Shed Wars 6th Birthday

Well today is the Shed Wars blog’s 6^th Birthday - 

I for one can't believe that I have been able to keep this going for six years. 

In part that is all down to you my followers for your wonderful comments and ongoing support. As is usual for me on these events I like to look back and summarise the previous year in a short review.

Once again I’ll firstly talk about the stats and then come onto the review proper.

As you can see from the numbers below the page view count continues to rise – I want that million hit marker !

	Number of followers	Number of page views
Dec 2012	80	25000
Dec 2013	180	95000
Dec 2014	285	230000
Dec 2015	373	383000
Dec 2016 Dec 2017	387 424	578000 789500

The plague of the Russian bots seems to have abated and for the moment photobucket seems to be playing ball and honouring my limited price contract. In the event they do pull the plug I have now saved all my images and have these collated in such a way that I could relink the photos (not a job I want to do) but it is possible.

Stats over....................................

So what happened this year?

Starting back in January I decided I wanted to have a crack at 28mm/Grand Scale Napoleonics and embarked on a very arduous task to complete armies for both British and French. Over 1000 minis bought, assembled (the vast majority were plastic) and painted hit the table in September of this year

This was clearly a big investment in both time and money and although these boys have only seen action a few times II am already looking forward to when it gets warmer and more Peninsular action can take place



The painted armies were shortly followed by one of my favourite terrain settings the Peninsular Village - I cant claim to have built the original but the setting of the warbase modular buildings on my boards set these off really well

One of the biggest battles fought this year kicked off in January almost 12 months ago on the anniversary of Isandlwhana and Rorkes Drift. Shed regulars refought these actions over a Sunday. Suffice to say hundreds of zulus and some very brave redcoats

The final Zulu assault..

Mark gets the prize for wearing the Pith Helmet

True to life the British Defenders held back the hordes at Rorkes Drift - just !

The other big battle and perhaps the largest to grace the shed yet was our epic English Civil War siege game

Over 12 foot of walls keeping the Roundheads at bay....

I even managed to build some breach sections for the game...

This year I promised myself that we would try to play more games across the periods I can offer and I think we were quite successful judging from a quick look back over the last few months

for example

English Civil War  -

Frostgrave 

Muskets & Tomahawks -

VBCW 

American Civil War - 

Saga - 

10mm Napoloeonic

The Crusades

and of course who can forget Daleks versus the Afrika Korps

You have probably noticed that there is a trend going on here - the Shed is going for big grand scale 28mm battles at the moment - in the past three years I have now assembled forces for the French Indian Wars, Crusades, Zulu's, English Civil War and Napoleonics. The latest project follows the trend as I foray into the Colonial world once again with my Sudan project.

Last month I finished my Dervish army (approx 450 figures) which means I have probably painted close to 2000 x 28mm figures this year. I doubt my productivity will hit such ceilings again.

Of course these guys need an opponent so the British and Egyptian forces will hit the painting table between now and the New Year. In the meantime I am focusing on the terrain including a Sudanese city, a gun boat, some dhows and of course the river Nile.

By the time you throw in trips to the shows (Salute, Colours and Warfare) and add in the four day extravaganza known as BLAM this has been certainly a very busy year.

Next years plans are currently under wraps (OK still yet to decide)  but as they develop you will be the first to know.

As a final note I'd like to thank all those that frequent the shed for making the games such fun and to wish them and all those in the Blogosphere a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year - 

Bye for Now

Eric the Shed