Every year I keep track of all the miniature games I play. You’ve seen me talk about this a lot recently because of my race to 100 games for the year of 2018 but the overarching point here is that I track them. I track the dates played, the opponent, armies, points level, event if there was one and obviously the win/loss/draw status. I break that down into a WL/D percentage for the year and up until the death of 8th edition Warhammer I was always able to keep that above 50%. However, with the death of that game I’ve not been able to keep such high standards. I’ve also played more games per year across a wider group of titles since the death of Fantasy over the course of each year thus making it harder to hold that percentage as it was.
I have data going back to 2009, and until 2015 I solely played or at least solely tracked only Warhammer Fantasy games. In 2015, I picked up Kings of War and Wild West Exodus and of course this is also the year Age of Sigmar was released so that got tossed in there as well. I still held at 50%, though just barely that year with a total of 59 games played over the four systems. 2016 included some games of Bloodbowl into the tracking but again I manaed to be over 50% with 63 games. 2017 saw the inclusion of Frostgrave and picking Warhammer 40k back up and the loss of my 50% goal dropping to 46% of 78 games played and finally we get to 2018. Last year I had my games spread across six different game systems but this year, woof… I thinned myself out across twelve technically, though a few of those systems consisted of only two or three games so could arguably be removed for purposes of skewing my numbers but I still ended hitting only ##% out of 100 total games played for a win percentage. Ouch!
Let’s break down the systems played here in alphabetical order:
Age of Sigmar
Blood Bowl
Flames of War
Frostgrave
Gaslands
Kings of War
Konflict 47
Warhammer 40,000
Wild West Exodus
Wings of War
So yeah, I spread myself out quite a bit this year across many systems. Generally, that turns me into one of those old adages about doing many things as a, jack of all trades, master of none. I’m going to split my discussions about the game tracking data down into two articles. This first one will focus on my primary systems that I played many games meaning that I played at least ten times or more.
Cutting that metric in it brings us down to talking about:
Age of Sigmar – 23 Games – W/L/D
Blood Bowl – 10 Games – 0/6/4
Flames of War – 21 Games – 12/7/2
Gaslands – 10 Games – 2/7/1
Kings of War – 10 Games – 5/4/0
Warhammer 40,000 – 12 Games – 3/9/0
This cuts the systems in half. I’ve noted next to each system the number of games played and the W/L/D/ percentage of those games. I always find it interesting to see the end results of my year in the hobby. Let’s begin the actual breakdown of data. I’m going to try to restrict each system down to one page in a Word document so, yeah, let’s go.
Age of Sigmar
Of 24 games played only 8 of those were outside of a tournament setting netting me only 9 wins, 13 losses and 2 draws. Interestingly my draws were at tournaments rather than outside which I say is interesting because this game does not tend to equate to a lot of draws in my experience. I clearly lost more than won, which isn’t a surprise when you put a few factors together.
1. I’m playing multiple systems thus not putting the maximum effort into this one
2. An abundance of my games were in a tournament setting, meaning that the people I was playing against on average at least, are probably more experienced in the game than myself and likely better players
3. I refuse to buy new armies leaving me in a somewhat uphill battle on special rules/abilities that other books seem to be getting (some will say this is an excuse but I haven’t seen to many people hitting podiums with these armies, that’s for sure)
4. I’m just not that great at the game (hey, I can admit it)
While I’m not a fan of what Games Workshop has done with AoS the number of games shows that I’m still playing it a lot because of the number of friends that the community has made me over the years. My desire to see and hang out with those people at tournaments continues to keep me playing, much more now for the social aspect than that of attempting to be a skillful or tactical player.
Over the course of these games I’ve only played with two armies; my Dwarfs (Dispossessed) and Ogres (Grand Alliance: Destruction). Some interesting breakdowns here is the W/L/D with each army and my suspected reasoning behind those numbers:
Dwarfs – 4/9/1
Ogres – 4/4/1
To be certain I’ve enjoyed playing my Ogres more. This army was built on the prospect of how many Giants can I run. This tends to result in very lopsided games where I either lose big or win big but I definitely have more fun with them. The Dwarfs I find myself disappointed after games that I lose, particularly if I’ve done well or at least what I perceive as well during the game. I have, on numerous occasions, killed the big models (Nagash, Forgeworld Khorn Bloodthirster, Zombie Dragons, Magmadroths, Stegadons, Carnosaurs, Greater Demons) but on a whole, even when I manage to deal with these massive threats the damage is often done to the point where I still lose the games that I’m playing. I find using my Giants that I expect nothing out of them but silly fun and thus I am often entertained by them outperforming my expectations which are set abominably low as Giants have historically always been extremely hamstrung in power level. Still, find your enjoyment in something and go with it and I expect it will still be a highly played game in 2019.
Blood Bowl
This was our 3rd season of the local league and I only got 11 games in. Not to mention it took literally th entire year to wrap up where the last two seasons only took about 6 months. Of those 10 games let’s check out that extrapolated data. I only played with one team. Obviously. We only did one season.
Orcs – 0/6/5
Not a single win to the team and four draws which frankly I’m proud of. This year our league dropped from 25 players to only 14. Given the lower number of players we decided (poorly I might add) to mush everyone left together. This left my new team playing their first season against teams who have been developing for three seasons. In fact, it left many us in that lurch. It resulted in an extremely lopsided season for everybody playing unfortunately. This is also very likely the reason it took an entire year to complete as players constantly dropped games, or wouldn’t respond and just stopped playing in general. It’s a real bummer because we had two solid seasons when they re-released the game. Hopefully next year we can get a fresh league going and learn from our mistakes and so hopefully will see some more play in 2019.
Flames of War
A new challenger! Flames of War was something I’d batted the idea of playing around with for a while and this year I took that plunge. I have two fairly large armies for it now and a ton of terrain. I used the Adepticon tournament as a focus to get me going in it and for that purpose it performed well. I really enjoyed the system (I’ve always loved WWII history) and I really enjoyed building the models, though I did find painting to be a real chore on the small infantry. I played 21 games this year and 20 of those were with my US forces that I took to Adepticon. The one time I played my Germans was in a demo game against my friend Ryan who I knew would want to be the Americans.
US Army 11/7/2
German Army 1/0/0
All in, I tended to do very well. My primary opponent was my friend Jim, but seven of the games were at tournaments so that’s solid. The trend was me winning although as I look at the dates of those wins many were early on while Jim and I were still learning the rules. As Jim got more accustomed to the game he started to win and draw against me. In those tournaments I spoke of, I only won two games and drew one leaving the other four to losses. This I feel can be nailed down to a couple of points.
1. The tournament players are far more experienced than me (Adepticon is a National Event)
2. Tournaments create weirdly skewed lists that Jim and I were 100% not even thinking about. We always played pretty balanced forces containing a little of everything (tanks, infantry, artillery, etc…) some of the lists I encountered at tournaments were 35 Stuart Tanks and mass Infantry formations that would dig in and never move
3. Unpreparedness; I just had no concept of how to play at a high level and constantly missed things in those tournament settings
That said, Jim and I always really enjoyed our games and I find the system to be a lot of fun. I have at this point completely painted my US forces and am down to my German Infantry and Artillery. After June, I haven’t played a single game as I began focusing on AoS more, attempting to support locals and going to Siegeworld with Chuck and John. I’m going to have to make an effort not to let this game die off on me this year.
Gaslands
Here is another new game to the pantheon of the many that I’m playing. I looked it up because of the sudden influx of posts I would see on Twitter from people I know and respect as gamers. If that many people were playing it, then surely, I should look at it. Turns out for a $20 investment on the rulebook and maybe another $10-15 to get some nice dice and templates this game was a big winner. All you need are some hot wheels cars and since my close friend and I all have kids; those cars are something we have in abundance. Of the ?? games I’ve played ½ of those were without the sponsor rules as we learned the game and its rules. The other games have been with the sponsors as we began a little league play so we could experiment with the rules for it as we went through all the scenarios and with those rules I’ve been playing with Rutherord.
Team Rutherford 2/7/1
This game unlike Frostgrave which I’ll talk about in another post is rough on the W/L percentage because it is a multi-player game. It makes it just that much harder to win and it is one of those games where there is for sure a clear-cut winner at the end. Funnily enough we did have one game that we felt ended quite decidedly in a draw where the last 3 cars that were alive all died in the same gear phase from explosions and collateral damage. It was amazing. Dave, Austin and Ryan I think are in general just better players than myself too and as such tend to win more of our games. It probably doesn’t do a lot for me that I’ve checked into this game sort of like I did AoS with the Ogres and Giants. I love to cause stupid destruction, even if it means hosing myself. Yeah, I’m that player in case you couldn’t tell. Also, this game has some just bonkers rules that seem heavily unbalanced at times; particularly when you begin involving sponsorships, but it is still a lot of fun and I don’t see it leaving the stable of games played this year that’s for sure.
Kings of War
Ah, Kings of War. The game I thought would replace WHFB. Wow, was I wrong. Maybe if we lived in the Southern areas of the country but boy Illinois didn’t take with it at all. I did still manage 10 games this year which aren’t bad. 6 of those were regarding Adepticon as Ryan and I played 3 practice games and then 3 games in the team tournament. The rest of the games we got in were juts random one-off games at our homes playing a smattering of armies across the board between Dwarfs, Kingdoms of Men, League of Rhordia and Ogres. Given the low number of games and the number of times switching armies we’ll just throw the stats out not by race played.
Kings of War – 5/5/0
Kings does not lend itself to draws. Happily, I did win ½ the games of Kings that I played, but what’s funny is that at the team tournament Ryan and I got spanked two out of three. Looking at armies I did seem to favor the humans over Dwarfs and Ogres, but that is because of their use in the team tournament. Kings does leave a little to be desired for me in that it feels like it should be Warhammer but obviously isn’t. I still enjoy the game but I have no desire to play it at tournaments. The player base (at least those that I’ve interacted with which is primarily Adepticon) take the game way too seriously). I get that you want to play an accurate and skillful game, but when your breaking out laser levels and nitpicking arcs and LOS as much as I’ve experienced you’ve drained the fun of the game for me. Maybe that is fun for you, and that’s great, but yeah, not for me.
Ignoring the negatives though Kings is what made my 100th game of the year for 2018! The new Clash of Kings book came out at the beginning of December and got Ryan and I all jazzed up to dig our Warhammer Fortresses out of the closet and play a siege game. The rules were TBD…. So it will still get played, though probably just between Ryan and I and so its going to be kind of on the low end of number of games played for 2019.
Warhammer 40,000
Boy, what can I say here. I’ve painted up 1,500 points of the Space Marines army that I won in a charity auction at the end of 2017. Fully painted I could probably run it up to 2,000. I went with the absolutely generic Ultramarines for my faction because I had to repaint the army and do a LOT of work on it and the nice deep blues helped cover up flaws in the models and still give them a nice vibrant appearance. Let’s have a look at those numbers.
Space Marines – 3/9/0
Ouch. I was super jazzed at the end of 2017 to play this game again but boy did that get beat out of me. Five of the games I played were against my friend Dave and his Demons and I’ve had to consistently ask him to play his list down for me so that I can feel like it’s a game and even when he has done so every game has still resulted in a loss. The other seven games were all at tournaments and out of that three were against Dark Eldar resulting in if not a pure tabling than a game which resulted in a near tabling. The other games tend to be decent affairs. Against Orcs it’s a give or take, Necrons I beat and Space Marines were a lot of fun as opponents. Sure, I’m hamstringing myself playing with just the models I have and I’m not that great of a player to start with but the games against Demons and Dark Eldar have felt so unbalanced and one sided it isn’t even funny. The Demons I can’t seem to kill off and the Dark Eldra generally kill me off the table by turn 3 as they have a ludicrous number of shots and many high AP weapons. While I don’t plan to stop playing this game will likely be taking a back seat next year except for random one-off games with Dave, just like KoW with Ryan.
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