2015 Year in Review

by | Jan 3, 2016

This year has been a busy one.  Both in terms of gaming and life in general.  A lot of highs and one gigantic low at the end of the year.

Here's a brief run down of what occurred this year.


  • Still Silver in League but at least ended at Silver 3 instead of Silver 4 like last year.
  • Started a Street Fighter 4 club in the school I teach at.
  • Finally got into the X-Wing Miniatures game
  • Brother got married so we took a trip to Japan to be at his wedding.
  • Father passed away just before Christmas.
Except for that last point, year went well.

On the Video-Game Front
Played lots of X-Box One games (Finished Tomb Raider and Arkham Knight but still working through Assassin's Creed Unity and Dragon Age Inquisition).  Penny loves playing on the X-Box as well mostly because of Disney Infinity.  She has a lot of the Marvel characters and we picked up a bunch of Star Wars characters when they were launched earlier this year.  Her ability to build things in the Toy Box is very impressive.  We also picked up Star Wars: Battlefront on Boxing Day and it has further fueled our Star Wars filled holiday season.  Penny likes having hero battles on Hoth against me especially when she gets to be Darth Vader.

Still Silver in League of Legends but at least I ended at Silver 3 instead of Silver 4 like last season.  Been practicing a lot of top lane in the off-season so I can take on more of a carry role if need be.  This has also helped me with my CS ability and I think that will be key in helping me climb out of Silver.  Whenever I got stuck in a laning role this season, I kinda sucked it up and lost it for our team.  With better CSing I should be able to at least keep up and not be a liability even if I can't kill my lane opponent.

Didn't play much of FF14 after Heavensward came out.  Didn't feel like paying the price for the expansion when it was released and just let my subscription run out.  I did end up buying Heavensward over Christmas though so will be playing through it in the new year.  Looks like lots of cool content to go through with my friends.  I feel kind of embarrassed to say that the reason I wanted to start playing again was because of the outfit from the Maiden's Rhapsody event, but if you've read my other FF14 posts, I like having a cool looking character and that outfit is pretty darn cool.

Speaking of MMOs, SWTOR got a new expansion that looks really cool too and I've been wanting to get in on that as well.  I even managed to get my wife to make a character.  Haven't played yet though but making a character is the first step.  The release of The Force Awakens got my whole family in a Star Wars kind of mood this holiday.

I also inadvertently started a Street Fighter 4 club/group at the school I work at.  It all started last school year when I started doing Street Fighter Fridays for one of my classes.  The way the schedule worked, one of my classes was always last class of the day on Friday.  That particular block is always very lazy no matter who the students are so rather than fight them to work, I opted to use the last 15 minutes as a Street Fighter 4 competition.  The team that won the small tournament would earn points for the Arocena Cup (my own version of the House Cup seen in Harry Potter).

As a result, this year some students from that class asked if they could continue this tradition which I obliged though not on Fridays.  Instead it would be during our 'study' block every other Wednesday (the study block was meant to have students come to teachers for help but no one ever did that so students just used the block to wander around the halls, fill the library or do some other non-productive activity).  Since then, the Wednesday morning tournament has gotten quite competitive with many of the students trying to get better so they can beat me on my Zangief (my best character so far).  If any of my students read this, it won't take that much to get better than me, haha!

On the Tabletop Front

Completely ditched Games Workshop and headed over to Fantasy Flight Games and their X-Wing miniatures space combat game.  An absolutely awesome game that I've written about previously.  In the past 2 months Penny and I have accumulated the following

Penny's Rebels
  • 1 Millenium Falcon
  • 1 YT-2400 Freighter
  • 1 HWK-290
  • 1 Y-Wing
  • 2 X-Wings
  • 1 T70 X-Wing
  • 1 A-Wing
  • 1 E-Wing
  • 1 K-Wing
  • 1 B-Wing
My Imperials
  • 4 TIE Fighters
  • 2 TIE/FO Fighters
  • 2 TIE Defenders
  • 1 TIE Advanced
  • 1 TIE Bomber
  • 1 Firespray-31
  • 1 VT-49 Decimator
  • 1 Gozanti Assault Carrier
Quite a large amount spent and I feel it's worth every penny.  The great thing about all those purchases is that I don't need all of them to play.  Most 100 point standard games require 4 ships or less so the lists we can make can be quite different each game.  I probably could have built an army for one faction in Warhammer or Warhammer 40k with what I spent buying both fleets but I'd have fewer options, I'd have to paint everything and the rules just suck for both systems compared to X-Wing.  Plus Penny can understand the rules for X-Wing and she loves the universe.

Penny has also gotten old enough to play board games.  We started with the traditional games like Snakes and Ladders, Candyland and Trouble but I got so frustrated/annoyed by the lack of skill and general mindlessness of those games (all those games are so random, just dice rolls) that I showed Penny other games that I thought she could understand and required more thought to boot.

First was Tsuro.  Very fun game and first time I saw it played was on Tabletop back in Season 1.  Penny loved it and we play it fairly often.  The rules are so simple and it teaches her forethought and spacial awareness as she needs to be able to visualize the path that her dragon will take as well as mine in order to successfully win.

Second was Tokaido.  This game we actually played at Game Quest one afternoon (Game Quest has board games they let people try in store) and Penny understood the rules well enough that we bought it.  Since then it's become one of her favourites.  The only tweak we make in the game is let her always be the little girl character.

Third game I introduced to her this year was Forbidden Island.  I found this game randomly in some kids store and looked it up on Tabletop.  The rules were simple enough and after a few hiccups, Penny and I were able to beat the game.  We did lose a lot though as Penny kept sandbagging one of the not so useful pieces of land because it looked like the Tree of Harmony from My Little Pony,

All in all a good year for gaming in our family although we didn't get a chance to cross anything from the Civ 5 World Wonder tour despite being in Japan in the spring (not enough time to see Himeji Castle)