Wrapping up 2023 and Looking Forward to the New Year

 

It was a good year. I read more books and played more games than I did the year before. The family is good and the apprentices are operating on their own. The animals are thriving and the house and yard are in good shape so a lot is going right here. 

One new wrinkle is that since the wife tracks her books read over the course of the year I started doing that too and hit 50-something for the year. I figure over 1/week is a pretty good baseline but now I have to see if I can go higher. painting mini's, running games, and computer time all cut into this effort of course so balance is the key.

Kind of obligatory here

I only played a few games of 40K this year, one of my lower-effort years in a very long time, but I did get a lot of painting done. Maybe I can get more playing time in this year. Much of this year's painting effort will be going into the Tyranids and then probably my Imperial Guard as we delve into the mysteries of Speedpaint 2.0 and airbrushes.

Blaster and I did manage to finish up our eternal ongoing tour of Command and Colors Ancients finished. I have now played every scenario in that initial set at least twice - once from each side. Now on to the next of 5 expansions ... we probably need to pick up the pace here if we are going to finish while I am still alive.

RPG's I ran this year:

• Star Wars (FFG)
• The new Marvel RPG
• The Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG
• ICONS 
• Warhammer Fantasy RPG (2nd Edition)
• Savage Worlds Deadlands - lots of this one. 

I didn't really play much as the GM-ing seems to be my normal role these days but maybe this year that will change up some.

Going into this year we have -no- commitments. with the main campaign completed we could go in any direction and that's a good feeling for the start of a new year. I have some ideas for some smaller games and for at least one big one but right now I'm sorting through them and figuring out what order top present them in and thinking through some details on how to make them work. More to come on those for sure. 

Other-games-wise we played some Battletech, King of Tokyo, and Scrabble - of all things! As it turns out the wife is a very good Scrabble player and I have lost more games of that this year than I can remember. A new goal for '24 is to beat her at least once now.

So - things are going well here, I feel good about 2023 and I am really looking forward to 2024. Happy new year!

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.

Looking ahead for '22

 

It's a little strange -  I haven't done one of these new year type posts in a few years and I think my approach has shifted.  I don't feel any real urgency with the goals this year as far as must-do or must-have type things. I'm fairly happy with where a lot of things are right now and I'm guessing that has a lot to do with it. 

For example EN World has a Most-Anticipated RPG list every year and there are usually a few entries that have my attention but this year ... man there is nothing there that grabs me. Partly because of subjects, partly because of systems, and also because for some of them I can think of how I could run them in existing games without much trouble. D&D 5th is still rolling along as is PF2. Star Wars and Star Trek both have well-supported games. Superheroes are well-covered too. That new Marvel game scheduled for March is really the only thing on the horizon I am sort of excited about but even there it's very much a wait and see kind of feeling rather than thinking up a new campaign.

RPG-wise I expect to keep running Deadlands for the near future, hopefully to the conclusion of this particular campaign. I like the system and the setting, my players seem to as well, and for a published campaign it's pretty open and flexible. Pinnacle's plot point approach works pretty well for me. 

When that eventually wraps up we will have some decisions to make. I usually like to change things up and I've been talking up ToEE for 5th edition as our next game but you never know. I'd say Savage Rifts is a strong candidate as well. I'd still like to do at least a short run with some version of Star Wars but we will see. The ever-burning hope of an ongoing supers campaign is still around but I suspect some of these options will have to wait until I feel like I can run a second game alongside a main campaign. I've done it before but this past year or two has worked best with one campaign going that everyone can plan around. FOCUS! Do not split the player-party!

I haven't played an RPG in a while and that's something I miss. Paladin Steve's years-long Pathfinder  campaign ended in late 2019 and Variable Dave's 50 Fathoms campaign was blocked by quarantine in 2020. he eventually started running it online but I just do not like the online option and they eventually wrapped it up last summer. There has been talk of starting up something new but nothing has happened yet. Maybe this year will see a re-kindling.

Battletech was a surprise end of year option and we have one kiddo at least very much interested so that might become a thing this year. I'm not sure if it will stay a board/minis option or if it might erupt into the RPG side too but it would be fun after this long to actually spend some time with it. It's not like I really need to buy or build or paint anything for it so it's an easy option. 

On the miniatures front 40K will stay the big dog. First goal is to finish the Necrons, then the Blood Angels and then we will see. Maybe Eldar, maybe Chaos ... plus there is always power armor work to do too. Not sure I will do a new army this year.  The robots were a unique situation being in the starter sets and all. The Tyranids are the only other army I don't have that really tempt me these days but I don't feel they're a must-have yet. The other likely candidate is the Custodes because hey, you only need about 20 models to make an army. 

Besides 40K I'd -like- to paint up and play my Flames of War ... and my Kings of War ... and some Sigmar ... and maybe try Legions.  Legions is pretty likely at this point to be the "new game failure" for me in 2022. More to come there for sure. 

That's right - Total War Warhammer III is coming soon too - that'll be fun.

I've had a weird urge lately to go retro. We know there's a reborn old-school Warhammer coming some day and I'm tempted to start building an old-school army to go with it. I still have my Chaos Warriors but all that stuff sitting half-done for Kings of War would look good on individual bases. Dwarves are also an inclination as I've never built a fantasy dwarf army in any game ... also Empire and all their crazy variety ... and Dark Elves for some reason. Not sure where this will go. It's not an urgent feeling but more of a "hey I could get a unit here and a unit there and have something ready to go whenever the new rules arrive."

So yes, this year feels way more casual than many in the past - laid back if you will. No hard schedule or agenda, just knowing what I'm doing now with a rough outline for later. The last couple of years have shown me that hard plans for 6+ months are likely to be disrupted so keep them loose. Worry about the now thing and maybe the next thing and leave the rest flexible.

More to come. 

 

The New Year's Eve Post for 2021

2021 was not a bad year here. Personal and family stuff was good and that's about all you can ask for these days. Hobby-wise ...

• I ran a fair amount of 5th edition D&D earlier in the year. One of these days maybe I will write those sessions up. That campaign was paused but I suspect we will come back to it down the road. It gave me a reason to spruce up the monster miniature collection and clean up the storage for it too. 
• The campaign that closed out the year was a new Deadlands campaign I discussed here. One of the goals for the new year is to put up some session summaries here and then keep up with it going forward. it's been a long time since we've had a sustained western type campaign and I do like the Savage Worlds rules quite a bit so it's been nothing but good. It's been on hold for the holidays and my convention crew but we will pick it back up in Jan/Feb. 

Looking back I don't think I ran any other RPGs this year, even one-shots. That's pretty light for me. I suppose I should look at it as maintaining focus at a higher level than usual but it still feels a little weird. I certainly added enough new ones to the pile and of course there are ideas for way too many campaigns buzzing around my head but my players are happy with what we are doing so I feel like I'm doing something right. 

Miniatures-wise we played a reasonable level of 40K and I got a -lot- of painting done so that feels like a total win too. Close to wrapping up the Necrons and I am very happy with that. Simple paint scheme, as terminator-ish a look as I can give them. It's pretty much silver/chrome, red eyes and gun parts, and desert type basing. I won't quite finish them by the end of the year ... errr ... tonight ... but some of that is due to weather as you can't spray that final clearcoat if it's too cold, or too wet, or too windy and we will cover all 3 of those this week. 

• The Blood Angels were also a big focus later in the year and I do now have a couple of Sanguinary Guard squads and enough Death Company to field a squad or two. This also pulled me into working on the BA dreadnoughts I've had laying around, the assault terminator squads half-built for a couple of years, some old unfinished tac squads and dev squads, and also finally figuring out the rhino & razorback situation I've had with them as not everything can have a jump pack or be dropped out of a Stormraven. It feels good to have these guys rounding into shape as my other major marine army

• I added some stuff to my Crimson Fists - a landspeeder with two more almost done, a pair of stormtalons that have been "almost done" for a few years now - now they are "really done" - and I finished up some leader types - rebased, decaled where applicable, touched up, and clear-coated. There is more to do ... I suspect there will always be a backlog with these guys because they are my "normal" marine army and there is always new stuff coming out for marines, but they are in a good place for now. 

• I played my Grey Knights early on but I haven't played them with the new book yet.  I have some units to build and tweaks to make and I need to focus on them for a while to do it - that will happen after the current wave is handled. 

• I played the Imperial Guard early on as well and my force needs some tweaks (and a more experienced commander). All I really added was some more demolisher cannon turrets  - hopefully they stay good - and the lascannon gunship (Vulture? Vendeta? I don't know but it seems nasty) because I could and I'd like a flying tank destroyer to help protect my own tanks. I'm really kind of waiting for a new Guard codex to dive back into this army and tune it up.

• I played my Orks in a Crusade campaign before the new codex came out and it is a really fun way to play the game. I got hammered pretty hard by Blaster's Ultramarines primaris gunline force but my warboss managed to wreck his redemptor dread regularly and to crunch his captain a few times too so it was not completely one-sided. With the new book I have added some bikes and since I mostly run Goffs I have the new Ghazghkull in the painting queue now too. I need to take a month next year and just play my orks only through a few games and I'll get them done. Also: The Great Re-Basing will happen as I have the base expanders sitting on my workbench to bump all the old boyz up to 32mm. not super exciting but it's a chance to change up how I base these guys and considering a lot of my army dates back to 2nd & 3rd edition I'm looking forward to it.

I did dive into Flames of War early in the year as this year's "miniatures game I will dive into hard and end up not playing" ... which is exactly what happened. At some point you might think I would learn but hope springs eternal. A few years ago it was Bolt Action, then it was Star Wars Armada (though we did play a few games of both) then Age of Sigmar ... I have played enough Kings of War that I don't count it as a non-starter but it was quiet this year too. Check in tomorrow for next year's candidates!

I did work on building an Undead army for Kings of War ... and also for Sigmar as that book came out while I was feeling it and so progress was made but not completed on both. I held off on 3rd edition AoS as we haven't played since 1st and I'm trying to be better about throwing resources at rulebooks I may not use. Armies - sure. We can play a few games with the old rules if we can get some armies together and make sure it's something we want to expand. 

Overall the miniatures situation is better then last year. I got a lot done and I also took the time to reorganize my work space  - cleaned out the workbench completely, picked up some new drawer/organizer things, and went through a bunch of paints and tools and supplies and got rid of a lot of clutter. I've enjoyed it more the last few months than I have in quite a while so I'm calling that a win. 

Then, last week of the year, the big surprise - we ended up playing Battletech of all things. We haven't played BT since the boys got interested years ago so I decided to go back to the original source and we played with the original BT boxed set, mechs, and map. This all came about because Paladin Steve's oldest son was asking about the 40K miniatures again when he was over for our boardgame night and rather than try to explain all that we started talking about how if he want to have giant robots moving around and punching and shooting each other Battletech was a better bet than 40k. It's also cheaper to get into if he really liked it. Paladin Steve hadn't played in 20 years but he was interested in dusting it off - so that's what we did. One mech apiece ... 3025 tech ... one original map board and we ran for several hours. It was a lot more fun than I expected - even when my Wolverine went down to a punch in the face that crushed my cockpit. 

Going through all of that old material hit me with a pretty heavy nostalgia wave. All those custom mech sheets, some sheets that still have damaged marked on them from battles 25 years ago, and even re-discovering old Mechwarrior character sheets ... we spent a LOT of time playing Battletech in the 80's and 90's. I have a ton of painted BT miniatures some of which I painted back in the 80's and it always feels good to put those on the table again. 

It was a ton of fun and Apprentice Boom Gun was already asking when we could play again before we finished the first game. That's a good sign. It was a nice way to wrap up the gaming year. 

Beginning Year 10 of the Tower

I started writing here in 2009 as an outlet for my game related-thoughts and that's continued every year since. Last year was a terrible year and posting fell way down, but as I climb out of the hole I intend to keep the blog here as a part of my online life. I'm still running games, I'm still playing games,  so I should have some things worth sharing. I figure 2-3 posts a week will put me back where I'd like this to be so that's the goal for this year.

Currently I'm mainly running 5th Edition on a regular basis finishing up a retro-run of Keep on the Borderlands. We could have gone in several directions but this is what my players wanted to play! It actually started in 2017 then had a long dry spell and picked up again this year and has become the main game - we've even managed something approaching a regular every-two-weeks schedule! As we wrap this up we do have plans to move into the next chapter of the 5E retro tour ...

Besides D&D, in the last six months I've run sessions of ICONS (first run in years - yes!), the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG (Starter kit - looking forward to the full game), and Labyrinth Lord (Barrowmaze - lots of fun).

For the future I'm hoping to keep the D&D game going and work in a once a month Supers game somehow too. We will see. I'm sure the plans will change - they always do!

I'm still playing in Paladin Steve's Kingmaker campaign. After 4 years we are 10th level with only one character death! It's still fun and all of the original players are still playing.

I'm also playing Variable Dave's new 50 Fathoms campaign! I say new - it started in November and has run consistently since then. I have to say it is a lot of fun finally playing Savage Worlds - not just running it.

Miniatures-wise I've pretty much let Age of Sigmar, Kings of War, Frostgrave, Bolt Action, X-Wing, Attack Wing, and Armada fall by the wayside. The focus is on 40K, both playing it and getting some of those armies perpetually "under construction" finished - at least to the point of having a painted, playable, 2000 point army. I'll post more about that on Friday. I do hope to work some of those other games back in to some kind of rotation throughout the year but for now it's all about the GrimDark Far Future.

Boardgames-wise I've played more Smash-Up this past year than anything else. It's a good game, especially with kids.

Online I take occasional dips into Star Trek Online but I'm mostly playing World of Warships. It scratches a historical itch and is a lot of fun to play, especially when I have a group of friends playing it too.

Anyway there's the state of things as the year begins. I'm looking forward to getting back into the blog and everything else that goes with it.

Looking Back and Looking Ahead

2017 was an interesting year - the year I ran more different games and less of any one game. It was also a year I filled in a lot of boardgame "gaps" that I had been feeling for a long time. It was also the year 40K was reborn and became even more our Number One miniatures game.

• I ran a few sessions of Mutants and Masterminds and then it just fizzled as my players were unable to gather at the same time and other games moved into the space this created.
• I ran a few sessions of our very leisurely d6 Star Wars campaign earlier in the year.
• I ran one session of Runequest. Hey, "one" is better than "zero"!
• I was determined to get in more experience with the FFG Star Wars game and for a while I did - I ran 4-5 sessions of it this year and feel cautiously optimistic about it.  
• I have been trying to get back to having a regular Savage Worlds game on the schedule and I briefly achieved this while running a few sessions of our Deadlands campaign but then it too sputtered to a stop as Player Schedule Incompatibility Syndrome reared it's head again.
• I ran 4-5 sessions of 5th edition D&D using "Keep on the Borderlands" to kick off our experiment with the current big thing in RPGs.
• I ended up running 4-5 more in a  second, separate 5E campaign using "Storm King's Thunder" for more of the typical schedule issues. 

The single biggest issue (and I know I'm not alone here) is schedules: I have college kids with their work and school schedules, I have adults with work and family schedules, and it's a real challenge to get those to sync up regularly. It gets an order of magnitude more difficult when trying to keep the same group of players together for a particular campaign! Now about a year ago I outlined my approach to managing this and that's pretty much what we have done and it works - with some considerations I will describe in a future post. 

In spite of the challenges I am still getting to run a lot so some things are going well. 

Looking back to last year's kick-off post, well ...

• I was noting that 5E had not replaced Pathfinder and seemed unlikely to do so - weeeell...
• One goal was to rejuvenate or kill the Pathfinder campaign I was running. I did accomplish this at least. 
• I was trying to make a Supers game a regular ongoing thing. That briefly appeared to be working, then it fizzled. My players all seem interested but it never really seems to be the top priority. I may have to resign myself to it just being that way here and keeping some things ready as a fill-in option.
• I also resolved to do more Star Wars - I did!
• I didn't run any more DCC, Shadowrun, or Gamma World but I did manage to squeeze in more Savage Worlds and a session of Runequest so partial success there. 

Enough rear-view mirror - what does 2018 look like?

Well 5th is here to stay for us for now. I expect to finish SKT and probably move on to Tomb of Annihilation in that campaign. I expect to finish the Keep and move on to the next thing in that campaign. I halfway expect us to end up with a third campaign in it as well - why not? 

We're regrouping on the FFG Star Wars and I expect we will at least finish Beyond the Rim early this year. After that I am not sure. I'd like to do some more with it but it will depend on the players. I expect the d6 game to continue.

The third main game will be Savage Worlds but right now it looks like it will be in the form of Rifts. Rifts! I'm set to run a kick-off session this Saturday so we will see how that goes. Assuming we have fun with it I could see it becoming the "other" game we play on a somewhat regular schedule. If it fades out then Deadlands will likely make a comeback. 

Anyway it's shaping up to be a good year - I have a clear course, a decent plan, some backup plans, and interested players!

The Old Year and the New Year

Game-wise 2016 was good and bad. Thoughts on it, practical talk, and hopes for 2017 below.

My "main" campaign, Pathfinder's Wrath of the Righteous, staggered through the year with all of six sessions played. That's less than Paladin Steve's once-a-month Kingmaker campaign! We're supposed to be playing every other week but we're averaging every other month! We're a session or two away from finishing Book 3 which put us approximately halfway through the campaign. We started in September of 2013 and we've managed 37 total sessions in the 39 months since. Call it once a month. I like the campaign but I'm not sure I want to spend 3 more years trying to finish it.

This has me questioning if these long term epic campaigns are a thing we can really do. Some of it is the system as Pathfinder is not nearly as quick in play as Savage Worlds, Star Wars d6, or even M&M. I have 3 or 4 more of these things I'd like to run but at this pace I'm not sure I could live long enough to do them all! Maybe after we retire ...

I admit, the concept of "finishing" a campaign isn't one I've always been attached to. To me you make characters, start playing, and that's a campaign - not a specific plot but the players and the characters and the setting.

Regardless of my long term doubts I needed to take some immediate action as I'm not sacrificing more weekends to "somebody can't make it so we're going to have to cancel" as we have a hard enough time making room on the schedule in the first place. With multiple active teenagers in the house and full time jobs this is a thing we have to plan ahead most of the time. So for 2017 I am going with the plan I discussed earlier on the blog:

• 1st weekend of the month: Superheroes, mainly Mutants and Masterminds
• 3rd weekend of the month: Wrath of the Righteous
• Otherwise: whatever we manage to fit in without interfering with other commitments

I'm also changing my "all of us or no game" policy I've been sticking to with the Pathfinder game. That's killed us, even with only 3 players. I'm willing to flip between Fridays and Saturdays when I can to accommodate schedules but I'm going to have to go with two available = game just to try and keep the thing moving.

Now other than this it was a pretty interesting year. I ran 5 sessions of a d6 Star Wars campaign that just kind of popped up. It's not on a regular schedule - the schedule is "whenever I have all 3 boys here and we have a couple of hours free". I also ran 2 sessions of FFG Star Wars. That means I ran more Star Wars than Pathfinder, more Star Wars than any other single game. I'm pretty sure that's the first time that universe has been at the top of that particular list for me, but I'm pretty happy with it. Combine that with persistent flare-ups of X-Wing, regular visits to The Old Republic, and here at the end of the year the acquisition of Armada and it was more the Year of Star Wars when it comes to my personal game time than anything else. The Apprentices are loving the d6 campaign, even with the irregular schedule so I expect it to continue through next year. I think the ongoing greatness of Rebels and the awesomeness of Rogue One helped show them that the Rebellion Era can be cool too. Of course Rebels also showed that there are more than 3 or 4 force users left in the universe and that didn't hurt either.

Other RPG's that I ran this year: Couple sessions of Marvel Heroic (a game we all still love), a few sessions of Deadlands (which I would like to run more), Mutants and Masterminds (getting into a regular groove perhaps), and ... Dungeon Crawl Classics! That one squeaked in Friday night with 4 players, a bunch of zero level characters and a roughly 40% casualty rate through about the first third of the adventure. We had a bunch of fun with it though picking names, arguing over miniatures, and "unlearning what we had learned" about combat from Pathfinder.

Miniatures: 40K, with visits to X-Wing, Kings of War, and Dropzone Commander, pretty much in that order. I picked up Armada this week so it's on deck for 2017.

Boardgames: I won't claim we have a regular rotation but if we did it would include King of Tokyo, Sentinels of the Multiverse, Munchkin (mainly Marvel this year), and Pandemic. Apprentice Blaster and I still work in Command and Colors Ancients when we can.  I did play my first game of Axis and Allies in at least 15 years this year. It's amazing how much comes rushing back after all that time. The boys liked it so maybe it will become a thing.

Games that fell off the radar this year:

• Star Trek - I brought up the old game early on as an option then brought up the new playtest rules here towards the end of the year and ... no one was interested. It's not like that's a new thing but it means I'm not going to worry about it too much for now. I'll probably pick up the book whenever they publish it but that's more for me to read and think than any real hope of running it. Honestly with an active Star Wars game I'm not all that upset about it. Attack Wing is also pretty much dead here and no one her is playing Star Trek Online anymore either. Even Federation Commander is dormant for us for now.
• 40K Roleplaying & Boardgames - we've had a few of the RPG books floating around the house but no one cares. Even some of the more ornate boardgames associated with it generate an "if we have time to do that we could just play real 40K instead" and I tend to agree. 
• D&D 5th Edition - I'm still interested in giving it more of a chance but Pathfinder is the main fantasy RPG for us and with a friend running it and two boys running PF campaigns of their own  I just don't see that changing.
• FATE - I like it in concept but I don't know that I will ever talk the group into running it. 

Enough about last year!

Goals for 2017

RPG Stuff:

1. Recover the Pathfinder campaign enough to feel like it's a living thing again - or call it, kill it and move on. Nine sessions in 2015 followed by six in 2016 is not a trend I care to continue. One of my players has already told me he has a conflict with the third weekend in February so it's not looking all that promising on just day 1 of the year! Having what feels like a failing campaign is a drain on things so either outcome will improve our situation.
2. Make a supers campaign a regular, ongoing thing. The first-weekend-of-the-month Freedom City game is it! I have interested players, a great system, and a plan - now we just need to execute! This one is looking pretty good. I hope next year's summary has a bunch to say about this, and maybe Atomic City and Emerald City as well. Our every-once-in-a-while Marvel Heroic and our equally intermittent ICONS campaign will be Plans B and C here. 
3. Ride the Star Wars wave with one or more RPG campaigns. The current d6 campaign is for me and the boys but if the opportunity opens up to run something for my friends I will, either with that system or the FFG system. Everyone seems more interested in it now so I'm going to strike while the iron is hot.

Having regular, ongoing options with these 3 games makes me a pretty happy guy. Everything beyond this is a bonus.

• Run some more DCC, at least finish the adventure we started. It doesn't have to be a regular, scheduled campaign. I'd just like to run a complete adventure as it was a ton of fun. 
• Run some Runequest - all of this fun with other games like DCC has me optimistic.  
• Run some more Savage Worlds: Rifts, Deadlands, Slipstream, 50 Fathoms, Hell on Earth, or another flavor of Star Wars. I like the system too much to let it lie for another year. 
• Sneak in some Shadowrun. Maybe a one-off, but I want the kids to experience it and I suspect I could round up enough players to make it fun
• Set up a Gamma World one-shot. It's too cool to ignore completely and it also helps set up a potential Mutant Crawl Classics experiment later in the year,

If I could pull off all of these over the next 12 months I'd be ecstatic. Most likely some of them will happen, some will not, and something completely unexpected will show up too - but this is the plan/priority/hope for now. I am having a lot of fun running my own material so I'm less interested in getting in to another giant campaign arc in a premade setting and more interested in doing our own thing.

Miniatures:

1. 40K: This is our standard and I do not expect that to change. We averaged about a battle a month this year but they tend to be clustered around time off with multiple fights over a week and then a month or two of nothing. I'd like to smooth that out. Right now the sub-goals are:
• Play with those Eldar I painted up
• Get the Blood Angels painted up and into  a field-able force
• Get the Dark Angels painted up and field-ready as well
2. Star Wars is a big player here too. We already like X-Wing and Xmas bumped up our selection of bigger ships like the Falcon, Slave 1, the YT-2400, and the Ghost. It will continue to be a thing here. Armada is new and I hope it turns into a big player, maybe even #2 behind 40K. Imperial Assault is the only option here that has really not impressed us - it takes too much effort to play when we could either play the RPG or go play 40K depending on what we're in the mood to do. 
3. Fantasy now means Kings of War for us. We will probably get in a fantasy mood and play a few more games. I don't expect to be buying new armies for it but the ones we have should see some action this year. Maybe we'll even paint them.
4. World War 2: Bolt Action - there's a new second edition of the rules and I am ready to go with a 28mm army option. It may be a few months before we get anywhere but we will probably play it more than we did in 2016. I'm really interested in some Pacific battles but that new starter set looks pretty nice. We may start there. Flames of War is just a non-starter for us, plus there's another new edition coming out which means "wait and see" at best. 
5. Dropzone Commander - I got one starter set and built some of it but we never played a real game of it. I'd like to do that. it doesn't have to replace 40K or the Star Wars games, I'd just like to play something more like the old Epic scale games.  

Mantic is constantly bringing out new games and GW is bringing back some old favorites but I just don't have the bandwidth to research them, buy them, build them, paint them, and play them. The door's not completely shut but something new is going to have to really bowl me over to get any real attention at all.

All that said I had a pretty good 2016 and I am looking forward to a 2017 that is at least as good.

40K Friday Special Edition - Year of the Eldar: Finale

Finally! I finished up the wraithknight yesterday and managed to get the stretch goal of the dark reapers (all 3 squads) finished too. I had finished the spiritseer and the cannon battery the day before. Extra extra bonus achievements were getting the second gun painted and put on the metal wraithlord and getting some snow on the bases for one of the dire avenger squads.

Overall it was an incredibly productive 4-day run. I painted up to the point of completion 26 models and touched up or added to another 12 for 38 models finished to a standard I think is table-ready to good. It's been a long time since I knocked out that many mini's. If you go back and in the rest of the wraith host I built and painted from scratch 42 Eldar models this year, along with 30+ Iron Warriors. That's a pretty good year. I do tend to paint in bursts like this around holidays and time off so one of my goals for 2017 is to even that out and make some progress every week.

Effectively the painted part of this army is some combination of wraith host, aspect host, dire avenger shrine, and a combined arms detachment - depending on points available and how I want to play it. There's more than enough stuff here to play with at over 3000 points so I am very happy with the current state of things.

All that said it's not yet finished. There are 30+ guardians sitting on the table along with the associated heavy weapons and warlocks, a wraithlord, 3 war walkers, 3 vypers, and another farseer - enough to build the big guardian host formation and really put this over the top. I have two unpainted wave serpents too. There are two squads of swooping hawks in the queue as well. Those may be at the top of the list before I dive into another massive batch of yellow.

Things it doesn't have:

• Jetbikes! I might add one small 3-man squad just to have some cheap speed for objective grabbing, backing down on my anti-bike stance. They've been an eldar "thing" since the earliest days of the game and it seems wrong to have zero of them in an army this size. I won't go full scatter laser on them regardless. 
• Banshees! Not that great under the current edition, especially with no assault vehicles to jump out of into a fight. I'll pick up a squad someday to complete the set of aspect warriors but it's not urgent by any measure.
• Warp Spiders! I'd like some but I just haven't seen any of them cheap enough to make me want to get them. They're tricky to find new and ever since that guy won a tournament with30 of them they've been pricier used as well. One of these days. Towards the top of the list. 
• Wave Serpents! I do have two on the shelf as I mentioned but I am not really feeling the need for them as much. The eldar battle focus rule, especially when it applies to the entire army, eliminates a lot of the need for transports. They are fast, but with no firing ports you can;t use them as bolter shelter like marines do while still being able to fire out the top of a Rhino.  I'd kind of like to have 3 of them for the dire avengers to sweep in en masse and blast something but it's really low on the priority list.
• Fire Prism! I'd kind of like to have one of these available but this isn't a tank army so it would be a big shiny target for anti-armor weapons - even more so than they tend to be already. 
• Avatar! I love the background and the model but he's just not that great these days and he's not cheap either. Maybe once I finish the guardians I'll cap it off with an avatar, though I don;t expect him to see much table time. 
• Crimson Hunter! The one thing I do not have in the army that I think would be useful. I'm low on anti air and it's very effective AA and anti-vehicle once that's handled.

So for 2017 I expect to be playing them more and painting them less. The goal of the focus last year was to get a painted, playable army together and I have pulled that off. Now I can add a unit here and a unit there as time allows while having fun playing it more. It's been a long time since I've had a "finished" eldar army and I am really looking forward to using it. Here's to 2017!

40K Friday: 2016 and Closing Out the Year of the Eldar

Wanting to use your Stompa more sometimes means it shows up as "terrain" rather than as part of an army

We had a big finish here for the year for Warhammer 40,000. Apprentice Blaster and I wanted to try out some of our other armies so we decided to play a four game escalation series with 500, 1000, 1500, and 2000 point battles. I wanted to get more practice with the Blood Angels and he wanted to dust off his Space Wolves who have spent most of this year sitting on the shelf watching the Eldar steal the spotlight. So in the last ten days or so I've gotten in 4 games of 40K which is far better than we usually manage. I'll have a more detailed write up on these later but it was good to get in a groove as a lot (though not all) of the head-scratching rules lookup melts away and the thing is just fun. Highlight: Mephiston managed to kill 3 dreadnaughts single handed in two games so there were some epic moments. DO NOT attack him with dreads when his lightsaber is activated!

In 40K this is one of the good guys ...

Blaster and Red also got in a bonus game  which was the traditional "Christmas Battle" where they try out whatever new units they got for Christmas. For the last few years I go find a nicely painted unit for one of their armies and make that a present for them so it a) doesn't add to the painting backlog and b) they can use it right away. Blaster's Eldar (and his new Scorpions) beat Red's Necrons (and his new pair of Annihilation Barges) but they had a good time.

Back to the "Year of the Eldar" - it's been a lot of fun. Focusing on one army has really made a difference. I have still managed to add units and get some painting done on my Chaos Marines (particularly the Iron Warriors) and Blood Angels but the emphasis was on Eldar and most of my efforts went there. I've only used the Wraithknight twice but even in a traditional CAD force a wraith-heavy army painted up in Iyanden colors just looks right.

• Iyanden Eldar: I am still finishing up the Wraithnknight and the Spiritseer for the wraith host I started a year ago but I should finish them tomorrow. Hey, that's still technically finishing them in 2016! I'm finishing up a full unit of Vaul's Wrath big guns (D-cannons when you can't field the WK) which will probably be done today and I'm finally finishing the first of the Dark Reaper squads I've been wanting to use for so long. With  some luck I may finish all 3 squads tomorrow too. With what I have already finished that's a pretty serious force and it will all be painted!
• Dark Eldar: They had a really good year. I called them out in 2015 as a new allied experiment and I have enjoyed them every time I've played them. I added a second raider, a squad of scourges, and based up about 40 more warriors. The archon, two squads, the scourges, and one of the raiders are even base coated now! Regardless of what I decree as the main army for 2017 these guys are on the short list for finishing up to an "allied force org" level.  
• Chaos Death Guard: I didn't really add anything here but I did sort out what I have and figure out what I want the force to be. It's a bunch of ground-pounding plague marines + cultists + possessed + demon princes backed by missile launcher havocs and a defiler. That's pretty much what it's been but I'm changing out the fast attack section from a squad of spawn+ bikes to 3 maxed out spawn squads. More on the thinking here later.
• Chaos Iron Warriors: Core is Chaos Lord and Warpsmith leading 3 squads of marines in rhinos backed by autocannon havocs and a tri-las predator with air cover from a heldrake. The bikers from the Nurgle crew above are moving over to this force which gives them another speed unit.  I did some work on them as far as bases and I also built and painted the triple-helbrute deep strike formation.  I managed to play these guys a few times this year and I like the way they're shaping up. Chaos could still use a new book but I don;t feel like I have zero chance when I line this force up.
• Dark Angels: I didn't add a ton to these guys this year but I did pull all of them out onto a table in the last week along with the Blood Angels and reshuffle some units between the two. I still have a pretty good idea of what I want to do with these guys - they are my mechanized, shooting marines. The Lion's Blade company is the goal here. I just need to buckle down and get them to "playable", which they are not right now.   
• Blood Angels: Ah, I've liked these guys since 2nd Edition and I've been slowly collecting a force for them over the last 3 years or so. Now I am finally playing them and that puts them in contention for being next year's "Army of the Year" but I haven't completely decided. Considering I have most of the pieces for them and the Dark Angels (and the Crimson Fists too) I may make next year the "Year of Marines" and try and get all of my marine forces whipped into shape. As far as BA's specifically after playing them recently they are my "fast close-in" marines. I have only used them on foot, with jump packs, on bikes, and in drop-pods through these games and I think that's the direction I'm going to stay rather than going heavy on rhino's and razorbacks and tanks. 

The Orks, Demons, Crimson Fist marines went thru 2016 with no real changes. I played Orks once and I might have allied in some demons with one of my CSM forces but that's the only action any of these saw. 

I did add the Khorne Demonkin book a few days ago so I may look at building out a force for that too - for now based entirely on what I have on hand. I'm not interested right now in building that up too much but I do have some berserkers, bloodletters, and other Khorne units sitting around. Why not give the Bloodthirster an army of his own?

So today and tomorrow are finishing up the Eldar for now and seeing what I can do to finish up some Dark Eldar too. I may do the Iron Warrior bikers on Sunday as they should be fairly quick to paint and don't take a ton of detailing to look good. Then it's deciding on the big push for 2017. 

Looking Forward to 2016

A little late but better now than never ...

Gaming-wise in general, my take on 2016 is "try to keep what I have going, improve it, and work in something new when I can."

When it comes to RPG's the main game is Pathfinder and I expect that to continue. We can do a lot better than the number of times we met in 2015 and that's the main goal. I have a good group, we have a pair of good campaigns - let's play them more!

Beyond that I would still like to do more Savage Worlds and lord knows I have enough stuff for it. Everyone loves it when we play it, but it never seems to gather quite enough momentum to take hold as a "main game". I'd say Deadlands is at the top of the list, with Slipstream as a possible dark horse candidate and various homebrew adaptations of things potentially in the mix as well. I love Necessary Evil but I'd like to spend more time at the "normal" level of Savage Worlds before going to Epic again with superpowered heroes or villains.

Superheroes will be in the mix somewhere, whether we continue with Marvel Heroic or continue with Mutants and Masterminds. Both are a lot of fun with even a small group of players and I've come up with campaign material that can be played out in short chapters that fit into a night's typical playing time for us. They make for good fill-in games when some of us have time but the whole Pathfinder party is not available.

Goal for the year: Run something in FATE, at least one session. I have some nifty books, some cool dice, and I like a lot of the concepts with the system.

Ever-optimistic hope for the year: At least two players say "Can we play some Star Wars/Star Trek" - there are usually one or two who might be up for it but not often at the same time. Given that word of a new Star Wars movie this last year and next this year and a new Trek movie this year completely failed to generate interest in an RPG or miniatures or boardgames I expect this will take a while. Regardless, I have systems. I have ideas. One of these days I will run a sustained campaign of one or even both but I suspect it will have to be a sudden development and not something planned months in advance. Or I will have to go online and play with people I do not actually know. Fingers crossed!

Miniatures-wise I expect this to be the year of the Eldar as Apprentice Red rediscovered his Necrons causing Blaster and I got serious about building and painting and playing our Eldar armies in December. More on that in another post. I expect 40K to dominate our miniatures time and I am fine with that - I like the current edition and we will be playing it for quite a while.

Beyond that I'd like to find time and money for Bolt Action, and I will probably dust off Epic at some point to work in another round of city-scale mayhem. As much as I like X-Wing and Attack Wing I'm not going to put much into them until the Apprentices show more interest.

Optional Victory Condition: Dropship Commander is close enough to Epic though that I might finally take the plunge sometime this year.

Boardgames and card games come and go with us - if it catches fire we play it a bunch for a month or two then it drops off for a while. The most fun is when the whole family gets interested but that's fairly rare. I don't have any big plans here but hopefully we will play some more of what we already have. A rule I've stumbled into the last few years in this area is to stop buying expansions for games we don't play - either sit tight or at most go buy a new game and see if it takes off instead.

Future Stuff

• Still no third-party license for D&D 5th edition ... maybe this year?
• Still no Freedom City for M&M 3rd Edition ... surely this year?
• My interest in the upcoming Pathfinder Adventure paths is dwindling. I'll probably stay with it through the "evil" campaign just out of curiosity but it's going to have to have more than just that to really interest me. The one after that is the Cthulu AP and I'm probably out at that point until something I like shows up in the coming attractions file. 
• Rifts for Savage Worlds is still probably at the top of my radar. Hopefully it's really good.
• There's a Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG supposed to be Kickstarting sometime in 2016 -  I'm always interested in a Superhero RPG and there are some good people involved in this one so I'll be keeping a hopeful eye on it.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to All!

Wishing good games and good rolls to everyone for 2016!

Looking back on 2015

Looking over at the side there I had about half as many blog entries in 2015 as I did in 2011-12-13-14. It was a busy year for other things so the blog became a bit less important than it had been. I'm not going anywhere and hopefully it will be a little more active in 2016.

RPG Stuff

• I ran 9 sessions of Wrath of the Righteous and finally - finally! - finished book 2! Book 3 kicks off in a few weeks and I am hopeful that we can plow through book 3 (remember, there are six in a Pathfinder adventure path) before the end of 2016. I say finally but the campaign has been a lot of fun and everyone is still enjoying it. Red even got to make a return appearance for a session or two. Book 3 kicks off in a few weeks.
• My friend Steve ran 8 sessions of Kingmaker and I was there for 7 of them. He had some interruptions too. It hasn't been a peak year for the gaming stuff for any of us but when we do get together we are having a blast. Hopefully 2016 is a little less challenging when it comes to schedules. 
• Savage Worlds is probably still in the #2 spot for games I run here, after Pathfinder. I ran a short-lived City of Heroes/Necessary Evil campaign. Stuff-wise I added the third Deadlands campaign book (via the Kickstarter), got the hard copies of Hell on Earth from the Kickstarter campaign, and added the first two big Deadlands campaign books, Necropolis 2350 and Slipstream to the shelf.
• I got to run a session of Marvel Heroic again and will be running another one this weekend to close out the first arc of a campaign we started in 2013. I don't know that I could run it continuously for years but as a single session or "burst" campaign it's a lot of fun. I do wish it was still being produced but I have enough material and ideas that I can play with it for quite a while.
• I also got to run some Mutants and Masterminds with "Battle on the Bay Bridge" to potentially kick off an occasional side campaign.
• We had our first session of the FFG Star Wars and it was good. Not sure I want to invest in the whole line just yet but the boys liked it and I can see some potential in the system.
• Other stuff : 
• I added some supplements and dice for Fate though I didn't run it at all
• I didn't run it even once, but I did get the hardcopy of Spirit of '77. I need to prep the Apprentices with a viewing of Smokey and the Bandit and then I think we'll be good to go.
• I added books to my LUG Star Trek collection, Mekton.
• The main target for "acquisitions" was Pathfinder - running one and playing in another for the long term meant I felt like I needed to be more informed and aware of the whole system. I averaged more than a book a month for the year and now have all but a few of the hardbacks and all of the smaller books I consider relevant for the current campaigns. That's a good place to be. 

Miniatures and Boardgames

• We did get into more boardgames this year with King of Tokyo, Imperial Assault, and Relic all getting some time. I'm hoping to work in a few more before we all head back to school and work.
• We tried Age of Sigmar once. It's OK but no where near what Warhammer used to be as far as drawing me in for a fight. When it comes to our limited time I would rather play 40K.
• Warhammer 40,000 continues to be our main game. It had peaks and valleys through the year but here at the end we've played a couple of more games and had a lot of fun so Apprentices' Red and Blaster and I have spent some more time building and painting to get ready for the next round. 

Oh you'd like that wouldn't you?

Looking back at least year's "looking ahead":

RPG:

• We did play some superheroes but could not sustain them as a regular scheduled thing
• We did play some Savage Worlds
• All of the rest pretty much went out the window as just keeping our main games going proved to be a challenge. D&D 5th edition is just not really grabbing anyone in my group.

Miniatures: 

• 40K - yes!
• Bolt Action - No!
• I did look into the Robotech miniatures game, Star Wars Armada, and Dropzone Commander, but none of them really grabbed me enough to take the plunge.
• X-Wing and Attack Wing both fell off of the radar. The boys just were not as interested in either one, even with the new movie coming out. It's a shame as both are good games, fast to play, and not terribly expensive to get into. Ah well, neither appears to be going anywhere so maybe they will pop back up next year.

Hopes for the new year tomorrow!

Looking Ahead to 2015

Games Ahead

With the new year I'm thinking about changes and how to make things better in the months ahead. The #1 goal is to keep the existing Pathfinder games going to their conclusion. I have goals beyond that though:

• Hopefully 2015 becomes the year my long-desired regular superhero campaign becomes a real thing. I'm going to throw a few options out to my regulars and see what sticks. 
• I'd like to play more Savage Worlds, regardless of genre
• I'd like to keep something regular going with the Apprentices
• I'd like to tinker with 5th Edition D&D a little more
• I'd like to play/run something Star Wars
• I'd like to play/run something Star Trek
• I'd like to finish our 4th Edition campaign

Now those last three are fairly long shots outside of a one-off event type thing, but I can dream. The first one is really up to my players, and I suspect items 2-3-4 may be intermingled quite a bit. Schedules are a big deal here with one of the Apprentices off to college and one of my regular players getting married sometime this year, the pool is a little smaller now. Beyond these I need to  finish reading FATE core and Ars Magica and I need to catch back up on Shadowrun 5.

Miniatures: I'd also like to make 40K and Bolt Action more regular things.

Boardgames: I'm hoping these become a more regular thing too. Between CCA, Memoir 44, and Space Hulk we have some pretty cool options. 

Things to look forward to:

• Freedom City for M&M 3E - should be really good
• The Giantslayer adventure path from Paizo looks like a lot of fun
• Spirit of 77 - yeah! The final version of this should be great.
• Star Wars: Armada from FFG looks interesting. Expensive, but interesting.
• Warhammer 9th Edition - time to re-enter the fray? Have to see when it arrives
• 40K 7th edition, Year 2 - what will they do once they're updated every codex? It should be interesting.

Future of D&D

There's a poll up on EN World right now asking what we would like to see from WOTC in 2015. The choices are:

• An Open Gaming License
• An electronic tools suite
• A Forgotten Realms setting book
• Another established setting book
• A brand new setting
• Another genre (sci-fi, modern, horror, etc.)
• A book of new rules
• A book of new monsters, spells, or gear
• An adventure path
• Magazines in print (DRAGON/DUNGEON)

Some kind of open license would be great and I'm sure we will see something later this year. I'm just not positive that it won't be more like the GSL (the failed 4E version of the license) than OGL.

I don't think 5th is crying out for character tools the way Pathfinder or M&M do. The game is just not that complicated. 

I don't need another "all about the Realms" book. Keep it in the adventures. I don't really need a book on another setting either, new or old. I might be interested in some adventure material, but I don;t need another general overview of any of the settings.

Another genre - don't care. There are plenty of rules for other genres out there already.

I don't really need books specifically on new spells, gear, or monsters. Support for specific adventure path type things makes a lot of sense. I'd be fine with a couple of decent adventures a year.

Magazines - I just don't think you're going to see this again. PDF's, maybe, but I don't see WOTC reversing the decisions they made 7 years ago. It's not as if magazines have made some kind of comeback lately. I liked them a lot and bought Dragon for most of 30-something years, but I think their time has passed. 

I will say that in general I think WOTC is doing this right - start slow and build up rather than trying to push a bunch of stuff out in the first few months of a new edition. I'm not as excited about this one as some people but I think it will do well.

There is that, too.