Ending 2016 on a High Note

I haven't gotten much done on the painting front lately - I'm waiting on a set of magnetic bases to attach my Teutonic Knights to before I go whole hog painting them up.  I did get two more figures assembled since last post - my general and Army Standard Bearer.  I've got some paint on them now too, but I'm holding off on showing them until they're complete and I can post them to the Painting Challenge.

general on the viewer's left, Standard Bearer on the right.

All I'll show you is the freehand I've done on the general's shield, as well as my reference image:

While I haven't been doing much painting, I did, however, fulfill a long-time dream of mine this week, and I'm going to count that as ending 2016 on a high note.

I played a full, army-level wargame for the first time ever this past Wednesday - something I've wanted to do since, oh, I started high school, back in the Olden Days of Yore.  At the time we had a Games Workshop store and Warhammer 6th Edition was rolling out - I had no idea there were other games besides Warhammer and 40K, but it didn't matter because back then I had so little income that I couldn't afford to build an army.  

Wednesday I got to play Warhammer Ancient Battles (second edition) at one of the local game stores - not my primary locale of Just Games, but Boldo's Armory, a smaller store catering more to wargamers.  They have a Warhammer night every other week and I was invited to come experience a demo game.  

I borrowed a medieval Polish army and sat down across the table from Daniel, who had brought a Holy Roman Empire force.  Boldo watched over us, pointing out useful tactics to me or explaining points of the rules.  I didn't think to take any pictures so this won't be a full AAR, but let me just say that my dice were hot that night - and Daniel's were decidedly not, especially when it came to Panic Tests.  Enough of his army routed off the table to give me the victory.  All in all, the game - with 2800 points and around 100 miniatures on each side - took about two hours to play through to its conclusion.  

Unsurprisingly, I'm eager to play again, and my big project for January and February is going to be finishing my Teutonic Knights army so I can play with my own figures instead of borrowing off someone else longer than I need to.  Currently my plan is to end 2016 with the assembly of my second unit of mounted knights and maybe ring in 2017 with a unit of dismounted knights.  For anything less than a 3000 point game I just have two more units left to purchase, so I'm feeling pretty good.  

And with that, I'm going offline until 2017.  Hope everyone has an enjoyable New Year's Eve and see you next year.