2012 end of year report part 2 - what I actually did

What I actually did, in a nutshell, was had a ball!

Tournaments and events:

• The WAB GT with my army of Brigantes (using the AoA2 British Tribes list), and came dead last. Not that I minded, as I had a great time and met a bunch of great people. Still considering whether to enter next year, as I'm rather developing an allergy to last-minute paint jobs on scads of plastic figures. I could use the Brigantes again, as they're legal for the period, or I'd have to assemble a bunch of Greeks or finally get my Parthian army built. We'll see.
• Two different WAB days at Eye of the Storm run by Scrivs and Tom - one an Age of Arthur day, one El Cid. Both brilliant fun.
• A weekend in Ayton with the guys from WD3, for one of Henry Hyde's big sprawling imaginations battles. Great fun, but I confess I am horribly, horribly behind on the in-character blog for my army. Still debating next year - again, I'd need a new force as we're changing settings.
• Took a Later Saxon Kingdoms army to Axes 2012 at the Rushden club in August - again, great people, fun session. After the first round I was at the dizzy heights of table 1, before discovering the hard way where the meat of an Indian army is relegated me to mid-table.
• Entered the local interclub tournament, playing WAB doubles with Grahame - we came a decent and enjoyable second, the club came... next to last, IIRC
• Bretwalda, our club's own Age of Arthur day. This would appear to have been a resounding success :D

Wargaming at the club and generally:

• I guess the main thing that happened in 2012 (which probably is responsible for several other rule sets not getting explored) is that I discovered the Too Fat Lardies' many and excellent sets of rules, specifically I Ain't Been Shot Mum and Dux Britanniarum. The latter not only gave the club a chance to have Rich Clarke himself come demonstrate the rules, but allowed Andy Hawes and I to run a two-player campaign which has generated some fantastic evenings, as well as allowed me to exercise my talent for writing fiction. As far as IABSM goes, I've umpired various demo games down the club (after playing a couple with Gavin), and expect to do more in 2013. For what it's worth, Christmas Eve marked the first anniversary of me discovering TFL.
• Carl ran an ECW campaign using WECW and Tinker Fox, which was great fun (despite the number of evenings on which all we did was move tokens on the maps). We also refought Edgehill and Cropredy Bridge with WECW, and a huge all-day game of the First Battle of Newbury with Pike and Shotte.
• AndyB ran a WAB campaign set in about 100AD, which seems to have been on hold since one or two of the players had intrusions of Real Life. We're due a final battle sometime :D
• We (as a club) ran a participation game ("Pyramid of Peril") at Hammerhead and Eastern Front - at the former we won best participation game. 
• Gavin ran a computer-guided Peninsular campaign, which was definitely interesting. It fizzled a bit to a halt, but we're hoping to pick up with a new version of the software and a fresh start next year.
• The usual collection of one-off games of Saga, Op: Squad, WAB and the like. 

Army building, painting etc:

• Finished my 28mm Brigantes army.
• Started and finished a 28mm Age of Arthur Early Saxon army for WAB, which has also seen service as Later Saxons, a Saga warband, and lately Dux Britanniarum. Been having fun painting character figures for the latter, too. I blame Andy :D
• Started and finished a 28mm El Cid WAB army.
• Started a 15mm US WW2 company for IABSM. No-one to blame but myself for this, although I could stretch to blaming Neil and Rich for one particular Meeples and Miniatures podcast.
• Started making terrain. Looking forward to doing some more of this, as I seem to be pretty OK at it.

Blogging and online:

• I seem to have got the hang of this blogging lark - at least, the traffic stats have gone through the roof this year (somewhere around 45,000 of the total page views happened in 2012). Part of it, I hope, is due to some of the series I've been working on, some due to hopefully finding good places to plug appropriate posts, and hopefully some is because I can string two coherent sentences together in an entertaining, informative and/or useful manner.
• I'm now hosting the club website and forum.

Tomorrow, some thoughts on the changes, wargaming-wise, in my hobby over 2012.