Looking Back at 2018

The year started out with an ambitious project, building the modular cliffs for my post apocalypse (and other) games, and generally, I made progress and played some games in each of the periods that I'm currently most invested in; the 28mm post-apocalypse, 15mm African imagi-nations, and the Star Fleet Battles campaign.

The year on the hobby front was full of goodness, and brought a couple surprises.  6mm African imagi-nations came about through necessity, and with the exception of detail painting some buildings is ready for the table top.  And, my 6mm Cold War armies got a tremendous boost (more than 900 miniatures painted), with three NATO armies, and that of the Soviet Union more or less completed. 

 I expanded my horizons a little, placing first orders with a number of companies, who all yielded excellent experiences and products.  A number of the products were for my post-apoc games, and I owe thanks to Mattglackgod for his tireless support of the genre through his blog, and the Post Apoc Wargames Forum, and to the guys on the forum, who supply a constant stream of inspiration through their amazing efforts.

My latest additions for the post apocalypse from Crooked Dice.

One irony during the year, was that I finally built up enough Lyran and Kzinti forces to play decent sized fleet battles in our Star Fleet campaign with miniatures, with more than 20 ships available per side.  But, our campaign progressed such that the two fleets fought one major battle (with counters, too many ships for miniatures, around 80), in which the Kzinti lost a tremendous portion of their fleet, and now they do not have vessels left for the miniatures to represent.  Thus, most of the completed Kzinti models will probably never be used in the campaign.

All things considered, I made great progress on four of five target projects for the year; 15mm Africa, post-apoc, Cold War, and SFB.  Only my 28mm near future project got neglected.  15mm Cold War didn't get the attention that I had hoped, as I simply wasn't able to complete any masters for vehicles, though I did add a few from other sources, and get some infantry painted.

Though I closed the year with a flurry of SFB games (even one with miniatures), the number of games played took a little dip as compared to last year.  This was mainly due to time spent putting together 6mm modern Africa, and about three months of time committed to casting and selling 15mm vehicles.  All things considered though, 2018 was a banner year on the hobby front. 

The Lyran fleet advancing towards a small Kzinti fleet in the distance, 

the wave of Kzinti drones most visible.

My plans, targets, and goals for 2019 remain largely the same as those for 2018, to make progress on 15mm Africa, 6mm & 15mm Cold War, 28mm post-apoc, and SFB.  I expect that 28mm near future will see some work this year, as I have whittled down the to-do list for some of the other periods significantly.

So now I will close this post, and later today, the the year with a post-apoc game.

Hope everyone has a great 2019!!