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
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
17th 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
Posts
