Sunday, December 30, 2012

2012 in Review and One of Those "Best" Lists

The year is almost over and now is as good a time as any to look back and see how I did on my goals for the year that is ending.

My goals were:
  • Weekly painting/terrain making/scenery construction/etc.
  • Monthly solo gaming
  • 100 posts to this blog
I'm happy to say I was able to complete all of these - and I present this blog as a documentation of the effort. If anything, I may have been a little excessive in my documentation: this is the 190th post for 2012!

As for the projects I hoped to make progress on:

1/72 WWII Pacific Island Assault - Completed.
54mm Morschauser Horse and Musket - Switched to 1/72 and the painting has begun.
2mm Napoleonic - This was placed on hold indefinitely.

And where would we be without a year end "Best" list. Since I covered posts on the blog's anniversary, I'll look at the crass consumerism I displayed this year:

Best Set of Rules Acquired (and Played): This is a tie. Unbelievably Simple Role-Playing, Chain Reaction 3: Final Version, and Bob Cordery's Memoir of  Battle. All have provided a ton of fun for only an investment of the time required to read the rules and play the game. If more free rules were this good, publishers would lose a lot of business.

Best Previously Acquired Rules that Got Use in 2012: Moldvay D&D Basic book. Honorable mention: G.A.S.L.I.G.H.T.

Best Rule Purchase with an Eye Toward the Future: Nuts! 2.0 - I'm reviewing these at the moment and I can't wait to use them in 2013. Honorable mention: Tunnels & Trolls is a top contender for this spot - had I read it sooner, I'd have used it as the basis for my aborted group Labyrinth Lord game (no slight to LL, which I love, but rather, the magic rules would have suited my players better).

Best Miniature(s) Purchased: Khurasan 15mm Ursids. Four bears in sunglasses, chomping cigars and carrying big-ass guns. What's not to love?

Best Non-Rulebook Book Purchase:
For wargaming, Featherstone's Solo Wargaming - I was late for the party on this one, but I finally got it. To be honest, I haven't used anything from it directly, but I find it inspiring and revisit it often.

For RPGs, I'm going to say the small stack of old Dragon magazines that I acquired for a song. Even though I haven't read them yet, in the condition they are in, I can get about 20x what I paid for them.

Item I Most Wish I Purchased: The rest of the stack of those aforementioned Dragon magazines. The rest of those 1/32 Panzer IVs and T-34s at 1/3 their retail price.

Favorite Gaming Accessory Purchase: My purple and gold d30. I cherish it like the heirloom it could never be.

Purchase That I'm No Longer 100% Sure I Should Have Made: 1/300 Panzers, Tigers. and T-34s. As much as I love how they look and how many you can fit on a small table, I have to ask myself, do I really need to do WWII in yet another scale? You'd think I'd ask this about 1/32, but that would be logical and let's face it, scale preferences are anything but.

Next up, 2013 goals.

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