Well... it's been a year...
What WERE my plans..?
What did I actually get up to...?
Was there any overlap in the Venn Diagram of those two things!?
THE PLANS
Looking back at all the plans...
Game Plan 2024 - Q1
Game Plan 2024 - Q2
Game Plan 2024 - Q3
Game Plan 2024 - Q4
I think all of those plans could largely be summed up as follows:
Get stuff painted, practice for, and play in a Warhammer 40K Tournament in February
Try to STAY FOCUSED on ONE THING: Age of Sigmar (the setting!)
Paint Warbands for and play LOTS of Warhammer Underworlds
Paint up the miniatures for and play Warhammer Quest games (Shadows over Hammerhal, Silver Tower, Cursed City)
Get a Role-Playing Game going - ideally Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound!
(and maybe get a Board Game Night - or afternoon on the weekend - going again...?)
(Maybe explore Solo Gaming more, if the above doesn't work out!)
and then later in the year:
Get armies ready for Age of Sigmar, Fourth Edition - first Spearhead, then Path to Glory - and play THOSE!
How did I do...?
Well...
Warhammer 40K Tournament
I DID get a bunch of new stuff painted for my Tallarn Desert Raiders to play in a Warhammer 40000 Team Tournament with my friend Orion and her Space Wolves!
By "new stuff", I mean NEWLY PAINTED, not newly purchased. It was ALL stuff I'd had for a while (and ALL of it was stuff I'd got as part of used lots, ages ago, dirt cheap!), I just finally had a reason to get them DONE!
YAY!!
I painted:
and I played in the tournament:
Warhammer 40K - Strange Bedfellows Team Tournament
And that was pretty much IT for Warhammer 40,000 this year (other than Lost Patrol)... and I WAS trying to stay focused on the Age of Sigmar...
Age of Sigmar
(The Setting)
I feel like I did pretty good at STAYING FOCUSED on the Age of Sigmar setting (after the 40K tournament) - with a few small distractions (assorted solo games)!
The first half of the year was pretty much DOMINATED by Warhammer Underworlds and preparing for Warhammer Quest - both set in the Age of Sigmar.
The Third Quarter things switched up a bit... I did try to get a campaign of Warhammer Quest started and I built up and played with Spearhead armies for the new edition of Age of Sigmar (the miniature battle game).
In the final quarter, we continued with the Age of Sigmar versions of Warhammer Quest - finishing off Shadows over Hammerhal and starting Cursed City. There was a new edition of Warhammer Underworlds. I did get a Soulbound role-playing games going. AND I picked up a BUNCH of new stuff for a Slaves to Darkness army... but didn't really do any larger battle games... ALL of that... Age of Sigmar... so yeah, stayed fairly focused without too many distractions BEYOND the Age of Sigmar... but i did do a lot of jumping around WITHIN that setting!
Warhammer Underworlds
For the first half of the year, I played a LOT of Warhammer Underworlds... like a LOT!! I played SEVENTY-FIVE games of the first edition this year! Seventy-one were in the first six months... and then kind of... stopped. I played only four games in whole of the third Quarter.. Partly that was because of the new edition of Age of Sigmar, and I'd shifted focus to playing Spearhead! Partly I was a little burned out on the game...
I had made suggestions about a challenge involving trying to play ten warbands ten times... of playing ALL of the warbands at least ONCE... and... neither of those happened... But here are the warbands that I DID play with in that first half of the year (with First Edition)!?
- Wurmspat x16
- Skabbik's Plaguepack x15
- Thricefold Discord x9
- Grinkrak's Looncourt x6
- Thundrik’s Profiteers x5
- Zondara’s Gravebreakers x4
- Blackpowder's Buccaneers x4
- Magore's Fiends x4
- Dread Pageant x3
- Mollog's Mob x2
- Cyreni's Razors x1
- Hrothgorn's Mantrappers x1
- Ephilim's Pandemonium x1
- Sons of Velmorn x 1
- Grombrindal x1
- Garrett’s Reavers x1
So, of fifty warbands that I own - thirty-three of which were painted - I played with sixteen different warbands (almost half of the warbands I have painted).
(There are ohter warbands that I own and have painted that WERE played with this year, just... not by ME! Elethain's Soulraif, Morgwaeth's Blade-Coven, a few of the Stormcast warbands were all played by Amanda - so it's not like none of the others are seeing any use at all!)
Of those seventy-five games I played, forty-three were one-on-one games. I won 20 of those... but the overall point difference was -38... so I generally lost by MORE points than I won games by.
The other thirty-two games were multi (3-4) player games. I only won six of those.
At the end of September, as the first Spearhead League wrapped up, there was talk of getting Warhammer Underworlds going again and maybe starting a League of sorts... And then THE PREVIEW happened and a TOTALLY NEW EDITION of Warhammer Underworlds was announced!?
In the Final Quarter of the year, a full Second Edition was released in the form of Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard. ALL the old cards would not be playable - it was a HARD reboot of the system - No more faction decks, only generic rivals decks, with all new fighter cards and a "warscroll" of special abilities for each warband. All of the old warbands would be playable...
I have to admit I was a little relieved with the announcement. I hadn't been playing for a while and was wondering how I could justify buying the new box and warbands and rivals decks if I wasn't still regularly playing... and with the announcement of the new edition I thought maybe I'd just STOP... there would never be another thing released for the edition that I had, I could just play with that stuff and not bother with any of the new stuff...
but as more information cam out about the new edition and some of the other local players got excited about it, I kind of got excited enough about it, hoping we'd all get back to playing.
One downside was the boards have changed and there is now no way to play a four-player game (unless we just used the old boards...?) and what had really been a lot of fun was playing four-player games with Nick and Orion and Amanda almost every other sunday for the first half of the year...
We did not all instantly start playing again, though. Part of that was because.. people were busy with other things and we'd fallen out of the habit of getting together regularly, but also... the release was slow, and I'd had trouble getting cards to actually play with!? Initially the core box was released in mid November and that was it... four decks to play with the double sided board and two new warbands... but Warscrolls and cards for all the other existing warbands weren't so available... Part of that is Games Workshop and part of it is on Staples... MOST of the warscrolls and fighter cards for the older warbands were released as PDFs. The warscrolls and cards for the 16 warbands that were being released, though, were only available to BUY in a card pack called Warbands of Embergard... for $70CAD!? But it wasn't realeased until a MONTH later?!
On release day, I played a few games with Orion - with warscrolls and Fighter cards I'd printed out in black and white and it was pretty fun... I tried getting just a few cards and warscrolls printed at Staples the following week, just to see how they turned out.. and it was pretty labour-intensive, cutting out and gluing the fronts of the fighter cards to the backs, but I was pretty happy with the result, so a few days later I ordered the rest... and it took Staples THREE AND A HALF WEEKS to get around to printing them... in the meantime, the other cards were released... but my FLGS wasn't able to get them in and if you hadn't ordered them online within a few minutes of the cards going on sale... you didn't get them!? I guess GW MASSIVELY underestimated how many people would actually want to play the new edition with their old warbands!?
So, I'd gotten sour on the whole thing and was thinking of just saying fuck-it and throwing in the towel and moving on with other things..
In the end, the cards ordered through Staples finally got printed and I got in a few more games...
I ended up playing with the following Warbands in the Fourth Quarter
- Wurmspat x3
- Thricefold Discord x1
- Thorns of the Briar Queen x1
- Zondara’s Gravebreakers x1
- Skabbik's Plague Pack x1
- Chosen Axes x1
- Ironsoul's Condemnors
Total: 9
I decided to separate them out by editions as they all play very different between editions. Some of them just has GARBAGE faction decks and, without faction decks in Second Edition, the playing fields were a bit more level... Oh, I still LOST games with them...
As of the end of this year, I own FIFTY-TWO warbands and 34 of them are painted. I played with 19 of them at least ONCE this year. The most played (Between the two editions) were Wurmspat (18 plays), Skabbik's Plaguepack (16 plays), Thricefold Discord (10 plays), Grinkrak's Looncourt (6 plays), Thundrik’s Profiteers (5 plays), Zondara’s Gravebreakers (5 plays)
You can see pictures of them all in a Gallery I set up here:
Age of Sigmar - Warhammer Underworlds Warbands
Warhammer Quest
In the first half of the year I got a LOT of Warhammer Quest miniatures painted, hoping that through the summer I'd actually get a group PLAYING!
I got so many done, I started a Gallery Page for them:
Age of Sigmar - Warhammer Quest Miniatures
Initially the plan was to play them in order; The Silver Tower, then Shadows Over Hammerhal, then Cursed City. As summer approached, I realized it would probably be easier to finish up the stuff for Shadows Over Hammerhal!
So I finished up painting the stuff for Shadows over Hammerhal and we start playing THAT...
Then the plan was that while playing Shadows Over Hammerhal, I could finish up miniatures for Silver Tower... Then play through Silver Tower and, while doing so, finish up the miniatures for Cursed City!
I thought, for sure, we'd blast through Shadows Over Hammerhal in 6-8 weeks and be done by mid-late July, then blast through Silver Tower by the end of the Summer, and then start working our way through The Cursed City (and the expansion - Night Wars) through the Fall and Winter as that one seemed like it would take longer to play through...
And I'd hoped that by the end of it, if I hadn't started one already, i might just segue into a Soulbound Role-Playing campaign (there is a book for Ulfenkarn, the setting for Cursed City!)
That all didn't all go exactly according to play, largely for two reasons:
1) Players that were not as deeply invested and/or committed as me...? so we got started a few weeks later than I'd hoped and then SO MANY sessions were cancelled...
B) the new edition of Age of Sigmar (the miniature battle game) which thoroughly distracted me for a good chunk of the second half of the year!
We DID get started on Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal. I was running the game and Amanda, and Finnegan, and John (manager of the local Warhammer Store), and Maygan (Johns partner) were playing. We got in a couple sessions over the summer but then John and Maygan kind of bailed...
It took me until the end of October to finally get moving on this again and just try to finish off Shadows over Hammerhal with just Amanda and Finnegan!
In the last week of November, Amanda, Finnegan, and I started in on Warhammer Quest: Cursed City! We've been having a LOT of fun playing through it! It is going to take MUCH longer to play through than Shadows over Hammerhal did (and Silver Tower likely would)!
So far we have played through seven journeys, bringing all the Heroes to Level One. TOMORROW we will be playing the first Decapitation Journey - trying to take down a Vargscyr!
So... while things didn't get started as quickly as I'd hoped and we didn't get as far as I'd initially hoped... I'd say the plans for getting all the miniatures painted for the three games and then playing them, was largely a success. Especially considering interest has not dimmed and it seems like we'll continue playing this weekly into the new year!
Soulbound
I've really wanted to get a role-playing game going for some time... with the focus on all things Age of Sigmar, Soulbound seemed like an obvious choice... and I really like the system.
The tricky bit, as an older adult, who doesn't have an established RPG gaming group (any more)... that wants to play a "niche" game (i.e. something that ISN'T Dungeons & Dragons)... that isn't the easiest thing in the world to DO!?
I'd tried earlier in the year... but life happened and plans got cancelled.
I thought maybe after we'd played through the Warhammer Quest games I'd be able to segue into a role-playing game, but when we finally got going on those, I realized it could be 2026 before we finish playing through ALL of Cursed City (and maybe Silver Tower), so i said fuck it, let's do both concurently and managed to get not one, but TWO games going - one online with friends out of town, and one in-person!? There were a few stumbles getting both started, but I've managed to get in two sessions of both campaigns so far this year and it's looking like they could both be weekly things continuing into the new year!!
(I'd still really like to play the new Twilight: 2000 and Bladerunner and Hellboy role-playing games... but those will have to wait while I ride this wave of interest!!)
Board Games
This has been an off year for board games - well, board games that were not Warhammer Underworlds!
We did, briefly, in the Spring, get a semi-regular Board Game Night going on... but that fizzled and we didn't get it going again... There was a one-off game day in October... and then the rest were over the Holidaze!
According to BoardGameGeek, in 2024 we played...
- Warhammer Underworlds (First Edition) x75
- Lost Patrol x10
- Warhammer Underworlds: Embergard (Second Edition) x9
- Warhammer Age Of Sigmar (Fourth Edition) x8
- Warhammer Quest: Cursed City x8
- Warhammer Quest: Shadows Over Hammerhal x8
- Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Soulbound x8
- Warhammer 40,000 (Tenth Edition) x7
- Splendor x5
- Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Crypt Hunters x4
- NMBR 9 x3
- Tinderblox x2
- Wingspan x2
- Abyss x1
- Betrayal at House on the Hill x1
- Calico x1
- Carcassonne x2
- Castles of Mad King Ludwig x1
- Century: Golem Edition x1
- Dixit x1
- Five Men in Normandy .30 Cal edition x1
- Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala x1
- Giro D'Italia Card Game x1
- The Hanging Gardens x1
- Lacuna x1
- Linkage: A DNA Card Game x1
- Mysterium x1
- Pirate Fluxx x1
- RoboRally x1
- SET x1
- Stone Age x1
- Tokaido x1
- Wingspan Asia x1
- Wyrmspan x1
171 Total Games Played!!
34 Different games were played.
84 of those were Warhammer Underworlds (between the two editions ) accounting for over half of the games played in 2024
16 were more traditional tabletop miniature games 8x Age of Sigmar, 7x 40K, 1x Solo Game (as opposed to hybrind board/miniature games - like Warhammer Underworlds and Warhammer Quest and others)
8 were Role-Playing Game sessions (4 were making Characters and sorting out backgrounds, 4 were actually PLAYING ADVENTURES!)
63 were actual BOARD GAMES (other than Warhammer Underworlds!)
Though, of those 63 Board Games, 30 of them were board games with fully painted Warhammer miniatures (Lost Patrol, Crypt Hunters, Warhammer Quest: Cursed City and Warhammer QuestL Shadows over Hammerhal)... Similar to Warhammer Underworlds
Solo Games
At the end of 2023 I'd gotten interested in the idea of Solo Gaming.
Earlier in the year I'd run a sort of online campaign set in the Back of Beyond and the battles were mostly played out solo, by myself, using One Hour Wargames... and I'd really had a fun time doing that.
Later in the year I finally got around to trying out Five Parsecs from Home - which I'd picked up the PDF of nearly a year earlier! That, too, was a lot of fun! I ended up only playing one SOLO game with miniatures, but I ended up using the system to run a few RPG-lite games for friends online... but that fizzled around the beginning of this year.
So in the new year, I decided to keep that open as an option... either playing more Five Parsecs from Home or exploring other games (Five Leagues from the Borderlands) - I'd even initially planned that I could play the Warhammer Quest games solo, if I didn't find other people that were willing to play.
In the end, I didn't so much PLAYING of solo games... But throughout the year I did a lot of thinking about and planning for and even some miniature painting in preparation for various solo miniature games. I got VERY EXCITED about Devilry Afoot - a new solo/co-op game of monster hunting in the 16th/17th centuries by Nic Wright!
In the end, I only played one game of Five Men in Normandy - a solo WW2 game by the same author as Five Parsecs from Home.
I wouldn't say this was a failure, as it was always a plan kept in my back pocket, in case I could not find other people to play games with... and I DID end up playing a lot of games with people!!
Age of Sigmar
(The Game)
New Edition and Spearhead Armies
In July the new edition of Age of Sigmar was released. I picked up the Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Skaventide release box - which contained TWO complete Spearhead armies...
Previous to that, expecting that I'd be playing it with the group i'd been playing Warhammer Underworlds with, I'd purchased and painted a Hedonites of Slaanesh Spearhead Army.
Hedonites of Slaanesh Spearhead Army
Despite HAVING a Hedonites of Slaanesh army for Age of Sigmar, that I put together when the previous edition had been released, almost all of them were Daemons, and NONE of the Spearhead army were Daemons, and so I had none of the units required to put a Spearhead army together?!
Then I'd bought a Soulblight Gravelords Spearhead army... because I was placing an order for other things and the place I was ordering from had the Soulblight Gravelords Spearhead army on sale (which convenitenly put me into free shipping zone!)... and I figured I pretty much have a Soulblight Gravelords army from all the stuff in Warhammer Quest Cursed City... and Vampires are cool... and I needed the Vampire in the box for one of the personalities in Night Wars... and could always do with more Skeletons...
Then I traded my 40K Imperial Knights away for an Age of Sigmar Blades of Khorne army...
and painted up a Blades of Khorne Spearhead Army...
Then I bought TWO MORE Army Boxes from the Bargain Bin at the Dragon's Den... largely for the terrain and the requisite miniatures to make a Daughters of Khaine Spearhead Army (Sixth!)...
AND THEN... during the local Warhammer Store's First Anniversary event... I bought ANOTHER (Seventh) Spearhead army and within a week (or so) had a painted Sylvaneth Spearhead Army...
Sylvaneth Spearhead Army
So that was seven (SEVEN!) Spearhead armies Acquired in three months!?
WTF was I thinking!? (They all seemed like a good idea at the time... and I HAD been thinking I'd buy the release box and then sell off BOTH the Stormcast AND Skaven halves and just keep the rules and stuff...) Three of them got painted over those three months...
AND THEN they released the Slaves to Darkness Battletome and a whole new Darkoath Spearhead army for the Slaves to Darkness in November.. So.. OBVIOUSLY...
Now I have EIGHT Spearhead armies...
(Oh, and... I'm close to a ninth, if I pick up a box of Tzeentch Flamers!?)
Maybe I SHOULD sell off those Skaven...?
Spearhead League
I DID play in the Warhammer Store's Speahead League from July until September). I only got in six games... but ended up coming in second overall (out of six players...?)... without winning a SINGLE game...? Points were given for playing a game, winning a game and playing with a painted army... and then bonus points were awarded for each different opponent you faced and each different fully-painted army you used during the league. I played six games with fully painted armies. I used three different fully-painted armies over the course of the league and played four different opponents!?
Path to Glory Campaign
In November, John at the Warhammer Store organized a Path to Glory campaign...
I did a LOT OF THINKING about what army to play in the camapaing. Finally I settled on Hedonites of Slaanesh, largely because I didn't need to paint a thing for it (other than the endless spells...)... but then actually looked at the rules for all of them and what I had that I COULD build... and then decided I needed to do a completely DIFFERENT Hedonites of Slaanesh army that seemed like WAY MORE FUN! But that would require painting 15 more mounted seeker cavalry... and I started in on them... and then I had a practice game and broke another slickblade seeker - just getting it out of the cabinet!? So when it was announced that, for this league being run by the store, games had to be played IN the store... and I'm just not feeling like transporting the Hedonites there every week for games and then having to repair these dainty little models that break...
So I starting thinking again, and, despite the fact that I could totally run Blades of Khorne if I painted ONE UNIT of Blood Warriors... or Sylvaneth if I painted up 15 Tree-revenants (which are super quick and easy to paint...), I settled on Slaves to Darkness... which I have next to NOTHING painted for... but seemed like more fun and the minis seem a bit more beefy and able to be transported without TOO much damage!?
In the end, I didn't get any of those done in time and just decided to not play in this league/campaign... but would have armies ready for the next one... and started thinking about running my OWN campaign!? More on that soon-ish...
Before the League started I DID get in a game of Age of Sigmar WITH the Hedonites of Slaanesh army...
MINIATURES
This is, in theory, a MINIATURE Wargaming blog, afterall... a place where I shared what I was up to in the hobby and a LARGE part of that hobby has been the acquisition, assembling, painting and basing of models and terrain!
As always, for the last few years, the PLAN has been to BUY LESS STUFF and PAINT MORE...
PAINTING
While, I DID manage to PAINT a LOT MORE this year than I have for the last few...
In 2023 I painted 66x 28mm Foot, 4x 28mm Mounted
In 2022 I painted 57x 28mm Foot, 2x 28mm Mounted, 13 Tokens and Terrain Bits, 3x 28mm Vehicle/Bigger Beasties, and a PILE of Micro/Epic Scale miniatures
In 2021 I painted 216x 28mm Foot
THIS YEAR, I painted...
- 286x 28mm Foot
- 22x 28mm Mounted/Beasties
- 7x Vehicles/Monsters,
- 34 Small Terrain Bits/Tokens
So... More than DOUBLE what I painted in 2022 and 2023 combined! More than I painted in 2021, as well...
For a complete list of items acquired and painted (with links to the posts) check out:
2024 Painted versus Purchased
ACQUISITIONS
The increase in painting came about because of an increase in interest in playing miniature games again... unfortunately, that interest also meant BUYING MOAR MINIATURES!?
This year I bought (or otherwise acquired through gifts of TRADES!):
- 28mm Foot: 559
- 28mm Mounted/Beasties:59
- 28mm Vehicles/Monsters: 2
- Small Terrain Bits: 2
- Larger Terrain Bits: 2
71 of the 28mm foot and 5 of the Mounted/Beasties were acquired through TRADE... (I traded of three 40K Knights for and ENTIRE BLADES OF KHORNE army!?)
DISPOSALS
I did, however, get RID of a few things, either through trade or sale or just giving them away...
- 28mm Foot (painted): 12
- 28mm Foot (Unpainted): 108
- 28mm Vehicles (unpainted): 1
- 28mm Titanic Vehicles (painted): 2
- 28mm Titanic Vehicles (unpainted): 1
So, when considering the trades and other disposals... the NET gain of things unpainted 28mm Foot miniatures was 451... STILL more than the 286 I painted...
So... miniatures got painted... games were played...? yay...?
Stay tuned for GAME PLAN 2025/Q1 which will be posted shortly after this!!
Oooof! That was a bit of a slog... for any that made it all the way, thanks for being here! hope you weren't bored to tears by it all...
What were YOUR Gaming/Hobby Highlights of 2024!?
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