2012 Wrap Up

Well, here we are again. Time for the Fifth Annual Sergeant Crunch's Miniature Madness Annual Wrap-Up post. Five years I've had this blog now though it doesn't seem like it. Thanks to all my readers for keeping up with my misadventures despite my spotty posting habits.

This year saw an overall increase in my gaming time and severe lack of motivation to paint. I did get some projects done and off the To-Do list though, but picked up a number of new ones. I'm at kind of a wierd place where I want more miniatures, but don't want to buy more until what I have is close to be finished. I've also delved more into board games for their ability to play out of the box without as much work to painting and building terrain. Of course this means that if I bought no other miniatures and painted at an average of one per day, I could conceivably run out of miniatures to paint by December 2013. I don't see this happening.

I've gotten two copies of Dreadball (miscommunication between my wife and I around Thanksgiving, totally my fault), X-Wing and its first wave expansions, and have a copy of  OGRE: Designer's Edition on order via that game's Kickstarter campaign. Of these X-Wing is the only one I've played yet due to it being truly ready out of the box. The figures are painted and the rules are extremely easy to learn. When I bought the core box set the boys and I were making TIE Fighter fly-by sounds and going pew-pew in minutes. What was pleasantly surprising is the the minis look good enough out of the box to not require immediate repainting, though some folks out there have taken their figures to the next level. I'm not going there, I like that I don't have to do anything with them except assemble the base.

I did paint a handful of CAV models in 2012, mostly because I have been playing CAV2 again with another Mech-Head. Might even go back to RCON to play in the CAV2 tournament being organized. Other than that though, my painting has been all over the place as usual. I started the year with finishing my Warmachine starter, then moved on to star ships, then 15s, then CAV, then Dreadball. Throw in some terrain projects for good measure. I find myself in awe of the people who consistently churn out hundreds to over 1000 miniatures in a year. Maybe this will be my year as I am on the glide-path to retiring from military service.

This next year should be interesting as I'm planning on buying a laser cutter with tax return money. Watch this space for my exciting adventures with high-tech cutting devices. Eventually my projects with that will be made available for general purchase. My first goal for the year though is to finish the Orc team for Dreadball so I can actually play it. I've had it for about a month now but have yet to actually play it with anyone. Thankfully OGRE will be more amenable to out-box play as the 2.5D models will just need to be punched out and slide together. Though it may take me a week to punch out all the counters from the Kickstarter version. I'm also looking forward to the second wave of X-Wing expansion models, particularly the Millennium Falcon and Slave 1. The fun part is going to be convincing my wife that purchasing Combat Wombat's Death Star trench tiles is a good idea.

The total model count for the year is 40 models, not including the X-Wing figures (I just included them so they wouldn't feel left out...and they look cool).  Here's the list:

1 Warmachine Charger
1 Shield Generator/Power Plant
16 GZG UNSC Light Troopers
1 Japanese Nagato Carrier
1 Fed Dreadnought
1 Fed Battlecruiser
1 Black Lightning Dictator 60
1 Atlas hexagon high-rise

3 stands Armored Heavy Mortar Teams (CAV)

2 Kraken (CAV)

1 Walther's Car Shop

2 Human Guards (Dreadball)

1 Referee (Dreadball)

4 Human Jacks (Dreadball)

4 Human Strikers (Dreadball)

 Gah! White is such a pain to photograph

 I find this amusing, the RefBot has eyes in the back of its head.

 Tremble before my mad freehand numbering skills.

So, there they are. I'm looking forward to what 2013 brings. May your games be fun and paint bottles never dry out.