2014 in Review

The first two months of this past year were pretty much intensely focused on painting and preparing for the 10th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash/Winter Wargaming Weekend. I painted enough Feudal Japanese for SEVEN Buntai - plus a whole bunch of assorted extras civilians, extra samurai and ashigaru and ronin that didn’t fit into one buntai or another and a bunch more for a few buntai that I never got to finish. I also built four 3x3 dedicated terrain boards the Marshy Forest, the Clearing, the River Ford, and the EPIC Mountain Pass!

The 10^th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash itself was played over the weekend of 21-23 February. On Friday night and all day Saturday I had eight people playing in a Ronin Campaign/Tournament. It was pretty awesome. Definitely right up there with the Dark Age DBA campaign and the first Hordes of the Things Campaign Weekend. On the Sunday we played Ikusa and some other games -(including Smash-up – Which my friend Cory got for me for my birthday – and turned out to be one of our most played games of 2014.

After that I pretty much dropped Ronin – Skirmish Wargames in the Age of the Samurai - not because it isn’t a good game (it is a GREAT game) – it somehow just got eclipsed by the more versatile A Song of Blades and Heroes which I played a LOT of for the rest of the year – mostly just playing it with the family. We ever played a couple of short campaigns;

One in the spring and one in the fall.

At this point I own just about all the Ganesha Games that use the A Song of Blades and Heroes game engine – though I haven’t played them all. So far I think my favourite iteration is Song of Shadows and Dust (street fighting in urban centres around the Ancient Mediterranean) and I am currently helping with playtesting Galleys and Galleons (a game of naval combat in the age of sail – by the same author as Song of Shadows and Dust). We also tried Mutants and Death Ray Guns and Song of Drums and Shakos and got to playtest Power Legion. Hopefully we’ll get to trying out the rest in the coming year.

We played a LOT of Boardgames this year. There are a few games we’ve played over the last couple years... and last year we picked up a few munchkin games and played those. But this year the boardgames really took off. It really started in the spring – I can’t remember why, but I picked up a copy of Small World and brought it home to play. We played it a few more times. At the end of the school year – after the kids year end portfolio review – we stopped by the Dragon’s Den and picked up a couple expansions for Small World and King of Tokyo (which a friend had given us for Xmas last year). Things really took off in August when I started playing Smash Up with the kids. In September I made a pact with them that we were going to play at least ONE GAME EVERY DAY throughout the month. We did  it. WE played 69 games through the month – averaging over TWO a day!? WE also started hosting a weekly boardgame afternoon for some other homeschoolers on Tuesday afternoons.

Also in the spring I started in on a survey of world history – starting with ancient times – and I started looking for games thematically related to what we were studying. I already had Ur and The Hanging Gardens for Mesopotamia, and I picked up Ra for ancient Egypt. We’ve also played Olympus for the Greeks. I have many, MANY more lined up for this next year.

As I mentioned in the Game Plan 2015 I would like to play 100 new games (games that I own that I have not played – or haven’t played in the last 7 years since I started recording game plays on BGG. We kicked things off a week and a half ago – the day the kids finished up their activity books for the year. I told them we would, over the next two weeks before The Boy’s birthday, play one new game every day. 90% of our Xmas gifts this year were Boardgames so we had a lot of NEW, new stuff to choose from over the last week. So far we’ve played Roborally, Age of Mythology: The Boardgame, Lover Letter, Ingenious, Pandemic, 7 Wonders, Arkham Horror, Chaos Marauders, Fearsome Floors, Small World Underground, Shadows Over Camelot, Smash Up with our new Science Fiction Double Feature and the Geeks from the  Big Geeky Box, and finally, on New Year’s Eve, Star Treek: Catan - scratching 14 off the list of unplayed games! We’ll continue through to Monday (The Boy’s Birthday – which will be a DAY OF GAMING!) There will be a post on this after the birthday celebrations – I’ve been taking pictures of all the games.

We didn’t do so much Role-playing this year. Throughout the first half of the year we tried getting a couple of campaigns going – mostly with my friend Christian and his daughters – but they weren’t available often enough it was hard to maintain continuity or enthusiasm (especially for me the GM) when 2-3 weeks (or even a month) would go by between sessions – which were generally limited to Friday or Saturday evenings when everyone was pretty tired… Perhaps next year…

Painting? As mentioned, I painted a LOT of Feudal Japanese for the first two months of the year. After that…? bits of this and that… I added considerably to the Ancients and fantasy collections – for Song of Blades and Heroes and Song of Shadows and Dust. I finished up a bunch of Ancient and Mythical Greeks – hoping to use them in a Greek Myth role-playing game using A Tale of Blades and Heroes - which never really got off the ground…

I seem to have failed in the Paint-More-Than-I-Purchase Department. 845 28mm foot painted to 1181 purchased (or otherwise acquired) – it wasn’t really as bad as it looks over 400 of those “purchased (or otherwise acquired)” were a pile of cheap plastic Hät 28mm Napoleonics that I’d convinced Amanda to get for me for my birthday (an online store was blowing them out of $5 or maybe $7 for a box – I can’t remember, it was an insane deal – there’s 32-48 figures in each of those boxes!?) Other than that I bought a lot of Feudal Japanese – most of them got painted. I bought a lot of ancients – most of those got painted. At the end of the year I bought a pile of Great War British (that I’ll be using as Canadians)… I haven’t even touched them yet – but they’ll get painted some time early in the New Year.

I spent quite a bit of time painting and reading with the kids – we would all sit down to paint miniatures – but each of us would take turns taking a break from painting to read a chapter of a novel – we got through a lot of books this year.

Well… that’s pretty much it…  I hope this past year has been as fun and exciting for you as it has been for me – and I hope this New Year finds you all healthy, happy, and gaming! 

One Last Post – Mech!

Thought I’d squeeze in one last post before the New Year...

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

Reaper Bones CAV mech of some sort. I have no intention of playing CAV – but I did get in on the Reaper CAV: Strike Operations Kickstarter to kit myself and the kids out with giant fighting robot ‘mech-like-things so we could all play Samurai Robot Battle Royale (and possibly Mighty Monsters…)

This is the first of the plastic CAV mechs I’ve painted – I actually finished painting days ago, but didn’t get around to finishing the base until last night.

We’ll have to build some micro buildings (and rubble - for when we smash them to bits!)

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Looking back as 2014

Skythian Horse Archer, Irish Wolfhounds, Wardancers and Mice

A few odd and sundry items I’ve been working on while watching Spartacus the last few evenings.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

This is a female Skythian archer from RAFM. I started painting this the first time I thought I’d try and run a Cthulhu Invictus game back in the summer. Amanda had planned on running a Skythian Horse Archer.

I also happened to have a very similar looking Wargames Foundry MOUNTED female Skythian horse archer – so I thought I’d paint her up the same so Amanda would have a mounted version of her figure for when she rode into battle on her horse (as all Skythian Horse Archers should!)

Luckily, as they depict the same character, they should never be on the table at the same time… because when standing next to each other the difference in scale is noticeable!

More Mice from Reaper Miniatures

Some Irish Wolfhounds and a pack master from Crusader Miniatures - I thought it might be fun to try an animal-based warband in A Song of Blades and Heroes (or perhaps Song of Arthur and Merlin?)

I found three more Wood Elf Wardancers that I’d missed when I painted the rest. The figures are from Games Workshop.

The entire troupe of War Dancers.

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

That may very well be it for painting this year… unless I finish up something while finishing off the final season of Spartacus… 

Imperial Guard Catachans

I have to admit I’ve been a fan of military role-playing games for a long time. I’m not saying they are the “best” or even my personal favourites – just saying I like them. I have very fond memories of playing Twilight: 2000, Traveller: Mercenary, Revised Recon, Behind Enemy Lines and Battletech: Mechwarrior in high school – and many of our Top Secret games were more “Special Ops” missions that “Spying”, per se... In more recent times I’ve run Tour of Darkness and Weird War Two campaigns with Savage Worlds, I even ran a Call of Cthulhu game set during the Great War where the characters were members of the Canadian Expeditionary Force.

I don’t know what it is about them… perhaps it’s because I’m interested in military history… perhaps it’s because it’s easy to set up a plot train when the characters are part of a military chain of command – “Here is your mission… go do it!”… Perhaps a bit of both.  Oh and (as a miniature wargamer) I’ve always had this megalomanic dream of running a military role-playing game where the players would start as grunts and work their way up to being the platoon/section commanders – at which point the engagements become skirmish wargames - then maybe after more campaigning they could even take command of companies and/or become part of a battalion’s staff – and then the combat engagements become another game entirely (possibly using Blitzkrieg/Cold War/Future War Commander)

I don’t even now how I started collecting up these things… Actually I do know the Void stuff I originally picked up from the bargan bin at the Dragon’s Den and I think I picked up a few odd Imperial Guard in lots off ebay. I looked into picking up a few more after I got  Rogue Trader and even more after picking up Only War last year. More recently I scrounged up a copy of an old Imperial Guard codex to see how the guard is theoretically organized – so I could organize this growing force of Imperial Guard that I seemed to be acquiring.

It’ll be awhile before I ever get around to running either Rogue Trader or Only War – but I got looking at these guys again after I picked up a few more Only War books during the annual Fantasy Flight Games Black Friday/Xmas Sale. I found I had a number of half painted guys (probably form last winter when I picked up the last batch of books/minis) and decided I should at least finish them off… then looking at the organization I realized I was one or two figure from finishing off a platoon – so I finished up a few more…

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

Assorted Imperial Guard (and proxies) I painted over the last week.

These are (mostly) old I-Kore Void Viridian Commandoes (the fellow with the flamer is a Kryomek trooper). As I mentioned I’d originally picked up a few out of bargain bin for $1/pack – I’d originally planned to just use them as generic sci-fi military dudes, but then realized they’d make pretty good proxies at Imperial Guard Catachans. This particular lot I picked up off ebay to finish off a couple of squads of them (see the complete squads below)

These are some monks from Black Tree Design that I tried converting (with some gen-u-ine GW guard bitz) to use as Ministorium Priests of the Ecclesiarchy (I hope GW doesn’t sue).

Some Gen-u-ine Games Workshop Imperial Guard Catachan Jungle Fighters.

Adding these guys to troops I already have I end up with:

Blast! I’m TWO GUYS short of a (rather understrength) platoon of proxies (the platoon HQ should have two more guys in it…).

A few of the new guys allowed me to finish up a complete platoon of Catachan Imperial Guard.

The three older Ogryn I’ve just finished up look like little kids next to the other newer (but previously painted) Ogryn I have. I guess I’ll call him the Bone’ead of this attached Abhuman squad. Two of these guys came with goofy helmets with horns(!?) so I added a plastic GW Warhammer Fantasy ogre head to one and the other I just carved off the offending helmet and added a beret made of Green Stuff. Teh head swap looks pretty cool, the beret conversion... well.. it's not my best conversion ever - but it's better than the silly horned helmet! 

These are some of the other guys I just finished that will become part of some other platoon’s command sections (or something).

I also have a Company Command section and another attatched abhuman section of Ratling snipers - which are already painted. I have enough figures to make a second complete three-infantry-squad all GW Catachan platoon (as the one above) and another Platoon HQ, an infantry squad, a Heavy Weapons squad (three heavy bolters), and a smattering of additional light support weapons (flamers, plasma guns, melta guns snipers, and SIX guys with demolition chargers!?) I’m not sure what to do with them – perhaps organize them into special weapon squads? I have a batch of old Rogue Trader Era guardsmen that I thought I could use as a Veteran Squad. Oh, and a Scout Sentinal Troop….

Oh, and that’s just the Catachans… (I’ve acquired a smattering of Tallarn and Cadians – about a platoon of each)

(Oh, and then there’s the three 1/48 WW2 KV-2 tanks I picked up – along with a few GW bitz – to convert into a squad of Guard Ragnarok tanks – anybody remember those from Epic?)

I’m done with these for now though…

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

I have some Irish Wolfhounds that I’m just finishing up on the workbench and a few other odd and sundry items.

Stay tuned for that Looking Back at 2014 post.

We’ve been playing a LOT of boardgames this past week – perhaps I’ll post about that as well… 

Game Plan 2015

Never too early to start planning for next year…

Most of this Involves some concrete plans for the first quarter and some general plans or ideas for the rest of the year.

BIG EVENTS

I recently posted that I will be hosting my 11^th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash/Winter Wargaming Weekend the weekend of 13-15 February 2015. It will be a Rome-themed weekend with a Song of Shadows and Dust campaign on Friday and Saturday and some board games on Sunday including Conquest of the Empire.

Beyond that…?

I had a thought of hosting a Summer Campaign Weekend… I won’t be thinking about this too much until Wargaming Birthday Bash/Winter Wargaming Weekend is over. I am of missed feelings about a summer gaming thing. Part of me feels like “who would want to spend a weekend indoors in the summer when they could be outside enjoying the weather!?”. On the other hand, it would be easier to travel in the summer – for friends in other cities…

REGULAR GAMING

Board and Card Games

We’re going to play a LOT of boardgames over the next year…

I was looking at my BGG Collection - which by the time the dust settles after the seasonal holiday gift-giving (and BOXING DAY!) I’ll have over 400 games and expansions. Looking a little further I realized I’ve only played a quarter of those – now, keep in mind, many of those are small expansions (a single pack of cards added to a Munchkin game is a separate entry – NINE of those are just Carcasonne expansions that came with the BIG BOX. Many others are games I played a lot “back in the day” but simply haven’t played in the last seven or eight years that I’ve been tracking game plays on The Geek. I have decided that starting now and before the end of the 2015 I’m going to make sure we play 100 new games and expansions – so at least half my collection will have plays recorded! That’s on average about two per week. To kick us off, starting tomorrow, We’re going to play one new game EVERY DAY until the new year – that’ll knock ten off the list and get us on our way.

All the boardgames i played over the last year with the kids was definitely one of the highlights of the year and finding games to tie into the history we were studying was a stroke of brilliance (If I do say so myself) – more on all that in the 2014 In Review post coming up in a week or tow - so I’m really looking forward to playing even more this coming year.

While there will be a lot of other games going on - there will be a number of games following teh periods of history we will be studying over the year - starting with 7 Wonders, Parthenon and  Alexander the Great this week to finish up the Greeks (and other ancients), followed by Rome (Italia, Conquest of the Empire, Ostia, Quo Vadis, Palatinus)  and moving through the Dark Ages (Dux Bellorum, Song of Arthur and Merlin, Tara, Constantinopolis, etc...) and Middle Ages (Carcassonne? Hammer of the Scots, King Arthur, Knights of Charlemagne, Warrior Knights, Lion Rampant, San Gimignano, Siena, Ventura, etc) to the Renaissance... 

In the fall I started hosting a Board Game Afternoon on Tuesday for some fellow homeschoolificators. It was fun. I plan to continue.

I’m attending Freezerburn 2015 this year – a small one-day-boardgaming-min-con hosted by my friend John, who also organizes Tooncon (not to be confused with John – who makes the Toy Soldiers)

Perhaps it’s about time I started attending Tooncon with The Boy…?

Skirmish Miniature Gaming

The next couple of months will be mostly focused on preparing for the Song of Shadows and Dust campaign at the 11^th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash/Winter Wargaming Weekend. I will be spending a LOT of time making buildings – but hopefully we’ll be playing lots of games just to get the rules in my head really good.

Other than that I imagine I’ll be playing a lot of other Ganesha Games I picked up most of their catalogue over the last year and a few of those remain unplayed. I have Of Gods and Mortals, A Fistful of Kung Fu – Hong Kong Movie Wargame Rules,  Flying Lead, Hearts and Minds, Fear and Faith, Kooky Teenage Monster Hunters, MORE Drums and Shakos, Song of Arthur and Merlin, Samurai Robot Battle Royale, Mighty Monsters, Flashing Steel, and Song of Drums and Tomahawks - all of which I have bought, but haven’t played yet. I’m going to play all of them in 2015 sometime… (that’ll be 12 games off my list right there!)

I’d also like to run a few A Song of Blades and Heroes campaigns using Song of Deeds and Glory.

I’ll also still be playtesting Galleys and Galleons! (not sure if that qualifies as “Skirmish wargaming”..?)

Big Battle Miniature Gaming

I don’t really have time to build any “Big Armies”… I could bust out some Great War stuff and play Contemptible Little Armies… I have any number of Hordes of the Things armies or Dark Ages DBA armies that I could get out… but I haven’t really had the urge to do so lately and I can’t see me doing that at any point in the immediate future. Nor will I likely be adding to any of the existing forces at any point in the near future – with the exception of the Great War miniatures for the Vimy Project. Perhaps I’ll get in a game of CLA before

The only Big Battle games I could see myself playing a bit of is Lion Rampant (which isn't very "Big Battles" as it still has a 1:1 figure ratio... it's just Bigger than all teh other skirmish games I've been playing of late...) and possibly Dux Bellorum - because I have it and I might be able to get away with using elements of my DBA Dark Ages armies to play it.

Role-Playing Games

I made a few attempts last year to get a few Role-playing campaigns going, but most fizzled before they really got started. This year I’m planning on running a Cthulhu Invictus campaign for the kids – which should tie neatly into our study of Ancient Rome over the next few months.

PAINTING, etc.

My main focus for the first part of the year will be to make terrain – buildings, buildings and MORE buildings for the upcoming Song of Shadows and Dust campaign at the 11^th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash/Winter Wargaming Weekend. I should also get a few civilians done and maybe another faction…

After that…? Painting stuff I already have, mostly. I have a bunch of medieval units for  Lion Rampant I’d like to paint up. I need to finish up The Third Division for the Vimy Project and over 2015 I will need to acquire figures for the 2^nd Division and some Germans (though I may just cast more of my own sculpts) and get cracking on some terrain!

I may pick up another Ancient Civilians Collection… and figures for the 2^nd Canadian Division  (I think the plan was to use 1^st Corps, Gripping Beast/Woodbine, and Irregular Miniatures… but otherwise I don’t imagine buying much else – I’m sure the odd thing will come up… but for the most part I HAVE all the miniatures for all of the games I’m planning on playing this year – I just need to find time to PAINT the ones that are as yet unpainted!  


Well.... That's as much of the plan I have sorted out so far. I'm sure I'll be updating the plan as they year goes by. Stay tuned for the aforementioned 2014 in Review (in a week and a bit) and more game reports and painting updates this week!! 

Mouselings

Um… yeah… long story…

So, I’d been looking at picking up Mice and Mystics to play with the kids. Seemed like it was all the rage on BGG for a bit – near the top of The Hotness list, #96 on the overall Boardgame Rank… I was kind of back and forth about it…. it’s not inexpensive… I was at the point of trying to talk myself out of it… I do have a LOT of board games already… So I thought I’d tell Amanda about it – thinking she’d just say “NO” and that’d be that – but then SHE (Ms. “Why-Are-You-Spending-More-Money-On-Games-Don’t-You-Have-Enough-Already?”) actually said – “Oh, that sounds CUTE, go ahead and get it!”. So then I actually showed it to the kids and they were a bit interested… after further discussion it came out that they were lukewarm to the idea of playing humans turned into mice running through a castle to warn a king or whatever and were actually mostly just interested in the toys and floor plans which they’d like to use for “their own games”.

So I decided I’m for sure not going to get it (but I may change my mind tomorrow… or on Boxing Day…) – if it’s mice they want to play with – I HAVE Mice!? I bought these two or three (or FOUR!?) years ago!? I have Mouseguard: the Role-Playing Game - or A Song of Blades and Heroes or A Tale of Blades and Heroes for that matter.

So I busted out the mice to paint up. We may or may not play games with them in the near future.

(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version):

The bunch so for. They are from Reaper Miniatures.

Assassin and Pirate

Warrior and Ranger – The Girl said she like the ranger one and wants to play with it…

Bard, Paladin, and Monk.

I had been considering putting some static grass on these – but then realized if they’re actually supposed to be mouse-sized mice grass would actually be taller than them… But then I figured they could actually be giant-sized (relative to actual mice), post-apocalyptic, MUTANT mice… (I could use them with  Mutants and Death Ray Guns!?)

Coming soon on Tim’s Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Games… Toys… The Usual… 

I do have a few more Mouselings... 

11th Annual Wargaming Birthday Bash Weekend - 13-15 February 2015

It is that time of year again when I get to thinking about what to do for next year’s Wargaming Birthday Bash Weekend – coming up in February. With the success of last year’s skirmish campaign , I thought I’d try something similar again. This year I am thinking of a Rome-themed weekend (in part because that is what the kids and I will be studying from early January until March). There might be a Gladius or two given away as prizes... There may or may not be a toga party.... or it might just be a weekend long toga party… with miniature gaming...

So, if all went according to plan… 

Friday Night/Saturday - Song of Shadows and Dust Campaign 

Street violence in the ancient Mediterranean – Gangs of thugs representing one faction or another spilling blood in some Mediterranean city in the first century BC/BCE (or AD/CE?). I thought I'd use elements of the campaign system from Song of Deeds and Glory and maybe even have a map of the city so people can fight for control of neighborhoods...?

For the first time ever I will not be supplying forces for all the players – the players will have to bring their own Roman street gang (or similar faction). I figure this shouldn’t be too much to ask As with most "Song of" games from Ganesha Games> they will need a half dozen figures for an average faction to start with – of course they should probably plan to bring a half dozen more to add to their faction as it grows throughout the campaign (providing they don’t lose horribly in every game!). I put one together relatively inexpensively in less than a week, so…

I will be supplying the 3-5 URBAN game boards we'd need – that’s a LOT of buildings I have to make between now and then - and possibly a few of the civilians!!? Depending on the time of day there are civilians wandering around the table and react to violence in their immediate vicinity - usually running away - but sometime they JOIN one side or the other! It would be nice if others could bring along a few appropriate civilians as well…

Sunday - Conquest of the Empire (and other board games)

Another of those old Milton Bradley big box games reprinted by Eagle Games - I haven't read the rules yet, but it looks almost identical to Ikusa/Shogun/Samurai Swords – and last year’s Ikusa game WAS a whole lot of fun!

I also have a number of other Rome-Themed board and card games... Ostia, Quo Vadis, Palatinus, etc...

Another departure from previous years is that I will be holding this on the long weekend in February (13-15). Usually I like to hold it on (or at least as close to) my birthday – but a few of the out-of-towners hove suggested on a few occasions that I should hold it on the long weekend to make it easier for them to travel. So I thought I’d give that a try. (Of course that means I have two weeks less to get buildings made!)

Should be fun – hopefully we’ll have a good turn out – despite my draconian requirements of… y’know… painting your own damned figures…