2018 Roundup from The Burrow

Another year over and from a wargaming point of view I have to say it’s been an incredibly fulfilling and productive one. The major achievement was of course moving all my stuff from the old Man Cave to the new Burrow. Nothing lost and minimal breakages.

Here are some interesting/useless facts and figures, in no particular order:

• I noticed earlier today that I’ve gone past the 600 mark in terms of posts on this blog, and a quick count shows that I posted 143 times (including this one) in 2018.
• I somehow managed to squeeze in an impressive 33 games this year. With the exception of three (the Wild Geese Kenilworth event, a trip to the Like a Stone Wall club and the demo game at Battleground, the rest were all played at home. 
• Six were in the ‘old’ Man Cave and 27 were played in the 'majestic' setting of The Burrow.
• The range of periods played this year was quite wide but there is a definite trend in terms of the ‘most played period’as is obvious from the table below:

           French Revolutionary Wars x 19
           Seven Years War/War of the Austrian Succession x 6
           Wars of Louis XIV x 3        
           Congo/Darkest Africa x 2

           Crimean War x 1

           Great Northern War x 1

           Thirty Years War x 1

• The games included refights of Kolin, Prague, Zorndorf, Lobositz and Leuthen from the SYW and Zurich and Trebbia from the FRW.
• Apart from my regular and growing wargaming circle of friends who live locally I had visitors from Stroud, Grimsby, Falkirk and Adelaide! Thanks to everyone, you are a pleasure to play with and to know.
• I managed to get to quite a few wargames shows, i.e. York, Partizan 1, Claymore, Partizan 2, Border Reiver, Crisis and Battleground. Special thanks to my wife Katherine and `John the Red for driving me there.

As far as the collection goes, it has grown significantly, especially the armies of the French Revolutionary Wars where I seem to have managed to go off on several different directions from the original idea of just doing Suvorov in the Alps. I have no plans or desire to do the Egyptian campaign but everything else is fair game. My Late 17th century Baroque armies have swelled with the addition of more French, Hanoverians and Savoyards, and lately units of Papal and Venetian troops, and my Polish renaissance army has been reinforced so my Ottomans had better watch out. I managed to sell my entire American Revolution collection as I have fallen out of love with the period, as well as a whole bundle of oddments; stuff that I rediscovered during the occasional tidying up of the Burrow, and that I knew I would never get done. Overall, the number of painted troops has increased a fair bit, but the lead mountain has grown a lot too which was not the plan. 2019 will definitely see me finally finish and base up my Sikh Wars armies, and I also have a French SYW army and some Italian Wars stuff in preparation. 

Hopefully next year will be at least as fun and productive for me as 2018 has been. That goes to all of you out there as well. Happy New Year and keep those dice rolling!