…2013, come on down!

I meant to be put this up a week ago but with a busy first Christmas with my son the holiday period disappeared quite quickly on me. So, on with the show!

2013 is going to be a bit of an odd hobby year for me. We are only holding one GT this year, so it means a little less incentive to work on some of my FOW projects (EW French, EW Soviets or anything Mid War). I am also unsure as to how many “away” games I will get in as it may be hard to get leave passes for the long weekends, although I am in preliminary discussions to head to Napier in June (good wine country down there so I can get in some gaming, and then after that we can visit some wineries!) and Wellington in August (nicest bunch of WarmaHordes players in New Zealand – sorry fellow Aucklanders, you guys are great too but they take the title). Evan is also likely to suggest I make the trip to Panzerschreck for his doubles tournament in July.

What’s the plan?

Q1 – I need to get a 42 point force painted for Ides of March and I have about 7-8 weeks to do it. I have been tossing up between expanding my Kara Sloan list by painting my Minutemen and Gun Mages, or starting my Trolls… Last night I was playing around with War Room and got excited about an eIrusk, 2 Juggernaught, 5 Man-o-War Shocktroopers, Bombardiers and Demo Corps and a small unit of Mechanics with their Officer UA. I love the MoW units (although they seem a little underwhelming on the table) and this would get me to paint them!

I also need to paint up a T-34 Battalion for a web article I am going to be working on. It means assembling and painting up 21 tanks, as well as an additional 21 turrets. Not normally a big issue but it does mean that I need to schedule my painting time well to achieve both sets of goals.

Q2 – If I am heading to NiCon it will either be WarmaHordes teams event (with Sean and Victor) or Flames Of War at a guess. In which case I will need to paint up some Trollbloods or find something that is going to inspire me with regards to Late War (not sure what periods will be on offer, but LW is a safe bet at this stage) – good chance to paint some of the new plastic PaK40s for my Hungarians as well as some Tigers I have had stashed for a rainy day!

Q3 – Call To Arms in Wellington will definitely be a WarmaHordes weekend with either the Trolls or Kara (or whatever else I end up coming up in between). Looking at my unpainted WarmaHordes figures there are quite a few units that I want to get painted and I know that a tournament is the only way to help me achieve that goal, hence all the swapping between forces.

Q4 – Finish my 1956 Israeli Tank Company! I have the tanks done, now I need to finish my artillery, add some recon and infantry. All the figures are sitting in a box at home, they just need a little paint and a lot of time. Evan is also working on a little Christmas present for me to go with this army – more details on that later.

Throughout the entire year… play some more games in general. Other than getting out to play X-Wing at TCOW in the last part of 2012 I did not play may games so the onus is on me to get the FOW and W/H stuff out of the cupboards a little more regularly. I’m also going to get my Dystopian Wars Prussians (and Allied nations) finished this year. They are quick and fun to paint so I need to stop mucking around and just get them done! I’ll also be getting my Relic Knights pre-order at some point so I should try and get some of that painted (or maybe just assembled). Last (but not least) is to work on some 1967 / 73 Syrians to go up against my Israelis.

Well, that is the 2013 plan, I already have this sinking feeling that I have bitten off more than I can chew!

Between writing this and posting it, I managed to get in two games (WarmaHordes with Tony and Napoleon at War with Wayne) and paint some Dystopian Wars stuff – the year is actually starting off according to plan!