Heretical Gaming is my blog about my gaming life, featuring small skirmishes and big battles from many historical periods (and some in the mythic past or the far future too). The focus is on battle reports using a wide variety of rules, with the occasional rules review, book review and odd musing about the gaming and history. Most of the battles use 6mm-sized figures and vehicles, but occasionally 15mm and 28mm figures appear too.

Wednesday 25 January 2017

A Review of 2016 & Look Forward Into 2017

A very happy New Year to everyone!  My own year was up and down, but had lots of highlights.

Despite a hectic work and family schedule, I have managed to get a fair number of games played this year, along with a reasonable number of figures painted.  If I look back to the end of last year, I find that my objectives were:

1 - Expanding my 6mm ECW army when Baccus 6mm releases its updated range.
Baccus haven't released the new sculpts yet, although there have been pictures of some of the greens on their website.

2 - Creating a new 6mm Napoleonic Prussian army.
I have achieved this one, more or less.  This one has been a mixture of Baccus 6mm for the Reserve and Landwehr troops, Commission Figurines for the Regulars.  All I need to do is finish and base up a few last infantry and artillery bases.

3 - Expand my 6mm buildings collection.
Achieved this one, with some additional pieces for the early medieval period and for NW Europe 1944. I think the majority were from Leven Miniatures.

4 - Consider  Late Romans (and appropriate enemies), War of the Spanish Succession, WW1 and Moderns.  
Considered and rejected for the moment.

5 - Buy some more figures suitable for Heroquest and perhaps fantasy skirmish games.

Done.

6 -  Continue my Peninsular War campaign, with the provisional target of getting to the end of 1810.
Campaign completed.  It was great to complete successfully such a large campaign but it has left quite a hole in my gaming life!  I am really looking forward to starting another big campaign like this one.

7 -  Completing the Scottish Corridor mini-campaign.
Done.  Well sort of, it felt half-finished, half-abandoned

8 - Begin a Wars of the Roses campaign using either be Kingmaker or one from a magazine article and DBA 3.0 for the battles.
Not started.
 
9 -  Begin a Gallic Wars campaign, using a suitable boardgame to use as an engine for this one (I have most of the figures I shall need, I think), perhaps using Polemos SPQR for the battles.
Not started.

10 -  Refight some ECW battles to get "in training" for re-fighting the whole ECW as a campaign in the future, using the Polemos ECW rules.
Done.

11.  Finish the Heroquest revival I have been playing with the bairns.
Done, but haven't gone on to find a follow-on game.
 
12 - Do "general gaming" from interesting scenarios on the web and in magazines.
Done.

13 - Be "finished" (i.e. no big lead mountain or plastic pile) again by the end of September 2016.


So, for 2017...

The priority is to start another engrossing campaign. The most likely options here are again based on a boardgame.  The two I am looking at are:

Caesar's Gallic War:


The English Civil War - The King's War:


However, there are also a couple of campaigns published in magazines I would like to have a look at.  I also want to re-do the TooFatLardies "Scottish Corridor" campaign:


For the Gallic War, I will use either the Polemos SPQR rules, DBA or the Neil Thomas' Ancient & Medieval Wargaming rules.  I may get some more figures too: I don't have enough Romans or Gauls to convincingly show six legions or an equivalent number of tribesmen, which I think would be about the biggest size of battle in this campaign.
For the ECW, I will use either Polemos ECW or the Neil Thomas' Wargaming: An Introduction rules. However, I think I might run into "not enough figures" issues if I were to use the Polemos ECW rules - they can end up needing a lot of bases of horse!

Apart from this, there are a few magazine-based campaigns I would like to try, including, but not limited to:

A Napoleonic "Northern Italy" campaign in Miniature Wargames 031, written by George Gush:


A fictional horse-and-musket campaign, written by Henry Hyde, in Battlegames 034:


And a couple of Steve Jones' campaigns:



So lots and lots to look forward to and try to fit in.  I am likely to be having another extremely busy year, with lots of new challenges - but all very positive ones.

Shopping List for 2017

Relatively little.  I'm much more into being minimalist and getting rid of excess stuff.  That said, toy soldiers do bring a lot to my life, so they aren't the focus of this, and I enjoy painting too.  But I don't want to get vast swathes of new stuff.

1 - Fill out my ECW forces when Baccus 6mm releases its new sculpts.

2- Possibly reinforcing my Roman and Celtic/Gallic forces.  Although maybe the answer here is to experiment with more rules.  Lost Battles, perhaps?

3 - Some more bits and pieces for my Napoleonics, mainly filling out existing armies.  Perhaps some Wurtembergers and Poles, too.

4 - Maybe some WW2 British Paras.

5 - Some more bits of terrain (extra bridges, more WW2 farm buildings, that really nice Total Battle Miniatures castle, perhaps); I'll turn my hand to making some more 15mm and 28mm terrain too.

6 - I'm thinking of getting some WW2 aircraft for Bag the Hun.

7 - There are a couple of rulesets I think I might try, just for a change as much as anything.

Anyway, that is the outline of my plans - I hope that your plans go well too!  Happy New Year

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