Plans for 2019

I didn't do a planning post last year and managed to avoid going terribly off course so maybe I am courting disaster by doing one this year but since one of my goals is to use the blog to keep focused I will go ahead anyway.

My basic goals for the year are to play more and buy less. I would also like to paint more but I have realized I need to be in the right state of mind to do that so I am not going to push that but I will make sure I have my painting setup ready to go when the mood strikes!

These are the games that will be in my mind (and hopefully on the table this year)

SAGA

This was my most played game last year and with the appearance of  the Book of Battles looks likely to be my most played this year. I have created the terrain needed for the Book of Battles (as discussed here ) so my next goal is to paint some baggage and livestock that is required for some of the scenarios

I should finish my Spanish Warriors

But I seem to have a bit of a block with them so I might skip ahead and paint the foot troops for the Franks which I think will give me enough of a force to actually play with them (though not enough to use Roland which is my long term Frankish goal).

Next up will be the Black Hoods mercenary unit and beyond that it gits a bit hazy but I want to get some more units painted for my Islamic forces

The Age of Magic will be coming out this year and I will hopefully finally paint the Revenants and I am tempted to paint some Mantic Games Naiad to use alongside some Vikings

The Walking Dead: All out War
Now that the Motel is finished, my terrain goals for this are to finish the Diner and the office building (I also have a swimming pool and playground to go with the Motel that should get done this year)

In terms of painting, I want to get through the figure from the Made to Suffer expansion and once I get those done (at least the survivors, I feel that I have more zombies than I would need now) I will get the Fear the Hunters expansion -- I have some interest in the Campaign rules, but realistically I know that I won't play enough to actually use them.

I have two side projects that I would like to at least do something with this year -The first is to do Cops vs Narcos using the Walking Dead rules

And the second is to use the town terrain to run Gaslands with 28mmish cars -- The Sunday Drivers expansion for the old Steve Jackson Games Car Wars was always a favourite.

Cruel Seas
I have high hopes for this game but I am holding off buying more until we have played at least one game. If it does play well I am seriously considering running a larger game at CanGames with either an attack on the Monitor HMS Abercrombie at D-DAY or and attack on some Liberty Ships in the English Channel

Team Yankee

I should get the airbrush out and finish of my Soviets but I am not sure if that will happen. I do hope to play some more games of this -- it has always been a fun game in spite of itself.

I am tempted by the Czech Dana Self-propelled artillery but there is too much unpainted to add more to the pile.

Flames of War

The OMG club is running a Stalingrad campaign this year and I will play in that but I have no desire to paint anything (I do have some Soviet SMG troops that are primed that I feel I should paint but I don't think they will actually get done)

Hail Caesar

At the moment I have no strong desire to run this at Cangames and my painting passion is more geared towards SAGA so I think there will not be much movement on this front this year

Boardgames

I am looking forward to another year of Boardgames with the Thursday night group 

2016 Plans for the New Year

With being sick and being very busy with my new job I haven't had a lot of time yet this month for the blog or for gaming (though hopefully there will be gaming on Sunday) In an effort to kick-start some progress I will set down my plans and goals for this year.

Team Yankee

This is going to dominate my painting time (and hopefully, at least to some extent, my gaming time) for the first part of the year. I put together 2 starter boxes of Soviets when I got back from Halifax and a handful of Americans and have been planning to start painting them since then. With any luck that will get started this weeekend -- the Soviets should go quickly since they are one colour (I plan to try a bit of "colour modulation" with the airbrush to give them some depth) and then I will follow up with the US. I plan to get enough of both forces so I can do both a mechanized and a tank force. The real test here will be to actually get the infantry done.

SAGA / Dragon Rampant
Here I want to get the rest of the Islamic forces from the SAGA starter boxes painted up. After we play a few games of Dragon Rampant I will get a better idea of how many I HAVE to paint but to be honest, I enjoy painting these. Once they get done I do have some plastic cavalry to paint up but they are not currently in the "official queue". I also want to play more games with the 3 SAGA factions and get good at at least one of them!

I am also going to paint up a force for Nick's Trojan War campaign but it will likely be the smallest force possible i.e. all hearthguard.  I think I will go with Foundry Greeks for this but I haven't decided yet.

Frostgrave
I want to have two relatively coherent warbands for this and paint up most of the stuff I got from the Nickstarter. I foresee this being a useful break from the Team Yankee painting.

Bolt Action
I would like to paint my Canadians but my only real goal is to finish the basing of the Germans and to play a game with them.

Hail Caesar
It didn't look like there would be any Romans in my immediate future but Ed want's to try out his siege rules that he developed for the French and Indian war in a (much) earlier period so we are dusting off our plans to do some Dacian war battles. I am planning to paint up 4-5 Roman siege engines for this and maybe a unit or 2 with some Aventine figures (since I have to get the set that has Trajan and Decadulus' head)

Terrain
Weirdly, the terrain I most want to do is for my Ortona campaign for 28mm WWII for which I don't have any inspiration to paint the figures! I want to do a river bank type terrain, a piece with the gully and a cityscape.

I have some ideas for Frostgrave and Team Yankee terrain and I should probably get more 28mm terrain suitable for SAGA.

I think that should keep me busy for the rest of the year and I am going to make a real effort not to get anything that is not on this list

Waiting for the Cold War to go Hot

I had been quite excited about the Team Yankee releases when they were first announced and then as time went on (and my enthusiasm for painting seemed to wane) my interest began to fade. There was quite a buzz about it at the club on the Saga tournament day so my interest began to rise again and when I was in Fandom this week and Randy asked me if I was interested in it, I ended up getting the book and a starter set for each side.

In preparation, I decided I should finish of the US self-propelled guns that I started earlier in the year (they were the first models I painted with my airbrush). I am not sure that I will get much use out them initially since I think both Stan and Mike are going to be painting US forces (but then again I am likely to be getting some "Lend-Lease" from the Kingston Red Banner Army so I will have a bit of leg up on my Soviets as well).

I am kind of annoyed with the way Battlefront has been handling their production troubles. I think I would have been happier if they had kept the original mix of the starter box and delayed them further rather than just releasing them with all tanks (this probably would have cost them some money so maybe they feel that they are not taking a big enough hit on the good will side to care). In any case, I hope they will be in Fandom this weekend so I can grumble as I glue together all my tanks!