2015 and Beyond... Part I

I had initially planned on doing a detailed review of the year 2015 but something derailed my plans... netflix!  I had gotten a membership to the service for Christmas and ,instead of working on the final hobby project of the year and the year in review post, I've been watching things like Knights of Sidonia and Jessica Jones!  It's a bit late for a proper year in review but I'd still like to share a couple of some thoughts on 2015 and 2016 in a sort of State of the Blog address.

First, we'll start with 2015.  While it didn't feel like a particularly productive year, I did mostly accomplish several projects that I set out to do.  The first is my Farsight Tau ally army.

I actually completely finished this project around the summer but then ran into a bit of a snag as credible rumors started coming out about a new set of rules for the army.  When they did a few short weeks later, I realized I'd probably want to add another model to my small group to make it a functional force with the new rules.  I built, primed, and washed that final model (my Broadside conversion) but failed my will save vs Netflix and binged on some shows instead of finishing the model.  I do hope though to get it done this month though.

The next project that I worked on this year was my set of house rules for the Robotech Tactics minis game that I dubbed "Vermilion Squadron".

I got in early on the game's kickstarter in large part because of a promised set of small model count skirmish rules.  When half the rewards were finally released a year late (with the remaining half still pending and approaching three years late...grumble... grumble), the skirmish rules were unfortunately not included and got lost along the wayside.  I decided to try and make a relatively quick set of house rules to retrofit back into the game that functionality.  It wasn't as large in scope of a house rule product as my Heavy Gear houserules but I'm happy with the results.

The final main project that I worked on was two fleets for the newly released Halo Fleet Battles game.  I initially thought that I'd do only a single fleet that was easily divisible in half for demos; after finishing that first fleet, I decided to just make a proper OpFor for the game.

With a few non-modelled options like Spartans and Zealots onboard ships, I'm at around 900-1000pts for each fleet with regard to what I can carry in my foam case.  Not pictured above is the extra base of small UNSC frigates that replace the second large carrier for that faction.

Of course, not everything is rosy as I did have a pair of projects that I had planned to complete in 2015 that I didn't.  I'll be discussing them along with some initial thoughts on 2016 in the next post that I'll hopefully put out today as well.