Recap of 2013

Okay, the new year is about a month old now and things have settled so much that I can have a cup of tea and reminisce about the past year. Looking back over 2013 I have to say that there are a bunch of outstanding things that happened and which I wouldn't have seen coming the prior year.

The year started out rather regularly - being snowed under with commission work, painting away at Space Marines (of several different colours and Chaos- and Pre-Heresy- variants) Chaos Daemons, another set of Dreadfleet, a bunch more Discworld figures, a Flames of War army, two titans.

2013 was also the year of reviews for me. I wrote a whopping 23 reviews, three or four of which are yet to be published. I received review copies of figures and two rule sets from various companies and, bought a few things for reviewing because I was curious or thought it would be interesting for people to know about the figures/rules and so on.

Of course I did the first themed month on my blog site, WW2 month. Problem was I had written up so much content that I had to extend WW2 month to January 17th.

In late April I took a trip to Salute in London. Not an inexpensive or unexhausting trip but oh so worth it. (I also went to London's natural history museum that weekend and saw a lot of dinosaurs. Yay!)

An amazing show and I hope to go again this year if time allows.


In October VIVAT, the first Austrian wargames show dedicated to historical wargaming exclusively, took place for the first time and according to everyone involved it was a great success. I had the honour to not only paint up the official VIVAT 2013 miniature (Empress Maria Theresia, sculpted by Paul Hicks) but also run the painting workshop at the show. A great day out at a venue which couldn't be any more fitting - Tin Soldier World Katzelsdorf.

I would have loved to attend Crisis as well but got cought up in a very special thing I had to do. I was asked to make the diorama for Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy issue #70.

The theme of the diorama wasn't a period I had been particularly familiar with but after some research I worked out a diorama and a four page article about the making of it. WSS issue #70 is still available in print or of course as PDF download from Karwansaray Publishing's website. Very proud of this one. 

Late in the year I got a fair amount of terrain done, starting of course with the fantay/dark age village...

...and went on to do a barn which fits a lot of different periods (and which I also reviewed if you remember).

...as well as GW's modular hill (which is OOP now. Terrible.) and a bunch of forests. Always handy to have these things.

I attended both of the huge Apocalypse games of the not-quite local gaming group. As always, these were great to watch even though I didn't actively participated (the picture below doesn't even show half of the table).

As for my own wargaming, I got into the dark ages big time. First with Saga (by which I was strangely underwhelmed), lateron with the Dux Britanniarum rules which are much more up my alley. If my moods should swing though, I always have my six points of Anglo-Saxons for Saga or of course my earlier Saxons for Dux Britanniarum (of which I currently got a campaign going on).

I got involved with way more new periods than I would care to admit as well. World War Two in 15mm and 28mm, the American Civil War in 28mm, Cold War in 20mm and a bunch of other thing. Hardly enough time to get everything done or play.

That aside, I had a bunch of fun games of Impetus, DBA, an amazing game of Bull Run to Gettysburg (something like 200 models a side, it looked immense), Force on Force, two games of 40k (believe it or not), Pike&Shotte, Gorkamorka, Star Trek: A Call to Arms, X-Wing, Warhammer Quest(!), Saga, Dux Britanniarum, Tomorrow's War, a peek into Die Kriegskunst, Flying Lead and some more.

2013 once again has been a very exciting year in wargaming as a whole. New Space Marines codex, GW speeding up things and being very clever about selling their products, 3d printing creeping up on all of us, Kickstarter running rampant, some beloved model ranges vanishing, others being added. Miniatures wargaming is a very "hot" thing at the moment and there are a ton of people trying to get a piece of it. Speaking of Kickstarter though, Towards the end of the year I actually caved in and pledged to one of these things. Still very much on the fence about that and of course due to unforseen problems in production I've been waiting for my stuff for over a month now. So receiving my Kickstarter stuff is something to look forward to in 2014 I guess.

2013 was full of events, paintwork, brushlicking and just having a great time with toy soldiers and the communities around them. The blog got quite a number of views and followers, along with a few regular commenters, which of course I appreciate a lot. The Facebook page saw an enormous growth in followers and despite Facebook's best efforts, view numbers increase steadily. It's great to get to know people from the community and fans and have chats now and then. 

I think that in 2014 I'll see that I buy less stuff and get more stuff actually done (only speaking of my own toys there). I accumulated quite a collection of things over the years and there still are some things I need to get painted (after removing the layer of dust), first and foremost that Landship I keep on saying I'd finish for the past three years. ;-)

What I am looking forward to especially in 2014 is much more work, maybe doing a bit on the side for myself, attending/running many events and meet with people (starting with Austrian Salute in March), get some games in, hopefully manage to keep up such an insane number of reviews throughout the year. I'm really happy with what I do. It's not always easy and many times there are things to tear some hair out about but I am deeply grateful that I can do what I do. 

So yeah, that's my recap and outlook to 2014. Thanks for reading and I hope to see you throughout the year!