2015 AAR and the New Plan

It being January I feel a need to review the last year and set plans for the new one, late as usual.

2015 was fairly successful on the gaming front we managed to get in 2-3 games a month at the local Hobby Town mostly Frostgrave but also some Little Britons using either OHW or With MacDuff to the Frontier as well as play testing Flint and Feather an upcoming set from Howard Whitehouse

Painting wise although happy with my output I bought way more than I should have. The stats, painted 146 bought 324 for a minus 178 on the year. The big purchases were some John Jenkins Warring States and the Watchful Studio Warring States Kickstarter to be used for a pair of Pulse of Battle armies.These will keep me busy for the rest of the year and hopefully nothing new comes along to temp me. All in in all a good year for the hobby.

Now on to the plans for 2016. The year has seen Three games so far, Sharpe's Practice AWI, Flint&Feather and Frostgrave, thirty eight miniatures have been painted with a good start on a dozen more.

An order has been placed for the final two cavalry units needed to finish the Little Briton project as planned. I am considering adding more to this project as I want some French, German and West Indian troops.

I'm starting to catalogue my collection and hope to get through a least four periods by the end of the year. The first is the AWI 28mm and then ACW 15mm. The Little Britons are mostly done but I switched formats so may move these over.

The plans for gaming will depend on availability of opponents but the one group I'm in is showing interest in Sharpe's Practice and Carnage & Glory for the AWI and perhaps En Guarde when it comes out. Locally word is that others are interested in Frostgrave so a campaign with that may be in the future. Dragon Rampant has been ordered so I'll be looking to play some of that using my Games Workshop LOTR figures. Once again Huzzah is on the calendar. Last year was a lot of fun. I played in the Hawks "Not Quite Seven Years War" game using modified Charge rules and fantastic 40mm figures.

So there's the layout for the next year. I'm shooting for twelve blog posts for this year with them being a recap of each months activity. It will most likely be weighted towards the beginning and end of the year though as the warmer months tend towards outdoor fun.

Thanks for reading.

Distracted but Happy

Not much happening on the LB front. The first unit of red coats has been painted and based now I'm waiting on warmer weather to seal coat them. The 10th U.S. Cavalry are coming along  with most of the first coat done. Pictures next week.

The distraction has been Pulse of Battle Ancient rules from Piquet. I'm not sure what prompted me to order these as Ancients aren't one of my major periods but I got in on the pre-order and the price was reasonable. Well I'm pretty happy that I did. They're a well laid out set of rules, an Army builder and short history lesson for several periods and two card decks. I've been a fan of Piquet for years and this looks like a great addition to the family.

Of course even though I had some Roman and Numidian armies for DBA there wasn't enough command figures and I felt I needed some more units to make a balanced gaming force. So it was off to the Viking Forge to see what was available. I wanted the figures to match my existing armies. Viking Forge sell the figures individually at $.40 a piece. I ordered about 50 figures giving me 5 command figures per side and an additional 10 units. I have to say knowing that these figures have been around for ages I didn't have high expectations for quality of the molds however they were cleanly cast with out flash and few mold lines. In fact the lines are so negligible that I may just wash and prime. I'm very happy with my purchase. Communication with them was good and shipping was quick.

I'm not unhappy with this distraction so far as every part has been top quality and I cut my original Viking Forge order down from 110 figures to a more manageable 46.

Next week should see the next order off to Spencer Smith.