2022 in Review

It's not been a bad year gaming wise, even with schedules getting busy again. The pictures are in roughly chronological order.

A couple of good projects were finished, started or expanded upon.

Finished the Bavarians. Well, I finished everything I've bought for them and they're big enough to play with. But I'm not ruling out a 3rd brigade or some dragoons for 1809.

Painted a Prussian army.

Introduced my Grandson to toy soldiers. Hopefully that will grow as the years pass.

Started some WW2 naval with 3d printed miniatures, but haven't gotten anywhere with them.

Knocked these Swiss off the leadpile.

Significantly added to my Rohirrim with 24 more riders mustered to the host. 

Dusted off my Bag the Hun for a convention game which went quite well I thought.

My Bavarians naturally saw a lot of action this year. They did well in their Sharp Practice games, but not so good in General d'Armee against Scott.

Starting an Austrian army was unexpected. But their arrival coincided nicely with reading John Gill's Thunder on the Danube trilogy.

Significantly increasing the Dwarves wasn't exactly unexpected, but long delayed. Expensive being all metal, but well worth the price.

I finished the year with a flurry of games. Solo:

Virtual:

And in person:

Games were up 15% over the last two years, ending with 23 in total.

1 virtual -Dragon Rampant

3 solo -Sharp Practice, Victory at Sea and Dragon Rampant

19 Face to face, including 7 at conventions.

9x games were Napoleonic

3x were WW2 (1 in each of land, sea and air)

4x were fantasy

3x were ancient or medieval games using Lion Rampant 2.

The rest were one offs of Cold War, Cowboys, Gangsters, and Vietnam.

Last year I outlined my objectives as the following:

So for 2022, I'd like to

• Play more Napoleonics, or air, or Middle Earth, or WW2 or anything really 
• Build a castle for Middle Earth and Medieval
• Build urban ruins for 15mm WW2
• Build SF corridors and Off-world Colony terrain 
• Sort out my ideas for a SF/Contact Front hybrid
• finish the Bavarians and Prussians
• keep smashing the leadpile down
• buy less, but keep painting output up

I did play more, especially Napoleonics and Middle Earth.

I did finish my Bavarians and Prussians. I've got a few battalions of Prussians to paint, but all major elements that I've bought are done, and it's a big enough army to play with.

I did knock some of the leadpile down, but I think I've bought or was given far more. So net increase to the pile.

I never did get to the BIG terrain projects which are still on my "to-do" list: castle, urban ruins, SF corridors/space colony.

But I did do some smaller terrain projects; autumn trees, big trees, added some churches to the Napoleonic terrain.

Didn't get my "Contact Front in Space" idea sorted. 

So not bad, bit of a mixed result. But not bad.

The table is cleared off from the holiday gaming frenzy so maybe I'll crack on with trying out my game ideas while I glue Austrians, Russians and Dwarves together.

So this year my objectives are:

• keep playing!
• try and get some under played collections on the table again
• sort out the SF rules and something for the naval and perhaps even the forgotten Samurai
• build up Russians and Austrians for Napoleonics
• paint Dwarves
• if a castle happens to get built, that'd be grand

We'll see how get on. Watch this space.

Happy New Year.
 

A Flurry of White -Last Figures for 2022!

All my Austrians so far, almost enough for a smallish game!

Christmas was pretty snowy around here, with a major blizzard closing roads across much of the continent. But a quiet, snowed in Christmas Eve and still being snowy on Boxing Day allowed for some decent painting time.

Victrix Big Men for IR Froon

Senior officer, junior officer and NCO

This next batch of Austrians consists of Big Men for both the Froon and Kolowrat formations, plus a group of skirmishers in the Froon facings. Even though I've got an extra NCO for Kolowrat, I decided to keep the Victrix skirmishers with the Victrix line infantry. The Mad Padre and I are jumping on the Alps Aflame kickstarter from Piano Wargames. Once the Padre cranks up the 3D printing I won't have to assemble any more skirmishing figures from the Victrix set, which I found extremely tedious. The Piano Wargames poses are so much nicer than what I can make out of the Victrix set.

Big Men for Kolowrat. They look like they're performing at the Vienna Opera. Maybe it's the big hats.

Senior officer is Victrix, rest are all Perry

In order to facilitate using these figures for General d'Armee, I plan to have at least 1 stand of skirmishers for every 16 figure battalion. This should be easy enough and generate lots of skirmish groups for Sharp Practice. I'd like each 4 group formation of fusiliers to also have a group of skirmishers.

Victrix figures. Skirmish group for Froon.

When I was positioning them on my usual 40x40 bases, I realized I was keeping them to the middle of the base, so I decided to just go with using plastic narrow bases for the skirmishers.  It looks a bit old school and saves me cutting out card stock. Might make them easier to position in terrain too.

I now have to revert back to assembling things to have anything to paint, so these are my last figures for 2022. 

Kolowrat formation so far. Bit heavy on the Big Men, but we'll fix that.

Next up will be a standard for each regiment and more troops stands, so that each regimental formation is of 4 groups. This will allow me to field a 2x battalion regiment in a big battle game, or in Sharp Practice they can form a nice 2 group wide, 2 group deep attack column/battalion mass formation.  

I also need to assemble a couple of groups of Grenadiers and as many groups of Landwehr as I can tolerate making, plus of course, associated Big Men. I've read that Grenadiers were not used in the skirmish role, so I won't have to worry about that, and I'm not sure the Landwehr would have been much good as skirmishers. But Piano Wargames does Landwehr skirmishing as well, so we'll see. Thanks to Scott, I can also make a group of Cheveauxleger for the Austrians too. That, plus a gun or two from Piano Games, should give me a decent force for Sharp Practice really.

Froon so far. 

Don't worry, I still have a few battalions of Prussians to assemble and loads of Russians too.

OP Thundering Christmas Dice Pt. 2- Somewhere Near the Misty Mountains

After a tea break and then dinner with Mrs. Rabbitman, the Mad Padre and I retired back to the Basement o'Gaming with the bottle of Port for our traditional Middle Earth themed Dragon Rampant game.

This time Mike wanted to command Elves and combined his and mine to make a largish army (it could have been larger, he left some of my elves in the box), while I put out just about all of my Legions of Evil. So this game is obviously set in the Second Age sometime during the War of the Elves and Sauron over some jewelry.

Evil central division lead by a Nazgul

Evil left wing

All my Elf cavalry on table for the first time I think

A big freaking ent! I prompted Mike to make him an Epic Warbeast, but he just kept him as a Greater

Lots of wolves!

Greater and Lesser Warbeasts wild charged each other back and forth

Goblins seize the high ground!

Overview after the Port spill (notice big stain upper right). You'd think the Evil dice would have rolled better for being covered in Port, but no effect. Missed any figures or terrain though, thank Goodness!

Orcs run from the big angry tree

Elf cavalry charge into some orcs, routing them.

Grizzly bears are definitely Greater Warbeasts!

 

My wolves, wargs and wolf riders put pressure on the elf left flank

Pressure on the elf right flank

"Gobbos bad! Bear smash!" seconds after this picture is taken Razgul the Orc captain (the figure directly in front of the ginormous scary bear) for the Evil Left Wing is torn in two and flung into the trees. Things go badly for me on this end of the table after this. Beorn the Bear does run from the field after being peppered with barbed arrows, but the damage was done.

Wargs assail the bespelled (my Nazgul hit him with "Befuddled") Elven king, pulling down his guards 

The Lost Patrol. My surviving unit of goblins way out on the left flank after the rest of the command has been destroyed.

My wolf riders did run around the Elf left flank, but were stopped by some heavy foot. Eventually, attacks by his assorted warbeasts and archery caused enough failed courage tests that I had to do army wide courage tests for 50% casualties. More units routed. The last roll was for my Nazgul who rolled '2' and suddenly remembered a staff meeting at Dol Guldur. He retired in a huff muttering about "Stupid goblins! Always dying on you!"

Eriador was safe for the time being.

Mike has written up his experience of the game here: 

 https://madpadrewargames.blogspot.com/2022/12/carnage-in-middle-earth-end-of-year.html

Having exchanged honours with a victory each, and put a good dent in my Port, we retired to bed.

Dice were rolled. Much fun was had.