End of Year Round-up

Every year when I review the year's hobby production and forecast the coming year’s schedule I always think, "this year won’t be as big as the last."

 

Well 2018 would have been less than 2017 if I hadn’t decided to expand the French in Egypt by half, doubled the Ottoman force, increased the War of 1812 armies, added the Spanish Napoleonic army to the equation and decided on a reasonably sized expansion to the Carlist armies.

 

The end result is that what I expected to be quiet-ish year has been my busiest year for many years. What is different about this year is that the size of the result is not skewed by the usual high proportion of scratch built items since those have only accounted for only 11% of the 2018 total. The bulk of the result has come from painted figures.

 

The 2018 year total landed on 13,060 painting points based the formula of 5 points for a foot figure, 10 points for a cavalry figure or piece of equipment and 10 points for every hour of scratch building. That is 2,330 points above the 2017 total of 10,730. All up 1,486 foot figures, 372 mounted figures, 34 guns, 19 pieces of equipment and 34 scratch built items were completed.

 

I worked on nine projects during the course of the year, five of which were completed in their entirety, three still have items to complete and one (the scratch built items) is a constant work in progress. I also suspended the Swedish Napoleonic project and introduced the Carlist War expansion in its place.

 

The Completed Projects:

 

The Egyptian Campaign of 1801 had three sub-groups:

• French in Egypt expansion which counted 208 foot figures, 27 mounted figures, 6 guns and 1 limber             

• British in Egypt which counted 390 foot figures, 33 mounted figures, 6 guns and 6 limbers

• Ottoman Turks in Egypt which counted 74 foot figures and  48 mounted figures

 

The French 1812-13 project was the biggest project by far this year and counted 507 foot figures, 206 mounted figures and 13 guns.

 

The War of 1812 Project (originally targeted as an American force only, but which has also absorbed some British artillery and cavalry, plus a stack of Woodlands indians) was completed with 70 foot figures, 6 mounted figures and five guns.

 

The Ongoing Projects:

 

The Crimean War British Heavy Brigade has been started, but issues with supply persist so only 12 mounted figures were completed, while 18 are outstanding.

 

The Spanish Napoleonic army is well under way with phase one, the 1805-1808 portion, complete with 170 foot figures, 18 mounted and two guns painted. The 1809-1810 portion that will make up phase two will start in February.

 

The Carlist War expansion has started but only 61 foot figures, 22 mounted and 2 guns are finished. The remaining 72 foot figures will be finished in 2019.

 

Constant Work in Progress

The never-ending scratch building section has seen 34 pieces completed including the Egyptian Village, the War of 1812 Blockhouse, the Maori village, some Indian lodges, the basing of a bunch of palm trees, the two of six Napoleonic fortress guns and included the completion of two 54mm figures.

 

So to the statistics:

 

 

The Current Year

 

So what does 2019 hold? Well it DEFINITELY will not be as high a count as the year just gone. The plan is:

• Finish the projects in hand – Carlist expansion, Spanish Napoleonic, Crimean War Heavy Brigade

• Work on a Swedish Napoleonic force

• A small number of British units for use in the early Peninsular war and Napoleonic coastal operations.

 

The rest of the year is to be given over to another project, that I shall discuss later, and playing games.

 

Speaking of games played, the count was 23, one down on target and was broken down as follows:

• 6 Napoleonic (3 in western Europe, 2 in Egypt and 1 in the Russian winter)

• 4 American Civil War

• 3 WWI (2 Europe 1914 and 1 East Africa)

• 2 Medieval

• 1 each, Russo-Japanese, War of Spanish Succession, Carlist War, French and Indian, Austro-Prussian, WWII, American War of Independence, English Civil War

 

This year’s goal is to get above 24 games.

 

New Year greetings are delayed this year because we headed off shore to Fiji to see out the year. Four days were spent in and around the pool where the two biggest decisions of the day were whether to have the pork belly bites or the burger for lunch and whether to wash it all down with a Heiniken or a Fiji Bitter...my decision in most cases was the former food type and the latter refreshment...as can be seen in part below (some veteran readers of this blog might think that they have seen a similar image last year and they would be right, but that image was taken on Christmas Day 2017 and this one was taken on Monday, just gone...and the glass in this instance has a little less amber liquid contained within).

Despite the threat of rain on a couple of days New Year's Eve was hot (32 deg C) and sunny and a big evening was planned. We had an early dinner with a seven course degustation menu at the resort's signature restaurant then returned to the pool where the night's fesitivities were to be held to find that four evil flamingoes had landed in the pool - one of which can be seen casting its evil beady eye on our position by the pool.

 

The night was one of fun, music, midnight madness in the pool and culminated in a huge fireworks display. 

We are home now to recover for a few days before going back to work on Monday.

Happy New Year to all!