Resolutions 2012

So 12 months ago I made four New Year Resolutions, it’s time to look back finally and review them.

1) Keep a record of the games that I play and against who I play them. I did a good job of this two years ago, but failed miserably last year. Still a New Year and new gaming opportunities arise.

Failed.  Mostly due to students from my last school finding this blog and being silly.

2) Finish off all those figures that are half painted. I’ve no idea how many figrues I’ve started to paint and then moved in as Paul introduces me to a new game leaving the figure half of less done. So I’m going to start by clearing the figures and terrain that are part done in my office/study and then start going through the bags. This could take a while so I will try and keep this blog updated.

Still a work in progress. Well I cleared the half completed terrain, with the exception of one piece that needs some more casting doing.  There are less unpainted figures, most of my 8th Army is finish and the Dystopian Wars ships are getting there as well.  This will keep me going for a long time.

3) Ok so the usual suspects start here, loose some weight (of course as a Physicsist I should say Mass but half of the people out there wouldn’t understand me.

Well I lost some mass!  More to go though.

4) Keep looking for a new job, I need to move on I’ve been at NKS 10 years or so and although the job is generally still good it’s not what I signed up for 10+ years ago. This is probably the easiest one to keep as I don’t swear to do anything other than look.

YES!!! I got out and am enjoying my new job.

New New Year Resolutions to come tomorrow.

4th May 2012

Star Wars day.

And finally I take up a game that doesn’t rely on d6, and I defeat my opponent.  A great game, thanks to Paul for being such a great opponent and to David and Joseph for the heckling from the sidelines.  Tomorrow’s War is a completely different kind of game to our normal fair and to be honest is one of the easiest games I’ve tried to pick up in a long time.  Great quick action with simple rules when it comes to dicing.  I haven’t looked at the setup yet, but I suspect that is the more complex part of the game.

Location: Nicholson’s place

Opponent: Paul

Game: Tomorrow’s War

Fielded Commonwealth Infantry Company.

Highlight – The APC (mine) and the Light Grav Tank shooting at each other and immobilising each other, then spending the next couple of turns trying to take pot shots at each other.

Unit of the match: My one APC which engaged two Light Grav tanks took both of them out and then was abandoned by the crew as they couldn’t drive it off the table to ensure the win was mine!

Result: VICTORY!!!!!

1st Quarter 2012 Review

Well I made 4 Resolutions at the beginning of the New Year and after a quarter of the Year is gone I thought I should look back at them:

1) Well I’ve been keeping my record of games and so far it is terrible, I look forward to winning at some point.

2) Painting, some figures have cleared the table and bits and pieces of terrain have gone as well, and of course new stuff has arrived to replace it.

3) Weight loss is going well, slowly but at least my mass is going downward.

4) New job, wow I sorted that one out.

So not a bad first quarter, if only I can keep it up and clear more figures to the completed section and win a couple of games.  Here’s to the remaining 3 quarters of the year.

March 30th and April 6th

No gaming again – different reasons though this time.
March 30th – I got up and varnished another 11 Capitol troops with the anticipation of taking them to game with that evening. Unfortunately as the last day of the term progressed my health went down hill. In the end I stayed at home and nursed by stomach.
April 6th – Good Friday and no location available for gaming an early night.

Two weeks without gaming has resulted in 11 figures varnished and in the bag and now some new terrain has hit the painting table. Given that Broadsides is fast approaching and Paul and myself are running a demo Sci-Fi game we need some new Sci-Fi terrain. I have put together a couple of pieces using the Hirst Arts Pipe mold that I bought a few months back a nice and simple way to make Sci-Fi/modern looking terrain. Pictures will follow when I have painted them.
The Gaming future – April looks to be a wash-out, 13th April I’m in Holland visiting Kim’s family, 20th April is the day before Salute and Kim is out on a course so time to prepare for the mecca of wargaming in the UK.

24th March 2012

No wargaming tonight as I helped Kim out in preparing for the NCT Nearly New Sale at NKS. Darryl helped out and then we played Killer Bunnies (first time I’d opened the box and first time either of us had played). The result, well what do you think, I lost. I can’t even win at a game of pure luck – back to the drawing board next week with a Sci-Fi game against Paul.

16th March 2012

My Annus Horribilis has continued this week with yet another battle and yet another loss.  I’m thinking of grinding my dice up and get some new ones, although maybe it is my fault tactics what are those.  I’ll give John one here he actually played a tactical game and pulled me all over the place giving him the upper hand with each shooting step.  Some good dice from John and some poor dice from me.

Location: Nicholson’s place

Opponent: John

Game: Flames of War

Fielded a British Rifle Company in Italy from Fortress Europe:

• Company HQ with jeep
• 2 Rifle Platoons one with 3 Squads one with 2 sqauds
• 1 Armoured Platoon of 3 Shermans
• 1 Anti-tank Platoon, Royal Artillery with 2 17 pounders and Quads
• 1 Machine gun platoon with 2 guns, carriers and a PIAT team
• 1 Heavy Mortar platoon with 2 mortars and carriers

Highlight – I actually can’t think of one here.

Unit of the match: Well I’ll give this one to my opponent, John played a masterful game and his tanks did him proud as they pulled my Anti-tank guns and Sherman around limiting there effectiveness.  I love the Russian ability to put out really massive numbers of tanks.

Result: Another loss this time by a countrymile.

9th March 2012

A slight uplift in my fortunes this week as I tackled yet another German World War 2 army.

Location: Nicholson’s place

Opponent: Darryl

Game: Flames of War

Fielded a British Rifle Company in Italy from Fortress Europe:

• Company HQ with jeep
• 2 Rifle Platoons one with 3 Squads one with 2 sqauds
• 1 Armoured Platoon of 3 Shermans
• 1 Anti-tank Platoon, Royal Artillery with 2 17 pounders and Quads
• 1 Machine gun platoon with 2 guns, carriers and a PIAT team
• 1 Heavy Mortar platoon with 2 mortars and carriers

Highlight – The second rifle platoon arrives from reserves, shoots at the German Kampfgroup near the edge of the board and then assaults them routing the Germans further into the woods.  The return on the following turn however was not so pretty.

Unit of the match: The larger rifle platoon who got stuck on the opposite side of the board, due to the deployment rules and then spent the entire game closing with the German Heavy Mortars and refusing to fail a motivation test at the end of the game.

Result: A draw (just about and Darryl see it differently, on reflection he’s probably right.)

2nd March 2012

Well my run in 2012 has yet to improve as I took another pounding from Paul.

Location: Nicholson’s place

Opponent: Paul

Game: Flames of War

Fielded a British Rifle Company in Italy from Fortress Europe:

• Company HQ
• 2 Rifle Platoons with 3 Squads each
• 1 Gun Troop of the Royal Artillery, consisting of 2 Sections
• Priority Air Support from the Hurricanes of the RAF
• 1 Armoured Platoon of 3 Shermans

Highlight – A platoon of German Panzergrenadiers assault an observer team in the woods and fail to score any hits let alone kill them.  A pity the assault went differently.

Unit of the match: The Royal Artillery who took out 4 Armoured Cars and kept some of Paul’s vehicles out of the way, then faced an assault and stayed in the game to keep my hope’s alive.  Such a pity that the second Rifle Platoon got lost on the way and then turned up on the wrong half of the board.

February

So what’s happened, a month without posting and here I was promising to post more often. Well it seems that the real world has conspired against me, I’ve not gamed for a month (ARGH! how am I still alive?). I’ve taken time to take the team of boys from the school to Loughborough for the UK National Championships of the First Lego League, then my wife booked an outing on my gaming night. And other things getting in the way.
I’ve not even managed to finish painting anything (although I did give the studio a clean last week). Hopefully a unit of 10 Sea Lions in Terracotta Camo will be finished soon.
More posting at the end of the week…

20th January 2012

Not a great start to 2012 for me with three weeks of gaming and three losses.

Location: Woolf College, University of Kent

Opponent: Paul

Game: Warhamer: English Civil War

Fielded a Scottish Coventer Army:

• 10 Irregularly Army Milita
• 12 Steady Pikes with 10 Steady Shot attached
• 12 Steady Pikes with 10 Steady Shot attached
• 12 Steady Shot
• Major General

Highlight – My one steady shot unit who decided that fleeing from the charging cavalry was a good idea, only to watch them move 2″ and get run down.

Unit of the match: All of them played as badly as each other so, I’m going with Pauls Lifeguard Cavalry who managed to destroy one pike block, one shot block and scare another shot block into running for the hills.