2015: Gaming year in review

All across the blogosphere, people are doing year-in-review posts. In most cases, these are painting wrap-ups, which I'm not going to do, but I will take the opportunity to talk about some of the stuff I've been up to this year, both in minis gaming and in RPGs.

Before we begin, though, I guess I have a picture -- this is the most recent thing I've finished, a statue and plinth for Frostgrave. You can see the original post here.

I think he looks OK. I probably went too far or not far enough with the verdigris, but I'm torn between the fact that it's so much fun to use and the fact that the way people use it looks nothing like actual verdigris on an actual bronze statue. Oh well.

Anyway, here's what else I've been up to this year.

Tabletop RPGs

My main tabletop gaming project this year, as last year, has been my ongoing D&D 5th Edition campaign. I think we're going to go until we get up to level 20 and save or doom the world, whatever. I am much happier now that I've stopped trying to run a traditional sandbox and just accepted that it doesn't fit my short, infrequent sessions.

One of the things that makes me happiest about this game is that my wife, who is not overall a big D&D fan, plays and enjoys the game. Soon her character will get to achieve her long-held dream of being a bear!

This photo is from my recent Holiday Special, with the PCs defending the workshop of the runesmith Klaus from the evil Lord Gyrinx and his snow-golems, or snowlems for short.

I have also had a few sessions at the local one-shot group, and would like to get in more, but scheduling is often a challenge.

Live-action RPGs

I have been going almost a year with this live Requiem game, and it's fun so far! The game is a moderate size and the players seem to be enjoying the sessions. I struggle with the administration of the game, and I'll be the first to admit my grasp of the rules isn't perfect, but in my defense Requiem is insanely complicated.

Miniatures gaming

It's been a good year for minis gaming! Most of my energy was devoted to SAGA and Oldhammer, but Frostgrave got a big boost toward the end of the year. I have my early medieval SAGA armies mostly done and am getting started on my Normans, who will also serve as Crusaders.

Oldhammer-wise, I have been mainly painting things I like and not really working consistently on either my Orks or Chaos or miscellaneous Imperial guys. I've had some fantastic charity shop finds, including a tonne of 80s fantasy models and loads of White Dwarfs (plus the surplus ones from CURS).

But the highlight of my miniatures year -- no disrespect to my regular colleagues and opponents -- was my trip to Bring Out Your Lead 2015. I am ... without being sentimental, I am not good at being happy, and I very clearly remember sitting on the train station platform in Newark and thinking that the weekend had left me so happy that I wasn't quite sure what to do. In fact, this weekend kicked off a secret project that I haven't talked about at all, but which I hope to reveal in the new year.

I have stopped keeping track of my painting in numerical terms, but I think I have done pretty well this year. My output slowed for a while during the process of moving house, but now that I'm here in the permanent place I'm hoping it'll pick back up again.

Board/card gaming

I haven't talked about it much, but the host of Bad Movie Marathon (watch out for Star Wars spoilers!) and I are working on that B-movie card game I discussed way back in the day. It's going OK, although we're a long way from being completely finished.

Other projects

I'm working on a couple of gaming-related projects that I don't talk about much, partly because I don't want to talk about them too soon before they are close to being finished. But there are a few things that I hope to be able to announce in the new year, so stay tuned.

My biggest non-game-specific post -- and indeed my most popular post ever -- was my dive into gaming history looking through the records of a campaign conducted by a friend's late father in the 1970s. If you haven't read it, check it out -- I think you might like it!

I've also been working on some non-gaming-related stuff, probably the most notable of which is my new podcast about classic Doctor Who, which you should check out if you like that sort of thing.

Overall, then, I'm pretty happy. I feel like I got a lot done this year and there's a lot of stuff that's going to come to fruition in 2016.