It’s time to reflect upon this year.

2018 was a bit of a game changer (pun intended). I made a conscious decision to avoid roleplaying since I had felt a major burnout on that subject. I have been roleplaying for about 25 years so it is a big part of who I am and how I perceive myself. And I have to admit that taking that break has been one of the best ideas I have ever had.

Since roleplaying has been my main way to see my friends I felt that I wanted to fill in that void. And luckily our Guild has a vast number of players willing to play different games.

The year began with Shadespire. We played it with Santtu quite actively up until our annual Guild meeting in May. I bought every single team and really enjoyed getting back to miniatures and painting. In the end Shadespire wasn’t enough for me so I dusted my old Fantasy Battle armies and decided to delve into Age of Sigmar.

In short this has been the essence of this year. Getting back to miniature wargaming has felt great. Especially since I was able to secure a temp job at our local gaming store and host a slow-grow campaign there (I should have written about that already…). I have built armies of Sylvaneth, Wanderers, Beasts of Chaos, and Spiderfang for Age of Sigmar. Beasts were ready before their new Battletome was published and Spiderfang have been ready for some time too (their book comes out next weekend). So I have high hopes my wood elves/wanderers will eventually get their own book as well.

But this year hasn’t all been just miniatures.

Since my son was born in 2010 I took a break from boardgaming since I simply didn’t have the time for everything I wanted to do. This year I have been playing more board games than in ages. I fell in love with Arkham Horror LCG and bought Rise of Tribes and Fireball Island (reviews upcoming). I have also played a lot of “classic” games like Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne and learnt about myself and what I like in board games. Which has also taught me some things about myself that I didn’t now.

I played through both new Assassin’s Creeds Origin and Odyssey (liked Origins story and world more than Odyssey that had better gameplay) as well as Far Cry 5. I have started Spider-Man and Call of Cthulhu also but neither stuck and I haven’t returned back to them after the initial sessions.

I have still played quite a lot of Magic the Gathering. I tried to get my gaming group to get excited about Brawl, Pauper, Cube, etc. In essence anything else than Commander since I feel that format has just completely failed to spark my interest this year. I have also come into the conclusion that maybe I should just not bother with the game since Wizards of the Coast keeps informing me that “maybe this game is just not for you” in those exact (I think?) words. I was really excited to get to play more standard in Arena but apparently they decided against it by not releasing it for iOS.

Luckily Fantasy Flight Games published their new card game Keyforge and even though I haven’t had the chance to play it as many times I would have liked it seems to be a more casual game I would enjoy. It might not have the deck building option that I like about in MTG but on the other hand it doesn’t have the deck building option which is a good thing. At least it will be when I finally find the deck I want to play.

But in the end I also got back to roleplaying. We started a new season (set in the 1990s) of Eldritch Sigils this fall and though it has been great it has also brought up the frustration of about scheduling the game dates that just weren’t that much of a thing with other kind of games.

I have no real idea what 2019 will bring to my gaming table. We still have that current 90s season to wrap up and have discussed about new season to be set in the ancient Egypt but anything isn’t set in stone on these. I will host a Path to Glory league at my LGS and will most likely try to host a Keyforge event as well. I might even try to find the time to visit Ropecon this year.

All that matters however is that I still get to sit down with my friends and play some good games in their excellent company. And I hope that you all get to do the same thing!

Keep on gaming!