Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Wrapping up 2013

It's the end of the year. Time to wrap up what I managed to accomplish in 2013 and make some plans for 2014.

I'll need to find time to polish off this monster in 2014 too!

Painting Totals for 2013 

28mm foot: 111, 28mm mounted: 17 which is about half of what I knocked out last year. It was an eventful year with a move to a new house and a new job which didn't leave a lot of time for painting. Hoping to get back to 2012 totals in 2014.

I failed to get up to 6 divisions per side for Hail Caesar, but I did manage to get a pair of basic forces for SAGA completed, and I made a dent on my Reaper Bones. I also managed to resist adding new periods to the lead pile which is good, and with a mountain if lead already on hand I think I'm going to focus on getting it painted up.

Games Played: 6 
One fewer than last year! Again, I spent 5 months in temporary housing with no room for wargaming. That said, we did play quite a bit of King of Tokyo and Pandemic. I'm quite eager to push some lead around in the new year.

Conventions: 1 
Urgh! Scheduling this year really put a crimp in convention attendance (we moved into our new house during Fall In), but I did manage to get a few new friends to join us for Historicon and they're already making plans to attend again this summer. So overall I count that as a win :)

Games to Play in 2014 

SAGA
I finally have enough painted figures to give SAGA a try. It's long been my back burner side project, and I would have preferred to get some dark ages battles before the game line had wrapped up it's entire run. Still, I've heard lots of good things about SAGA, and the demos I've played at cons have been fun, so I'm looking forward to take a deeper dive into the rules.

Fireball Forward
I've really enjoyed every game of Fireball Forward I've played at cons, and my buddy Mike and I are jonesing to get it on the table. My soviets are ready to go, and Mike's Germans are nearly so. We just need to get them finished up and a few of the markers and flags necessary for the game and we can give an infantry game a whirl. I'd like to get some tanks on the table too (something I think Fireball Forward does well), so hoping I can get both some panzers and T-34's put together and painted up quickly too.

Hail Caesar 
We have a good handle on the rules, but Mike and I have been talking about making a few adjustments. I think we're both ready to move beyond straight up slugging matches, but our first attempts at scenarios pulled from the old Tabletop Teasers weren't quite satisfying. We're also thinking of trying a fantasy version of Hail Caesar as well.

Command and Colors: Ancients 
I picked up the board game this summer, hoping to get my ancients fix while in temporary housing awaiting the completion of our home. Only got as far as getting the stickers applied, but I'm hoping to get in a few games, albeit with a full hex marked table and 28mm figures rather than the blocks and board.

Dungeon Delves 
I've got quite a few of the Reaper Bones figures painted (and many, many more to go) plus an unopened box of Dwarven Forge terrain. Looking forward to doing some orc bashing with my son, and I'm pretty sure my regular game group will want a few sessions of dungeoneering as well. Not sure if we'll use Song of Blades and Heroes, an expanded version of
Dungeon Crawl Junior, or good ol' DnD.

Battleship 
I don't mean the one with the white and red pegs. I played a pretty fun WWII naval game at the last Historicon, and I've quite suddenly gotten the urge to do some spaceship gaming too. I like the idea of a simple felt cloth and a handful of vessels duking it out, but I'm not quite sure what period or theme I'd like to tackle yet.








Sunday, December 22, 2013

Dungeon Crawl Junior


We're finally getting settled into our new home and with our Christmas shopping and parties wrapped up I managed to get some minis on the table. My son and I have messed about with a variety of D&D type games, but no matter how simple I tried to tweak the rules, they always still felt too complicated. I did some on-the-fly game creation this afternoon that stripped them down to the bare minimum and had two hours of fun with the boy today. He was able to internalize the rules quickly and ran a dungeon crawl for me for over an hour. Details on dungeon crawling for kindergartners after the jump.