So dawns 2023 after a long year of achieving a fair amount, but very little wargaming related. The house renovations are about 2/3rds done, the baby is settled in, and I once again have hobby space!

With the start of the new year, thoughts inevitably turn to projects, both current and potential new. Let’s take stock of a few existing projects first:

• Star Wars: Legion

A slow burn, but the intent is to be able to play Legion over a board representing two iconic locations, with appropriate forces – desert and ice. On the desert front, I’ve been printing some of the absolutely excellent Pilgrim City and Desert buildings from Steve O’Boyle at Corvus Games Terrain to add to the existing collection of desert terrain, which is mostly made up of pre-painted rocks from Gamemat.eu.

A 3d printed Rebel squad is my first unit for the ‘good guys’, minis from Skullforge and either Dark Fire Designs or Squamous – I forget. These will be the epitome of fast & dirty paint wise.

I really want to get a Jedha City look to this, so a few more structures will follow. I’m also considering a small Imperial encampment to be able to add to one corner. Another corner will have the edge of a docking bay. The Imperial encampment will do double duty in the desert as well.

For the ice/Hoth board, I need to add some large snow drifts, the missus wants some big ice crystals printing. I’ve got some Sarissa Precision System Infinity pods already built and earmarked for this set, they just need some interiors and final detailing – and a landing pad and scatter to bring it to life.

• Moderns

Lets start with the obvious – a lot of people’s ultramodern gaming projects took a hit last Feb. I’ve decided to take a leaf out of Michael Charge, aka ChargeDog‘s book and focus my attentions on a fictional world – I’m going to start work on my ‘Modern Day Rome’ setting however, and start fleshing out an alternate world where the empire never truly fell. This should provide a solid RPG setting as well, which is where most of the plot development will happen. This is also the setting I plan to use to develop a fast-play, platoon scale battle game based on Warhammer 40k 9th edition – though I may end up shelving that and using the ultramoderns mod for Chain of Command currently being worked on.

Also in Moderns is Vietnam (and Weird Nam/Tour of Darkness). This is a project I want to get back to, and plan to make some progress with terrain once the missus is no longer hogging the 3d Printer for her Dark Eldar city. I have WOWBuildings Vietnam set, so I’ll use that to add to my existing pair of Chiltern Models long-out of production hooches. I’ve got a small batch of jungle terrain built, but I need some more and some farmland. Troops wise I’ve got half a platoon of USMC (Empress), and a box of Rubicon VC. I’ll add a platoon of NVA (Empress) and the USMC will become a full platoon, plus transport (see the below 3d print file in prep) and a few other bits n pieces (ARVN plus SF support, perhaps).

Moderns also includes Insurgent Earth, which is a game I’m keen to play.

• WW2

This one’s quite straightforward – finish the vehicles I need for Normandy ’44, which are:

• Sdkfz 222
• Sdkfz 251/1
• 88mm gun plus prime mover
• M5A1 Stuart
• M8 Greyhound
• 2x M4 Shermans of varying flavours
• 2x M3 halftracks

All the infantry for this are complete already. I need to pick up (or print) the 88, M8, M4s and M3s – we’ll see how my foray into printing an LVTP 5 for my Vietnam project goes…

• GW Games

This is the big one. In progress currently include:

• Custodes
• Adeptus Mechanicus (including Knights)
• Leagues of Votann
• Black Templars
• Heresy – Iron Warriors
• Aeronautica Imperialis – Imperial Squadron
• Necromunda – Goliath gang

The Adeptus Mechanicus, Custodes and Iron Warriors are the furthest along in overall percentage terms, and the Goliaths are half done (but I’m damned if I can find the sprue I’ve lost!), so that complicates things in that regard.

I’m planning to use the airbrush a lot on the Templars and the Votann, so I’m hopeful of making reasonably swift progress. The Mechanicus need some reworking thanks to the recent balance updates, but I’ve not looked at that yet. The plan with the Votann is to build out to about 1850 points, and then stop to await the inevitable second wave.

Most of the terrain I will ever need for 40k is done. The big one terrain wise is adding stuff for Necromunda – and I’m still debating this one. My current plan for Ash Wastes involves using a lot of the desert stuff mentioned for Legion plus a set of the Sector Fronteris, and add some of the newer Necromunda sets (the fuel tanks, market etc) and half a dozen shipping containers. I think it’ll look great. For more traditional Necromunda, it’ll be 3d printing again. A while ago I printed a couple of square feet of Corvus Games ‘chemworks’ set, and now I have a printer I can run overnight (much quieter), I plan to get back to this. This is likely to be back half of the year – in the meantime, I’ll just use the tiles or borrow a friend’s completed set of Boarding Action/Into the Dark terrain.

• Other Stuff

Inevitably other things will creep in. I think I’ve hit ‘mid life crisis’ point as I’ve begun pining for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (admittedly top-quality STLs being available isn’t helping this any), and I’d like to play some 15mm WW3/Team Yankee.

Let’s see how well the plan survives contact with the ultimate enemy – time!