Review Of 2023

As another year draws to a close it's time for my annual review post.

This blog has now been going for over 11 years, and I'm still finding things to post about. To be fair this year has seen the number of posts slow down though; just one of the side-effects of what has been a strange and involved year.

Aside from my 30th wedding anniversary (which we celebrated with a trip to Melbourne, a trip from which I still have photos waiting to be posted here), the biggest event this year was our moving house. We've rented ever since we arrived in Australia, but had been in our current place for the majority of that time. However the time comes in every landlord's life when they decide that they're going to be the total shit all landlords are at heart, and they decided to make life difficult for us. We decided to get out before things got too unpleasant, and ended up buying our first property in Australia (we owned our home in the UK, but used the proceeds of that to fund some stuff here when we arrived). Anyway, that meant a good few months in the early to middle part of the year were spent house-hunting, sorting out years of accumulated crap and then actually moving. Now a lot of our time and resources are tied up in getting our new house in order, but it is at least our own place to do with as we wish.

The most exciting house-move experience was the evening we moved my wife's beehive. Not something I'd care to repeat.

As part of it I did lose the dedicated gaming table I had in my office. It was that, or lose my painting table, and if I didn't have that sat there reminding me then I'd never paint anything. But we have a dining table in its own room, and it's rarely used for dining, so I still have somewhere to play games.

I am terrible at painting. I rarely feel motivated to do it, and tend to start projects and then not finish them for ages. This year I decided that rather than beat myself up for not staring, focusing on and finishing projects that I would simply do something every day, no matter how small, and just see what came out of it. Rather than set goals I'd never achieve a simple 'paint something every day' would suffice.

It actually worked - aside from a brief break when we went away for our anniversary, I stuck to it for around five months. Until we moved house, basically, at which point I fell out of routine and it all went to post. Still, I did churn out more odds and ends this year than I have n previous years, so as a project it did bear some fruit. A browse of this blog will show some of the odds and ends I did - new gladiators, new beasts for Palaeo Diet, new ships for Galleys & Galleons and even a HOTT army I'd started ten years ago.

Whilst we're on new things, was there much in the way of new games this year? Not really. HOTT continued to be a favourite, along with the Nic Wright trilogy - Galleys & Galleons, Palaeo Diet and Blood Sweat & Cheers. At the club we played Gaslands enough to keep me happy. We have started looking at Valour & Fortitude this year, which I think is my favourite new set of rules from the past twelve months. We've also had a couple of goes at incarnations of Battletech, and that looks set to continue into next year. I did play in a tournament - a few of us took part in a Lion Rampant event up in Sydney, and I got joint second place (out of eight players). Our club picked up the top three spots in fact. 

I've enjoyed all of your comments and feedback this year, and have also enjoyed looking through the various blogs I follow. 

Anyway, on we go with my usual review format; the top-viewed post from each month.

January

Lion Rampant - Who doesn't love charging knights and axe-wielding maniacs around a table? I do. Lion Rampant got a new edition this year (or late last year) and we gave it a try. And we liked it.

February

Battle of Poltava - Poltava is not an easy battle to wargame, and I was intrigued when I read a blog post about a boardgame that managed to make a playable game out of it. So I bought it. And it's a pretty good game, not only to play but in terms of components and general look and feel.

March

Nimitz - My most popular post in March was a writeup of our first proper game of Nimitz. We'd been playtesting it for a couple of years prior to its release, but it was fun playing it and being able to reference our shiny new books.

April

The Return Of Thomas - Gaslands with a gigantic steam-engine in play. What's not to like? We had some great games of Gaslands this year; we're really starting to get how to play it and people are now confidently designing their own teams.

May

'Lion Rampant' At Shirecon - My most popular post in May was, of course, the write-up of the Lion Rampant tournament I talked about above.

June

It's a (HOTT) Knockout - Episode One - I'm always happy to jump on a bandwagon, and around June there was a lot of interest in some of my Facebook groups in a simple knockout campaign format for DBA. It was easily adapted to HOTT and provided a good few weeks of games before a winner emerged. This was the first episode.

July

One Hour Wargames WWII - In which I used cut-out counters from Junior General to try out the WWII rules in One Hour Wargames. 

August

Tri, Tri, Triremes Again - One of this year's many Galleys & Galleons games was August's most popular posts. One of the things I managed to paint this year was another batch of galleys.

September

Triple HOTT - A write-up of three games of HOTT at the club seemed to attract the most attention in September.

October

Battletech - Alpha Strike - Alpha Strike is the stripped-down, fast-play version of Battletech and we all enjoyed this game which became my top viewed post in October.

November

His Name Is Steggy - I bought some toy dinosaurs. I repainted one and posted some photos. You all seemed to like it. I also used the term 'thagomizer' in a blog post.

December

Aerials For 'Galleys & Galleons' - As I've said before, December is always a difficult month in this survey because I don't have a full count of post hits. However at the time of writing - as close to the end of the month as I dare - this post showcasing some new and rebased aircraft for my Galleys & Galleons games seems to be the most popular. Which was something of a surprise.

So that's another year over.