Resolutions ½ Way Through

Hoping everyone in the old USA had a nice independence day.

Seeing as it is now July and the year of 2018 is half way through I thought it would be an interesting time to take stock of my gaming situation.  Now, back in January I went over what I managed to do game wise in 2017 and I didn’t really make any resolutions other than hitting my usual game count of 52 games played to justify my hobby to myself.  That I’ve achieved quite easily and as of this writing I already sit at having 55 games played with a breakdown as follows:

Age of Sigmar – 3

Blood Bowl – 8

Flames of War – 21

Frostgrave – 5

Gaslands – 7

Kings of War – 6

Warhammer 40K – 3

Wings of Glory – 2

Total: 55

I’m sad to say that I am doing very poorly on the win ratio.  I always want to win at least half the games I play and I missed that last year by about ten and this year is at an abysmal 32% win rate.  I think some of this has to do with the vast difference of my previous hobby to where I’m at now.  AoS, 40K, KoW I play so infrequently that it’s not surprise losing those games and in Blood Bowl I started a new team into the third season fighting against many second and third season teams.  It’s rough going when everything you’re playing against already has block and guard.  Frostgrave and Gaslands are significantly harder to win because those are most of my bi-weekly games which are being played with four players making the odds of winning even lower, particularly when FG doesn’t really have a “win” condition?  It’s more just grab what you can and run and I’ve been counting wins/losses there as whether I’ve collected more treasure than anyone else in the scenario.

That leaves us with FoW to explain.  Well clearly, I’ve played more Flames than any other game system individually and the reason for that is I just got into it this year and I’m still excited about it.  My friend Jim and I have generally gotten at least a game in a month as well as the fact that I’ve attended two tournaments.  Now I’ve happily got over a 50% win rate in those games having walked away victorious twelve times.  If I look at where those games were played I see that most of my wins come from my games with Jim who is also just sticking his feet into Flame this year.  Most of my losses come from the tournaments I’ve attended (Adepticon, Die Con) which means clearly that I’ve not yet learned how to min/max this game and honestly, I don’t want to.  I’ve generally enjoyed Flames, even when losing and I’m quite happy with that.

While I didn’t really give myself any resolutions in January I should have but lets just go with painting a single army for the year of 2018.  I’m probably about half way done with my FoW German Afrika Korps army now so we’re going to aim for that.  I’ve just yesterday completed all the vehicles which leaves me probably fifty infantry stands and about ten gun stands.  That’s quite a bit of little men to paint but I feel it should be easy to achieve by December if not perhaps a little earlier.

Moving onto my other gaming stuff I have yet to play a single RPG this year which depresses the ever loving crap out of me.  I really enjoy playing D&D and I am preparing a Roll20 campaign to run for some friends which hopefully we can start this month.  Assuming it doesn’t fall apart that should rack up many hours quickly and I’m looking forward to it.  I guess running isn’t the same as playing but I’m going to count it dammit.  I get to roll dice so its playing.

I picked up the Fighting Fantasy Gamebook hobby this year too.  Really, I should be counting that as RPG shouldn’t it?  Lord, I have no idea how many hours I’ve spent reading those books but I am just starting the last of the first five books I purchased, Deathtrap Dungeon!  Pretty excited about that.

One of the interesting things this year has brought is different games into the repertoire.  If you were to compare the systems I played last year to those of this year you’ll see the old familiars.  AoS, 40K, BB, KoW.  You’ll also notice though that FG took the place of WWX when we put it down but also that FG has been put down recently as we’ve picked up Gaslands.  Now, we have no issues with FG and in fact we talked the other day about getting back to it but we just started playing our first GL league set.  When we wrap that up (6 games so 12 weeks) from now we’re going to head back to the Frozen City for a while.

I also picked up Wings of Glory this year with a big chunk of store credit I had lying around.  It is almost certainly a game I’ll never get my friends into and really, I bought it more because my youngest son seemed vaguely interested in it.  You can see I’ve played a whopping two games so far, but I’m hoping to get more as he continues to mature.

All this gives us a conclusion that my gaming is healthy and happy now.  I’m playing a lot of games at every opportunity.  Flames seems to have picked up my loss of the regular Warhammer from my previous years consistencies in so much as its dominating most of my games played.  I’m satisfied with where I’m at and hope to continue that upward tick.  Somehow, I doubt I’m going to get another fifty games in the latter half of 2018 but wouldn’t it be amazing to not only get more games played this year than last year (72? I believe) but to hit 100!  That would be amazing.  I think I’ll try.