Wow, I’m a year older. Guess I’d better do a review!

As the title suggests I am a year older (and that means me and not the blog) so in the tried and tested tradition of most bloggers on an anniversary of some kind I thought I’d do a review of my efforts since my last birthday.

September 2012 - Septmeber 2013

Well it was quite a significant 12 months in terms of gaming and hobby related bumpf (Yorkshire slang for “stuff”). It was around this time last year that I finally made the decision to abandon GW products completely, my reasons being much the same as many other gamers, bloggers, housewives, employees etc:

• Price increases
• Rules changes
• Change from hobby to profit orientation

I could wax lyrical on the decision however suffice it to say that I have happily not looked back. I had already been playing WAB for a while and still do occasionally, that being the one rule set that still appeals. However I have since broadened my interests into more historical periods and much like most wargamers out there have been overwhelmed with the amount of good material being published, cast, moulded etc. That’s not to say that it wasn’t available previously however it would seem that to this humble bloggers view there has been a sea change in where the £/$/Y/E is being spent and thus a number of smaller companies (one man bands) are benefitting from this bounty.

So where did my hard earned get spent in the last twelve months? Well my list of hobby projects seems to have sky rocketed over this period, with slight deviation into the evil world of WHFB (argh!):

In Her Majestys Name - Ooh where to start. A nice cheap ruleset from Osprey, skirmish based so there’s minimal outlay and the rules writers are active on discussion forums. The epitomy of hobby based wargames in my view and spawned my desire to do a little fictional writing (see Inspector Johnsons Casebook here).

WAB/Clash of Empires - Still playing however not so much CoE as it feels a little like the poorer cousin to WAB. Unfortunately I have too many projects on the go at the moment (Saxons, Early Imperial Romans, Greeks).

Bolt Action - World War 2 skirmish games at their most “Hollywood”. I jumped in feet first on this one when the rules were released, managed to drag a big chunk of our gaming club along as well and will be assisting in a campaign day we’re running in December. The side benefit is it managed to revive my interest in WW2 gaming in general which resulted in :

Flames of War - My disillusionment with GW led me to trade in a big chunk of my rulebooks to Amazon (boo hiss I hear you cry). However I then spent my ill gotten gains on a US Airborne force with some online sellers and have been thoroughly enjoying this revival in a system that big chunks of the gaming populace seem to have abandoned (typical). In a similar vein this leads to:

Lord of the Rings - I know, I said I had abandoned GW. Well it would seem that not entirely although in my defence I would categorise this as New Line/Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings gaming as the imagery comes from the films hence my reason for collecting this. It was also done as a way to demonstrate that you can game fantasy settings on a budget, all my purchases have been from other gamers who need to clear their lead/plastic pile and I have made some mutually beneficial trades.

WFB - Warhammer Fantasy Battle (on a budget). I did this purely as a finger to the ridiculous pricing policy of GW and put together a 1500pts Daemon army for our club tournament. I did badly however won the best painted for my £11.09 army (for my see my article here)

Saga - Still trying to figure this one out however its fun, uses my existing figures and seems different enough for me not to get it confused with other systems.

English Civil War - I started this simply because I picked up a bunch of Warlord Games Parliamentary figures on the cheap. Luckily a fella at our club is a bit of a local ECW buff so ran a small campaign based on the local area using WAB ECW and Pike & Shotte. We’re still finishing this one off!

Naval WW2 - This is a bit of a solo effort by me and I still have no opponents. Not sure what rules I’ll use however I intend on setting up the Hunt for the Bismarck and picked up the Davco models from Skytrex at Triples earlier in the year.

So am I going to complete any of this? Well I am still plugging away at my LoTR models and have opponents at the club on a slow boil (metaphorically speaking). WW2 seems to be my focus at the moment with our upcoming Bolt Action campaign and Flames of War modelling (which I’m thoroughly enjoying). I should have a bit of a modelling update shortly and have been trying to sort out the terrain for a Normandy beach assault for the club so will share that once I figure out the beast way to layout 5 x 6’ boards on a limited budget.