Friday, January 3, 2014

Looking Forward to 2014

Here I am in 2014, a year that sounds to me like a date from a science fiction novel, but I guess that will only get worse as time goes on. Anyway, enough about how old I'm feeling. It's time to think about what I'm going to focus on this year.  If I don't do this post, I'll have nothing to look back on and laugh about in twelve months.

Miniatures Games

Bolt Action: I plan to keep going with this for the near term at least. As I push the rules a bit with my historical scenarios I'm finding a lot of limitations that I haven't seen before.  Still, I expect to keep up with the game.

Other WW2 Rules: I've got at least two teed up to try out: Battlegroup Krusk and Chain of Command. Both look to be great games, but I've got to get my head around CoC. I will probably continue to explore different rules.

Campaign Games: I much prefer the historical scenarios to the generic "kill each other" or "steal the same prisoner/object/thing-a-ma-bob" scenarios of most rule sets. I'm going to do Operation Bagration this year in honor of its 70th anniversary. (Actually because I have a bunch of 15mm Russians unpainted, but the timing is right.)

Air Combat: This is a no brainer, as I've already bought the planes! I'm jumping into 1/600 scale planes, focusing on Guadalcanal to start but later shifting to Battle of Britain. There are two rules sets that work well for this. I plan on using Bag the Hun paired with Squadron Forward for solo campaigns, and Check your Six! for games with friends.

Additionally, I want to expand my Wings of Glory collection. It's a great game and deserves more attention than I gave it last year. I'm going to stretch myself a tiny bit and say Angels20 is also interesting to me, but the collectible aspect may kill it.

Naval Combat: I don't know what I'm doing for this, but want to try. I've kicked the idea around forever, but it might be time to do something about it. Sails of Glory will hit the stores soon, and I'm likely to get hooked on that. Not sure about this one, but on my mind.

15mm Fantasy: I've got an itch for large fantasy battles, but just don't want to do it in 28mm.  I have five viable armies for Kings of War (six if I throw in my Vikings), but the scale does not fit the size table I have. When I deploy my orcs, the units line up end to end from one side of the table to the other. What fun is that? You just move forward and die until you win or lose.  Smaller sized bases will work better on a 4x6 and still preserve maneuvering room.  Anyway, my mind has been coming back to this constantly.

Samurai Action: Ronin looks hopeful for 28mm, and I am sweet on the idea of a large 10/15mm samurai force for some as-yet-unspecified rules set. I just keep seeing ranks of colorful samurai and want to play something like that without breaking the bank and renting a new house to store it in.

Figure Scales: Each different scale has its good and bad points. I have been consistently getting smaller in scales and have settled on 15mm as a preferred scale for cost and storage considerations. I will probably continue to go smaller, and have been considering 10mm for company sized actions for WW2. So I expect to continue this downsizing, for larger scaled games of course.

This does not mean 28mm is dead, and in fact I'd like to put some 28mm squads together for more skirmish / squad level actions. Plus 28mm is the "social scale" as few other people are prepared to game at any other scale, so I'll continue to invest here as needed. Sign me up for at least a few more squads for WW2 at 28mm. I also have a lot of Reaper models in this scale... ahem.

Other games I'm expecting to be a focus for me in 2014: Malifaux has been great and I want to go further with this.  Savage Worlds will provide for my fantasy skirmish replacement that LotR created when it went ridiculous. That's about it here.

Board Games

Whereas last year I wanted to try more, this year I want to try to get more play time for some of my favorites and work in new games.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: I can't believe I left this off my list of most played games in 2013! I love this game and will play all the campaigns completely, maybe even with multiple characters.

Combat Commander Series: These games have proven to been excellent investments. The games are not too difficult to teach to new players but have a lot of depth. Also, they play well solo, which is a huge consideration for me. I hate to drop $80 on a game and play it only three times, particularly when the game is as good as this series.

Descent 2: I've been playing in a campaign which is close to finished. I know the expansion introduces another campaign, which I hope to play in. It has been a great game and I expect to continue to enjoy it into 2014.

Elder Sign: While the expansion prolonged the game somewhat, I enjoy this game a lot and try to show it to anyone with interest. It will get played more often this year, at least that's my plan.

DVG "Leader" series games: I've got Phantom Leader and Thunderbolt Apache Leader, which I plan on playing to death! I may get Hornet Leader as well.  These will be a mainstay throughout the year.

Living Card Games: Time to finish my Call of Cthulhu collection and keep up with Warhammer Invasion, Netrunner, Star Wars, and LotR!  I want to play more LotR than I did last year, and get CoC back on the table too. 

Since new games are coming out all the time, it's hard to say what else should be on this list. For Christmas I got Conflict of Heroes:Awakening the Bear. I expect to love it. Discwars: Warhammer is also out and I'm sure to like it as well. I also have Command and Colors Samurai Battles, which is a huge game.

Other Hobby Stuff

Divesting from old games: I'm not playing 40K, WHFB (or Kings of War for that matter), nor am I playing LotR SBG or WAB or Warmachine. So why do I have so many of these armies? It's time to sell them off. Right or wrong, I have some emotional attachment to my Space Marines. My son and I spent a lot of time painting them together and many models were gifts from him to me (which he bought with my money, but that's beside the point). Maybe they won't go. Everything else should go, along with other games I'm not playing.  I need storage space.

Painting: I've got to take a chunk out of my pile of Reaper Bones models. This has to happen because (allegedly) in nine months I'm going to get hundreds more dumped on me. My wife will kill me if she sees models pile up!  Plus I WANT to paint the stuff.

Storage Solutions: I'm cheap when it comes to storing my models. If I invested in some nice KR Multicases or Battlefoam stuff, I'd have compact, portable storage. I need to get serious about this in 2014.

Well, I'm probably the only person who thought this was an exciting post. In any case, I'm excited for 2014 and the various projects I've outlined for myself in the upcoming year. We'll see what I get through, but it's an ambitious list.

Happy New Year to all!

5 comments:

Dagreenskins said...

Hey Jerry I look forward to reading your solo battle reports this year. One Naval Combat game you might want to look at is Victory at Sea. Have a great new year.

Tim Kulinski said...

Jerry,

Nice list, I too have been wanting to do some Naval games, Pacfic WW2 comes to mind. I have seen the Victory at Sea rules and they look good. Maybe something we need to try with Mike.

Also I have seen those DVG games, I would be interested in trying them.

Jerry said...

@DGS: Thanks Mike! I will do better at posting battle reports more regularly.

@Tim: Thanks! Victory at Sea does sound good and the Pacific theater would be perfect for it.

The DVG games are strictly solo. The rulebooks are free and you can download them from the DVG website, just to give you an impression of how the games would play.

Mike G. said...

The Victory at Sea rules are ok. The game originally started out as a Babylon 5 game. Mongoose converted it to Victory at Sea. Once they lost the B5 license they converted it to Noble Armada and A Call to Arms for Star Trek. Overall, the system is ok. The fleet construction rules are meh and not very balanced. They do not use a point system. They have been working on second edition for almost two years so I would wait for that edition. Supposedly, they are working extensively on the fleet construction rules.

Sails of Glory looks great. Of course, I am biased since I received all of my kickstarter ships.

KR Multicase is a great affordable way to store the models. It is a lot cheaper than Battlefoam. While I do like the battle foam bags, I found my KR multicases just as good. The only exception would be for warmahordes. The old metals are so heavy that the Battlefoam bags are key.

Looking forward to gaming in 2014. I plan on ordering my planes shortly.

Jerry said...

I'm still in the "thinking about it" stage for naval games. I don't know where that will go this year, but put it on the list.

I really have to get better with storing all my stuff and KR Multicases are far more affordable.