Blood and Spectacles: Random: 2020- The Future has Arrived!

…. And I am not prepared. Where is my jet pack? Flying car? Bionic eyes? Anything? Did we get anything right? I guess I will give you the Net.

Here it is, another year of wargaming ahead. Typically, I like to write my wargaming goals for the year down. This helps me stay focused on the year to come and helps me restrain myself from going crazy and splurging like crazy! Like many resolutions it will probably be dead and buried by the end of January, but I have stuck with them relatively closely in the past.

Last year, I tried a different approach and focused on goals by Period. I do not think I will be doing that this year. It was a nice change of pace, but I think I am going to go back to placing goals into a series of categories instead of by genre or period. Those categories are:

· Purchase- This is goals that require me to spend my hard earned bread, cash, grip, money, coin, etc.

· Painting and Modelling- Here is the section of stuff I will want to paint up or build up

· Playing- This section will be for what I intend to put on the table for 2020

· Rules Writing- Here are my goals for writing and creating games

· Miscellany- This is for stuff that falls into the realm of Blood and Spectacles but doesn’t neatly fit into a category

Last year, I had enough goals for a 3-5 year plan, so this will mostly be left-overs and also-rans from 2019. However, I think there might be a few new items in here as well. After all, last year a big goal focused around Frostgrave. However, it ended up being D.O.A. as my local group did not cotton to it. Therefore, those items from last year may not be relevant anymore.

With all that boring preamble out of the way, let’s get ready to rumble into 2020!

Purchases

This year, there will be a big focus on Ancient gaming. This is for a number of reasons.

· I like Ancients

· There are a lot of interesting things going on in the Ancients space

· I am writing a set of Ancients rules

So here are some purchases I will try to put in order of importance:

1. Victrix War Elephant

2. Victrix Republican/Early Roman Boxes

3. Victrix Greek Cavalry

4. Mortal Gods

5. Gangs of Rome

6. 28mm Samnites

7. 28mm Carthaginians

8. Clash of Spears

In the Non-ancients front I have the following interests:

1. Oathsworn Warband bundles A and B for Burrows and Badgers

2. Buy a rural American Barn and Farmhouse scenery piece

3. Get some Gangster/Urban terrain for a 3x3 board

4. Keep up-to-date on the Osprey Wargaming Series

5. Pick up Osprey Supplemental Books

6. 2 Blood Bowl Teams- Lizzies and Chaos Dwarfs (Cross-fingers for the Chaos Dwarfs)

7. 2 Armies of Vanguard Miniatures for Rampant Galaxies and AeronauticaImperialis

Painting and Modelling

Last year, I thought I was done for. I almost ran out of models to paint. Thankfully, before my last model got finished, some new metal and plastic showed up to keep me alive.

I painted over 150+ models over the course of the year. That is probably a record for me, and I doubt I will be getting anywhere near that this year. However, a man can dream can’t he?

1. Paint my 6mm Baccus Successor Armies

2. Finish up my loose Gangster Models from Copplestone casting

3. Paint up as many new purchases as I can to use on the table!

4. Complete a set of Scorpion Drones for All Quiet on the Martian Front

Playing

I managed to play about a dozen games last year from historical to sci-fi, from hoplites to 40K fighter planes. I want to get a good range in this year as well but I have a feeling Ancients will be the flavor of the year.

1. Get in a game or two of Broken Legions

2. Playtest Wars of the Republic for Osprey Games

3. Men of Bronze and get it on the blog

4. Some game set during Operation: Hemlock for the 40K universe

5. Get one game I have not played before on the table

Rules Writing

Typically, this is one of my more productive goals for the year. Last year was a pretty good year for me on this front, and I hope to keep expanding on my successes. I always have various projects on the go, and this year I have a few deadlines to hit!

1. Complete writing Wars of the Republic for Osprey Games

2. Update the photos and artwork in Turf War for Wargame Vault

3. Get 1 game from the WIP section to the Wargame Vault

4. Get 1 new game into the WIP section of the blog

Miscellany

This is stuff I want to do for the Blood and Spectacles publishing, but don’t really fall into other categories.

1. Get 1 new blog post a week

2. Take more photos for Social Media Marketing

3. Add a games Played/Models Painted Tracker to the Blog

4. Do preliminary work for organizing a local Convention for 2021

Conclusion

Well, this looks like an expensive year for me! I better keep selling books to help finance all of this stuff! I find that something I buy typically takes about 2 years to make it to the tabletop to play or get on the Blog. Looks like I am setting myself up for 2022 work all ready!

Of course, as new stuff comes out, I can see myself easily getting distracted to other games and systems as the year goes on. I have been itching to play some Super Hero themed wargame so it may sneak onto the blog to score me some end of year bonus points! Plus, Who knows what else might strike my fancy as it gets released through out the year. This list is a guide for me to stay focused, but it does not cast my choices into stone.