Projects In Progress: 2018

I'm looking at a basement full of wargaming projects right now. The lead mountain basically covers one wall of my basement - which makes it a relatively small lead mountain in some circles, but it's plenty big enough. This year my goal is to get through at least three projects - and that means not just painting the figures, but also building terrain and trying out rules. (I'd like to get through more, but I'm being realistic here.) Out of the many half-started, barely-begun, and still-in-the-package projects, these are the three I'm going to focus on:

Grymkin: The Wicked Harvest

This is a limited faction for Privateer Press' Hordes wargame. As a limited faction, they won't be releasing much more in the way of models for it over the next few years. For me, that's a point in its favor as it means I can actually complete the faction: buy all the models, paint all the models, call it done. And once it's painted, I'll have a fully complete collection to build armies from and play with. At least, that's the theory. I've already purchased most of the models, and am only missing a few infantry figures and warbeasts. Some are even painted already.

The Rise of Rome and the Hellenistic Age

The period from 300 to 100 BC is pretty interesting: it has the Punic Wars and the rise and fall of Alexander's Successors, and as a result a heck of a lot warfare. It's interesting stuff too - none of this Dark Age "a bunch of hairy guys in mail lock shields and shove each other" nonsense. There are elephants, barbarians, hoplites, pikes, heavily armored cataphract cavalry, scythed chariots, camelry, mercenaries of all sorts, and - of course - the mighty Roman legion just hitting its stride. I've been collecting it in 15mm for a while, and have a decent collection (Romans, Successors, Greeks, Carthaginians, Gauls...) - but most of it still needs to be painted. I also need to test out rules I like (current front runners: To the Strongest! and Sword and Spear), and much more importantly - build terrain! More on that in a later post.

Saga: Viking Age and Crusades

The new edition of Saga comes out this month. For the last couple years, I've been playing the same Crusader army from Crescent and Cross, and it's gotten rather stale... Plus, the C&C faction battleboards aren't going to be immediately available. I already have a Viking army in raw lead in the basement, and I've backed Bad Squiddo Games' Freja's Wrath Kickstarter to get a longship-load of shieldmaidens! So it's time to get painting some hairy guys (and gals) in mail so I can get on with the shieldwall...

I also want to build some proper terrain for this - maybe a full-fledged viking or Norman village or farm.

After that, it's time to do the same for my Saracens (also still in lead) and build a little village for them to defend from my Franj.

Other Projects

In the rather unlikely event that I do finish all three of those projects in 2018, here's what else I'm looking at:

• 15mm Sci Fi Skirmish
• 15mm WW2 Skirmish
• Frostgrave
• 6mm WW2 (would like to get something going for Rommel)
• 6mm Napoleonics (bought a large second-hand collection that needs organizing and quite a bit of rebasing...)
• 6mm sci fi, aka "picked up an old Space Marine box"
• 28mm English Civil War or 30 Years War (or maybe 80 Years War)
• A hell of a lot of Warmachine/Hordes. Some of this is probably going to just get sold.