2014 Year in Review

As with most miniature gamers who take up blogging, today is the day to write about what we acomplished and did not accomplish during the year.

For myself, all I can say is that 2014 was a huge success for me regarding gaming.  Seeing how in 2013 I only had 2 blog posts, and 3 in 2012, to already finish 2014 with 85 posts is an accompishment all by itself.

On to the actually gaming.......

Bolt Action

At the end of January 2014, I was introduced to a farely new 28mm WWII game called Bolt Action.  Seeing how I always loved the WWII era and have been waiting for a ruleset to catch on world wide, I jumped right into it.  A long time friend of mine (Tim @ Cursed Treasures) was bringing back his 2 day event "Gathering in the Desert" for 2014 and it was going to be Bolt Action (previously LotR).  I had 3 weeks to get an army built, painted and ready for the tournament.  I acomplished getting 1000 points of Soviets completed and had a great time playing in the event and catching up with some old friends.  My son had also played in the event with a borrowed army and also had a good time.  It was now time to get him an army built and painted so we can get some more games in.

I finished 1000 points of US for him, plus we managed to get a German army done and also added some new units to our armies.  I was able to get in 21 games for the year, most of them were in the first half of 2014.  After the summer my gaming and blogging took a little hiatus and I was concentratng once again on my personal health and exercising more.

We still have a lot more models to paint up and complete for this game, hopefully we'll get them done in 2015.

X-Wing

X-Wing really surprised me in 2014.  At first I did not want to get into 'another' miniature game with all my time contraints, but I am glad that I did.  My son was playing the game for most of 2013 and finally on my 40th birthday in March of 2014 I had him give me an introduction to the game.  Boy did I really like the game.  First off, there is nothing to paint (sure you can paint the models if you really wanted to, but I feel Fantasy Flight Games did a really nice job on the pre-painted models).  Second a standard game is 100 points which is to be played in 75 minutes.  This was a huge plus for me.  I really do not care to spend 3-4 hours playing one game, so to get a game in just over an hour was a huge benefit.  And finally it's 'Star Wars'....

I managed to get 20 games in for the year (with the last game being yesterday afternoon) and I see many more games for 2015.

Warhammer Fantasy

This was a bust for me.  I had some hope to revive this game in 2014 and managed to get 2 games in.  I also dug out a lot of my old models and started to touch some up, but the summer came and once again this game slid from me.  The time and money to get a unit completed in this game is starting to get ridiculous with Games Workshop pricing.

Flames of War

Another bust.  I also had some high hopes for this game seeing how I already had some models for this game.  I had my friend (Rob @ Drunken Samurai) re-teach me the game and also managed to get a game in with my son.  But seeing how at the time I was really into Bolt Action, another WWII based game (and in 15mm scale) was starting to look slim.  When Bolt Action released their Tank Wars book, my son and I did manage to use our Flames of War models to play some of the Tank Wars games.

Dungeons & Dragons

In August of 2014, Wizards released Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.  I always wanted to really get into D&D and did manage to find a group back in 3E, but that did not last long.  Before I bought any books for 5E, I went to find a group to play with.  I managed to get a hold of a Dungeon Master playing at Desert Sky Games who offerered to run a campaign for me and two of my sons.  We then also recruited another player and the adventure began.  We are now playing every Sunday from 12pm-2pm at Desert Sky Games and I am really enjoying playing 5th Edition.

Well that is about all for 2014.  Stay tuned for tomorrow's post on what to expect for 2015.