2019 in Review.

For me 2019 has been a year of new and old and consolidation.

For the new: I started, at the end of 2018, with 6mm ancients in the form of the 305BC siege of Rhodes by the Macedonian King Demetrius Poliocetes. This project started because I wanted to do an ancient siege and I already owned a fleet of ancient galleys. But it also required the raising of two ancient armies & the building of Ancient Rhodes. And it all had to be very portable. It was played a few times at NWA club meetings as well as Little Wars Melbourne. 

Surprisingly it didn't take very long once I got started. This was my first foray into 6mm and the building of the armies proved to be far easier that I expected. Likewise the island of Rhodes was quite simple and it was a case of using one of those things that I'd carted around for 20 odd years that, "might come in useful one day." This was a large piece of marine carpet that I originally bought in Sydney - Followed me to Melbourne - Moved house several times and eventually turned into Rhodes.

The city, on the other hand, proved to be the biggest problem which I eventually solved with Photoshop, a pad of watercolour paper & glue. I designed the walls and towers and printed them out onto the watercolour paper and then cut out and glued all the pieces together. Voila! Rhodes.

 

 

 

Then... The End Was Nigh! and I was delving into the grimness that is the Zombie Apocalypse. For the most part this involved the writing of some rules (which remain unfinished at this time), painting some miniatures that had long been set aside and building terrain. No games eventuated with this project but I did get some very nice pieces of terrain made and a lot of new figures painted.  

 

 

Then it was on to the old - This took the form of 20mm WWII. This is where I started wargaming back in the mid/late 1970's. For me WWII will always be 20mm and I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Airfix (which I'm sure many other wargamers of my age can also claim).

 

The main change with WWII, for me, was that I started playing different rules that I really enjoyed. These rules are Chain of Command by the Too Fat Lardies and Battlegroup from PSC. I also got to play quite a few games during the year using both sets of rules. They are similar in scale, different in style and play completely differently. But both are enjoyable.

So WWII took up quite a chunk of 2019 and I built a lot of models, painted a lot of figures, make a huge amount of terrain and played some really great games. 

And now, at the end of the year I'm concentrating, once again on Napoleonic's - another of my old favourites from the late 1970's and again I can blame Airfix for this. However, this time around it's again a Too FatLardies game - Sharp Practice - that has fuelled this new flurry of activity.

 

As usual, I'll have a burst of activity for a couple of months in one particular era and then I'll move on to another. I'm not sure how long this Napoleonic jag will go on but I already have my next project for 2020 in the planning stages  - 28mm Fantasy!
I'm not sure what form this will take - Big battles, skirmish or role playing. I'm pretty sure that the RPG rout is unlikely - But you never know...  

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And as for consolidation... Well I decided to get rid of quite a bit of stuff and concentrate only on those games that I actually play. So I've started selling things off no matter how painful that may be. I have an awful lot of figures that I painted to a lovingly high standard but they sit in boxes and most of them have never been put on to a gaming table. So it's a matter of selling them off so they will actually be used for what they were made for.

And before you say but what about this new 28mm Fantasy idea????

Well, apart from laying blame at the feet of Airfix, I can also lay blame at the feet of Garry Gygax for my love of fantasy wargaming because I was also there when D&D first hit the shelves (and before that Chainmail!) and I played it for almost 20 years before it faded away.