Year In Review

Curse of Strahd

It has been quiet on this blog of late, largely because I've been so busy running two businesses since the start of September that I really have not had the chance to get around to it. As simple as that. But as 2019 runs down towards its inevitable conclusion, I thought I'd take a look in the rear view mirror at what was gaming in 2019, as this might also help to inform any ambitions I might have for 2020 - i.e. what is attainable, and what represents just day dreams.

First off, we did get some miniatures gaming in, quite a bit of it in fact, and ideally I'd like to repeat that next year. Much of this occurred in the first half of the year however.

The Frostgrave campaign with Kelvin rumbled on, although I fear my warband was getting the worst of it against those pesky orcs. The campaign went underground briefly for an investigation of the lost library, and then subsequently explored the ruins of the museum. Frostgrave is great fun, but things have been quiet on that front recently, as I try to expand my warband with some new recruits - I lost a couple of dogs in the last skirmish and feel I need to beef the team up with some shooters to cope with the orc archers.

We also managed to get a game of Lord of the Rings done, the next chapter in the Fellowship of the Ring campaign, which saw Frodo, Sam and Pippin take to the road to sneak out of Hobbiton and make for Bucklebury. They were pursued by Black Riders however. This was a great little scenario and it was fun to get the campaign back on track, but sadly it too has now been on hiatus for far too long! Hopefully we can get another game in the next couple of months.

Most of the miniatures gaming I did in 2019 involved the Dice Saloon Blood Bowl campaign, where I was managing a Chaos team. It was a steep learning experience against some veteran teams and some very experienced players. I finished the season on the end of seven defeats, with two draws and one victory.

I've re-entered for the new season, but progress has been slow, with the Lambs only getting one match completed in a 10 game season so far. I have some catching up to do...

Other than that, I also dusted off my Necron fleet for a single game of Battlefleet Gothic back in July. This was against a Chaos fleet. My Necrons took a pounding. Despite all the nice things that are said about Necrons in BFG online, I must be doing something wrong with them, as they don't seem 'broken' to me and were readily seen off by the Chaos powers in this battle. I think my lesson here was not to bring a heavy cruiser to the fight at the very least, and to try to take down a capital ship with escorts. Does not seem to work in this game...I still live in hope that Games Workshop will re-launch Battlefleet Gothic, which also seems to have a lively PC gaming following.

On Roleplaying Games...

The RPG front has been quite active throughout the year, which is great. Most of it has involved Dungeons and Dragons in one shape or form. The two main campaigns were the Curse of Strahd, run by Ben F., where I was playing a halfling monk, and Tomb of Annihilation, run by Adam T., where I was/am playing a drow druid.

Other than that I also got to play in a mini-campaign of Star Trek Adventures, while Adam was taking a break, and Ben F. ran a test drive of the new Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay rules from Cubicle 7.

There have also been a few memorable one-off games. Kelvin G. ran a play test of a Lamentations of the Flame Princess adventure he is working on for future publication, but I can't say much more than that about this one other than that it takes place in Paris.

For myself, I did not spend much time behind the GM's screen: I ran a couple of sessions of Trail of Cthulhu which followed on from the WW1 scenario I ran in 2018. This time I took the investigators to Egypt in 1920. This seemed to go down well but there has been little opportunity/inclination to continue with this campaign since then.

I also ran another Night's Black Agents one-shot from the Edom Files, this time the Carmilla Sanction, set in 1948 in Vienna, a city I used to live in as a teen. I stilly enjoy running Gumshoe and hope to get some more in during 2020 in one form or another. We shall see how things turn out.

That's it for the year. I'm sure I've left something out. Looking back on 2019, I did seem to get an impressive amount of regular gaming done, and also made it to Salute in April, so can't really complain. My attendance at the gaming table may have looked fragmentary on the surface of it, but on average I was probably gaming at least once a week, which given how busy I was on the work front, was a bloody miracle!

Next time: we take a look at what I'm working on and scope out some very rough plans for 2020...