Hobby Year 2020 in retrospect and prospects for 2021

 A weird year

I guess we all know, why 2020 was so different, so I'll focus on this blogpost in analysing how it impacted my hobby life...

More games than ever before!

Even if Finland also faced 2 lockdowns I managed to play a whopping 135 games during 2020 - that's 2,6 games per week (and yes, I'm still happily married, with three kids and a job). That's 30 games (almost 25%) more than last year . So how was this possible? Answer to me is quite clear: as the global pandemic narrowed down everyone's social life and activity, it made me focus even more on this hobby. During lockdowns I chose a few friends I played with at our home (or at their home) and also played quite a bit of Song of Ice and Fire Tabletop Miniatures Game with Tabletop Simulator (on Steam), which was rapidly developed by the players during the spring. 

This lead to SONG (aka ASOIAF) being the overwhelmingly number one game for me in 2020: 75 games, that's approximately 1,5 games per week and 75% of all the games I played! Dramatic increase from 26 games in 2019. Running two campaigns and several tournaments certainly helped too.

Saga and Bolt Action also held their ground in my top 5 games. Tournaments and campaigns there too.

Even if I've been more of a historical wargamer for many years, Song aka ASOIAF (and Saga Age of Magic) have flipped the scales totally towards Fantasy (with MESBG and Warhammer adding some to it too). 71% of all games were fantasy (57% last year), with historical games having a 25% share.

Painting

During lockdowns many wargamers probably painted more then before. I painted as much as before. My tendency is to paint what ever I'm going to play next, and when physical gaming was limited, it did not really increase my productivity, it might have even reduced it.

Toll of painted miniatures in recent years and 2020:

• 2018: 623
• 2019: 679 (600 from scratch)
• 2020: 688 (581 from scratch)

More than 90 cavalry / bike models painted, significantly more than 2019 (63), this is mainly due to painting a Targaryen army for SONG, which has lot's of (Dothraki) cavalry.

Compared to 2019 % of infantry painted dropped from 83% to 71%. Besides cavalry, I painted more of monsters, warmachines, terrain and "others". This means I've painted more of bigger things then before. I'm also happy about the increase in terrain. I have plenty of terrain in my stockpile and painting minis for the next game always has priority, so this is very positive, as I drive to have a thematic terrain for each game and army. A good example of my terrain production was making 3D terrain for ASOIAF.

Other armies painted during 2020:

• WW2 Deutsche Afrika Korps (DAK)
• WW2 Chinese Nationalists
• Ancient Carthago Warband
• Marvel Crisis Protocol Starter Set
• 1812 Napoleonic French

You can review my paint jobs in my Instagram account "wanhaherrat" and also from here and here.

My activities in the Wargaming community 2020

As you can see from the amount of games and miniatures painted, this was a very active hobby year from me. Besides painting and playing I took a more active role in couple of different communities. In the spring I was elected to be part of the board for our Helsinki Wargaming Club Nopat & Taktiikka ry and our totally renewed board has been really active in developing things within that community - our member count rose significantly (like 25%) during 2020, despite Covid-19 causing the closing of the club twice during the year!

In order to promote the hobby and our favourite games, we also produced several introductory videos to some of our favourite games, I was involved in the making of the videos for ASOIAF and Bolt Action. You can find these videos embedded on our club's website here.

Dressed for the video shoot!

ASOIAF community

As ASOIAF (or Song) is my number one game, communities related to it are also important. During 2020 I did a lot to build the community in Helsinki-area and our player base has more than doubled from 2019; game nights, demo games,  tournaments and two map based campaigns did the job and new players are joining on a steady pace. Next campaign is planned for spring 2021 - now managed by two other players and currently we're playing a TTS-tournament.

Tournament crew from early 2020

On the international scene our campaign concept has raised a quite a bit of interest and I have shared our content for players looking for info. Chase from On The Table Gaming also interviewed me and Mika in his podcast episode 79.

My most visited page in this blog during 2020 was also about the campaign, with 844 uniques views. I also published some thirteen ASOIAF battle reports in the blog.

As a new adventure, I look forward to contributing to the one and only ASOIAF Guild during 2021!

This Blog

As I'm writing this on 3rd of January, this blog has been viewed 202 089 times, that's about 32 000 views during 2020, which is so cool, because it's really motivating, that somebody actually views this content!

Readers are mainly coming from the English speaking countries and from the Nordic countries and Russia

Busies time was from April to July.

Most viewed posts were:

i think six out of these were also written during 2020, so oldies but goldies also got some love from my readers. I have 42 "registered readers"

Conclusion of 2020

This is what I wrote a year ago about my plans for 2020. Red texts are comments on the goals I had set....

PROSPECTS FOR 2020

So will 2020 be much different? Probably not, I expect my top 3 games to remain the same. Otherwise, I’ll  possibly playing more Star Wars Legion and Black Powder era games, but it really depends on what tournaments and campaign are organized.

On the painting side I'm setting two goals to myself (to continue the drive for finished models):

• For each new unit / miniature painted, I will finish a unit / miniature started before 2020 - Did not happen as I painted 581 miniatures from scratch and "only" finished 107 miniatures started earlier. New projects just grab that focus
• Once a month I will paint something cool, a one miniature, that is not directly linked to "my next game" - I guess, this partially happened, as I painted more of those "bigger things" and terrain. Then again, they also were for the games I played during 2020.

New Projects 2020

Currently I have two projects ongoing / prepared:

• Star Wars Legion: Battle of Hoth - happened, third episode to be played one day, when I've built Echo base
• Map based campaign for Song - happened, twice. Won the second one ;-)

I'm certain that these shall be my new painting projects for 2020:

• Saga Age of Magic Undead - completed; painted and played with them.
• ASOIAF: Targaryens (starter set should soon be here) - completed, see link to the army in parade earlier in this post
• Anno Domini 1666 -miniatures (When the kickstarter is delivered) - completed; played five games and painted two warbands

Possible New Projects

• Painting WW2 German Afrika Korps for Bolt Action - completed
• Coming back to Black Powder era games, probably The Russo-Swedish war of 1808-09 - happened in the form of our Sharp Practice campaign for Napoleon's Picnic to Russia in 1812

So all in all, the year went hobby wise quite as I had planned. No need to say, it in many other ways, it absolutely did not!

Prospects for 2021

Currently our club room is still closed, at least until 10th of January,  and the most recent news of the new more rapidly spreading Covid-mutation sound really alarming, while there is light in the end of the tunnel now, with vaccination ongoing. 

My year has started with two games of Marvel Crisis Protocol, which is an awesome game!

Besides super heroes, what else do I expect myself to be doing?

• ASOIAF will continue to be my number one game. Looking for the 1.7 rules and units to be released and all those new units to become available for Targaryens. I will probably play more with Free Folk (using my The Others army as proxy). I do not plan to go raiding with Greyjoys. 
• I will continue to play current and coming campaigns, including ASOIAF, Bolt Action, Sharp Practise, Anno 1666 and hopefully a map based campaign for the Sengoku era Japan
• Besides all that I hope to play more of Star Wars Legion, MESBG and SAGA
• On board games front I expect to play and paint The Ankh by CMON
• I hope to get my children to paint and play with me, so far that has not been very successful, even if they are fans of lores like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Marvel
• I hope to be able to organize an international F2F tournament for ASOAIF