Another Milestone

Well, I'm amazed that I've reached 50 000 views on my little blog, and so soon after hitting 40K.

Thank You!

The same sort of things are proving popular, and the fact that there is a wide spread of views throughout the 'back catalogue' suggests that most of the views are genuine.

At past milestones I've looked at what people have been reading, this time I'd like to reflect on the projects that fell by the wayside, the started but never completed stuff, and perhaps learn a bit about why. Who knows, I might even decide to return to some of them.

I'm not considering stuff that is, essentially, eternally ongoing, such as painting Reaper Bones for roleplaying, or adding to existing playable armies.

Barsoom 

This one is embarrassing as it's the first thing I blogged about. The aim was to play skirmish games set on the Mars of Edgar Rice Burrows' John Carter of Mars books. As is often the case, this was a an idea dreamt up by Bodvoc (or Merlin as he was known then) and myself, I couldn't tell you who first came up with the idea. We were going to adapt the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Games rules (I think we found a document on the internet?). We had a small collection of 18mm minis from Black Hat Miniatures and I built a one metre game board. 

I don't really know why we never got any further. We were both working then, and gaming opportunities were very limited. We didn't get any games played, and I never even got any minis painted. Sadly, the game board succumbed to damp and had to be destroyed.

If I were to return to Barsoom I'd use Fistful of Lead Galactic Heroes, there's even a set of suggested stats for Barsoom.  I don't think I'd make a dedicated board, but I do have vague plans for some sort of terrain tile, and a red desert might be fun for a variety of Sci-fi games.

Kings of War Goblins

I started this army back in 2015 to give myself a new force to play the then new second edition.  Since I started them, second edition came and went, and I finished a regiment of sniffs and a regiment of fleabag riders. I've also got enough Sharpsticks for a horde, but (familiar story) they aren't based. I fully intend to return to these, as they will make up the bulk of a 500point Ambush force. I haven't tried mixing the old plastic goblins with the new ones yet, but I may well look into that in the future.

As to why they got abandoned? I'm not really sure, but I suspect that it was a choice between painting more goblins and painting more orcs for whatever battle was looming up. Once I've got the current lot of orcs rebased it sounds like a great time to get at least an Ambush force of goblins sorted out.

10mm War of the Ring

Another MisterC/Bodvoc joint project. This was a way to get the feel of playing mass battles in Middle Earth. We'd both played a bit of the War of the Ring game when it came out, but wanted to reduce the scale and rewrite the lists to be closer to how we imagined them from the books. In the end there was a lot of chat and a bit of painting, but this all came in useful when we moved to using Fantastic Battles, you can see the first lot of orcs here.

Our Fantastic Battles in Middle Earth project is alive and well, if a little neglected. I'm sure we'll return to it before long, and I have some Grand Plans in that direction.

A Song of Ice and Fire

This was more of a vague theme to my hobbying for a while. I built a Stone Crow and some Wildlings and began a rough hut. I'd initially thought of collecting enough to try the Never Mind The Billhooks rules, but more realistically I was aiming for Fistful of Lead warbands. 

I'll probably return to this at some point, though the drive to play Westeros set games has lessened. The idea of having forces of fifty to sixty minis a side with bright heraldry is still appealing, though I think now I'd use Dragon Rampant rules.

Trident Realm

This is a biggie. I've lots of minis, and I've painted some of them, but I've never got as far as getting anything table top ready.

Basing has been a problem; I set out with a very clear mental image of how I wanted them to look, but nothing I tried came close. This was very demoralising and sucked all the joy out of the project. It didn't help that I wasn't familiar with the different units or what makes a good starting force.

I'm going to reset my expectations for the bases, build some minis afresh and do an Ambush force and see how they go. I've a fair bit of other stuff on at the moment, but I'll get back to these later this year.

Kings of War Dwarf Demo Army

At one time I had plans to have a box containing two demo armies plus the Quickstart rules and a bit of terrain to lend to people expressing an interest in the game. I've got the Orc army done, but the Dwarf army currently consists of just a regiment of Brock Riders. I have my existing Dwarves to draw from, but I need, at the least, to rebase some of them.

Part of the reason I did Dwarf buildings for the Second International Terrainscape Challenge was to come up with a 'look' for a Dwarven building to accompany the set. (I wonder if another Terrainscape Challenge would be fun? Perhaps next year).

This is one of those 'I want it done, but there are so many other things I'd rather work on' projects. I'm going to have to just bite the crossbow bolt and get on with it. Probably one unit at a time.

Orc's Drift Dragon Rampant

Bodvoc and myself played the first scenario in the Orc's Drift campaign, Kachas Pass (write up here and design thoughts here), but never got any further. There are several reasons for this, including me not yet painting up the required minis, something else coming along and me losing a lot of my files when I changed PC.

I definitely want to get back to this, I've always enjoyed the old second edition scenario packs. Now that, in theory, Bodvoc and I should be getting more gaming days, perhaps it's time to look at this again?

Deadzone

I've not painted anything for Deadzone for ages.  Probably not since the Ripper Suits in Orctober 2021.  I do want to get a few teams painted for the various factions, and I'd like to expand into Firefight territory, for the Marauders at least.

I should also sit down and work out a decent set of terrain.  I have a large box of the sprues, but far more than I need.  I may as well thin the collection down to what I need for games.

Dungeon Saga/Star Saga

I wnated to get full sets of painted minis and scenery for both these games.  I got all the minis for Star Saga done, but still have to finish the scenery, the doors especially.  Dungeon Saga-wise I only have a few undead painted.  I suspect if I raid my various stashes of RPG furniture I'll find more there (I know I did the well for Frostgrave).  We aren't doing either of these games at the moment, so the impetus isn't there.  I guess they could count as easy wins in terms of achievements though.

I should also mention the Conan game here.  As we've been playing a lot of board games recently, and after a years worth of trying to fathom Deep Madness, I don't think this is the game for me.  I painted the mummies and some of the gribblies, but I don't need the minis for RPG, so I guess it's the Bay of E for the game.

But What about the Rest?

There are loads more things I started and haven't finished, though I do intend to do so soon(ish).  The above projects are the dead in the water ones that I need to either cast raise hobby project on or scrap.

Before the Blog

I suppose I could also mention a couple of projects that I started many years before I began this blog. 

Kings of War Elves

I've shown my first KoW army, Orcs, in many battle reports, but I also started an elven army using Mantic's elves.  These are a bit 'marmite', folk either love them or hate them.  I like the thin, non-human look.  I've seen too many elves in miniature that are simply humans with pointy ears and hoods.  Perhaps an exaggeration, some have pointy chins as well.  I find the proportions of the Mantic elves to be subtly different and they work for me.  I have some issues with the original kits, the modern ones are much more flexible, but I have enough to do a small force.

I was inspired by the mention of the elven prince who fled up north.  Now, of course, this background has been woven into the Northern Alliance, but at the time I thought a force of winter themed elves would be great.

I came up with a paint scheme, mostly white with some blues, and even began converting plastic elk to make mounts for the cavalry.  I was using West Wind's yeti as Forest Shamblers and even tried putting skis on the war machine. 

Alas, the project was abandoned, partly due to a house fire and an enforced 6 months living in temporary accommodation.  Given the new N.A list I don't see much use for these any more.

6mm Fantasy

Even longer ago Bodvoc and I experimented with 6mm fantasy, using Irregular Miniatures strips of fantasy minis.  Initially we adapted a set of rules from one of the Wargaming magazines, with a generic rules set on one page, and specific rules and lists on a separate page for each race.  Rather like One Page Rules do now.  We never quite got these right (anyone remember average dice?) and moved to adapting other rules.  We had a good selection of different armies, Bodvoc certainly had elves, and I had dwarves, orcs and goblins.  Bodvoc has returned to 6mm with his Dark Elves for Fantastic Battles (you can see them towards the end of this post on his blog), using 25mm squares for the element bases.  I may well do the same, I'll have to see if any of the stuff I painted years (decades) ago is worth salvaging or is it the Dettol for them and starting afresh?

So that's a look through some of my abandoned projects. Have I learnt anything, apart from the fact that my aspirations outstrip time available? Well, yes, I think so.

If a project takes a long time to get ready then it's likely to be supplanted by something that's already ready or that needs just a little bit of extra. This usually happens if I'm looking at two new armies plus terrain.

If I'm already enjoying something I'm more likely to invest hobby time there than something different. That said, I do tire of long term projects, and there's always the thrill of the new. When I was doing Palette Cleansers this worked admirably.

I learnt the hard way during Lockdown that I need a goal for my hobby. Sometimes this can be the pure joy of painting a particular mini, but there's no point starting an army if I don't have a realistic chance of playing games with it in the not too distant future. Thus I found it relatively easy to do my Karpath army, Bodvoc and I were doing a slow grow campaign and were pretty regularly playing games.

The counterpoint to this is that I hate to feel forced to do something. Hobby shouldn't feel like a job. Or at least, not a demanding or tedious one.

So it's a balancing act. Fuzzy targets would seem to be the most effective long term, but a hard target helps short term.

At the moment I seem to be doing very little wargaming.  There's the MESBG stuff, but nothing else.  I'm still running D&D, albeit online (so no need for minis or terrain).  This tends to take away the impetus to crack on and get stuff finished.