2021 Wargaming review

[paulr]

It is time to summarise the wargaming year, another unusual year. I have, again, been incredibly fortunate to have been impacted much less than many this year.

Painting
The year has seen me work on five or six different projects. These have all completed or added to existing forces.

The year started with me continuing work on my Hundred Years War DBA project.
Last year I'd completed four armies:

• IV/76 Early Burgundian
• IV/62 100 Years War English (x2)
• IV/64 Medieval French

This year I completed the remaining four armies of the project:

• IV/57 Low Countries
• IV/64 Medieval French
• 6 Camps
• IV/16 Scots Common, thanks to Pierre the Shy for the banners
• IV/74 Free Company & Armagnac, thanks to the forum for assistance on the personalities and banners

After I completed the camps and the first 6 armies; 2 English, Low Countries, 2 French and Burgundian, they got a day trip to Palmerston North with Pierre the Shy to play with an old friend, Rhys.

I've added a couple of batches of WWII ships for the Pacific. The first batch was from the Battle of Surigao Strait but will more likely be used in what if scenarios around Leyte Gulf and other battles. These were:

• 5 US Battleships
• 1 Australian Heavy Cruiser
• 2 Australian Destroyers
• 2 Japanese Light Cruisers

The second batch fills out my American, Dutch and Japanese forces for the attack on Malaya, Boreno & Dutch East Indies.

• 1 US Heavy Cruiser (missed from the above batch)
• 9 US Destroyers (old four stackers)
• 1 US Fast Transport (converted from an old four stacker for Guadalcanal)
• 4 Dutch Destroyers
• 20 Japanese Destroyers

   
Looking through my spare Punic War figures I realised that by doing 9 extra elements:

• 6 Light Horse
• 2 Cavalry
• 1 Spear

I could add 3 new potential DBA armies; two II/5g Italiot and one II/5d Thessalian. These were completed in September.

For the English Civil War or War of the Three Kingdoms I've added four units of rabble to my English forces. I'm slowly working my way through 8 battalia of Irish for Pierre the Shy with 6 painted so far. I also need to talk to him about what he wants done with 54 'spare' figures.

A total painted for the year of:

879	Foot
102	Mounted
60	Models
1,041	Total

A little down on last year's 1,665 but not bad for a year when I was mainly completing or adding to existing forces.

Gaming
From a gaming perspective Wellington, New Zealand has been extremely lucky with only one significant period of major restrictions (mid-August – early-September).

I managed to play 30 games, totalling of 123 hours, averaging 4.1 hours per game. About a third of these games lasted 6 hours over two gaming sessions and 3 lasted 9 hours over three sessions.

The rulesets played were:

• Black Powder & Glory Hallelujah: 6 20mm ACW
• homebrew 20mm WWII of our regular host: 4
• Big Battle DBA: 1 10mm Punic Wars, 3 10mm Hundred Years War
• DBMM: 4 20/28mm
• For King & Parliament: 1 10mm ECW, 3 10mm W3K
• homebrew 20mm Napoleonic rules of our regular host: 3
• General Quarters I/II: 3 WWII
• Volley & Bayonet: 1 10mm Wing scale AWI
• Spearhead: 1 6mm WWII

Plenty of variety and all very enjoyable games. Our regular host completed his 20mm ACW forces this year.

A number of my forces didn't make it to the table this year:

• Age of Sail fleets
• 6mm Napoleonic Volley & Bayonet forces
• Pre-Dreadnought naval
• 10mm WWI forces for If the Lord Spares Us
• 6mm WWII Spearhead forces for Poland and early North Africa
• 10mm First Crusade DBA

Most of these forces haven't been on table for 2 or 3 years. I will have to, again, try and address this next year.

Plans
I've been pondering my plans for next year.

First up is to finish Pierre the Shy's Irish that he has been patiently waiting for, once I find some undercoat.

Then things get more complicated.

As I said last year, do I continue with painting projects and end up with more forces that won't see the table each year or do I focus on making better use of the forces I currently have.

Last year I was inspired by some of the narrative campaigns discussed on the forum and made a start on developing some linked scenarios. I want to spend some more time on these.

We have started playing the Old Dominion Games Works (ODGW) naval campaign Defending the Malay Barrier to mark the 80^th anniversary. In August we will mark the 80^th anniversary of Guadalcanal, we have a number of options for this:

• have another go at ODGW's The Solomons campaign
• refight a number of the historic naval battles
• perhaps my own narrative campaign.

   .
Some possible distractions next year might include:

• Pre-Dreadnought ships for the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-5) and/or Russo-Japanese War (1904-5), using a variant of GQ I/II
• Some more DBA armies, 1066 is a possibility revived while reading Norm's Christmas Gazette (but what to use for the Welsh)
• Indian Mutiny using a variant of Volley & Bayonet
• Ancient Galleys, possibly using a DBA variant as I can't seem to find anything better as a high level game
• Something else entirely.

   
My thanks to all the forum members for the interest, support, information, entertainment and confusion they have contributed over the year.

[Steve J]

That's a nice review Paul and you've certainly been busy, both on the gaming and painting front .

As I said last year, do I continue with painting projects and end up with more forces that won't see the table each year or do I focus on making better use of the forces I currently have.

Last year I was inspired by some of the narrative campaigns discussed on the forum and made a start on developing some linked scenarios. I want to spend some more time on these.

Over the past few years my preference has been to play more with a few key forces and periods, rather than paint stuff I will unlikely ever use. I've found this approach rather liberating. Alongside this I've found narrative games/campaigns have added an awful lot of enjoyment to my games, so hope oyu find time to explore this in 2022.

[fsn]

Nice work.

As I posted elsewhere, 2021 was the year of Napoleonics - Britsh, Brunswick, Wurttemberg, Prussian, Bavarian (now complete) and some Austrians. 2022 will continue to be Napoleonics (Poles, Austrians and Russians), maybe into French and Spaniards.

The Pig Faced Bascinets are drawing me to some "clip-clop swish-swish" though. 

Who are we kidding? 2022 will be the "ooh Pendraken have released some shiny!" year, as has every year since 2013.

     

[Rhys]

I had to have a look back at my blog to see what I had painted this year.
I started with 3000 pts of 6mm Prussians for Volley and Bayonet (18 brigades of infantry, 9 brigades of cavalry, 7 battalions of artilley plus a couple of batterys of horse artillery).
I then did a couple of DBA armies (10mm on large scale bases) Ottoman and Trapezund Byzantine. Back to Volley and Bayonett I did some Russians (12 brigades of infantry, 4 brigades ofcavalry and  battalion of artillery) before my will to live gave out, then it was back to 10mm DBA with Knights of St John (which I've only 1/2 finished).
Thrown in there were some 3mm aircraft and helicopters for my Spearhead/Modern Spearhead armies and some 28mm figures for In Her Majesties Name.
I've no idea what the figure count is (I've never really kept track).

Game wise I've had 2 days of gaming this year. Must do better.

Plans for the comming year are to clear out the lead pile (things have not been overly good financially this year and one must do ones part. the plus is that theres plenty in the pile to do). I also need to build/finish some more terrain to play on.

[Orcs]

Painting

2021 Has been a reasonable year on the painting front. It was not as good as last year, due to rebasing some of my 10mm WOR and a large lot of 15mm Renaissance figures.

28mm
32 assorted figures.

Not much happening here, But will no doubt increase due to Oathmark being played by friends and club

20mm
250 Infantry
22 Vehicles

15mm
80 + Italian wars figures
300-400 completely rebased

10mm

150 Figures
16 guns
2 vehicles

I did much better on terrain. Making quite a bit for a 20mm Seelow Chain of Command campaign

40 feet of Timecast river
5 Bridges
4 Fords
6 x Bridges for Chain of command
9 feet of Dagons teeth (British and german
Assorted Markers
Various specialist bits for Home guard campaign.


Gaming

Surprisingly got quite a few days gaming in, including two seperate weeks where I played a campaign with various friends from Monday to Friday.  I lost track of games days, but it must be in the region of 15 -20 whole days gaming plus about 10 evening's, despite the various restrictions.

What I did miss was having several friends round on the same day due to keeping games at our respective houses down to  two player games for the most part.

Projects for next Year.

20mm late war Germans.
Probably only about 30 figures to paint plus 6 vehicles when I get the airbrush out.
Rebase about 100 to fit in with Chain Of Commad.
Make up new storage boxes for them

28mm Hobbits for Oathmark.
30 figures needed to field reasonable size army

28mm Orcs For Oathmark
Annoyingly I need to so about another 30 to make some units up to full Oathmark units.

20mm French Platoon plus supports for Chain of Command.
This project was started last year, but kept getting put to one side


I will intersperse these with some ongoing projects, so I do not get bored.

These will be

Completing 10mm Wars of the Roses units
10mm Marlburian Units.
15mm Biblical
15mm Rennaisance.
28mm Elves for Oathmark

Should I finish all of may main projects, I will start on one or more of those below. which one will be depend on ahat I have read or watched immediately prior to starting it

10mm BEF
10mm Early war Falshirmjager
10mm Russian
10mm Alexandrian Macedonian
20mm Fallshirmjager



Planned Purchases.

Some more Dirt roads from S& A scenics
Markers for "To the Strongest"

28mm Dwarves from Conquerer Models
28mm Hobbits from Northstar

I expect to succumb to the Arab Israeli wars stuff when its released. I have seen the greens and they are superb. 






 
 

[Chad]

Last year I continued with my 15mm French Revolution covering:
French
Austrian
Prussian
British
Hanoverian

Also worked on my  rules for the period.

Also started 10mm SYW Prussians and Austrian

In between I began 1/2400 Pre-Dreadnoughts

[Steve J]

My end of year review can be found here:

https://wwiiwargaming.blogspot.com/2021/12/end-of-year-review-2021.html

[Chris Pringle]

A productive year, considering the circumstances.

Hungary 1848
This was the year's major project: to playtest and finalise 15 scenarios for a wargame campaign book on the Hungarian War of Independence of 1848-1849. As the BBBBlog shows, we got through 11 of them:
http://bloodybigbattles.blogspot.com/
and I will be fighting #12 later today. Pretty good going really.

Also on the same theme, Helion published my book "Hungary 1848: The Winter Campaign".
https://www.helion.co.uk/military-history-books/hungary-1848-the-winter-campaign.php
(Five-star reviews on Amazon so far - thank you, gentlemen.)
In November I sent Helion the final manuscript for the sequel, "Hungary 1849: The Summer Campaign", so that should appear this year. A third book on the topic is in the works and should be submitted in March.

Clausewitz
My third Clausewitz translation with Prof Nick Murray was published in early 2021: "The Coalition Crumbles, Napoleon Returns: The 1799 Campaign in Italy and Switzerland, Volume 2"
https://kansaspress.ku.edu/978-0-7006-3034-9.html
Nick and I and a third colleague have been working on another Clausewitz volume to be published this year.

Transatlantic gaming
The wonders of Zoom, Discord, etc., enabled me to get a few games in with my American buddies. Lexington & Concord (AWI) with Black Powder; El Teb (Mahdist War 1884) with The Men Who Would Be Kings; and some WWII action with O Group.

Computer gaming
I used to love the Close Combat series. I discovered these are now on the Steam platform. I have logged a fair few hours solo, but also have regular online sessions of getting my butt kicked by my mate Graham, whose small unit tactics are excellent.

The next generation
I am nurturing a young relative's already strong interest in wargaming. We have done Agincourt (sort of) and Waterloo (sort of), as well as some Memoir '44 and other miscellaneous stuff.

Oxford Wargames Society lives!
Managed some games at the club as well: Champion Hill (ACW), Gitschin (1866), Gaslands, Sherlock Holmes and the Wicker Man; and some games hosted by club members: Isted (1st Schleswig-Holstein War), Delhi (1803), etc.

Overall not bad; expecting 2022 to be as good or better.

[paulr]

A productive year, considering the circumstances.

Hungary 1848
...
Also on the same theme, Helion published my book "Hungary 1848: The Winter Campaign".
https://www.helion.co.uk/military-history-books/hungary-1848-the-winter-campaign.php
(Five-star reviews on Amazon so far - thank you, gentlemen.)
In November I sent Helion the final manuscript for the sequel, "Hungary 1849: The Summer Campaign", so that should appear this year. A third book on the topic is in the works and should be submitted in March.
...
Overall not bad; expecting 2022 to be as good or better.

The Spring or Autumn campaign  

A very productive year indeed    

[Chris Pringle]

Cheers, Paul. Well done yourself!

The Spring or Autumn campaign  

Since you mention it - Hungarian historians do like to distinguish a separate Spring Campaign between the Winter and Summer Campaigns, whereas the Austrians prefer to gloss over, downplay, and generally ignore it. That's because the Spring Campaign was the phase when the Hungarians won some major victories and kicked the Austrians out of Hungary almost entirely, forcing them to turn to the Tsar and 200,000 Russians to bail them out.

As for the Autumn Campaign, that was really the Serbian insurrection in 1848 that preceded the war proper.

Lecture over, back to your gaming!