That's 2021 Done

I've decided not to dwell on 2021 that much, for obvious reasons, so my yearly review will be a bit shorter than usual this time round. In brief, I played a lot more games this year than I have for a long time, including some memorable Dahlgren and Columbiad, Fistful of Lead, Broadside and Ram and AK47 games, a full solo Naval Command campaign based on the Indonesian Confrontation, which I really enjoyed devising and writing up, as well as a Bag the Hun solo campaign and, last but not least, some games of MiG Alley and my own Wings at War variant for the Football War, Corsairs and Cavaliers. I also played a few games at the club, notably a multiplayer Cruel Seas game and some AK47, but these were few and far between as you might expect. 

As well as the actual wargaming, I also wrote an article based on the Bag the Hun Khalkhin Gol series of games that I played over the summer, now published in the 2021 Lard Mag, successfully finished play testing the Corsairs and Cavaliers rules and wrote a conversion of the club WW1 aerial rules to the modern era, aptly titled Jet Knights of the Sky. These haven't been tried out at the club yet, however, so remain on hold until things go back to something approaching normal. I also continued to support International Naval Wargaming Day, with a game of Broadside and Ram, later followed up with a couple of Dahlgren and Columbiad War of the Pacific scenarios that I devised for my 1/2400th scale ironclads.

In terms of projects, apart from the aforementioned Bag the Hun Khalkhin Gol project and the modern ships for Naval Command, including British, Indonesian, Chilean and Chinese forces, it's been a less successful twelve months. I had a lot of stuff on my 'to do' list and started on a couple of projects, such as 1/2400th scale Napoleonic French ships and a 1/3000th scale WW2 Italian fleet, but these stalled early on due to a work overload in the latter half of the year. I wish I'd managed to get these shifted as I am still keen on both of these projects and have some excellent rules to use with them, but supply work got a bit busy due to teacher absences so they are still on the metaphorical slipway. I also had some inevitable dead ends, most notably an ill judged attempt to get a 28mm British platoon painted for Chain of Command (what was I thinking!?)

I managed to avoid too many distractions this year and so did a little bit of painting rather than just adding more lead to the pile. This included a single 28mm mountain gun for my Back of Beyond expedition army, a handful of extra ironclads for my War of the Pacific Chilean and Peruvian fleets, some Royal Navy coastal monitors for my Victorian ironclads, a load of 1/3000th scale post war and modern warships (see above) and a complete flotilla of E Boats for Cruel Seas. I also painted all of the 1/600th scale Japanese and Russian aircraft for my Khalkhin Gol project and some extras for the Football War and MiG Alley projects as well. I even scratch built a railway for AK47. Not too bad, if not a massive inroad into the lead mountain.

That's all folks!