It’s the New Year….Wahoooo!

🍾   HAPPY NEW YEAR!   🎉

It has got to be better than last year, right? Or better than the last three years for that matter.

Reflecting on the year just passed it has been remarkably productive hobby-wise with eleven projects worked on, five of which were carried over from last year. 

The carry over projects were:

• The Franco-Prussian War Prussians
• The American Civil War dismounted cavalry*
• The Swedish Napoleonic*
• The Great Paraguayan War*
• The terrain tiles*

New projects were:

• French AWI*
• American AWI*
• Franco-Prussian War French
• Russian Napoleonic cavalry expansion*
• Prussian Napoleonic cavalry expansion
• Aztecs

Seven of those projects (marked * above) have been seen through to their conclusion…well as much as any wargaming project has a conclusion.

Broken down the projects were made up as follow:

Consolidated Points by Project		%		Item Count by Project						Yearly Totals
Project	Points			Foot	Mtd	Guns	EQ	Scratch		Year	Total	Variance %
FPW Prussian	3150	27		468	73	8	0
Russian Napoleonic	1025	9		17	90	4	0			2014	5205	-
Great Paraguayan War	630	5		64	12	11	8			2015	5843	12.26
AWI American	1355	12		237	9	5	3			2016	12125	107.51
American Civil War	215	2		21	5	6	0			2017	10730	-11.51
AWI French	885	8		155	10	1	0			2018	13060	21.71
Swedish Napoleonic	2130	19		382	15	7	0			2019	12140	-7.04
Scratch Built Items	1070	9		0	0	0	0	40		2020	7990	-34.18
Aztec	150	1		30	0	0	0			2021	11715	46.62
FPW French	270	2		54	0	0	0			2022	11510	-1.75
Prussian Napoleonic	630	5		0	63	0	0
	11510	100		1428	277	42	11	40

I almost matched last year’s count, in fact in terms of the total number of figures completed I was slightly ahead since last year’s total featured a large proportion of scratch built items.

Graphically the output looks like this:

In terms of numbers of games the count was also down, from 18 games last year to 14 this year. For me the cause of the downturn in games was the result of three factors: a complex year at work, COVID restrictions at the start of the year, then health issues with one of our hosts. The result was that in the first six months of the year I played only four games (and none between mid-January and mid-May).

As for 2023, I have only two projects on the books: a small expansion of the Russian Napoleonic infantry (half a dozen battalions of grenadiers) and the completion of the Franco-Prussians. Of the latter there are only three regiments of hussars, two horse batteries and some generals to do for the Prussians, but the French really can’t be started until the plastic infantry are released.

Outside of those two projects I have no inspiration for new armies and I certainly do not need any further expansion to existing collections. I have said it before (pretty much every year for the last five years at least) that storage is now a real issue and after adding another 1,700 figures this year the issue is even worse. I did make moves to address this over a year ago by preparing to sell off my old Foundry French and Prussian armies for 1870, but I got distracted…must look at that more seriously…so if anyone is interested in 500+ Prussians and 250+ French let me know! 

I think this year will be one to concentrate on gaming rather than collecting.