Hail 2015 and Farewell 2014

I’m a little late (okay more than a little) in doing a 2014 review and 2015 preview, which seems to be normal for me, but here is a quick look back and forward.

At the beginning of 2014 I was still in rehabilitation mode from my shoulder surgery, but in my initial 2014 post I laid out four projects for the year.

1) Work on some moderns 1/700 scale ships. I’m going to call this one a success, since I completed the Chinese Navy Type 056 corvette from Shapeways and several Taiwanese Kuang Hua VI missile boats from PT Dockyard. I used all the ships in one of my Enfilade games.

One successful project

2) I wanted to get back to my 15mm Age of Sail stuff. This was a failure as I didn’t do any work on these items.

3) Complete the planes for a Vietnam Air Rescue scenario. This was a definite success. I finished all the planes and a helicopter and ran the scenario at Enfilade using the AirWar C21 rules. I was pretty happy with the game,

MiGs and Phantoms mixing up at Enfilade

4) My fourth item wasn’t a gaming project goal. I wanted to get 30 posts up on this blog for 2014. My posts are typically pretty lengthy and I thought I could do a better job of breaking them up into shorter (and more) topics. Looking at the archive tally, it appears I only did 19 posts, which is not 30 and means a failure on this goal. Although, I think I sort of forgot about this goal sometime during the year.

So, it looks like a 50% pass rate for 2014. Not great, but not terrible. While recapping 2014, I’ll mention some games that I picked up at the end of the year as late Christmas presents for myself.

First up is Legion of Honor from Clash of Arms games. In the game you start out as a sergeant or sous-lieutenant at the start of the French Revolution and you try gain fame and fortune through 1815. The game has a lot of history and some role-playing elements. It can handle up to 6 players, but also has rules for a solitaire game.

Next is September’s Eagles from High Flying Dice Games (HFD). HFD Games is mostly a desktop publishing game company, but September’s Eagles one of their professional line games. This game covers Thompson Trophy air racing in the 1930s. The game is for up to four players (no real solitaire option) and I’m looking forward to trying it out, but will have to wait until I can get some people together. I also picked up a couple other HFD games – Gauntlet (which covers Operation Pedestal) and A Bold Fight (which covers the Battle of Mobile Bay). 

Looking forward, here are my plans for 2015.
1) Run the St Nazaire Raid (Operation Chariot) game at Enfilade 2015. Kevin and I have been talking about this for several years and finally decided that we just need to do it. Kevin has completed the British ships for this project, I’ve got an order into PT Dockyard for some German ships, and we’ve been getting together the terrain. It will be a big project, but I think we can get it done. Stay tuned for more on this.

2) Paint up some Japanese opponents for my 28mm Bolt Action Aussies. I completed my Australian figures in the last half of 2013, but never did up the Japanese opposition. This year I want to remedy that.

3) Work on rules and miniatures for modern submarine game. I’ve been kicking around some ideas in my head ever since several plastic model companies put out some 1/700 scale modern submarine kits. The question has always been how to do the hidden elements of submarine warfare while putting miniatures on the table. I’d like to have a working prototype to test out during one of the early sessions at Enfilade 2015.

A couple submarine models I've collected that would be good in a game.

4) Get back to my 15mm Age of Sail project. This has been sitting around for far too long. Bases on the previous items on the list, I probably won’t get to this until the later part of the year (certainly after Enfilade).

I’m also sure there will be other odds and ends that will draw my attention throughout the year. Including putting together some armies for the Lion Rampant rules. I had a chance to play these rules last year and really liked them. So this could be a fallback project for later in the year.

So, there is the plan. Will it really work out? Probably not, but at least there is a plan.