The New Year's Eve Post for 2022

 

Well the end of '22 finds me in a very different place then the end of '21 ... literally. Somewhere along the way I decided to see how much change I could pack into one year and the answer is "a whole lot".

• All of the Apprentices are now out on their own. It's a massive change for all of us but it's part of the deal and how things are supposed to go. 
• I changed jobs, leaving a place I had been for more than a decade for something new. It was time and it has certainly been worth it so far. 
• As that was developing I also ended up moving from a house I had been in for ten years to a new (old) house with more room more land and more interesting terrain. There was the whole looking part, the getting-ready-to-move part, then the actual-moving part, then the unpacking-after-the-move part and trying to get the new routine figured out. It's been challenging but so far so good. One of the reasons for the move was ...
• I made things official and permanent with The Relationship and getting back into the groove of "couple" rather than "individual" has been a big part of this year too. She's amazing and it's very cool to have a smart, capable, person right *there* as we go through life.

So, yeah, had a lot going on this year - mostly positive and mostly self-chosen (or self-inflicted) but still a lot. Next year should be a lot quieter and should involve a lot of building on what we did this year. 

Fred the Yard Panther on patrol

Looking back at this time last year I can safely say I was not planning all of this. I figured it was probably the last "everyone at home" holiday season but beyond that ... no. 

RPG-wise I mostly ran Deadlands. I ran one session of D&D as a sendoff to the game room at the old house and then one session of d6 Star Wars here after other plans fell through. I usually have a more diverse array of games over the course of a year but with everything else going on it just did not happen in 2022. 

In saying farewell to the old place I thought about the number of hours spent in that room with friends and family and it is eye-opening. If you figure two 4-hour sessions a week. 50 weeks a year for ten years (that's a rough guess between RPGs, miniatures, and boardgames)  it means I spent 4000 hours in that room around a table. That's probably on the light side and it doesn't count the time spent building and painting miniatures in an adjoining room which would add at least a couple thousand more hours on to that. It's one way I spend time both with friends and family and also in solo concentration attempting to accomplish various goals. It's a significant chunk of my time and that's probably why I spend time pondering things here. 

I also mentioned 40K last year and while I have yet to play a game in the new place I have started building and painting again. I clear-coated some of those Necrons earlier today and will do some more tomorrow. I also decided to dive back into Age of Sigmar as I unpacked things and I'll talk about that more here next year. 

As far as the next historical game, well, the rules for Victory at Sea arrived today and I'll start reading them a bit later and over the rest of the holiday weekend. No I did nothing really with Flames of War this year. or Kings of War, or Bolt Action, or Armada, but with the new place and a more regular schedule I have hopes of touching at least some of these next year.

Blaster and I did manage to play another round of C&C Ancients this year and we are just about to wrap up the first campaign of Rome vs. Carthage which we started, um, as described in this post. Yeah it's been awhile. To celebrate I picked up the Revolutionary War version of the game to go along with the other 5 or 6 expansions for the Ancient version. Hopefully we can finish it before he starts bringing me grandkids.

One other thing that did hold over from last year is Battletech - yes Battletech! We played multiple games earlier in the year at the old house and we have played multiple sessions at the new place as well. It's been fun dragging old friends into playing it with many comments along the lines of "I haven't played this in 20 years". I expect this will continue at its intermittent pace next year as well as several of them have now bought the current boxed set and started painting mini's. I'm still calling that a win.

So for now my gaming year wraps up with a session of d6 Star Wars that kicked off a campaign, the next-to-last scenario in the C&C Ancients book, and building & painting my Necrons, Chaos Warriors, and Fyreslayers with a pile of rulebooks and settings waiting to be read into the new year. Moving means going through your stuff and for me it reminded me about some things I had let go dormant and rekindled interest in some old options while inspiring some looks at some new ones.

It's been another good year. More to come.

Dertosa, 215 BC

So Blaster and I have managed to restart our extremely long term Command and Colors Ancients series. This time we fought "Dertosa" which historically was a Carthaginian loss. Since the game plays fairly quickly we always play each scenario twice - once from each side. This time Blaster won both games so each side went 1-1 though that second game was really close as we both had 5 flags the last few turns and the win was to get 6.

The funny thing is we read through the "Cannae" scenario and were all fired up to fight one of the more famous battles of the ancient world but I walked away from the table and somehow the book got flipped over and we set up for Dertosa (the next battle in the book) instead. Ah well - it's probably good to have a warm-up before the bigger fight anyway.

I did not realize quite how long this had been going on til I looked back at the blog and find the first battle was in 2011 ... that is a really long time to still be playing through the first set of battles.

I suspect we will pick up the pace, considering how much we both like the game - especially now that I know.

40K Friday - March & April

We have been playing our miniatures games and I have not posted much about them for some reason.

• The Reign of the Eldar continues
• Apprentice Blaster and I are still building and painting (or in his case "repairing" after the cat got into his room and took a strong interest in giving his space elves the old American Tourister luggage test ). 
• We played another battle over Spring Break (3000 points of Apprentice Red's Orks vs. a combined Eldar force of 1500 each for me and Blaster) a few weeks ago and recorded video of it as a first attempt at maybe doing a series of video batreps. We will see what comes of that. 
• I finally managed to get my wraithknight built, if not painted, and it performed very well. This weekend I might have time to get some painting done on it leaving only the Spiritseer unfinished out of the whole Wraith Host formation.
• Supplemental: I finally acquired a hard copy of the Dark Eldar codex. I know they're not that popular right now on their own but they make damn fine allies for an Eldar army and I intend to expand my force as time, money, and the painting backlog permit.

• Kings of War
• I picked up that second unit of boarboyz I wanted but have not had time to build or paint them yet. My orc army is pretty much complete for now I just need to base everything permanently and get to painting. 
• Apprentice Blaster's High Elves are also complete - he just needs to build too. He did get his own rulebook so he's all set there. 
• Apprentice Red is also starting to work on his Wood Elves and figuring out how to adapt them to the game. He's going to use either the Elf or the Nature list as his core.

• Command and Colors Ancients
• While not strictly miniatures it has been scratching the ancients itch and we've actually been playing regularly which really makes me happy. Our standard approach now is to set up, pick sides, play the game, then switch sides and play again. It is a lot of fun and it plays fast enough that this is completely possible in just an hour or two for most scenarios.
• We have most of the Ancients sets and we also have Memoir 44 but I like this system enough I've actually considered getting the Napoleon game and previously my interest in Napoleonic games was right about zero. I may wait until we've plowed through more of the ancient scenarios but I am surprised to say I am seriously thinking about doing it.

An Urgent Announcement to the Populace!

The ongoing campaign against the invader Hannibal has suffered a terrible setback!

Despite winning the first 3 battles of the war - Akragas, Crimissos River, and Bagradas, Roman leadership faltered at the Ticinus River*, recovered at Trebbia**, then suffered another defeat at Lake Trasimenus!

Fear not though, citizens! Another battle is set to take place at Cannae and Lord Blaster is confident that he will prevail over Lord Blacksteel, despite these recent thrashings.***

This news provided by the Capitoline Brotherhood of Millers. The Brotherhood uses only the finest flour: True Roman bread for true Romans!



*suffering a total shut-out

** thanks to an ambush that never occurred - Hey! Hannibal's brother! Off with your head!

***Perhaps too confident, based on this weekend's results.

Carthaginian Patriots Resist Unprovoked Roman Aggression

 Something new! Schedules this summer have prevented us from playing RPG's with the Apprentices. Frustrated with this state of affairs I decided to introduce Apprentice Blaster to one of my wargames and so we set up the first scenario for Command and Colors Ancients. This is a newer style wargame that while still played on a hexgrid it uses wooden blocks for pieces and cards for issuing orders to your troops. This first game focuses on the struggle between Rome and Carthage, with expansion sets focusing on Greeks/Persians, Imperial Rome, and the Late Roman struggles against barbarian invasions. It's a fun game that plays quickly and is realistic/historical enough to make me happy. The wooden block aspect also scratches my itch for ancient miniatures games, and since I discovered this game my 15mm Romans and Thracians have been gathering dust in the garage.

Akragas, 406 B.C.

The Romans begin in a line formation  with a LOT of heavy infantry in the center, some auxilia and light bows on the left and right, and some cavalry on the wings. The Carthaginiains begin wit ha lone heavy infantry unit in the center, supported by medium infantry, auxilia, and some light bows and light infantry on the left and right. They too have some light cavalry on the wings but they also have some heavy chariots on each wing, leading to some interesting possibilities.

The Romans started things off with some limited manuver and some ineffective archery*. The Carthaginians responded in kind, inflicting light casualties on an overly bold cavalry formation. C&C battles often start this way (which is pretty historical) and then Mercury smiled and suddenly the Roman general lit a fire under his core of heavy troops and they advanced on the double - then they did it again and all of a sudden the Carthaginiain line is being mulched and driven back, and the Romans are up 3 banners to none.

The always-cool Carthaginian commander quickly rearranges his troops, isolates the maniple being led personally by the Roman general, and smashes it with his own bodyguard of shock troops, smashing it and killing the Roman general! The renewed assaul by his line also wipes out another beaten up Roman unit and suddenly things are now much more even at 3 baners to 3 banners. The battle hangs in the balance!

Both lines battle back and forth with scoring a decisive result until a foolhardy Carthaginian sub-general makes a distrous error and manages to get himself killed and even though his unit survives another unit nearby is overrun also and so the Romans win the battle 5 banners to 3 and the Carthaginians withdraw in shame.

So Apprentice Blaster wins his first game. He got a little cocky in the middle when he was up 3-0 but he settled back down when things evened up and he realized anyone could have won the game. He was pretty happy with it and wants to play another.

*Combat uses special d6's. Each die is marked with a green circle (the symbol for light troops), a blue triangle (medium), a red square (heavy), a helmet, crossed swords, and a flag. The basic idea is to roll the color symbol that matches the type of troop you are fighting. So when my light bows are shooting at a unit of medium cavalry, I want a blue triangle result as that's what scores a hit. Green or red means a miss. In hand to hand the corssed swords also mean a hit, so the odds jump from 1 in 6 to 2 in 6. If I have a leader in the attacking unit then a helmet result also means a hit. A flag result means a retreat which can also be devastating as units rout into each other or off of the board (which is worked out as additional casualties). The number of dice is determined by the type of unit attacking - light troops usually roll 2 dice, mediums roll 4, and heavies roll 5. So you can see a unit of heavy infantry with a leader is pretty nasty, while the typical unit of light archers that throws 2 dice and has a 1/6 chance of doing some damage is not a heavy hitter at all.