2013 round-up and 2014 plans

Merry New Year!

My goodness, is it 2014 already? I guess it's time for the inevitable 2013 year in review. So how did I do? Not terrible good, I'm a afraid. More after the break:

Let's start off by looking back at what I was going to try to achieve:

Planned projects for 2013:

• WW2 Western Europe 20mm. This included both brits and germans, as well as suitable terrain. I did not set any specific goals, except that I wanted to finish my PSC carriers and my two Churchills.
  Partial success. I didn't get a lot done, but I did at least finish the PSC carriers and one of the Churchills. I also painted some brits, a StuG and a 4Ground hayloft. (To be honest I couldn't find the second Churchill in my stash...)

Still an excellent book!

• WW2 Western Europe 6mm. I was planning to play the Blenneville or Bust! campaign pack for IABSM, doing the necessary forces for at least the first two scenarios.
  Failure. I didn't get a single game in, although I did paint some British armoured cars.

• WW2 6 mm Desert. This was almost finished in 2012, I just wanted to finish off a few tanks, redo the command bases and then play some games with them.
  Failure. I never touched them in 2013. Mainly because I never got a game in, having a game tends to rekindle my spirit in a project.

• Lord of the Rings. This was to be a slow-burner of a project. The LotR figures are beatiful and having a bunch of nice fantasy figures can never be bad.
  Partial success. I did paint five goblins and a dwarf, but the high cost of the new Hobbit figures put me off this project.

• Dust Warfare. My plan was to try out the game at least once during 2013.
  Failure. The lure of Weird WW2 with walkers is quite dead for me now. Anyone wants to buy a lot of Dust figures at a bargain price? Only oogled and fondled once, never played with.

• Warhammer and Warhammer 40k. No set plans for this one, but I hoped to play some games with the kids.
  Partial success. I played some 40k with the kids and painted some stuff, mainly for fun. My oldest son got tired of miniatures though and is now only into Minecraft. There is still hope for my youngest.

• Gaming table. This was the big one for 2013.  I was going to build a 6x4 gaming table in the house for me and the kids to play on.
  SUCCESS! I did indeed build a gaming table, painting and flocking it. I didn't game as much on it as I wanted to and right now there is a LEGO city on it. But I did build it. Huzzah!!!

Unplanned projects

So what did I do instead of the above? First and foremost I got a lot of X-wing gaming in. As these are prepainted I only put a few pieces up on the blog, but X-wing wins my gaming of 2013, hands down. But I did do some other stuff too:

A better love story than Twilight!

• 28mm WW2. A lot of time was taken up by proof-reading and playtesting Chain of Command by the TooFatLardies. This rekindled my interest in larger figures and I dug out a bunch of old Crusader British and German Fallschirmjäger figures. I painted four brits as well as a special morale tracker. The Perry twins also released a jolly nice British Desert Rat boxed set which didn't help a bit. Naturally I had to buy a box to try them out. I even managed to paint some of them!
• 20mm LRDG. This was a left-over from 2012. While not finishing everything I did slay my Moby Dick; the awful Italeri Caproni Bomber. I also built a control tower.

Final Painting Tally for 2013:

6mm vehicles: 8

20mm guns: 1

20mm airplanes: 1

20mm buildings: 3

20mm vehicles: 5

20mm figures: 12

28mm WW2 figures: 12

28mm LotR figures: 5

40k figures: 4

40K vehicles: 1

Not bad, but not good either. More kind of "Meh" really. Blog-wise my goal was to post at least a post a week, and with 52 posts I barely scraped over the finish line.

Projects for 2014:

• 6mm WW2. I will try to play the first scenario from Blenneville or Bust. With painted figures even. No, really, I mean it...
• 20mm WW2. This is all things Normandy. British, Germans, US Paratroopers and terrain, terrain, terrain. Will be used to demo Chain of Command at various conventions during the year.
• 28mm WW2. Perry Miniatures Desert Rats and Deutsche Afrika Korps is one project, Finnish Winter War is another. Why the two you ask? Well, I was seduced by the awesome sculpts by the Perry twins, and then I was seduced by the awesome value in the Baker Company kickstarter.
• And then whatever takes my fancy to keep me sane; Warhammer 40k, 1/48 scale models or Fantasy. I have realised over the years that I need some fun fillers not to get bored with my projects.

I have one New Year's resolution though: NO MORE KICKSTARTERS!!!