2025 Hobby Goals

 A freezing day here in the northeast US.  A really good day (and weekend) to huddle at the hobby desk and get some painting done. I hopefully will have some pictures to share in the next few days. 

I have been looking at my outstanding pile of shame and trying to set some hobby goals for the coming year. I think I have settled on three game systems and their related painting and modeling opportunities. Here they are in no particular order:

Cold War Commander - I have a really good start on this project with diverse units already painted for both NATO and WARPAC forces. I still have a lot of unpainted stuff including FRG, Americans and round-out both French and Czechs. We have been working on rules revisions/modifications of the base Cold War Commanders v2 rules.  Our club definitely has an approach to simplify the extraneous parts of the rules to make them more playable within our usual three to four hour gaming timeframe. Our club has never really had a set of rules for anything more ‘modern’ than WWII so I’m hoping that these CWCv2 rules will give us the opportunity to expand our wargaming experience. 

Chocolate Box Wars - As you can see from my recent posts, I’m currently working very hard on getting my first two CBW armies completed. I have the base forces done and now I’m adding some extras to have the ability to field four-player games and use different upgrades within my forces. I’m also looking at adding two other armies (ACW Confederates and Maximilian French in Mexico) during the year. I really enjoy playing these simple, yet challenging rules and I want to bring other members of the club into this gaming experience. 

One-Hour Skirmish Rules - This is a pretty simple, card-driven rules set that can be used for many different eras. My Friend AJ and I are working on specific rule changes for WWII era gaming. We have made a few tweaks and are now just waiting for schedules to work out for a test four-player game. Stay tuned for a battle report(s) later this month. Ed M. also has made some modifications to play the rules in his Age of Rifles timeframe (1850’s to 1880’s).  We have all agreed that the rules can be played as written for everything Ancients to Napoleonics. So, there will be a wide range of gaming opportunities with these rules. I have several additions that I can make to my WWII collection including Afrika Korps and 8th Army, early-war German and British and a couple of late-war German units.  I also have some Pony Wars US cavalry which I can use for the AoR era. Setting up some scenarios will give me an excuse to get these forces painted and on the table.

So there you have it, my gaming goals for 2025. Let’s see how things go.