2015 Gaming Year in Review

It is the end of another year and time to look back and forward to gaming projects. Looking back at my plans for 2015, I laid out four ideas.

1) Run the St Nazaire Raid (Operation Chariot) game at Enfilade 2015.

This was a successful project that won an award at Enfilade. A pretty good start to the year.

2) Paint up some Japanese opponents for my 28mm Bolt Action Aussies.

I picked up a box of Warlord Games Imperial Japanese infantry and some support weapons, but have not started work on these figures. So, this only gets a 25% completion. which is probably a little generous, but it is the time of year to be generous.

3) Work on rules and miniatures for modern submarine game.

I painted up the Chinese (PLAN) Type 092 Xia class ballistic missile submarine (photos coming soon) that I ordered from Shapeways earlier this year and I’ve written out some ideas for rules, but I haven’t actually played any games with them. Since I already have a good number of submarine models ready, I’m going to score this a 50% completion.

4) Get back to my 15mm Age of Sail project.

With the completion of the DANG 2015, I’m going to mark this as 100% successful. I do have a few other ships to complete, but I finished up the everything I wanted to get done.

Odds and Ends: I talked about putting together some armies for the Lion Rampant rules, but that never really got started. However, I did get through my Summer Solo Project, which was probably time better spent.

Overall, I’ll give 2015 a 2.5 - 3 out of 4 for gaming projects. Which means it was a pretty good year.

Book Reviews

Besides gaming projects, there were a couple new books that I read but didn’t review this year.

To Crown the Waves: The Great Navies of the First World War 

This is the World War I version of On Seas Contested (reviewed here). This book provides a comparison of the major navies of World War I, including the Royal Navy, the German Navy, the French Navy, the United States Navy, the Italian Navy, the Austro-Hungarian Navy, and the Imperial Russian Navy. It also has some short overviews of the Japanese and Ottoman navies. Like On Seas Contested, the book covers information about the organization and doctrine used by each navy, along with a section on wartime experience that gives an outline of a navy’s operations and development during the war. It is a good book to get deeper into how the navies operated, but it isn’t for everyone.

British and Commonwealth Warship Camouflage of WWII: Volume II: Battleships & Aircraft Carriers 
Full Disclosure: I helped with the editing of this book, so my opinion might be somewhat biased. 

I enjoyed the first volume in this series, but in many ways I prefer this volume. This book covers camouflage for battleships and aircraft carriers. Since there were fewer of these ships than the destroyers and escorts of the first volume, the book provides a much better view of the evolution of camouflage schemes during World War II. Additionally, it provides information on the weapons and radar changes for the ships. This is a great book for anyone with an interest in ship camouflage and will be of particular interest to modelers and other hobbyist because of the wide variety of camouflage patterns.

Looking to 2016

I haven’t really thought too far ahead. DANG usually takes up the last quarter of the year and since I let the gamers vote on the project, it is hard to know what it will be. However, I do have a few items on my plate:

1) Channel Dash project for Enfilade 2016. My friend Kevin talked me into doing this project for Enfilade. We are planning on two games, one involving the air attacks (it will be similar to the Tirpitz game from 2013) and one involving the MTB attack. I’m tasked with providing the ships for the game. I’ve got most of the MTBs and German escorts for this project, but the big work will be completing models of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen in 1/700 scale. It should be a fun little project

2) Finish the modern submarine rules. I’ve been toying around with these and it is time to do some serious work.

3) Work on the Japanese opponents for my 28mm Bolt Action Aussies. Another holdover from 2015. But since I’ve got the troops, it should be easy enough to get this going.

Odds and Ends: I’d still like to do up some Crusades era armies for Lion Rampant and I have some Galactic Knights ships to finish up (and play with), but I expect that some other bright shiny game project will draw my attention. So I’m keeping my other options open for now.