Well that’s another twelve months gone by, which means it must be time for my annual review of all things wargames.

Gaming

A spectacular year this year with 72 games played, more than any year since records began back in 1985. Every game was fully written up, which kept me very busy when I wasn’t gaming or painting.

The Timurids in Action at *To The Smallest*

Most of the games were competition games, as this year I made a real effort to play in as many To The Strongest tournaments as I could, which meant that 60 of the 72 tabeltop encounters were in the Ancients/Medieval category.

Playing through the Siege of Norchester scenario pack for For King & Parliament with friend Rob meant that the 17th century period came in next with nine games, with the 19th Century, WW2 and Sci-Fi games making up the rest.

Polish-Lithuanians in action against the Turks

Starship Troopers in miniature!

Tournaments

I played in 10 events/tournaments this year, using my Ace-loving Venetians for all but one of them.

A real mixed bag of results, but I was very happy with the two first places:

Many thanks to all the organisers and my various opponents: all the games I had were played in the very best of spirits, with none of the unpleasantness I’ve sometimes seen at other events. I do remember laughing a lot when playing, always a good sign!

Luck is a funny old thing.

I know it’s easy to blame the cards (TTS is a playing card-driven system) but I think even the most uncharitable of my opponents would agree that the Aces do flow for me in competition, and it’s when they don’t I seem to do well i.e. it’s not that I get the good cards then, I just don’t get the bad ones!

That said, I think my two most memorable games involved a lot of luck going my way. Number one was snatching victory from the jaws of defeat against Matt and his Anglo-Normans at The Crusades at the Bunker in Weston-Super-Mere; and number two was the two Tens I drew to defeat Steve’s Yorkists atthe last moment at Peter’s To The Longest event.

Norman Milites bounce off Venetian Knights

Venetian Pikemen take the Yorkist camp

But, as I said above, my thanks to all my opponents throughout the year. Just looking through the AARs has made me realise again how much I enjoyed all the competitions I enetered this year, and I would highly recommend the To The Strongest competition circuit to those who fancy a bit of “competitive gaming without numpties”.

Painting

Not a bad year for painting: no great shakes in terms of points in the Painting Challenge, but some significant projects finished.

The first part of the year was mostly taken up with finishing up all the units I needed for my main TTS tournament army, the Venetians. This included a favourite figure of mine: the chef heading up the city militia unit of Spearmen that I sometimes have to field:

The middle part of the year was spent on a whole variety of projects: some Scots for the English Civil War period, some more Ottomans for the 17th Century, and an assortment of sci-fi figures from various manufacturers:

15mm Mozzians from Khurasan (black powder sci-fi)

15mm Blared from Trilaterum to join the rest of my Ursoids

Finally, the latter part of the year was mostly spent on producing a new army: 15mm Hittites from the excellent STL sculpts by Red Copper Miniatures, which I had printed by Baueda in Italy.

These are very nice figures indeed: highly recommended to anyone wanting new chariot-era army.

Wargames Shows

One sacrifice I did have to make because of all the tournament gaming was to reduce the number of shows that I went to.

After last year’s cornucopia of events, all I managed this year was Roll Call, Britcon, Warfare, Colours and Salute, with the first three being because I was competition gaming there which obviously cut down on looking around.

Disappointingly, I also managed just one TFL Lard Day: Operation Market Larden X in Evesham, where I played a great game of I Ain’t Been Shot Mum and also managed to try out Sid’s When The Last Sword Is Drawn (Banzai Bonkers) samurai skirmish game, this last highly recommended. It seems extraordinary that this event has been happening for ten years now, and I have been to every one.

Looking back at the pictures from the shows that I have been to, I still saw some very inspirational games: a good reason to try and up the number I go to in 2025.

Summary

So all in all, 2024 proved to be a packed and very good wargaming year.

As always, a big thank you to all my gaming chums and opponents whose good natures and dedication to the hobby have made the last twelve months so much fun.

And to all those who have read Vis Lardica throughout the year: thanks for your visits, likes and comments throughout 2024, and I look forward to seeing you all throughout 2025 as well. Incidentally, we passed the 500,000 page view mark in March, and that’s with not being on Blogger either. If you do own a blog of your own and like this site, please add VL to your list of recommended/favourite links: it seems a shame for all this content not to have a wider audience!

Here’s to doing it all again next year!

Cheers

R