Year end wrap up and a look ahead to 2018.

First of all Happy New Year to everyone!  May you all have a wonderful, safe, healthy and prosperous 2018!

This has been a good year for me not just in a hobby sense but life in general. I received a promotion at work, my daughter is closing in on being a teenager, we've done a bit of traveling as well this year.  I can't complain.

Of course the hobby stuff is the most important aspect of life, right! 

This year I was able to attend 3 conventions. Enfilade in Washington State is always a great 3 day weekend. So much so I volunteered to be the Event coordinator for the next 3 years.  More on that as I figure out what I'm supposed to be doing and how to do it.
I was able to attend Historicon in Fredericksburg, VA in July.  That is always a lot of fun. Not just the gaming but the catching up with old friends and making new ones or even just putting faces to names that I know from the internet.  I won't be able to attend again in 2018 but 2019 is on the books for me to go.
The last convention was our local Ambuscade!. Always a fun 1 day event and the nice thing about it was that it grew by nearly 50% from last year.  We went from about 14 attendees the first year to 31 or 32 this year.  We will continue to coax this convention along until it dwarfs Historicon. :)

My purchases for the hobby this year have been mostly gear related. New brushes, paints, new lighting for the desk and so on. I did not add too much to the lead pile this year.

I did however take a leap into learning how to paint figures with oils.  This has been an eye opening experience for me.  I've been teaching myself how color works and the theory that lies beneath it all.  The idea that I can at some point drop all of the acrylic paints I have and only have to use at the most 10 colors to paint everything is amazing. I'm still working and learning on how to do this but I'll get there soon.  I like the oil painting process. The ability to put paint on a figure and a day or even two days later come back to it and still be able to work with it has been fun.

I've entered my first painting challenge: the Analogue Painting Challenge. At this point I've completed 120 points out of 500 and I have another 120 points waiting to be verified.  The challenge has certainly lit a fire under me to get stuff done.

The gaming group has grown this year to 30 people. We all don't gather at the same time but we are there. We've been able to game twice a month and have run a variety of games from ancients to WWII. I am hoping that that will continue into 2018.

Now for the big reveal for this year end review. If you have been following this blog you will know that I've been working on 10mm War of Spanish Succession figures.  I kicked this off at the end of June and as of today I have painted 1,200 figures for the project! 
When I sat down and figured out the number completed I nearly fell over. I had no idea that I had painted so many!

Just a couple of photos of the latest units to be completed.  

What will be new in 2018?  Well I'll be painting more WSS figures. Now that the French infantry are done I can concentrate on the Spanish. I'm hoping by June I will have them done.  The month of May will be busy for me as I gear up to run Enfilade.

I will continue pursuing painting with oil paints and learning more about color theory.  I hope by the end of 2018 to completely off of using acrylics to paint figures.  

I'm sure there will be other side projects that pop up, like the idea I have for building some terrain boards.  I have to get my garage cleaned out first before that can happen.

We shall see what happens with the rest of the year.

Thanks again to everyone who follows this blog and takes an interest in what I'm doing.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2017!!!!

I thought I would do a little year in review for 2016.  First off let me say that this year has been very good for my family.  We were able to take a nice big family vacation (16 of us) to Alaska on Princess Cruise Lines and then we spent 18 lovely days back on the east coast visiting friends and family.

One of the many beautiful nights on board the ship.  This by the way is about 11pm. :-)

Looking out over a section of the Gettysburg battlefield.

Miniature and gaming wise the start of the year was very good.  I rolled into 2016 with a full head of steam painting up my Spanish troops for the Great Italian Wars and then busied myself with getting ready for Enfilade in May. Enfilade is always a wonderful weekend. It's great to see friends from the Seattle area and game.

 Once the summer came around my production eased off with the trips and my daughter being home all day from school.

We stilled gamed every other week or so during the summer.  By the fall my desire to paint anything hit rock bottom.  In fact for about 2 months or so I didn't even want to game.

I was still planning though. I had hit upon the idea for next years Enfilade to run the last gunfight from the movie "The Magnificent Seven".  I spend a few weeks asking questions about figures, how to build the town and so on.  I bought all of the figures I needed and bought a couple of the buildings.  Again, the steam wasn't there to paint any of it.  I have one group of bad guys primed but that is about as far as I have gotten.  I better get my mojo back soon or I wont be putting on this game at all.

Towards the end of the year I did participate in Chris Stoesen's Santa Clause event.  That is always fun and I look forward to it every year.

Also in our area we had a fun 1 day convention called Ambuscade which was the first Saturday in December.  I ran a Check Your 6 battle.  We had a great time and I was able to participate in a "In Her Majesty's Name" game as well.  I really like that set of rules.

Some photos from the Check Your 6 game.

That's me in the blue participating in the "In Her Majesty's Name" game.  The table was fantastic!

Because of my lack of painting I did send out some figures to be painted by DJD Minis and I am awaiting their return which should be shortly.  If you are in need a good painting service, I highly recommend them.

At some point I noticed (a little late) that I had surpassed 100K views to this blog. I'm rather surprised really. I never thought I would get that far.  Thank You to all of you that drop by here. I hope I have provided some helpful information or at least been entertaining.

I am not a big video gamer at all, I tend to get bored with them very easily.  So I don't own a wii or xbox nor do I have games on my computer.  Having said all of that I will have to say that I've been enjoying World of Tanks Blitz.

While this game isn't historically accurate at all it has been fun running around in different tanks and blowing stuff up and also being blown up. Which happens a lot really. :-)

So I will close out this last blog entry for 2016 with saying "Happy New Year!!"  I want to wish you all a safe, happy and prosperous 2017.