NYR for first half of 2015

Seeing the general success of the NYR for 2014, I thought I'd set myself some NYR for 2015. But it posed conflicting challenges, which I finally resolved by making separate sets of NYR for both halves or the year.

So first half of this year is fairly simple: The Book needs to be finished. In June. So that's fine. I need to read some books towards that goal (and no distractions!) and I have allowed myself two blog posts per month. That feels more like a challenge now than I thought it would be a month ago.

But the second half of year should be some kind of happy time where I intend to completely scatter my attention over a multitude of smaller projects. I've set myself the following goals:

• 2 small paint projects
• 6 games I own that need to be played
• 25 games I own need to be found a new home
• Lead pile must be reduced by 25%
• 25 books read, 
• there will no longer be a ban on buying new books
• 12 blog posts
• 1 big project to be started
• Project Essen 2014 (4 games still need to be played)
• Project Satan (I want the games I received from Secret Satan in 2013 and 2014 played)

Part of the fun in the coming months will be in deciding what the projects will be. I am already drawing up lists!

NYR 2014, the Reckoning

So I've been meaning to look back on 2014, which was a crap year in many ways but also one that may make 2015 one of the best. How did I do with my gaming New Year's Resolutions for 2014?

The Book: I wanted to get 85% of it done, so most of the writing by December. That didn't happen, but 70% was good enough, and next time I can do it more efficiently.

Books read: that proved a serious challenge but I feel I came very close taken all the articles I also read during this period. I had hoped to use Goodreads to keep track of all my reading but it is no good when it comes to old and non-English books. I just didn't feel like adding those manually.

Books bought: I banned myself from buying new books on subjects other than Waterloo and was pretty consistent. What I did buy were some books by people I know personally and a bunch of new Ospreys (which were allowed, I think).

I organised one megagame which was the side project. It pained me a lot not to put on a megagame later in the year when invited to, but it was a wise decision.

New games played: I came a long way, even including the one game I bought last year. But past October my focus and priority shifted to other things.

Old games removed: ditto. Just didn't get round to it.

Essen games played: I managed to play all the Essen 2013 games before Spiel 2014! I have also played quite a few of the games I bough last year.

Shifting focus also impacted on books I wanted to remove. I picked quite a few from my shelves but I didn't get rid of them, so they are still in stacks on my floor.

Lead pile reduction: I gifted my German 1940 paratroopers, which have found the best possible home as they've been painted and used in the brilliant Ypenburg demo game.

Finally, I rationed myself to one blog post per week but went way over that, which is fine.

Next post I will look at my aspirations for 2015 (yes I know it's long started).

Won by the Sword and more

So after my last lament at getting so little gaming in, this has been a good catch up. Managed to play Won By The Sword. As a recent arrival with limited length of rules I decided it was best to get it to the table instead of something else.

It took us an evening to get through the first month (ie 5 activations of 5 armies each) of the 1632 scenario including a major battle and a small siege. The manoeuvring was a lot more hectic than I'd thought it would be. By the end we felt reasonably comfortable with the rules (there's not a lot of them but some of it is complex).

What I liked about Won by the Sword was that it promoted historical strategies, like laying waste an area so you make it more difficult for your opponent to attack you; and splitting off a separate cavalry column to forage.

Although it is a main part of the game, the foraging feels clunky, mostly because you make about 30 dice rolls in a turn just for that (no kidding). Too much looking up. I understand the wish to randomise but with this many rolls, the results tend to the average. 

Oh well, no judgement till I've played a bit more

Yesterday we were supposed to play a game of Civilization but changed our minds. We had a very tight game of In The Name Of The Rose, where Diederick scraped a just few points less than Michiel and me, even though I saw through his little trick!

Then continued with Love Letters. Michiel finally got most letters through. Love Letters was perceived as okay but not as cool as King of Tokyo which we played next. And again. And again. Absolute hit I guess!

Brutal as always I think we all won one of the games, and I won the last, very unlikely, with one health left. Epic, n'est-ce pas?

And in terms of New Years Resolutions this means one more unplayed game scratched off!

Essen 2013 Challenge Completed

With Essen 2014 fast approaching, I can draw up the result of my self imposed Essen 2013 challenge. What games did I manage to play that I bought there?

Rats in the Walls (at Essen 2013)
Strajk (Christmas Offensive 2013)
Concept (January 2014)
Sigismundis Augustus (19 september 2014)

Which means I have actually managed to play all four games I bought, but only just in time. These weren't the toughest games to learn, so you can see how hard it is for me now to make the effort. But I can go to Essen knowing my hands are free to buy games.

But the sad story is that the past few months, I haven't played many games. Only 5 since the end of June. Apart from Sigismundis Augustus there were the familiar Civilization and Battlestar Galactica. I learned the Game of Thrones card game I had bought for Died's birthday. Newly bought Pathfinder was also good, but doesn't really count towards my NYR because it wasn't my copy.

In terms of getting 13 unplayed games from my collection to the table this year, I'm now at 7, so behind schedule.The sterner among you (and who can remember the New Years' Resolution) will note that I also played Eight Minute Empire, which although I didn't buy it at Essen was also mandatory to play before the deadline.

Boardgame Invasion

Well I was supposed to get rid of games rather than acquire new ones, but I had time stacked against me. Yesterday I received Won By The Sword, a GMT game on the southern German campaigns of the 30 Years War. 

I had pre-ordered it so long ago I had actually forgotten about it until I got a note saying my credit card had been charged. No disappointment really, because what I've seen of it so far bodes well. The game is of medium difficulty so I could get it played reasonably easily. And I'm looking at it from the point of playing double blind. Perhaps...

Also, earlier this month I got my share of the inheritance of Frank van den Bergh, who died almost two years ago. His books and games were auctioned to raise money for a charity of his choice. So last year I bid with a good conscience and I don't count them towards my non new games limit.

S&T Austro-Prussian War (1994)
S&T Byzantium (1996)
S&T Khan: The Rise of the Mongols
Air Assault On Crete/Invasion of Malta: 1942 (1977)
1809: Napoleon's Danube Campaign (1984)
Risorgimento (1997)
Risorgimento 1859 (2000)
Cactus Throne: The Mexican War of 1862-1867 (2005)
Guerra a Muerte (2008)
Chinese Civil War (1979)
Barons' War (2004)
Napoleon at Bay: The Campaign in France (1978)
Napoleon at the Crossroads (2006)
The Struggle of Nations (1982)
Balkan Wars (1993)
The Egyptian Campaign (2008)
Ataturk! (2003)
Montebello: First Step to Freedom (2003)
Solferino 1859 (2004)
Pour Dieu et Pour le Roy (2005)
Les deux Bretagne (2007)
Libertadores 1810-1824 (2003)
Car Wars Expansion Set #4, Armadillo Autoduel Arena (1983)
Car Wars (1981)

A good moment to remind you all that if you have a large collection of miniatures, books and games, it might be helpful to have it sorted out and catalogued before you die. I've seen several cases over the last few years where the execution of wargamers' inheritance became a task involving months of work for remaining friends (also see Chris Stoesen's and Bob Cordery's experience ). On the other hand, it will make sure you'll be remembered, if not always positively.

Of course, knowing that this was coming up made it easier for me to be strict on the No-New-Games-This-Year (except Essen) resolution.

NYR May Update

The NYR was a bit slow this month, although I didn't buy any games, and mostly books I was allowed to buy (ie Napoleonics). The holidays wreaked havoc with my free time early in the month and I was also out with an infection for a couple of days by the end.

I didn't get too much done for The Book. I read the new biography of Blücher and two books by Michael Broers. First his exciting book about armed opposition to Napoleon's empire and then his great book about the empire itself. Add to that a detailed account of the deposition of Louis Bonaparte as King of Holland and the annexation of the Netherlands into the Napoleonic empire and you get an idea of where my interest was headed this month. And I had a very good session with my co-authors last week which inspired me.

Some new acquisitions

r

I didn't play a lot of board games, as my regular group missed two sessions. I managed a pretty weak game of Imperial and a glorious round of Cuba Libre (a game I hoped to deepen my acquaintance with) plus two fine games of 8 Minute Empire.

Getting distracted by running a demo of the Monsters megagame didn't help of course, even though developments in megagaming are now looking very good! There will be an Operation Market Garden megagame on August 30th, possibly a Monsters game later this year in the Netherlands and maybe even a game in Germany next spring.

Did more than enough blogging, even though I haven't had time to write down all my experiences of the workshop on games in education and the few bits of painting I did.

So all in all, I think I need to kick myself in the ass and get going.

Focus, young padawan!

NYR April Update Update

Just because I like graphs, I've visualised my New Years Resolutions, which forced me to make some of them SMART (uche). I've tried to set them all to 100% for ease of comparison.

So I want my part of The Book 85% done by the end of this year (meaning a concept, but lots of editing to follow in 2015)

New Games Played and Old Games Removed is fairly easy, but any games bought this year (8 Minute Empire) increase the target I'm actually putting off the removal of games and lead pile to the latter third of the year.

Books read is based on my Goodreads Challenge of 150. Buying books is  tentatively set at 100 books for ease of counting. Actually not a target, but I have assumed that I would buy some books that aren't Napoleonic or non-Napoleonic second hand below 10 pounds.  So there have been some trangressions, but not many.

Blog is fairly straightforward: once a week is 53 in 2014. I am doing (too) well.

Each non-Waterloo project picked up is -10%. An arbitrary figure but useful.

NYR April Update

I have been busy modelling and painting: finished of the Panther, assembled M3s and M5A1 Stuarts. Also started on my bats and rats.

Collected my WWII Yanks in 20mm last weekend. They are awesome. Thanks again René for a painting job well done! Pics after the weekend.

Blogwise I came up with a fair number of posts and with quite a lot of variety. Happy with that too.


I also played more games than I expected to. Three new games: Mice & Mystics, Mission Red Planet and 8 Minute Empire (4 times). Also another game of Civilization and two of King of Tokyo. A good score, which made up for my lapse in NYR by buying 8 Minute Empire. I'm now at 6 new games for this year, halfway the target. But I need to get rid of another 24 games before the end of the year.

As a result, in terms of books, this was a slow month. I only read 6, of which three Ospreys. Two old skool Men At Arms on the Dutch army of the Napoleonic Wars and the King's German Legion, and a better though still not perfect one on the Bayonne and Toulouse campaign.

The main course were the two volumes of Hofschröer's Waterloo campaign. I finished off the month with John Sweetman's biography on Fitzroy Somerset, or Lord Raglan.

Slipped up from my reading target, but there should be enough catching up later in the year. I ordered a bunch of Waterloo books by the end off the month which I think will be very interesting.

No new projects started. But I have been thinking of a 'Napoleonic' rpg, mostly set in the period 1813-1821, that is the decline and fall of Napoleon's empire and the conspiracies afterwards. Ample space for Cossack mission for French booty, assassinations of important people, duplicitous dealings, duels and the sense of soldier's honour. Throw in some Italian carbonari and Austrian secret services at the congress of  Vienna and you have an unlimited source of backgrounds and storylines to pursue. I don't think the actual mechanics matter that much, but the setting does.  Might be named 'In the Shadow of the Eagle' or something ominous like that.

NYR update March: books I read

Bought no new books, while awaiting some of the stuff that I had ordered in February. Managed to read a dozen. So still slightly behind the curve toward 150, but that should not be hard to regain when I have more time on my hand from September.

Two tougher books to get through was me finally finishing Lieven's Russia Against Napoleon, a great work which shows how the Russian army managed to get from Moscow to Paris in less than 18 months. The other was Gregor Dallas' 1815 The Roads To Waterloo, which is more about the reordering of Europe than about the campaign. A book which in content and approach is a clear precursor to Zamoyski's The Fall of Napoleon.

With my modelling efforts came three Osprey's on the M3 Halftrack, Stuart and Panther.

One small subject was the smaller German contingents, from Bavaria to Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen. I enjoyed John Gill's With Eagles to Glory on the 1809 campaign, and his article on the German troops in Spain. To this I added the book on the Poles and Saxons of the Napoleonic Wars by Nafzinger. Great research but I’d wish that man could write better and get an editor.

The last week has seen me racing through some books on the Prussian Army: Classics by Craig, Goerlitz, Demeter and Paret. All together throwing a much more nuanced light on the reform period. Paret's book towers above the others as far as I'm concerned.

And a quick Suske & Wiske as well. This one is about WWI and much darker than any S&W I’ve read.

NYR update March

Not often that I acquire so much stuff in a coop game #teamplayer

Board games: failed. I bought 8 Minute Empire. And didn't play any of my games. Played some games, though, in three sessions: Eldritch Horror, Civ, Carcassonne, Bohnanza and Koehandel/(You're Bluffing). But I will need to pick up the pace of playing my own games, with 8 Minute Empire a requirement.

Miniatures: I bought a Panther model for a friend and a Buffalo amphibious craft plus jeep for my US Chain of Command force. So that's all within remit. René has informed me the miniatures are as good as done (all 143 of them) and I'm looking forward to playing with them. Next task is to pick a fight to try it out.

Good thing is that I actually did some assembling and painting.

No new projects started.

Blogging is still at a low although I´ve managed to get some interest on the post about Wexy and my modelling exploits. It´s enough.

Will post my past month's reading in a separate post later.

NYR update February

The book: again a considerable amount of reading, which is encouraging. I started the month with a big splash of online orders, which have almost all arrived by now. Some of these I have read immediately, like Officieren Aan Het Woord, The Unwanted Revolution, In the Wake of Napoleon, Hell Upon Water and Napoleon and Berlin.

Two books picked up cheaply at a second hand stall

I also picked up two Ospreys on Napoleon´s headquarters and general staff. There was the odd non-Napoleonic book bought, mostly second hand as promised: one on El Cid, three on WWI and French WWII aces from the translated Osprey series.

February was meager in terms of gaming. I missed two sessions (one of A Study in Emerald and one of Civilization), so I’m not happy with that at all. But at least I got some nice stuff played: Tales of the Arabian Nights, Concordia, In the Name of the Rose and Set. None of my new acquisitions, though. No games bought. Not tempted.

No minis bought, although I ordered bases for the American WWII infantry that René is painting for me.

I did 10 blog posts, mainly book reviews, but also a fairly popular one on why it matters to wargamers what happens to Games Workshop. I still have to finish one on the differences and similarities between Napoleon’s 1814 and 1815 campaigns. After finishing Leggiere’s The Fall of Napoleon, I’m sure there is something in there.

The Cid book rekindled the smouldering interest I picked up last year in Spain for the Reconquista period (which is about Christians fighting Christians and Muslims fighting Muslims as much as fighting each other). So I’ve added it to the shortlist of projects I might pick up after Waterloo.

All in all again quite a good month from the perspective of my resolutions.

As far as non-gaming NYR: I got a new bike. Spring has officially started!

NYR update January

What's up with my new year's resolutions? Doing reasonably well, actually.

Sometimes it feels like Ospreys don't really count as books

1. The Book. Done considerable reading, but not everything I had wished to do in January. But 11 of which 5 Ospreys is not a bad score (distracted? sometimes). I´ve written loads of notes and over two dozen pages, but it needs a lot of footnoting. So I continue in February with what I had set out for January: 1814 books and the Dutch army and economy. Been thinking a lot about the (dis)similarities between 1814 and 1815. Obviously, Napoleon carried his experiences of the previous campaign with him after he returned and this guided some of his decisions, both politically and militarily. Another point is the difference between the military careers of Willem I and Willem II (and their brothers, both named Frederik).

We've also got the basic framework set up, a possible third author and rough planning. That all needs to be detailed, but the essence is that I need to finish as much as possible on my chapter about the mobilisation before summer. It seems doable, and my partner knows what he´s doing. He´s got maybe 15,000 copies sold in two months, after all. Yes, you read that right.


2. No games bought. Five games played, of which three out of my collection I had never played before. That drives up my played share up from half to 53% (games have popped up over the last weeks from the most unusual places). Good going.

Mag Blasting!

3. No minis bought. It was easier to ignore all kinds of temptations knowing there was a ban.


4. Bought hardly any books, only Napoleonics. My wishlists is still growing but books, even 2nd hand, aren't always cheap. There´s always the library!


5. Did 17 blog posts, which is high by my standards and much higher than my goal of a weekly update. Linking my Goodreads reviews straight to my blog helps.


6. No new projects started. Just musing the post 1815 options. That mostly means considering which projects I would pick up again. And South American wars of independence. Been looking out for that one a long time.


So overall a good month gaming related.  Don´t expect this rate in February, though. Fewer books and games and so fewer posts as well.

But it was satisfying to have over 4,000 hits this month (and cross the 40,000 all time). My post on Andrew Bamford's Bold and Ambitious Enterprise did very well, but I think Uffindel's Napoleon 1814 actually deserves a bit more love, so check that one out if you haven't yet.

Which 12 games for 2014?

Okay, if I want to play 12 of my games in this coming year, I had better prepare a shortlist. I will give you a choice from my most recent acquisitions in 2012 and 2013: 

From Essen

Concept

Sigismundus Augustus

(I already played Strajk at the Christmas Offensive 2013, and Rats in the Walls at Essen)

Signum Mortis (Essen 2012)

From Secret Satan

The World Cup Card Game

Ascalion (aka Borderlands, got in 2012)

Mission Red Planet (got in 2012)

Collision

Mag Blast

Scarab Lords

Isle of dr Necreaux

Red November

Lord of the Rings card game (not the CCG)

(I already played Pass the Pigs on New Year’s Eve with the kids. Success.)

Other acquisitions

Warriors & Traders

Mice & Mystics

City of Remnants

Love Letters

Pathfinder card game

and some games on Waterloo or Napoleonic wars

Beyond Waterloo
1815: The Waterloo Campaign
Dresden 20
Napoleonic Wars (GMT)
Wellington (GMT)

Most of these are light games, but others require serious study, so they might not make it in the end.

Which one do you guys think I should try first?

New Year’s Resolutions

So much to do, so little time. Which means making choices and focus! Which results in the following resolutions:

1. I’m going to write the book. Everything else is secondary/tertiary etc to that

2. I won’t buy any new games, but play what I’ve got. I’ve registered all my games on boardgamegeek today and found that I have about 240, of which I have played only 120 at least once. I will raise that percentage by playing at least 12 of those this year (one each month seems doable) and shedding 24. Not buying new games will be tough, though.

3. I won’t buy new figures. I might buy some more vehicles for Chain of Command. And maybe some buildings. I will shed some 5% of my lead pile.

4. I won’t buy new books except about Napoleonic warfare. Second hand books under 10 euro/pound on other topics, maybe. I will shed some 5% of my books. Although I have no idea yet of how many I actually have.

5. I will blog once a week. But it's not going to be big thoughts, and not written well.

6. Just to remind myself: I won’t start any new projects. All non-book projects are on hold.