Weapon Squads (6 each – 2 weeks)

4x Platoon Commanders + Command Squad (2 weeks)

2x Company Commanders + Command Squad (1 week)

12x Infantry Squads (12 weeks!)

2 Scout Sentinels (2 Weeks)

1x SHADOWSWORD (1 week?)

2x Primaris Psyker (1 week?)

for a total of 32 weeks. That's a fair chunk of the year... 12 weeks - 3 months of just painting Infantry Squads... I'll have to break that up a bit - paint and infantry squad them paint... something else... then paint another infantry squad....

For the English Civil War, I still have the following to finish up:

1x Horse (gallopers? 1 week)

4x Dragoons (12 Foot, 12 Mounted – 4 weeks?)

2x Irish Foot (1 Pike, 1 Shot – 2 weeks)

4x Highland clansmen (4 weeks)

5x English Foot (3x pike, 2x shot – 5 Weeks)

2x Mortar and Crew (1-2 Weeks?)

30 Assorted 17^th century swashbuckler-types ( 3 weeks?)

Another 20 weeks…

That puts us at 60 weeks – a bit more than the year - assuming I stay on target and keep up that pace – which is a pretty average output for me… Maybe the Eldar, assorted colonials and fantasy/medieval will be next year… or maybe I’ll slip in a unit or two this year – just to mix things up a bit and know that I won’t get EVERYTHING listed here done…

I should really finish up the Highland Dwarves – there are just two units (of 12 foot each) to complete the entire army…

GAH!? SPACE HULK!!!! I totally forgot about Finishing up the Space Hulk miniatures. That’s a couple more weeks to finish those off… (i.e. a few less English Civil War units that I’ll finish this year…)

Coming Soon to Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

December Boardgame Round-Up