Monday 31 December 2018

That end of year post - 2018 edition

   It's that time of year again, so love them or hate them* your feeds are going to be full of round-up posts.

*Personally, I love them

Last year's resolutions were:
So this year I want to focus on some key resolutions:
  1. Keep my 52 games a year target - as I now work from home making sure I get out of the house at least one day a week is extra important. So I stopped working from home within a few months of the new year, but the sentiment remained - 93/52 games played - Pass
  2. Paint more than I buy - I managed this, this year and would like to keep getting my lead pile down, either by painting it, or by selling it off. - This year saw both a fairly drastic reduction in the amount of models I bought but also a mass selling of old projects which meant my Pile of Potential is looking much better than before - Pass
  3. Finish some key projects; 15mm armies for Sword and Spear - Failed, Napoleonic British for Sharp Practice - Passed until I bought more, Sons of Horus 30k - Finished my initial plans and my 5th company of Space Marines - Didn't even touch this project - Half/Half.
  4. Start far far less new armies. Not sure how to quantify this as a pass or fail but if I don't own any models for an army already, I don't want to get carried away with it and keep disrupting my painting queue. - As I said going in, I don't know how to quantify this one, but I finished about 3 or 4 projects depending how you quantity 'finished' and only actually bought 3 new sets of rules (Pikeman's Lament, Kill Team and Adeptus Titanicus) and started 2 new projects (Ultramarines for 30k and a Legio for Titanicus), so I think this one counts as a Pass (if more in the spirit of the thing than actual practice).
   General Stats:
Most played game: Warhammer 30k
Most played army: Sons of Horus
   Neither of those are likely to be a shock, but I found it interesting that is 5 years of keeping my gaming stats this is the 4th year in a row with a different most played game and 5th year in a row with a different most played army.

   As I did last year, I thought I finish the post with some pictures of games from the past year, most of which won't have been on this blog before.



One of my big aims for the year was, not only to play 30k, but to play a game of 30k at Warhammer World. It wasn't the massive game I had planned but it was really good fun.

I've played a fair bit of Blood Bowl this year too, including trying out my Halfling team for the first time and while they are terrible as a team, watching them take out a ball carrier then almost score is absolutely brilliant.
Then below we have a game that has gone down in infamy, 11 players dead or seriously injuried in the photo and that was just after half time.







   I did notice, while putting this post together, that I have played less 'pretty' looking games this year, which is something I need to have a look into fixing. Is it because I have been trying more small demo games, rather than playing regularly with the same opponents or is it just because I have become lazier in my pre-game packing?

   After a fairly successful year, in terms of pure aims, I am pretty happy to keep a similar list of targets, so this year's resolutions are:
  1. 52 games target - classic and a good thing to keep to
  2. Paint more than I buy - damaged my backlog last year, so want to keep that up
  3. Not to buy into any small scale skirmish games this year - esp not fad looking ones
  4. Finish some key projects (again) - Sword and Spear, at least one of my Dark Age projects (I have 3 that need most of the army painted) and 2.5k of 30k Ultramarines
  5. Play some key rulesets - Sword and Spear (been meaning to try this since it came out), bigger games of Sharp Practice 2, more 30k (still loving playing this), Titanicus, Kill Team - this list could go on and on.

Thanks for reading and a happy new year

Tuesday 11 December 2018

Carried away with scenery

   As I mentioned on the last scenery post, I recently bought a pair of gaming mats* and this has given me the proper drive to get a collection of scenery build up to justify their cost. I am aiming to get a supply depot board done for one, but the other will be a city or urban centre of some kind, so I needed buildings.

*Which I need to get decent photos of before I can post about them properly

   I have a shopping list of GW buildings that I will buy as and when I have the spare cash and inclination but I also want a decent mix of styles in my buildings, so for my first building I dug through my bits box and found a half built kit, that I finished off and sprayed up.
   In the past I have always just painted these kits in various greys and called them done, but with the release of Kill Team and the new scenery kits, Warhammer TV released a how to video on painting the building you got with the starter set, and it looked really good.




   The next thing I have done is another couple of batches of the Munitorum Containers - another 7 to be exact, each with it's own number. I still have a fair few to buy and a backlog of another 9 waiting to be built, so I guess, I had better get on with them.



Thanks for reading

Thursday 6 December 2018

More assaulting goodness

   I have said in the past that I love my squad of assault marines and the more I thought about it, the more it made sense that if 1 squad is good, 2 must be better. So here is the second one, or at least the start of it.
   Only 10 men at the moment and no special weapons outside the sgt himself, The current theory being that I have my big current squad that currently just kills vehicles that can now be replaced in that role by this squad, leaving the original to start taking on infantry like it is supposed to. Although, this squad may become a carbon copy of the other one in the near future.

Sons of horus assault squad mk4 armour

I really need to be getting on with my Ultramarines, though.

Thanks for reading

Monday 3 December 2018

Munitorum Depot

   I have achieved next to nothing in the last week or so, which when added to looking after an ill rabbit this weekend - hourly feeds all day and night* - have led to this state not changing. However, I had a test project nearly finished and it was late yesterday afternoon that I realised what needed to be done to get them finished.
   I have become really good mates with the guys that ran the Extinction of Thuros event at the start of the summer and now they have announced their next one will be early next year, I have promised to supply at least one table's worth of scenery to make for some **better photos of the event and some more themed looking games. So off I went, ordering a couple of mousemat mats from gamemat.eu (well Incom gaming but the point stands) and as many Munitorum Crates as I could afford in one go.
   I'll go into more detail on my first planned board once it is finished, but in essence I wanted a board that would be easy to transport and whose components would be useful for other boards too - a table full of crates seemed like the easiest thing to box up and move about.

* Making a really good recovery
** hopefully
ultramarine munitorum armoured crate container 30k 40k scenery

   Having just finished reading a few heresy era Ultramarine novels (to get ready for that project) I was struck by the images of fighting amogst the loading docks on and above Calth and this felt the best theme to do.
   I've not weathered my test crates that heavily simply because I have this thing in my head that supplies were better in the crusade/early heresy, a crate simply wouldn't be let get to the point where it would embarass a legion, although I will have a couple that will be worse off.

   The key thing was to get a scheme I could replicate cheaply and easily as I have a good 24 of these to do minimum. . .



Thanks for reading