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 

Finished Motel, Walking Dead and Saga

The intermittent part of the title of my blog seems to have loomed large again. Red Dead Redemption is probably mostly to blame.

I have finished the Motel to a point where I am happy with it. I would like to do some weathering on it but I think I am afraid that I will make it look awful. We did play a Walking Dead game with it earlier in the month and I think it looks good enough.

The Walking Dead game was quite a lot of fun, we did a game with 3 players and me as the GM. I gave each of the other players a special objective and there were a few special enemies as well as the regular zombies. I used the special objective supplies card to provide clues towards the location of the objectives but I would like to use scenario specific event cards to move the scenario forward (and that would require me to actually do some work to print out the cards so it is less likely to actually happen)

Mike has posted a battle report of the Zombie game on his blog here


The Book of Battles for Saga arrived this month. I was already quite keen on Saga but now I am even more so. My hobby goal for Christmas is to make some "officially" sized terrain for the game since it does feature in the randomly generated skirmish scenario.

Mike and I have split the started set for Cruel Seas so that will also be fighting for play time in the New Year. Luckily Ed was quite keen on the models and painted them up when he was visiting 

Sarrisa Motel Planning

After playing the Walking Dead on the Labour Day long weekend, I decided that I need to paint up some more of my Sarrisa buildings. The grocery store is really cool but it is just too big for some games as its footprint is pretty much the same as one of the Mantic 20”x20” maps.

There is probably some planning that will need to go into this and what better way to do that than to post on my blog for the first time in a year and a bit!


In hindsight, it might have been better to spray paint some of the pieces before assembly but I think a lot can still be done with spray paint and some simple masking (at least I hope it is simple, I have never done anything like that)

Here is the motel -- I haven’t assembled any of the parts that have acrylic pieces since I don’t want to paint over them. One of the buildings was put together back to front (it still surprises my that it is possible since Sarrisa sells the left and right wings are different kits) -- this is annoying but doesn’t really have any aesthetic or game issues.


For the two wings my plan of attack is to put some filler on the ground to give a bit of texture and some sand on the roof and then spray prime black. For colour I am thinking a pale yellow exterior, cream coloured interior walls and red-brown carpets. I am not sure yet if I want to paint the balconies and support as wood or concrete.


For the reception building, I plan to have the same colour scheme and with any luck I will have my 3D printer running again and can print some signage.

The clear acrylic balcony and stair railings I plan to distress a bit with some sandpaper and give them a grimy wash

Hopefully I will have a bit of an update in the next week or so