That Was The Year That...

As promised, a quick look back at the past year, both in terms of what I got round to doing and what was happening in the gaming world as it impacted on me.

I started this blog last January and my first project was a board for playing Barsoom games on.
The board is more or less complete, although I want to put some more patches of yellow Martian moss on it.  I have a few rocky outcrops shaped and waiting to paint, and several 18mm Martians to paint.
The main reason for not finishing this is that I rarely get to try out experimental games.  My regular opponent for this kind of thing lives some distance away, and we only manage a handful of games a year, so in hindsight it could be said that the project was doomed form the start.
Fear not.  I shall return to it sometime this year, and I learnt quite a bit about terrain building.

Next up was some D&D 2.5D terrain.  I really like this stuff, although it doesn't have quite the dramatic effect of full 3D terrain, it is a lot more portable, and some of the Heroic Maps stuff is very nicely detailed indeed.  in fact I have recently purchased some more stuff which will see use fairly soon in the long running D&D campaign.
As with the Barsoom project I improved my skills, and will be building more 2.5D stuff soon.

In march Bones 2 arrived.  Once I had finished oo ing and ah ing over the lovely plastic goodness I got round to painting a few of the minis; not much though, and I have a huge pile of Bone still to do.

April brought the start of my attempts to build a goblin army for Kings of War.  I have two units completed and a third just waiting to be based, but as with many of my projects, other new shiny things took over.  It's still an ongoing project though, and I am going to try and get it finished (if an army is ever finished) by this time next year.  I might even set myself a target of one unit per month, though that might get tight if other things come along.

Alongside painting goblins I got a lot (and I mean a lot) of Fat Dragon 3D terrain build for a long running dungeon crawl (its still ongoing, though they are close to the end).  the results can be seen on here, though more up to date photos including other areas of the Library, can be seen on the Fat Dragon forum here.  (It was nice to get such positive feedback from my peers in the hobby as well).

To go with the new version of Kings of War (and to show ex WFB players how easy it is to switch) I dragged out my old WFB Empire army and re jigged it as a Kingdoms of Men army for KoW.  I ended up doing quite a bit of repainting, and there is still more to do.  Even so I managed to put together a nicely functioning 1000 pt army that met with some modest success on the table top.

I then got Frostgrave and began putting together a warband for it.  Rather  than starting straight away on the figures that came with it I decided to use some of my old D&D prepaints.  Sadly this didn't save me any time as I then repainted them.  At least they look good.
I also made some terrain for Frostgrave; some fold flat ruined buildings form Fat Dragon and Dave Graffam, and a statue of a wizard, in fact I have two more statues just waiting to be based.

After Frostgrave came Strange Aeons, a Mythos based skirmish game.  I haven't done much with this so far, partly due to lack of enthusiastic opponents, partly due to having loads of other stuff to do.
the tentacled gribbly has made several appearances in D&D though.

And then Dungeon Saga arrived.  I have been waiting for this and was not disappointed.  There are a few issues, especially with the Adventurers Companion, but they are being corrected.
The detail on the figures is really good.  Although marketed as 'board game quality', they are the equal of many table top miniatures.  The rules are good, simple enough to pick up quickly, but with enough detail to model dungeon exploring.

The end of 2015 brought Dragon Rampant.  This fantasy version of Lion Rampant looks interesting, and I hope to be playing it soon.

In the world of gaming last year saw GW finally waving good bye to the Warhammer world, and I suspect, quite a few die hard warhammer fans.  Mantic tried to pick up the slack with their new edition of Kings Of War.  Mantic also brought us Dungeon Saga, which could be thought of as the spiritual successor to HeroQuest.
They also promised us a new version of Deadzone (the redux beta test is currently ongoing, thought the rules themselves should be locked in by now) and Warpath, which we are expecting some time this year.