2023 Wargaming Retrospective

 

2023 has been an interesting year for my hobbying. For starters, for most of the year I've had practically no other gamers to play historical wargames with, which contributed greatly to my decision to make the leap into Warhammer 40K. That's been a bit of an adjustment on all fronts, and something I'll touch on more later. This year has also brought a lot of distractions in the form of work and other life events, and I've struggled a lot with burnout, particularly when it comes to getting models off the painting table.

The above photo, by the way, was taken during a recent game in which Jesse's Chinese faced off against my Soviet horde in a game set in 1937 in Xinjiang.

Speaking of the painting table, why don't we take a look at the numbers this year? I always intend to paint more models than I buy, but so far that's only happened in 2021, when the ongoing pandemic and my lack of a job for part of the year gave me plenty of time to paint. On the bright side, I've managed to paint 100 or more models every year since I started keeping track in 2021.

2023 Models Acquired: 208
Infantry - 181
51x Old West
16x WWII
106x Warhammer 40K
8x Misc
Support weapons - 0
Vehicles - 8
2x WWII
6x 40K
Buildings - 2
2x Old West
Scatter Terrain - 2
1x Old West
1x Misc
Animals - 15
15x Old West

Markers/Tokens - 0

2023 Models Painted: 100

Infantry - 87
4x French and Indian War
31x Old West - some seen here
37x WWII
15x Warhammer 40K
Support weapons - 1
1x FIW - French Cannon
Vehicles - 1
1x 40K
Buildings - 3
3x Old West
Scatter Terrain - 5
5x Old West
Animals - 3
3x Old West
Markers/Tokens - 0

Much of the painting this year has been Old West stuff, but the blog has seen fairly little of it. We've been experimenting with What a Cowboy by Too Fat Lardies, trying to learn the game and find the right feel to enjoy it. Expect to see some Old West content on the blog this year.

A few words on getting into 40K. I got into the game at the end of 9th Edition because my roommate used it as his gateway to wargaming and I wanted to share a hobby with him. I don't regret that, even if I think the game attracts too many overly competitive people and the models are dreadfully expensive. We both made the jump to 10th Edition earlier this year, and so far I like it. I haven't played nearly enough Warhammer to have a super educated opinion on the subject, so take that for what it's worth. It could use an alternating activation system, above all.

The models, at least the newer chaos space marines I've been working with, are incredibly detailed, which is a blessing and a curse when it comes to painting. Despite having painted hundreds of models of that scale prior to entering 40K, I found myself very intimidated by how to do justice to these figures. That's part of why I only painted 15 infantry figures all year. I've gotten a greater number table-ready for an escalation league (fun and challenging but stressful) I joined at the local game store, but they're not yet finished to my standards.

I'm not sure how much I want to bring the 40K stuff to the blog. I always intended for this to be primarily a historical miniatures blog, and I think it'll stay that way for now. Another reason for this is that I just don't find the tables used for pickup and league play at the store are very attractive, and I feel like they won't make for posts that are thematic and nice to look at.

I'll be getting into Kill Team this year, so maybe I'll find those games blog-worthy.

Several of my fellow gamers have also gotten into Games Workshop's Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. I like Lord of the Rings as much as the next nerd, and the mechanics have seemed really intuitive and fun in demo games, so I may have to give that a go this year as well.

Expect some WWII content, but I'm not sure what form that will take just yet.

Blog Update / State of the Blog

So, the attentive amongst you will have noticed a decline in posts this year. I put out 13 posts, 14 if you count the end-of-year recap. They're mostly clustered at the start of the year, and some of them are very short, not full battle reports.

As mentioned, burnout has been a big problem this year. I haven't felt like I had the time or energy to keep chugging along with the French and Indian War campaign write-ups, so that project has suffered. I haven't had new painted figures to show off, or many games to highlight. Thus, fewer posts.

Part of the solution to that will be to push myself to paint and play more this year so I have more to post, but part of it will be stepping back from the blog a little.

When I started the blog is 2021 I intended to put up a post nearly every week. I had a lot of hobby time and enthusiasm and wanted to share it. I'm hoping this year I will have the same type of enthusiasm, but I want to take some pressure off myself, so I'll be shooting for two posts a month this year.

The good news for readers is that, by and large, that would mean you still get more posts than you have this year. So hopefully that'll be worth the read.

First and foremost, the FIW campaign will be wrapped up on the blog in the first half of this year, ideally in the first quarter of the year. That series has gotten good engagement and has really helped me hone my skills at writing narrative batreps, so I hope readers will be looking forward to its conclusion.