Firstly it's fair to say that my hobby effort has been erratic last year. It's a sad fact that as you get older, so do friends and family, and you find that the numbers decrease, or readjust.
I've been far more active musically in 2023, but I still managed to get hobby things done as well.
Gaming in 2023
Whilst I'll always think I'd like more gaming, I didn't do too badly last year.
I managed some Kings of War, finally getting my Kingdoms of Men force to 750 points for a four player game with Bodvoc and the rest of the SADdos (sadly my last game with Phil).
I got a good amount of MESBG-ing done in a Battle Companies campaign with my son. The intention behind this was to sort through our huge collection of MESBG minis and thin the collection considerably. This is becoming a theme, and will be an important factor in my hobbying going forward.
Monday nights gaming is now dedicated to board and card games, though we reserve the right to do a few one shot RPGs. I've played Aliens, Era, Sushi Go! Azul, Moon and several others. Generally they've all been fun, special mention must go to Era, Azul and Moon.
Sadly my D&D campaign was paused due to schedule problems, but I have started a game to introduce two new players to the game. This is progressing well. It's all online, due to geography, but I've been kept busy designing stuff for it. One day I'd like to be able to rerun an old adventure, simply so the majority of the work would already be done.
I played a couple of games of Galactic Heroes Star Wars style, trying out the Hero rules to see how well they fit for Star Wars (pretty well). It confirmed how good the rules are for this sort of skirmish game, and also how much I wish I'd concentrated on 28mm rather than 20mm.
I also had a game of Fantastic Battles using 6mm minis. This allowed me to play Fantastic Battles without the restrictions we placed on ourselves for the Middle Earth FB lists.
Painting in 2023
Painting wise I did a few 'Oldhammer', or 'Old School' minis, and I came up with a way of organising them, or is it justification for keeping them?
I got a bit more done for my Kingdoms of Men army, and I think it's time to get the initial 500 points up for sale, as was the original intention. I also got around to basing (most) of the orc army I painted in lockdown.
I painted up a group of Haradrim for the Battle Companies campaign. With only a bag of unpainted (and often broken) Harad minis at the start of the year, I now have 15 infantry and 2 cavalry painted. I'm at the point where I know, more or less, what of my Harad bag I'm going to keep and what I can get rid of.
I also painted some more terrain for the games, GW's nice Ruins set.
A new project was 6mm Fantastic Battles. My first army is dwarves, and with a combination of stuff I did many years ago and newly painted minis I have 1000 points already. Again the reasoning behind this was to see what 6mm fantasy I had and if it was worth keeping. I had been thinking about more generic fantasy games of Fantastic Battles, this allowed me to use minis I already had, and, again, thin out the collection.
Other Stuff
I also decided to review the first few copies of Hachette's Dungeons and Dragons Adventurer part-work. These have proven to be popular posts, and I've enjoyed writing them. Thanks must go to Bodvoc who split the cost of the magazines, without which I'd not have done more that the first two or three issues.
I began 'Island 23' my version of the popular 'Dungeon 23' stuff that sprang up last January. As with a lot of other bloggers, I couldn't sustain this beyond March, and towards the end the entries were sporadic. However, I still have the file, and there are some good ideas there that I shall revisit.
2023 saw my blog garner a lot more views, passing the 40 000 and 50 000 marks (currently standing at over 56 000). I'm both astonished and delighted by this. I must be doing something right.
The Future
Looking ahead into 2024 I'm starting off by finishing various projects from last year (and earlier!).
Here's a list of some of the things I'd like to get finished, in, as they say, no particular order.
Finish painting six companies of dwarves and a couple more characters. This is to give me 1000 points of newly painted stuff. I already have pretty much all I need to get this army to 2000 points, probably with a few interesting options, though I suspect a small order to Irregular is in the future somewhere. I'll be selling off a lot of the armies and part armies I bought back when I first collected 6mm, so I'll finish up with less stuff, have an army I can use, and, hopefully fund any small additions.
I'd also like to get at least one more army done as opposition, and terrain is, of course, something else I'll have to address (indeed I'm already collecting bits for this).
I have a few more Haradrim to paint, partly to model changes to my Battle Company and partly to give me a good base for playing other MESBG stuff. I'd like to play through the journey books at some point, though I'd probably use Fantastic Battles for the larger games such as Pelennor Fields. If I thin my collection down to meet this goal then I'll have cleared a lot of stuff out. Of course, once Harad is sorted, there's the other factions to attack.
As mentioned above, I'll get the Karpath Kingdoms of Men Ambush Force up for sale soon, and I suppose I should look at replacing those units so I still have a force to bring to battles. I think I've got enough unbuilt minis to replace the Ambush force, though I might go for slightly different units. I've also got plans for some more units to eventually expand the army to around 1000 points.
I've currently got five orks part painted to add to my slow growing Ork army. I doubt I'll ever play 40K. What I've heard about the latest edition hasn't changed my mind, but maybe, one day, Grimdark Future? Besides, I'd really like to have a go at scratch building some vehicles.
As mentioned above (and ad nauseum in earlier posts) I'd like decent terrain for my games. Ideally I want to be able to play good sized games without always using my old GW Realm of Battle. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's looking a bit tired now and even switching the boards around, the layouts eventually seem a bit samey. I've no idea how I'd replace it, space precludes having a 4ft x 6ft board. This is going to take a bit of pondering.
Possibly the biggest project, though easily broken down into small sections, is a complete overhaul of my RPG/D&D stuff. I've given a lot of my various floorplans away to local gaming shops and I'm looking around for a system to replace them. My current leaning is towards the Crooked Staff stuff (I made up some of the ruins here, and have a few of his Dungeon Tile files as well).
I'm going through my RPG minis and deciding what to keep. I have a lot of different styles of, for example, goblins and kobolds. I've even painted several different goblins and kobolds, but which ones will I use, and how many do I need? There's no quick or easy answer to this, but for kobolds I think I've settled on the most recent sculpts from Reaper. I've already got sufficient, though I do need to do a bit of weapon swapping. This frees up all the previous versions of kobolds (yes, even the ones I painted here) including a lot of the WotC pre-painted minis.
I may well put the kobolds near the front of the painting queue soon.
I'm hoping that I'll make some good progress with all this. There's always going to be the risk of new projects, Warpath is one that springs to mind, Kickstarting soon. However, I doubt I'll get much interest among my gaming friends, so I should be able to avoid it.
So if I'm setting any goals for 2024, its just one very general one.
By this time next year I'd like to have more minis painted and games played with them, and considerably fewer minis overall. This last point may be difficult, as Bones 6 is due to land this year, but I'm sure that with focus I can manage it.