Updated: Summary of 2016 & Plans for 2017

Year full of HOBBY!

What a year of hobby it has been! I'm in such a happy state in my life, that the split between working - family  and hobby-life is almost in balance. Of course once and a while hobby life keeps me a wake too late, which impacts the too others and my wife might not always agree on the balance, but at least we get along and I'm happy with the "balance"!

It seems that my hobby activity level has been the same for 2015-2016:

This is more than a one blog post per week!

The amount of visitors on my blog is also growing nicely with the total of 50K visits closing in fast!

Most popular blog posts have been:

Not surprisingly very popular Bolt Action takes lead, also play testing and unboxing texts gather audience nicely. Also being linked to Dalauppror's blog has generated traffic.

Top 5 texts actually correlate very nicely on the higlights of my hobby-year: painting Finns for Bolt Action (and playing with them), play testing  Burn & Loot and seeing it published and of course my Great Northern War -project, which has gathered a total of 25 blog posts and has been most active this year. It has also been the most visited "page" in my blog and it also has a strong connection to why we decided to visit our gaming friends in Stockholm -they have been our guides in both GNW as well as the Russo-Swerdish War of 1808-1809, which I think will be one of my hottest topics for 2017!

Visiting Little Wars -club in Stockholm

Read on to see the high light of 2016 in picture as well to find out about my plans for 2017!

January - February

January really kicked of the frenzied preparations for the Great Northern War! This had been long in the planning / waiting state and now I finally had managed to recruit a bunch of players to join in. I also made army lists for Muskets & Tomahawks -system and painted miniatures for it.

I had also been running a Saga Campaign called "Britannia", it was still running it's course. 

Annual high light was naturally visiting Hamburger Tactica, this time we were already 5 members from our club as two new Tactica recruits joined in. For me it was third visit to Tactica. It's really nice as I already know some of the people and there's a great opportunity to play some games and Germans really make awesome setups for these demo games. Also GNW was well presented in event, for example by Barry Hilton from League of Augsburg, great pleasure to play and chat with him & others.

Beautiful game of "Eagle Rampant" (see WI April 2016) with THS.

In the evening we have tradition of eating very well and then (after several excellent

German beers) we play Gladiator Wars in the restaurant.

And of course Tactica is great place for shopping - especially the "flohmarkt" aka bring & buy.

Flight & hotel for Tactica 2017 has been booked.

March - May

GNW campaign preparations continued with terrain making and the campaign was finally kicked off in April with great ceremonies - in Swedish! First games were also played. It was a great feeling off fulfillment to see campaign start and games being played first with Muskets & Tomahawks -system and as everybody in the campaign painted miniatures for it, also Black Powder! 

Burn & Loot was also play tested and feedback sent to FireForge. Our names now decorate the rulebook! Saga Campaign was concluded with a great Hail Caesar -game: Battle of Clontarf

Summer time (June-August)

As always, hobby activity and blogging slowed down a bit for summer. One of the high lights was my second game of Blood Rage. It's great board game with nice miniatures. I certainly want to play more of it during 2017!

In June we also did a marathon gaming session of Deus Vult in Kalle's summer cabin... luckily we took lot of pictures, as it was kind of hard to remember the exact game events that occurred sometime between 02.00-04:00 in the night...

Our club was also running a 40K campaign during the summer, so I re-learned to play 40K after a break of 2 years or so. My Eldar had some success as well. I was fortunate to play a few games with a new friend and a club member Heinrich, whom had the patience to educate me on the current edition of 40K - Eldars have turned into BMF's!

During the summer I also started a new game (even if I've actively avoided getting into too many new games): X-wings. I managed to lure my daughter (whom likes Star Wars) to play a few games with me, but lately there hasn't been more games with her. This is a but of disappointment, as I had hoped X-wing to be a game I could play home with kids... Another new game - Dux Britanniarum by Two Fat Lardies was demoed for. I liked it a lot, but further games have not yet materialized.

Busy September

After the easy going summer period, September bustled with hobby activity - 8 blog posts were also written. My friend is running a long term running LOTR-campaign. The aim is to play once a month and to play through all LOTR -scenarios in the narrative order, as published by GW. Painted Tom Bombadil and Goldberry for this and had few nice and relaxed games.

Together with Hamburger Tactica, fighting for the climax of my hobby-year is fighting: our club delegation visiting Little Wars -club in Stockholm, where we had excellent gaming and sight seeing, hosted by most friendly Micke and Jesper, whom have also been great in sharing information and tips on both GNW and Russo-Swedish War 1808-1809, this project really fired up after this visit!

End of September also saw us traveling to exotic Lahti, were a small Bolt Action tournament was held. I surprised myself by being second out of the six players (three from our club)! I was playing with my Continuation War Finns - this was a great motivation to get them finally painted!

Finnish Army Commander in Chief 

Mannerheim in miniature.

October

Being all fired up after visiting Stockholm and playing a few games there, we had immediately ordered suitable miniatures from Perry Miniatures and quite frenziedly I started kitbashing, converting and painting miniatures for Finnish troops

This project will turn into more games and into a historical campaign as soon as Pikeman's Lament by Osprey is published. Micke (aka Dalauppror) from Little Wars is a co-author for the rules, based on the Lion Rampant -system.

I also had a first go with Bolt Action 2. I really like the updates on the rules.

November

For a change something not related to Finland caught me as Kow Historical was published by Mantic Games and I had go with Kalle. Again my Samurai army was trashed by his Mongols...

At least it motivated me to put together some more buildings for Japan...

November also saw my 1808-1809 Finns to have their baptism of fire as set up a demo game of Eagle Rampant / Pikeman's lament - I think this AAR is one of the best I've written so far - with Finnish poetry and all!

In the end of November we honored the anniversary of Winter War start by

a traditional game of Bolt Action.

December

Christmas time was closing in, but battles were still raging... and deliveries from Santa were also dropping in, it seems he lives in UK after all!

First we had a pretty big re-fight of Battle of Klissow 1702 - continuing the GNW campaign, with a visiting commander from Lahti. History quite well repeated itself and we had a blast!

And a one more new game was introduced on 28th of December as Kalle run a demo game of Congo - great fun as well!

Wrap up of 2016

• I played Saga, Muskets & Tomahawks, Bolt Action, Black powder, Hail Caesar, Blood Rage, Burn & Loot, Deus Vult, 40K, X-Wing, Dux Britanniarum, Lion Rampant, Eagle Rampant / Pikeman's Lament, KoW Historical, Star Wars Miniatures Game and Congo!
• That's 16 different systems with 8 new games!
• I didn't play Warhammer (I think so) or much of fantasy at all - am I growing up?
• Most of my games were about black powder era
• Most of my games included Finnish / Swedish / Nordic forces
• I've studied quite a bit of history on the side.
• I traveled twice abroad due to my hobby
• I've had a blast! Mainly due to having such great companions to play with!

So THANK YOU: Kalle X 2, Marko, Ludde, Aleksis, Mikko, Jussi X 2, Heinrich, Niilo, Antti X 2, Joonas, Barry, Heinrich, Mika, Aito, Juha, Micke, Jesper (& others at Little Wars) Stefan (from THS), Jaakko X 2, Petri X 2, Sami, Sebastian, Ville, Samuli, Pave, Heikka, Lotta, Heikki, Aada, Otso, Juho and possible others I might forget here!

Outlook to 2017

First game for 2017 was played against my godson and his father: new Blood Bowl ( I got it for him as a Xmas present) and today I gave him a lesson in painting the miniatures.

I want to make a promise for myself for 2017: I will finalize most of the miniatures I start / have started painting earlier.

Active projects for 2017

• Airfield raid -scenario & terrain to be used in coming Bolt Action -tournament, that I'm organizing as part of our Club's Winter War -event
• Great Northern War Campaign will continue, next game is the battle of Holowzyn
• Campaign for Russo-Swedish war 1808-1809 is being planned to start from Feb/March
• Battle of Hastings (HC) planned for April and repeat for fall 

Would like to play / do as well

• Play more Congo
• Play more Blood Rage
• Try out Sharpe Practise 2
• Organize a campaigns in narrative, cinematic mode... most potential themes are "7 Samurais" and "3 Musketeers" as miniatures, terrain and rule systems (Ronin / En Garde, same system by Osprey) are in "custody" (I did "The last of the Mohicans" two years back)
• Play the battle of five armies from Hobbit! 

Dear Reader / Gaming Companion!

I would be delighted, if you would leave a comment on one / some of the following topics:

• Which blog post / game have you enjoyed the most?
• Which project would you like to participate in during 2017