Sunday, 11 January 2026

Looking at the year ahead

With so much of 2025 taking up with preparing to move, moving and reorganising following the move with most of my gaming paraphernalia being in storage for months, I didn’t think a retrospective of the year would be either long or interesting. Consequently I’m just going to focus on my plans for 2026. So here are a few projects I intend to work on (but will, no doubt, be distracted from in due course!) [for an explanation of the Stages see my Project Categorisation post]:

Guards of Traitor’s Toll (Stage 3) 

I was vaguely aware of this game from Grey for Now Games before but paid more attention to it over the Christmas break and, then convinced, took advantage of the North Star Boxing Day sale to dive in.

I am still waiting for the bulk of the order to arrive but have the starter set and have assembled one building so far. Assembling the figures and painting them is yet to come though!


3mm Eastern Front (Stage 2) 

Having picked up a decent selection of Oddzial Osmy kit before Magister Militum closed down I have the ingredients for this project already. The rules are likely to be either Rommel or Eisenhower both from Sam Mustafa.

In addition to the minis (and they are very mini too!), I have the bases and materials for the terrain including some 2mm Eastern Front buildings from the Brigade Models range.


15mm WW1 (Stage 4) / RCW (Stage 2)

With my Serbians within sight of completion, I am now looking at the pile of unpainted metal I have for the other nations - Germany, France, Britain and the Ottoman Empire - as I have the Russians and Austro-Hungarians done already. 

An offshoot of this, which may get moved up the queue, is Russian Civil War, as I can use my Imperial Russians for Whites (with suitable new command stands) and have the Red Army figures in the aforementioned pile too. Of course, I may well use a different rule set for these games with the venerable Triumph of the Will from the Too Fat Lardies being the most probable.
 

28mm Operation Sealion (Stage 3)

This project stalled a little while ago so I need to pick up where I left off (initially finishing my invasion barges and pillboxes) and then some unusual (improvised) items.

The first game is, perhaps unsurprisingly, going to be the initial landing and I have plans for at least another two games following that. With Chain of Command likely to be the rule set of choice.

28mm Pulp (Stage 4)

I have a number of new sub-projects to work on including Tomb of the Serpent (Egyptian), China Station and The Raid on Innsmouth. I have most of the things I need and just need to do some construction and painting now.

15mm By Fire and Sword (Stage 3)

This one mostly needs basing and finishing touches before it can hit the table so it will just be a matter of when it gets prioritised.

 

28mm Rif War and Great Syrian Revolt (Stage 4)

Some minor completion activities and these will be ready for the table - I suspect the biggest issue will be deciding which rules to use for them.


 

 

 

Various Stage 2 Projects including 1848, Franco Prussian and 15mm Napoleonics are all moving at the pace of an asthmatic ant with some heavy shopping so don’t expect to see much here for a while!

I do also have various game ideas using existing kit so I don’t really consider these actual projects but these include 15mm ACW, 28mm 02 Hundred, 28mm Witch Hunting, 28mm Border Reivers and a few more that have temporarily slipped my mind.

So plenty to keep me busy for the year ahead!