Earlier this week, I ran through what I got up to in 2021, which honestly having gone back through it all I’m pretty happy with. 2021 saw me work on a variety of genres
Looking ahead, what are my plans for 2022? Well….
Project 365
First up, my plan to paint 365 models in a year. As I mention in the 2021 review, I didn’t quite hit that goal but it was a great motivator. I’m going to roll the goal over into another year – even if I don’t hit it, it would be nice to begin to approach it.
I’m probably not going to do all the tables and graphs I did last year. Frankly, it ended up being a pain at the start of every monthly update post, having to get all the details together
Finish Purchased Projects before starting new ones
My biggest problem with last year and my purchasing was the sheer number of projects I came up with, purchased, assembled and then put to one side. As just a taster of the projects I still have to do:
- Chaos Warriors (including Lord and Greater Demon)
- Dark Elves (Witch Elves, Corsairs, Morathi and more)
- Stormcast (including the Dominion box)
- Undead (Vampires, Zombies and Skeletons)
- Dark Eldar
- War Cry Catacombs
- War Cry Red Harvest
- Escher gang for Necromunda
- White Dragon British
- Empress British platoon
- Empress US Rangers
- Empress US Marines
- Empress Russians
- Spectre African Militia
- Full Battle Rattle Canadians
This doesn’t even begin to cover the hosts of smaller squads, sections and vehicles that are sat in the collection waiting to be painted.
Now, this isn’t to say I’ll live like a monk and never purchase anything this year. With the announcement of Cursed City getting expansions, previews of new Eldar figures coming later this year and a few rough plans for projects, there are a few special things I might pick up. But I’m not planning on doing anymore random sprees or leaping into new projects that require buying a load of new things
Ultramodern Chain of Command
Speaking of brand new things, my biggest project this year is going to be something that doesn’t need buy new models – it’s taking the things I enjoy and already have and putting them into a stew pot.
Chain of Command is my favourite platoon level ruleset. Nothing gives me the same level of involvement or interest as a game of Chain of Command (except maybe Skirmish Sangin), making me feel in the action rather than merely rolling some dice. It gives you that feeling of having too much to do with too little, the requirements of the mission fighting against the tools you having in your hands. For many years, the idea of Fighting Season, a conversion of Chain of Command written by Leigh Neville and Rich Clarke, seemed like it would be the ideal ruleset for my collection. However, that has entered development hell, with Mr Clarke announcing it being put on the back burner for quite frankly pretty understandable reasons.
Well, this is the year I want to start playing Chain of Command with my collection of Ultramoderns. And luckily there has been plenty of things written about Fighting Season (as well as other modern conversions written by people for Vietnam, The Falklands and Somalia). By pulling these things together, suddenly a lot of the work is already done (and done incredibly well) – it just needs cataloguing and putting together. Of course, my goal isn’t to copy Fighting Season exactly – I’ll be using it for more than just counter-insurgency (I do have one or two other regular factions that might get involved) but that game will certainly lead the way when it comes to dealing with how modern professional armies function vs those in WW2.
The other part of this?
Chargereal Campaign
I’m going to be putting my world setting to work and assembling a long campaign for my local crew. Seeing as an overwhelming number of the group knows Chain of Command rather well, it’s one less thing to teach from scratch to get people through the door and into Ultramoderns. My thoughts are to have each player be in control of a different element in a task force (with options such as Infantry Company, Ranger Company, Internal Security Company or Special Forces) which will perform different missions. Depending on how these missions go, other players may find their missions helped or hindered – a botched night raid by a Special Forces player may embolden the OPFOR in the region, giving them extra support for when the player Infantry or Rangers play their missions.
Am I doing this so my friends get to send each other passive aggressive messages at the start of each battle once I reveal the situational effects?
Yes.
The idea is to run this campaign slowly – with the players being scattered to the four corners of the North we might not be able to get together as much as we like. However, I think I can run enough side events that will still keep the players involved even if a full game isn’t practical. Combined with a monthly update for all players, and it might be time to get the Albion Empire’s finest into an operational footing and throw in enough twists and turns to keep everyone interested and entertained.
Fantasy Ruleset
Seeing as my brain doesn’t like to sit still, I’ve got a second set of rules in the works. As mentioned, I’ve been playing some fantasy games with my Sister and in the first two episodes we’ve played, we used the Open Combat rules. These are great little skirmish rules but maybe don’t include the level of crunch we want for an ongoing campaign. I took a look at Rangers of Shadow Deep and, although I adore the co-op aspect, I don’t think the power levels or combat really matches to how our Swordmasters (and other factions) really play in the setting and I didn’t feel levelling characters was exciting as it could be. The way out? Get writing.
My current thinking is a D100 system (going for the RPG feel) with units either named individuals or small groups of unnamed extras. I also want to include the events system and AI from Rangers, so my sister and I can play the game together and get a fun experience, rather than me trying to direct the story as the bad guy. True, I’ll have to write everything from scratch but that’s half the fun!
Blog + Patreon
So that of course leaves the blog and attached Patreon to be planned out. The Patreon is a relatively new addition and I still need to 100% nail down what it’s going to be. I want it to be a tip jar + perks, so the main thing is making sure it doesn’t add too much to the overall work load. That said, doing the extra work writing up patreon specific scenarios is definitely something I enjoy, especially as I already have a lot of the work done beforehand and it’s just formatting.
As for the blog itself, the main thing is just keeping on top of the posts. The daily (ish) SITREP posts work really well for me, even if the Algorithms of other places may not want to share them quite so much. Having all my hobby in one place and not limited to 270 characters works super well for being able to tell the story of my ongoing hobby. The main thing is to keep on track of getting the posts done relatively quickly. Things like the Spectre Covert guys took way too long between “models painted” and “post written”. I still have the battle reports from my fantasy gaming to write up. Mostly with the blog my aim is to be efficient, rather than dragging out writing simple things.
That’s it for planning. Fingers crossed on how well it goes throughout the year – even if I don’t hit all the goals, this is at least what I have planned.