End of 2017 and a Look to 2018

This year was a good year for playing games and painting miniatures. I will probably have a change in the department I will be working for in 2018 so I may not get as much painting during the 30 minutes I allocate to lunch for little projects. Time will tell.

Game Books
Only read through three game books this past year: Malifaux Ripples of Fate, Adventures in Middle Earth Players Guide, and the Batman Miniature Game: 2nd Edition. Will attempt to read through more this year as I have a backlog but with running two games it will be mostly 5e and Fantasy Flight Star Wars books.

RPGs
Played thirty sessions of role-playing games. Most of the sessions (25) contimnued in a friend's 5e D&D game set in a late Roman-like time period set on Vancouver Island. I'm still playing a wizard, who harbours dark thoughts yet is courteous, who is part of a group to depose the evil emperor by freeing imprisoned gods from a forgotten empire. The basic rules are still free to download from the Wizards of the Coast website. We plan to continue this campaign for the foreseeable future.

The next most was the Fantasy Flight Star Wars: Edge of Empire setting (4 sessions). I played a Negotiator who was sold into slavery to protect her corporate boss' position. The character has raw talent but is a quick learner, and took the Marshall career to develop her combat abilities. We have cancelled this campaign as it was hard to do remotely with computer voice skyping. I also played one session of Star Wars: Saga edition as a one shot.

In 2018 I will be running a Fantasy Flight Star Wars campaign, starting with the Clone Wars with the PCs as force users and padawan. Also going to run the Storm King’s Thunder adventure book as a pickup game when there is not enough people who attend for the other 5e or Star Wars game.

Boardgame
I played only 75 war, board, and card games this year as many friends were occupied doing other things of more import. Games played the most were: Balloon Cup (4), Codenames (5), Crib (6), and Santorini (5).

Games I did not play much but were very impressed by and/or wish to play more (not excluding the above games) were: 878: Vikings, 1754: Age of Conquest, Freedom: Underground Railroad, Polis: Fight for the Hegemony, Sekigahara, and Terraforming Mars along with several games I have purchased but not played yet.

Computer Games
I played very very few computer games this year and anticipate that trend will continue. The only one I played was Plague Inc.

Miniatures
This year I played 51 miniature games, a slight drop from last year.

Guildball was again the most played game by myself to a total of 34, using my Mason and Fishermen teams. I hope to continue to play this excellent game next year. Even better, the rules, cards and standees are still free to download. Also painted eight of these models this year. Will continue to paint models in this line, including Granite and the complete Union lineup.

Malifaux was the second most game I played, with 13 total games. I mostly stuck with the Outcast faction with Von Schill, Misaki and Tara. I played Angel Eyes for two demonstration games at the LANtasy gaming convention. I expect and wish to play more in 2017. I have painted 27 of these models and will be continuing to paint more models of the Outcast faction, including the Jack Daw and Parker Burrows crews.

Besides these games, I played Dystopian Wars (1) and Kings of War (3). I am looking forward to playing and painting more Dystopian Wars, Firestorm Armada, Kings of War and the Batman Miniature Game.

I painted some more models for Dystopian Wars Prussia (24), Brittania (18), and Neutral (29) as well as nine Planetfall Aquan models. It was a shame that Spartan Games, the company that makes Dystopian Wars, Firestorm Armada, and Planetfall went bankrupt but Wayland Games has picked up the IP and is intending to continue to make models and new rules for these games. For Kings of War I painted 6 old GW Empire models as testers for a paint scheme. I also painted two models for the Batman Miniature game.

Terrain
I finished seven large and several small terrain pieces. I intend to paint many more in 2018. I was particularly impressed by the modern buildings I painted and put graffiti on.