Year in Review 2017

It's been a good year.

A triumphant return to the hobby, gaming, painting and blogging all making good progress.

There have been highs and lows though of course. Lots of excitement for the new 40k, only to have best laid plans go to waste. Partly due to best man/wedding planning and other commitments, but also just because of a general lack of time. Malifaux is a lot quicker to setup and play for starters, and rather than taking up an entire table for 40k, we can play two games of Malifaux on the same size table so no one gets left out.

Really quite pleased with some of the progress made with modelling though, just need painting and assembling of new boxes of modelling to catch up.

Planning activity for the month ahead was a double edged blade. On one hand it was a good way to see what needs doing rather than just flitting from WIP to WIP, but on the other hand it felt like a bit of a rigid way of doing things, with no variation. I don't quite know what this will look like in future iterations, but I want to combine some element of  'I want to work on this' with 'This needs finishing for X reason' to avoid burnout, while still making progress.

The end of the year had markedly less progress made than most of the rest, for a number of reasons. The aforementioned wedding/best man stuff, holidays & kitten, as well as some recent personal issues. Hopefully this week's painting progress is a good sign of things to come though :)

All in all, it's been a good year for hobbying. I might make a post about hopes for the next year but that just seems like it'll be a list of things that might not then get done, so a monthly target setting system seems a better idea.

All the best to you all for the new year and for the last time:

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty

8th Time's a Charm

There is a lot of noise and excitement at the moment about the upcoming edition of 40k. After all these years I can only say I'm skeptical. However with their recent revamp of the social media dept and engagement with the community, I can also say i'm quietly hopeful.

MY gaming buddy and I have been chatting about the sneak peaks that have been coming about about changes in the new edition, and have each agreed that if the rules are free as they are rumoured to be, then this would be a great chance for us to revamp his Thousand sons and my Space Wolves & Eldar Exodites.

I have a fair sized force of Space Wolves as pretty much a blank slate, with only a few miniatures assembled. I'm almost tempted to wait until the new rules are released in order to build these so that I can make them into useful configurations. The reality of this is more likely to be that I'll put them together as whatever looks good, and worry about it/proxy later :)

On the Exodite side of things, it all really depends on what the new rules look like as to what I should add next. I have a well rounded force with just the Wraithguard left to build, and the dragons to add weapon mounts to (and paint of course). I'd like another Wraithlord anyway even before the new dreadnought rules were teased, and I'm not convinced I want to make shining spears, or a warlock jetbike squad so I'm not sure what to do with the cold ones I have . I do want to make non-mounted warlocks and take another look at what aspect warriors I'd like to add and convert. I suspect that the merging of different Eldar into one codex will mean that I can make Wych/Howling Banshee proxies for example.

Other than that, it's quite exciting. This is the game that got me into the hobby after all, and without it I wouldn't be into roleplaying or any of the table top games I love to play and paint now. Or maybe I would, but it was definitely the top of the slippery slope I'm skiing down now :p

Resolute

I'm not a fan of resolutions, New Year ones or otherwise.

Instead I'm going to list what I've got outstanding, and what I hope to get done in the coming arbitrary time measurement :p

Malifaux
-Guild
-Ortegas. I bought the crew box for Francisco (who I then replaced with the
 limited sculpt ironically).
-Peacekeeper, Lone Marshal & Pale Rider. WIP for to long!
-Hoffman crew, on whom I've had my eye for a while.
-Lucius (see below...).

-Neverborn
-Lilith crew is progressing well to completion and hoping to get some use out
 of her on the table top this year.
-Lucius is a master that hasn't really interested me in the Guild, but it's a
 great chance to use him with my Neverborn :)
-Expansion into Titania/Zoraida/Collodi? No Idea who works well with what so
 this is a wildcard :)

-Outcasts
-Parker Barrows is cool, need I say more?

-Through The Breach
-We will be playing this in the new year so I expect to be making & paining one
 or two characters.

Warhammer 40,000
-Space Wolves
-I'll be outlining the models I have and what I plan to expand into
-I plan to assemble everything I have & then paint everything as much together
 as possible.

-Exodites
-I'd love to get this project finished and give it the time it deservers, let's see :)

-Cool Stuff
-I intend to buy models that I like in order to paint. Because why not? maybe they
 will be integrated into current projects, maybe not but that doesn't matter :)


-Hobby
-Re-think my painting/desk setup, maybe it's fine how it is, maybe I can improve
-Make a decision finally one way or the other about airbrushing, I'm not sure I can
 do it even with an extractor booth really as my desk is so far away from the window to vent it.            Deliberation required :)

-Infinity
-I have some models which I bought hoping to convince a friend of mine to play but
 this will inevitably be a painting project, so expect pictures at some point :)

-Dark Age
-I'd love to collect, paint and play this but at a push I might be able to get some
 awesome minis to paint.

-Have fun and learn/improve while doing it. Is that not why we are here after all?

I hope you all enjoy whatever way you choose to welcome in 2017, and whatever hobby related goodness you are planning on :)

Thanks for stopping by
Lofty