Year in Review: 2014

This year in 2014 was fairly productive. A few new ventures, and a few expansions. Roughly on par with 2013.



I completed 19 new armies, including one board game and two very small skirmish games, in addition to a plethora of additions to existing projects.

In terms of new armies for existing gaming systems, I did two Bolt Action armies: Americans and a Polish 12 TKS army.

I did not start any new WW2 Flames of War armies, but I did start three WW1 armies, starting with Cossacks using Chris's FoW1918 rules, and then later FoW Great War with British and Germans. Fun fact - I painted up the FoW Great War stuff twice - first for our WWPD review articles, and later my own personal collections. I also did up two ARVN armies for Vietnam with Battlefront's summer sale - ARVN tanks and ARVN infantry. Finally, while not really a "new" army, I redid all of my Battlefront Polish lancers with Forged in Battle due to figure quality -EW Polish Lancers.

Going back a couple hundred years, I started a new BFAS army - Ottomans. I will be greatly expanding these Ottomans to a full sized division level in 2015.

Finally, for Dropzone Commander, obviously the only new faction I could have done was the Resistance, which I've dived into pretty heavily as the models become available.

I jumped into a few new systems, which interesting enough, none of which I have "stuck" with. In fact, most of them I never have even played a game of.

I painted up two skirmish armies for Deep Wars: Scaly Horde and Ancients of Atalan, after picking up the starter boxes dirt cheap at a swap meet. Along the same lines of the swap meet, I picked up some cheap Warmaster and painted up the Undead. I did play a few games of Warmaster, but it just seemed to be a worse version of BFAS in my opinion.

I had two ventures into All Quiet on the Martian Front, playing a couple demo-level games of it. We got in a bunch of review stuff for Outpost Zero early in the summer, and I effectively doubled my collection in the fall by trading off some old X-Wing for for models, although I haven't played it since June-ish. Regardless, I now have quite a collection of Americans and Martians.

I started up a Microarmor Cold War Polish army for no real reason. It's super cheap, was kinda fun, and a friend is (slowly) working on a ruleset for them. The same friend drug me into Napoleonics, so I started a Napoleon at War army: the French.

I built some 28mm Renaissance Swedish for Pike and Shotte, which I've never played and am not really sure I have any desire to at this point, but the thought was always I could use them for WFB Empire as well. (Which I don't think I've played more than once in 2014 either).

I expanded several existing armies as well. I sold off my Bolt Action Italians early in 2014, but continued painting some for the same guy as a commission. I also expanded my FoW scale Bersaglieri, as well as adding Slicks to my FoW Vietnam Americans.

For BFAS, I expanded both my Polish and Swedish, as for DZC I rounded out my Shaltari and  PHR. With the advant of a 3D printed Kubus armored car, I was able to expand my FoW Polish AK and also add some Peter Pig additions to them as well.

I actually spent a lot of time and effort on DZC terrain this year. Joe and I started a joint effort on the Hawk Resin buildings, but decided that was a flop and switched to the Blotz Buildings. I continued to add some bits and pieces like ruined Cars, Bunkers, the Monorail and Defense Laser, giving quite the impressive urban table. Late in the year, I manged to secure a commision to make me some DZC Rural Terrain.

In terms of travelling, my convention attendance was down slightly this year. I attended Templecon, Cold Wars, Historicon, GenCon, and NOVA Open. I skipped out on Fall-In...the HMGS shows are losing their appeal to me, but I'll probably try to make Cold Wars if Napoleon at War starts to be a thing.

Tournaments have been even less - I played in one Bolt Action tournament - a silly doubles armored event where I took 12 tankettes, and one FoW tournament at Huzzah where Sean ran it thus I didn't have to! I also played in two DZC tournaments at Templecon, one at GenCon, and one in Baltimore. In terms of running tournaments, I ran four for FoW at Huzzah and the three for FoW at NOVA Open.

Looking forward to 2015 - I forsee more DZC terrain projects and a lot of BFAS Ottomans. I am cutting Templecon out of the convention rotation due to some vendor issues, but adding Las Vegas Open and possibly Adepticon to the mix.

As far as other projects, we'll just have to see what the new year brings. And speaking of that, Happy New Years!