A 2011 gaming retrospect

As this blog is very recent in origin I thought I'd take a quick look back at a year where I had a lot of plans but little execution - I blame lack of time but it may also have been inertia on my part.

Shows: I attended Call to Arms (Theale in February), Valhalla (Farnborough in January), Battle Group South (Bovington in July) and Warfare (Reading in November).   I'd thought of doing Salute, Colours and/or SELWG but these didn't happen owing to business travel or fatigue.

Apart from the painting over the Christmas holidays recorded in the earlier blog posts I painted about 30 15mm WW2 Gurkhas (which were loaned as artillery protection at the Bovington Battlefront WW2 Bishenpur game).  I also did bits and pieces on various 10mm and 15mm WW2 figures and vehicles but nothing much.

The Bishenpur game at Bovington created and run by the talented and friendly UK supporters of the Battlefront WW2 rules:

As far as miniatures games go I played in an IABSM Lard Day of the Australian assault on Italian held Tobruk in Operation Compass, did a solo game of Battlefront WW2 (A Difficult Affair - Kursk).

The table for the morning of the TFL Tobruk game:

A view of the main L of the TFL Tobruk game in progress with many of the usual suspects:

I bought a lot of rules and related publications during 2011, including Force on Force (FoF), Tomorrow's War (TW) - both from Ambush Alley Games, and IABSM3 from TF, as well as Beneath the Lily Banners 2 (BLB2) and Piquet's Field of Battle (FOB). 

I'm hopeful that FoF and TW may get played at some point in 2012 with my son.  I've been lucky with IABSM3 (as related in posts from earlier in December) both in convincing existing friends to play but also to find a willing fellow TFL Yahoo group member who lives pretty close.  

I did more roleplaying than miniatures gaming.  This was mainly a mix of home brewed games GM'd by my son and Ars Magica run by an old friend in London.

So, a year in which I hoped to do more painting and gaming than I did.  But I met a lot of good people in 2011 especially at the Bishenpur game at Bovington and the TFL game at St Albans.

I've also taken to recording all my hobby related expenditure.  In 2011 this was almost exactly £700.  Of this £193 was on miniatures rules and supplements and another £193 on miniatures (much of it remaindered 15mm Flames of War items). About £108 went on RPGs.  Only £39 was on books, £32 on magazines, £47 on travel to shows (petrol) and £22 for entry.  Paints and terrain accounted for the balance. 

I wish any readers of this blog a happy 2012.