2015 in Review

A belated Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a good ending to 2015 and have had a great start to the new year.

Well, I know I say this every January but gosh – is it already another year? Doesn't time fly? As is customary, I thought I'd look back at the year that passed and see what I achieved – and didn't.

The year started a bit slow hobbywise, as we tried to find some balance on the homefront with the new baby. Miraculously, I managed to keep up my painting routine for the most part, but gaming was a bit scarce during the first couple of months. Luckily, during the spring things began to settle down at home and I could take a night off here and there for some gaming down at the club. After the summer I've more or less been back in the old groove, with regular games almost every week.

As for painting, the year started fairly well, but really picked up after the summer thanks to me being on paternity leave: I've even been able to get some extra painting done during daytime once in a while! Naturally, this has worked wonders for the productivity which is evident from my output from August and onwards.

As usual, I made some plans for 2015 and it's time to take a look at how I fared:

Italian Wars French
Failed!
Once again my great shame ... The plan was to finally complete this project after having failed to do so in 2014. Well, I managed to finish the two pike blocks – they even got used in a game! – but that was unfortunately it for 2015. Too many other things taking priority over this one, due to a severe drop in motivation. However, I'm still intent on finishing this project, so it will follow me into 2016. Hopefully for the last time.

Håtunaleken 
Finished!
During 2015 I finished a 24 point medieval host for our club project Håtunaleken. I had already started in 2014 with the first unit completed and the second unit partially painted. In 2015 I added some foot knights, a unit of allmoge/foot yeomen and a unit of bidowers. Ironically, the first (and only) time I fielded the complete host they stood around for the entire game and achieved almost nothing. Still, I'm very pleased with this host and I'm fired up for some more Swedish medieval gaming.

Great Northern War Swedes
Finished!
I missed the deadline by about a month, but at least this unit got finished. We have played one game in our club campaign and it was a gloriously fun and chaotic affair. I think the Swedish side won? Anyway, I'm looking forward to more GNW games in 2016.

Operation Winter Storm 
Partially finished!
I had to face the facts and revise my original, and (overly) ambitious, plan to something more manageable. After this revision, things rolled on and I did complete all the German infantry and vehicles necessary to play the complete campaign. The Soviets and the terrain will have to wait until a little later this year.

Of course, I couldn't stick with these original plans but had a couple of side projects during the year:

Frostgrave Warband
Finished!
After play testing this fun little fantasy skirmish game, which seems to be all the rage at the moment, I was so inspired by Dalauppror's kit bashing I had to build me a warband of my own. This was a nice side project, with some really fun modelling and painting. Of course, I have yet to play a game with these models ...

Trees and bushes
Finished! 
It's safe to say I made a fair amount of trees this year. The first batch was a bit of a test, and as they turned out OK I went ahead and made another (bigger) batch. For the second batch, I wanted to take the quality up a notch so I sculpted some roots, varied the colours of the leaves and worked on the bases some more. After getting some nice comments about the trees from my club mates, I also did some bushes.

I have yet to take some snaps of the second batch of trees and the bushes, but since they've featured in some of Dalauppror's latest AAR:s so you've probably seen them already.

Rohan Warband
Finished! 
In anticipation of Dragon Rampant I rebased and touched up some old, speed-painted Rohan miniatures for Lord of the Rings. This project seems to have fizzled out before it began in earnest, but there are talk of some other Dragon Rampant gaming at the club which I'm very much looking forward to.

Project F
The still secret early medieval project took up most of December in a frenzy to finish at least one unit before the year was over. I narrowly made the deadline and will soon post some pictures of these final models of 2015.

Looking at the actual numbers, I painted exactly 100 28 mm models (19 of which were cavalry). In addition to these I also painted 56 15 mm infantry models and 7 vehicles/tanks and made a huge amount of trees and bushes. Overall, I'm fairly happy with the output but as always it could be better.

Now I have officially closed the hobby part of the year 2015 and I will be back in a day or two with my plans for 2016.

Finally, I want to thank each and everyone of you who read and comment on my posts – it really means a lot to me! I hope you all will have a great year.