Belated Happy New Year everyone!
It’s that time of the year once again where everyone likes to reflect on ourselves and make new year resolutions that most wont meet. But isn’t seeing how long until you give up half of the fun?
Last year was the first time I did this on the blog, with a post that was mostly about the hobby and I closed it with a couple of lines about the blog itself. As this year I want to look back on 2015 and also make new resolutions, both for the hobby and the blog I’ve decided to split it in two posts. One, to avoid a possibly really long article and two, so the people that are only interested on one aspect can easily avoid the other.
Let’s start with the Hobby then.
Last year I decided on four projects as my resolutions: 1500 points of Imperial Fists with Imperial Guard, 1000 points of Bolt Action Germans, a 4 point Saga warband and 1 to 3 500 point starter armies to go Back to the Void.
How much was I able to achieve? Zero, zip, zilch, nada.
But that shouldn’t be a surprise as in my first quarter review I already declared that the only project with a chance to be completed was my Bolt Action germans. And even that I wasn’t able to finish (but I’ll resume work on it!).
So, my 2016 New Year Hobby Resolutions instead of paint 100 marines I’ll go for more open things, geared towards having a better hobby life.
My main resolution, as Wil Wheaton likes to say, is to play more games. And I’ll try as hard as I can to play with painted miniatures.
Last year I opened the resolutions talking about how I should buy less miniatures, specially with the Kickstarters I had waiting to arrive. Well, this year things haven’t changed.
I won’t try to fool myself and say that I have to buy less stuff. Buying lots of miniatures isn’t wrong, what’s wrong is painting few of them. So this year I want to keep track of how many miniatures I buy and how many I paint. Trying to paint att least as much as I buy. And if that doesn’t work, maybe I’ll decide to buy as much as I paint?
I’ve decided that I’ll count the miniatures when I get them. That means that all the Kickstarters that I recieve during 2016, even if they’re from Kickstarters already finished will count. And I’ll count all the miniatures, even if they’re from boardgames. Lucky I got part of my Zombiecide: Black Plague and the second wave of the Kings of War Kickstarter late 2015 or I would have started already on the red.
Related to that, I’d like to improve the speed I paint at while producing models I’m happy with.
And, I’d also like to reduce the huge amount of half painted miniatures I have. Finish what you start! In the end, everything is related. I’ve noticed that if I’m working in a miniature project for more then 2 or 3 weeks it’s very likelly that I’ll start with something else. That’s why I want to improve my speed and also try not to work on more than 3 models or so at once. Painting a 10 man squad at once? It doesn’t work for me.
Lots of things already, but I think I was too lax last year in keeping track of all my hobby stuff and I believe that this way I’ll be more aware and I might think twice before getting into a new project thinking it’ll be easy and/or fast.
I don’t want to bore you with monthly reports, but I’ll blog about it quarterly. Keeping track of all of this and seeing how many projects I’ve been able to close, which ones continue open and how many new ones I’ve opened.
The big loser in all of this? Warhammer 40,000. I haven’t played it in a long time and I don’t think I will. Even if I doubt I’ll play 40k I want to help the Dark Angels during the ETL as much as I can. Las ETL the DA placed second to last, and I want to help avoid such a bad result. So I’ll start building things here and there to have as many options as possible ready to paint once the ETL begins.