2025 Year in Review

 I retired as of the 1st of January 2025, so I have been fortunate enough to have some extra time on my hands this year, as planned.  My wargaming goal going into the year was not to turn down any offer of a game unless absolutely necessary.  The HAWKs have had a regular retirees group for some years now, and I was happy to be part of it, starting with the first meeting in January. I’ve also gotten games days with my sons, and made it to a few conventions this year.  As a result, as of the 15th of December, I’ve logged 67 game sessions this year, with only a slender chance of getting any more in before the 1st of January.  That is a new record, and has been the best part of the hobby year.

A Fantastic Battles Game with My “Myzantine” Forces

As gleaned from my log, which I keep on paper in a notebook, being somewhat old school, here is a complete list of those games, arranged by frequency:

Miniatures Games of 2025

9 x Combat Patrol (7 20mm WWII, 2 25mm WWI)

6 x DBA (20mm)

5 x Fantastic Battles (4 6mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Dragon Rampant (3 20mm*, 1 25mm*)

4 x Look Sarge, No Charts (10mm WWI)

4 x 15mm Napoleonics home rules (3 different sets)

3 x To the Strongest (10mm ancients)

3 x Fistful of Lead (F&IW, 2 40mm*, 1 25mm)

2 x Fantasy home rules (1 25mm, 1 wooden “crafties”)

2 x Charge! (40mm NQSYW*)

2 x Square Bashing (25mm WWI)

2 x Chain of Command (20mm WWII)

2 x Medieval home rules (54mm*)

2 x Neil Thomas 19th Century Europe (20mm)

2 x Chosen Men (25mm Napoleonics)

1 x Rebels and Patriots (40mm NQSYW*)

1 x Turnip 28

1 x WWI home rules (10mm)

1 x British colonial home rules (25mm)

1 x Vauban’s Wars (15mm SYW siege)

1 x Don’t Give Up the Ship (Napoleonic Naval)

1 x Fistful of Lead Bigger Battles (25mm British colonials)

1 x This is Not a Test (25mm post-apocalyptic)

1 x Star Schlock (25mm SF)

1 x Thalassa (1/300 ancient naval)

1 x Battletech Alpha Strike (1/300 SF)

1 x De Bellis Fantasiae (20mm fantasy)

1 x Lion Rampant (54mm medieval*)

1 x Blood and Swash (25mm early American)

1 x Tanks for the Apocalypse (20mm post-apocalyptic)

——-

67 games

30 (+) different sets of rules

*17 games involving my own figures; 50 not involving my figures

Someone asked me recently on a hobby Discord what I typically play.  This year, there really was no “typically” about it.  Due to my acceptance of whatever was on offer, the most frequently played game was Combat Patrol, one of the many games designed by club member Buck Surdu. I played it both in the standard WWII version and modified for WWI. I personally only have one 20th century project in my collection at this time, a 6mm Spanish Civil War set which, according to my records, has not been used in a game since April 2005, over 20 years ago.  Due to club interests, I suppose I do end up playing a lot of WWI and WWII, but I enjoy the opportunity to play something without having to build up a collection myself.

Only 17 games involved any of my own figures this year using figures from 6 projects.  By my count, I have 16 projects that have “playable” levels of figures. I would have to say that my figure collection was a bit underused this year.

With 30+ sets of rules played this year (the uncertainty being how to count the home rules Napoleonics) it has been difficult to gain proficiency with any new sets of rules, and I have a stack of rules that haven’t been tried yet, particularly Hobgoblin and Midgard for some fantasy mass battles.

Some 40mm Prince August Infantry for the Not Quite Seven Years War

It has been a bad year for painting overall. I have scarcely picked up a brush since I finished a few Prince August semi-flats for the NQSYW in September. Other than that, I finished about 10 stands of various 6mm troops for Fantastic Battles and a handful of 25mm fantasy figures (also Prince August home cast).

I have been wanting to get back into blogging more regularly, and I can’t really say that this year was a success.  It took until September to actually buckle down and write something, and I did not match that pace for the rest of the year.  However, I did do some blogging, and I had three times as many posts as last year, so perhaps we’ll call that a draw.

I have usually done some solo gaming in the course of a year, and I have a solo campaign in progress, although it has been stalled since I played out the Battle of Newkeep in January of 2022. I know why the solo campaign is pending: I am stalled on building some buildings I want for the next scenario. However, I have not done a single solo game this year. I could have tried either of the new fantasy rules mentioned above solo, or done any number of other one-shots.  I would suppose that the availability of opponents this year has reduced my craving for more games, at least a bit.

Overall, though, it’s been a really good year for the hobby, even if some areas could be improved.

I haven’t actually written down my goals for 2026 yet, and I hope to blog a bit when I do. There are several ideas on my mind. March 2026 is the 50th anniversary of my involvement with Dungeons & Dragons, and I would really like to dust off the original rules for some retro-gaming. August will be

the 30th anniversary of the first NQSYW game, which is an occasion I will certainly wish to mark. I also want to play some games with some vintage rules. I haven’t had Knights and Magick (Heritage Models, 1980, review minus pictures here) on the table in a few years. We have always played K&M as 

“miniatures agnostic”, but a couple of years ago I thought that it might be fun to see if I couldn’t assemble a couple of forces using contemporary Heritage figures (currently available from Classic Miniatures), either vintage or new castings, and I have acquired more miniatures for this recently. I acquired a set of

Warhammer (1st edition) rules during the pandemic which I still haven’t tried, despite the recent release of a video series on the topic. I’ve been accumulating Citadel Dark Ages figures to provide a couple of appropriate armies, just for fun.  Never having been a Games Workshop fan, the Dark Ages figures and the early Citadel ranges such as Fantasy Adventurers and Fiend Factory, which were licensed to Ral Partha for production in the US, are the only Citadel minis in my collection, so I decided I’d try to build on that a bit.  And…if I’m going to dig into Warhammer, it might be fun to break out Warhammer Ancient Battles for a Dark Ages game or two. More to follow on those ideas…

Meanwhile, I wish all of you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Barrage 2025 After Action Report

 The HAWKs staged Barrage XXIX (really, 29?) on 26 and 27 September, at the Havre de Grace Community Center.  Things suddenly got busy after that, so this has taken me longer to write up and post than I had hoped.  I have been finding that things have expanded to fill most of my available time in retirement, so I’m not sure how I used to find time to go to work and still get anything else done. But here we are … 

Since we became a 2 day convention a few years ago, we now set the hall up on Thursday night.  We generally have about 20 tables set up for gaming in the main room, and there’s also a side room that gets used for an Art de la Guerre tournament on Saturdays.  I believe there were about 50 scheduled events and we had about 190 attendees overall.  

I had the opportunity to play in one game on Friday, a session of an ancient naval game using the Thalassa rules and some 1/300 scale 3-d printed ships, hosted by Walt Leach and a couple of his friends.

A convention is always a nice opportunity to play some games I wouldn’t have time to prepare myself.

Both of my sons came up from the Washington D.C. area on Saturday and helped me run a 40mm Not Quite Seven Years War game with Charge!. Once we had it set up we had a little time to spare, so Norman set up a quick game of DBA using his most recently completed armies, and William and I played it out.

For the NQSYW game this year I dipped into my standard resource, C.S. Grant’s Scenarios for Wargames, and selected Scenario 15: Reinforcements in the Defense (On the Table), a scenario I have used many times before.

The attacking force was provided by the Pragmatic Coalition (forces belonging to myself, Norman, and William) and the defenders by the Northern Alliance (forces belonging to Chris Palmer and Duncan Adams). 

The defenders occupied a large hill, seen here in the far center of the photo, and the attackers need to clear it before reinforcements arrive. As is common in this scneario, both side’s cavalry ended up in a scuffle in the clear area on the near side of the hill (from the point of view of the photo above).

The Pragmatic assault eventually carried the hill, but not without ferocious casualties. 

Everyone agree that the Pragmatic Coalition would not be able to hold the hill against the counterattack from the Alliance reinforcements which had deployed:

I did get a chance to add my most recently completed unit to the Alliance defenders, seen here shortly before they broke:

A few musketeers of the North Polenburg Queen Jennifer Regiment have become intermingled with them in the swirl of the battle.  Overall, it was an unusual run of this scenario; the forces on the hill held out longer than expected, and my sons and I were discussing the possibility of doing a little mathemtical modeling to see how unusual that was, but we haven’t done it yet.

I had good luck with the flea market this year.  I sold almost everything in the three boxes of stuff I brought, and went home with a few books and a couple of small bags of Airfix figures to add to projects befopre actual and potential. 

Now it’s time to prepare for Cold Barrage in March …

All Based and Ready to Go (NQSYW and 54mm Fantasy)

 It has taken a few days since my return from visiting my father to finish up what I had painted, and I also had three more of the NQSYW figures which needed basing.

That brings a Charge! company up to full strength, so I will need to find a way to get it on the table this Saturday.

I also finished the one witch.

Next up on the painting table will be a few more 54mm fantasy figures.  I’m trying not to look too far ahead, so I won’t predict what might be after that.

Some NQSYW (and other) Painting

Please pardon the cluttered table picture!  I have been visiting my father on a regular basis this past year, and I usually try to bring along some sort of hobby project I can work on in the down time.  This trip I brought along the travel paint set and some NQSYW figures for the red-coated army of the Archbishopric of Schlüsselbrett.  When we picked up the redcoats in the Annexation in 2011 there were a few figures with yellow facings that didn’t amount to a complete Charge! company, so I eventually cast up the rest of the needed figures and have worked on them very intermittantly for the last several years.  (More libations for the Muse Clio would be in order, I suppose … ) I was down to the last four I had in progress, so that’s what I brought, figuring that finishing them wasn’t too ambitious.

So, while my father was off to his volunteer gig at the Henry Ford Museum I buckled down and knocked these out. I should have time to get all the basing done to allow the company to appear on the table at Barrage next week.

After playing A Fistful of Lead last week I was also inspired to bring along a few 54mm fantasy figures.  (I have the magic/fantasy expansion for those rules.) I finished off one sorceress, from the old Toys R Us Mythical Warriors play set. (Less the basing, as I didn’t bring the basing or final varnish materials with me…)

During my last burst of inspiration for 54mm fantasy I picked up a bunch of Marx recasts (knights, Vikings, and Robin Hood), so I have plenty of possible figures to paint.  With a bit of help from the Muses, perhaps I can get an initial game on the table some time this winter.

 

Geezer Game

Today's Geezer Game is a 10mm WWI battle, from 1914. The Germans and British clash near Ypres. Rules in use are "Look Sarge, No Charts", with WWII modified to support the WWI scenario.

Foundry Day

 I have been preoccupied this summer and have not taken advantage of the warm weather to do any casting since May. My wife, being an industrial hygienist, has advised me to keep all of the casting outdoors, so hot sunny days are the best for this.  (In fact, as long as you stay well hydrated, ridiculously hot days are the best of the best, so I don’t mind the occasional heat wave.)

Earlier this summer I bought a new clean melting pot so that I could keep any potential lead contamination out of things to be cast for my grandchild, and it seemed like a good day to give it a test.  It’s an actual Prince August device that requires you to dip the metal out of an open-topped pot with a ladle, so I wasn’t sure how well that would work.  Future grandchild toys are not urgent, however, and my younger son has been waiting for me to cast some Prince August marching grenadiers for him, to complete a unit.  Working alone, casting three or four molds makes for a good work flow, so I pulled out the grenadiers he needed, a pair of grenadiers firing, a drummer and standard bearer, and an officer and musketeer advancing.  I did three at a time, swapping the officer and advancing guy out for the drummer/standard bearer after producing a couple of good copies of each. Getting 50 successful figures this way took me about two hours, including the set-up time.  I’d have done more, since the set-up time had already been invested, but I had to go pick my car up from its maintenance appointment.

We haven’t been adding much to the Not Quite Seven Years War (NQSYW) collection in recent years, but I guess the big game we did last year at Barrage (see his commentary at 10:05) inspired him, and who am I to argue with inspiration? 

I also handed off a cavalry squadron to him recently, so I look forward to having a game with some new figures on the table, perhaps by the next spring.

For that matter, I have some NQSYW figures on my painting desk now.  These figures are to complete one of the units acquired in the Annexation back in 2011. (2011 ?!?!) I suppose that it’s more than time that they be completed…

There will be a modest NQSYW game (using Charge! as is customary) coming up at Barrge 2025 in a few weeks.  I hope to have a Barrage AAR, and I also hope that I will have these figures all based and varnished so that the unit can appear in the game.

French and Indian War Skirmish Using “A Fistful of Lead”

 In my recent post I mentioned the HAWKs Geezer Games which I have been able to participate in due to my retirement.  There is an even more unofficial custom of gathering for games on Mondays.  I volunteered to run yesterday’s game, and decided that it was time to pull out the 40mm French and Indian War figures.  These, according to my logs, were last out for a solo game in early September 2023, just over two years ago. 

I have been wanting to try A Fistful of Lead for some time, ever since I saw a group playing a science fiction game using the specialized variant Galactic Heroes during a HAWKs game day a few years ago. My thought at the time was that I would run a game using the 54mm semi-flat home cast Buck Rogers figures, although I still have not (yet) done that.  As noted, I had the opportunity to play in a colonials game at Gen Con using the Bigger Battles variant, and I enjoyed that. So, it seemed like a good time to give it a try.

Because we were playing at someone else’s house, and I knew we were going to be learning the rules, I did not carry much scenery with me, so this tabletop is not as picturesque as I might like it to be, so I didn’t take too many pictures as we went along.  I kept to a simple set up.  The four corners of the table were covered in woods (represented here by the darker green cloth).  Two log cabins were in a clearing in the center of the table, separated by a small stream.  We had four players, so I assembled two groups of French and Indian raiders, each with seven figures and each including a group of three untried youths, one group of five British colonial settlers plus a group of four non-combatants occupying the clearing around the cabins, and one group of five British settler militia from the next valley over.  The French objective was to burn the cabins and capture the non-combatants; the British objective to drive off the French.

In the first game I played the arriving militia, and did not do well, losing my leader and being about lose a second militiaman, while being unable to prevent the raiders from burning the small cabin. The local settlers took more casualties and had little ability to defend the larger cabin and the non-combatants against the raiders.   So we called it, broke for lunch, switched sides and tried again.

This time the settler elected to defend both cabins (having abandoned the small cabin in the first game), and my raider team was unable to do much against the defenders, although I did eventually eliminate the settler leader with a lucky shot.  My fellow raider lost all but one of his figures, so we called that one a settler victory.

The main feature distinguishing A Fistful of Lead from other skirmish games is the activation system using a standard deck of playing cards.  Each player is dealt a hand of cards (one per figure) at the start of each turn.  Activations occur in order, from Kings down to Twos, with Aces being wild cards.  Certain of the cards provide special actions (e.g. heal a wound marker, combat bonus, automatic reload), so there is some strategy inherent in choosing which figure to activate when you have the next card to be played.  Turns generally moved along quickly, and the mechanics are pretty simple.  Most of them are laid out pretty well on a one page QRS.  The activation system is designed, among other things, to support multi-player games, which is a plus.

Everyone seemed happy with the rules, so I expect that there will be more of this in the future.

My only quibbles were that the QRS would have benefitted from including a list of the possible actions, and that (in common with a lot of the skirmish games we play) status markers end up creating a lot of table clutter.  If I planned to run this as a convention showcase game, I would wish to put some effort into making some more unobtrusive markers.