State of the Tiny Tin Man: future

Before, I talked about my wargaming in 2012. Phil then did the same and plotted out some devious plans for 2013. I shall now do the same.

Existing projects

Wargame projects are of course never completed, just put on the back burner. In my case that means that my main two projects of the last years will still get the occasional unit or two extra:

• Great Northern War: I'm currently painting a battalion of the Livgardet till Fot for the Swedes, and I expect I'll paint the occasional squadron of cavalry for both sides this year.
• Napoleonics 1809 Austria: this will get a bit more focus than the GNW. In the painting queue are French Légère battalions, and I'll probably expand the Bavarians further with (the start of) a second infantry brigade.

Both projects will also see regular gaming table time of course.

New projects

If possible, 2013 will see the emergence of two new projects and one oldie that will get more focus:

• Mass fantasy battle. I seem to have touched a nerve in our gaming group (well, Phil at least) with my Elephant Man, so I'm bumping mass fantasy battle up to project status for this year. I'll paint up Orcs and Dwarves (probably) while we work out a suitable ruleset. It's hard to put any numbers to this, but I'm aiming for about a unit every two months.
• Thirty Years War. What has been threatening for quite a while has now become reality. I've been reading up on the TYW, and with the purchase of the two excellent books by Guthrie, this has now caught my fancy in a big way. I'm still in the planning stages for this project—I want to keep it fairly small and easy. Sides will be Swedes (of course) and Imperials / Catholic League, but I don't know which period just yet. One option is the heyday of the Swedes, basing the collection on the battle of Breitenfeld and thus emulating wargaming classic Phil Olley who tracked his own Breitenfeld project on 'The Breitenfeld Blog' (now sadly deactivated). The other option is moving it all a bit later, towards the 1634-1635 period and basing the collection on the battle of Nordlingen or Wittstock or thereabouts. Output will be less than the fantasy project, so in all probability not enough to have a viable game by the end of the year without 'stand in' units.
• Ancients: Romans and Celts. This collection will receive more attention this year (as it has towards the end of 2012), with the aim of bringing them to a decent Hail Caesar playable level.

Small fry

Apart from the above big five, there are many things lying around the various storage spaces of the Command Post which might see table and/or painting time:

• Check Your Six!: I have the two campaign books on the 1943 battles around Guadalcanal and the Solomons, up to the isolation of Rabaul. I'm toying with the idea of playing these as an actual campaign.
• Blitzkrieg / Cold War commander. Both collections have seen little use last year.
• 20mm WWII. Way in the back of my head lives the idea of taking this collection 4 years back in time and building an early war Belgian and German army. Probably not this year though :)
• Naval: both fantasy (Uncharted Seas) and historical (WWI Dreadnaughts)
• Lots of stuff I'm probably forgetting :)

Writing and blogging

Last year was a very good year in this regard, and I hope to repeat this in 2013. I'll write up some more articles to try and get in to Battlegames, and will try to keep posting to Tiny Tin Men, at a better frequency than last year. Also, way back in my mind (even further than the 20mm early WWII :) ) live two ideas for longer form writing. One is 'Wargaming the GNW', which might be a book or a series of articles, the other is 'The Grassus Gambit', a narrative campaign for the Romans and Celts in the style of CS Grant's books. Who knows what will come of that :).

That's it for my wild plans for 2013. I'll leave you with a gratuitous picture of my painting desk, with the second unit of the year (the Livgardet) being painted. They're the black blobs: