Looking back on 2012

It's the time of the season for bloggers to reflect on the previous 12 months.  As the Dreadnought glides through the last hours of 2012, I thought I'd share my take on how the year turned out for me, gaming-wise.  I had a number of wargaming goals for the past year, and I was able to carry out quite a few:

• I attended two game conventions, GuadaComaCon and MillenniumCon, and I ran games of Star Navy at both these cons.
• I ran a starship campaign with strategic moves from online admirals and battles fought on my gaming table with local commanders (which kind of fizzled out after the last big battle).
• I released my own starship combat game, Kill Radius, which even got linked to on Starship Combat News.
• Although I didn't organize a gameday, I did get to play in a Hordes of the Things campaign.
• I painted and based plenty of spaceships, including a new fleet.
• I completed a forest's worth of miniature trees for land combat games.

Not on my list, but a personal goal was to blog on a regular basis.  You're now reading my 288th post of the year, giving me an average of 24 posts per month.  I continued to get my D&D fix with adventuring in the Hill Cantons.  I also got in plenty of gaming with Ed the Two Hour Wargames Guy, who (unfortunately for me, but great for him) moved to Arizona in the fall.  All in all, a great year for gaming.

Of course, we all start out the new year with good intentions, and there were a number of objectives that I didn't come close to finishing:

• I didn't even start working on a 28mm scale game board for Search for the Emperor's Treasure.
• I purchased the materials to build a 3'x4' battle board for HotT, Song of Blades and Heroes, and other games, but they're still in the shrinkwrap.
• While I bought waaaaay to many new figures in 2012, I didn't complete even one new army for Hordes of the Things. 
• So much for my idea of scratchbuilding structures for 1:300 sci-fi games--guess it's time to throw out all the plastic lids, old ballpoint pen parts, and other junk I'd collected for that purpose. 

I would have liked to have gamed more in 2012, but I'm sure everyone else would, too.  So I can't complain too much about my gaming accomplishments for the past year.  What about y'all?  Did you accomplish everything (or at least something) you set out to do?

Kill Radius now on SCN

I see my homebrew starship combat game Kill Radius has made it onto the list of Web Games at that wonderful resource for SF tabletop gamers, Starship Combat News. 

I'm honored to find my rules listed with such notable games as GOBS and A Sky Full of Ships.  My thanks to SCN's proprietor, Dean Gunderson, for sharing the link to my game with visitors to his site and for offering spaceship gamers such a great resource. 

Sunday Starships: Kill Radius

I think everyone who plays wargames also has the urge, deep down, to be a game designer.  I'm no different, and I started working on a set of rules for the kind of starship combat game I'd like to play: simple, fast, and a minimum of recordkeeping.

I came up with Kill Radius: Quick and Dirty Starship Combat to scratch that itch.  The game is short, but not as short as I intended.  I originally wanted to keep the rules to two letter-sized pages (or one front and back), but it grew to almost four pages.

You can use any starship miniatures in your collection, but you do need a hex mat.  Recordkeeping is fairly simple--you can fit a whole fleet on one sheet of paper.  Ship design and combat is abstract, but I thought that was a good tradeoff in return for ease of play.  Kill Radius still needs some work, but when I playtested it last year, we had 30 ships on the table, from destroyers to dreadnoughts, and we played five turns in about three hours. I've revised it since then to make it play a little faster.

It keeps the vector movement system that most people I game with have said they enjoy.  I like the way maneuvering works in Kill Radius--you have to think where you want to be not just one turn, but several turns ahead.  In last year's playtest, we started out on opposite ends of the table's long axis, closed within a couple of turns, then drifted past one another, exchanging fire all the while.  Of course, then we both had several ships drift out of range (and even off the board), so we ended the game.

I have posted a preliminary version the rules on the Kill Radius web page, so take a look and tell me what you think.

Gaming goals for 2012

I don't make New Year's resolutions on this blog--or anywhere else, for that matter--but I do feel like sharing some gaming-related objectives that I hope to accomplish over the next 12 months.

GAMING: Before I get into specifics, let me note that I plan to keep up the game playing in general.  It's kind of difficult (and gasoline-intensive) when everyone else I game with lives 35-40 miles away, but I want to take part in more wargames, as well as continue to campaign in the Hill Cantons.  Anyway, here are my specific gaming goals for 2012:

• Attend at least two Texas gaming conventions
• Run at least one starship combat scenario at a gaming convention (Starfleet Wars or Galactic Knights)
• Run at least one local starship campaign (Starfleet Wars or Galactic Knights)
• Help organize at least one local Hordes of the Things gameday
• Release Kill Radius, the starship combat rules I'm working on

MINIS & TERRAIN: Like most gamers, I tend to purchase miniatures faster than I can paint them.  I probably won't be able to break that habit.  I am, however, going to set a realistic goal and get some projects finished (please note, the items on this list involve stuff I've already purchased):

• EDIT: (Thanks, Chris for the reminder) Scratchbuild an entire 28mm scale game board for Search for the Emperor's Treasure
• Base and paint at least one new fleet of spaceships
• Base and paint at least one new Hordes of the Things army
• Build a 3' x 4' battle board for use with HotT, Song of Blades and Heroes, and other games
• Get all my new miniature trees ready for the tabletop
• Scratch-build some structures for 1/300 (6mm) sci-fi armor games like OGRE/GEV or Future War Commander--if not, then throw away all the crap I collected for that purpose

I have more projects kicking around in my head, but I figure this list here is at least somewhat realistic, even though it may be overly optimistic.  What's on your to-do list for 2012?

Another good day of gaming

Another great day for spaceship action, as I got in two lengthy games this afternoon.  Sting52jb from the Star Ranger message boards had contacted me about playing some games while he was in town, so we spent Friday and Saturday pushing around our models at Dragon's Lair.  We weren't able to play Colonial Battlefleet like we had planned because we didn't have the printouts we needed, so instead we tried another set of rules--Kill Radius, by yours truly.  It was fun, and I'll share more details at a later date.

We also got in a large game of Full Thrust, about 3200 points per side.  Of course my camera battery died, so I thought I was out of luck, until I remembered my phone can take pictures.  The photos aren't as good as with a regular camera, but I'm just happy I had something to get pics.  I had a blast playing FT, and I really dig the concept of damage threshold checks and rolling buckets o' dice.  Again, I'll post additional pics and a writeup in the near future. 

All in all, another good time down at the local game store--and a fitting subject for my 100th blog post!  Thanks for reading, everyone.