Happy New Year!!! Plans for 2015...

As I am out later gigging with my current bunch of ageing rockers known as Sidewynder, I thought I'd post quickly now, as I'll be in no fit state tomorrow.

2014 has been an interesting year. I have suffered major problems with my painting mojo this year and have actually achieved very little. On the plus side, I have made decent inroads into my Colonial collection and the LoTR forces continue to grow at snail's pace. Aside from that, very little. This is a shame as I have a lot of French Indian war/AWI skirmish stuff I want to start gaming and I had hoped too have got somewhere with that, but to no avail.

On the plus side, 2014 has seen a major new gaming interest: Rob Broom's War & Conquest. This has pretty much replaced WAB as my ancients/dark ages game of choice, although I still enjoy Dux Britanniarum and Dux Bellorum. I also enjoyed trying out Lion Rampant and hope to play more of that in 2015.

Plans for 2015 as follows:

1. Continue to expand the NW Frontier collection. I need to finish highlighting & basing 12 Gurkhas in the short term, then move onto a Mountain gun and about 60 more tribesmen, of which 30 have been started. I do have a couple of chaps at the club keen to do a bit of gaming with these.

2. Continue with the LoTR collection. I have decided that my recent 'scour EBAY for painted Orcs to tidy up' is the best way to build up the evil forces. It's not cheap, but it might mean that I get a few games in this side of 2020!!! The Elves, well, we'll keep on with those as and when. I do want to get 12 more and a hero done in the short term, as that'll give me enough for a few LoTR SBG games with son and heir.

3. Finish the Saxon characters I am painting for Andy M at the club...he asked me to do these in September and I have thus far got them undercoated!! Good job he ain't desperate for 'em!!!

4. THE BIG ONE!!!! Complete the late Roman/Arthurian/Early Byzantine/5th-6th century barbarian army lists I am drafting for War & Conquest. I have submitted Romano-British, Early Saxon and Patrician Late Roman (Aetius, et al) to Rob already and am in the middle of Belisarian Byzantines. This latter list is important because Andy MacTaggart and I have plans to do a demo game at our club's planned wargame show in November based on a battle during the Ostrogothic Siege of Rome during Belisarius' Gothic wars in the 6th Century. I will be the Byzantines and Andy the Goths. I therefore need to paint 3 more cavalry units for this (regular Roman horse archers, Roman Bucellarii and Hun mercenaries) and finish the army lists. This could be quite an exciting project and I am about to order the final 12 models from Footsore Miniatures who have taken over the Musketeer miniature ranges. The rest of my army will be composed from my current huge force of late Roman/Arthurian models as they are more than adequate for the army of Belisarius in Italy in the 6th century. This will be a tall order, as 36 cavalry is a lot to paint! To be fair, I can get away with doing 24 and leaving the Huns, so we'll see... Also, 'dip & highlight' is a much more speedy method, so it's not an impossible task. I also have to design the scenario and write a Goth army list. I can see lots of play tests for this taking up most of my gaming time this year...

5. Paint enough models for a Songs of Drums and Tomahawks war band. I have enough Indians for half a war band already but want to paint some AWI American riflemen to go with them. The latter are undercoated and the faces are base coated, so they are under way. You only need 10 models or so, so it's not impossible. They would make a good break from the Byzantines!!

I realise there's a lot to do there. I probably won't get anywhere near most of it, although I am slowly coming out of my painting slump. My New Year resolution is to spend less time on the laptop in the evenings trawling the internet and more time painting and list writing (and playing guitar, as I have a reunion with my old band 9 Lives coming up in Spring/Summer.) If I can manage to use my time more effectively, most of the projects above might get at least some progress in 2015.

Whatever you plan to do in 2015, I hope that it's a very happy, healthy and prosperous year for you.
Please keep looking back at my blog, as I will try to get updates going a little more regularly next year, especially as I get more models painted.