Friday 31 December 2010

Happy New Year!

OK, so it's a few hours early but I very much doubt I'm going to be sober enough to make this post later on!

Christmas has been and gone and so, naturally, I've not picked up a paintbrush for about a fortnight. I did manage to finish the Greek hero for DWP's Advent Challenge, but I've been unable to take pictures of the finished product.

That is, until now! Santa was extremely helpful this year; I am now the proud owner of a brand new digital camera, which means I can snap away to my heart's content. Hopefully I'll have a picture of the Greek ready to display in the next couple of days (depending on how long the hangover lasts...)


Of course, tomorrow is the first day of 2011 and with the new year come new resolutions. I made just two hobby-related resolutions last year; to finish 2000pts worth of Night Goblins and to finish painting my Human and Orc Blood Bowl teams. Needless to say, I didn't succeed with either of these (although my Human team would be finished by now if it weren't for the fact that I added another 6 players which I've only half-completed so far...)

2011 will hopefully be more successful, both in terms of real life and hobby related goals. Here's the hobby targets:

1/ Finish painting my Human and Amazon Blood Bowl Teams
A carry over from last year, with the addition of the Amazons. I've had the Amazons for nearly two years now and other than cleaning them up they've been sat in the box they came in. It's about time I got both of these finished

2/ Add more subs to my Orc Blood Bowl and finish painting them
Sort of tied in to target 1, I want to expand my Orc team as well as finish painting it. My human team has 18 players available, so I'd like to give that added flexibility to my Orc team as well. Eventually I'll do the same for the Amazons as well...

3/ Finish painting all the Skaven figures I currently own (Doomwheel, 8 Rat Ogres, 120 Clanrats, 4 Weapon Teams, 6 characters)
There's been talk of a Skaven-Night Goblin campaign amongst a few of the gamers at the club, with the purchase of several IoB boxsets. Between us we've got tonnes of goblins and rat-things to get going, we just need to finish painting them all. Mine are mostly assembled and sprayed, which is a good start

4/ Make a post on my blog at least once every week
Being as I started this blog with the intent that it act as motivation, this one really goes without saying. If I can keep updating regularly, odds are my painting will become more regular as well (that's the plan anyway...)

5/ Paint a Dystopian Wars starter fleet (likely Prussians)
Dystopian Wars has really caught on at the local club (after the success of our Firestorm demo game last month, everyone has been snatching up the DW stuff). I've not bought the fleet yet, as I'm hanging back a bit to see whether Spartan Games bring any new fleets out any time soon, but I do really like the look of the Prussians

6/ Play with said fleet at least three times 
There's no point having the fleet if I don't play with it; gaming is the other side of the hobby coin, and one I've not really engaged in much during 2010.

7/ Play a minimum of five Warhammer games
As above, gaming was something I didn't do a lot of in 2010. I'm hoping to change that in 2011, especially with A5 on the horizon and talk of our own WFB campaign as well

8/ Play one game system I've never played before

One to broaden the horizons of my gaming repertoire; trying a new system is always good and there should be plenty of scope for it. Malifaux is looking increasingly tempting...

9/ Take part in at least two demo games at wargames shows with Stafford Games
Not entirely sure what the plans are with regards to this as yet, but I know there has been talk of putting on two games at Alumwell wargames show around April time I think (one Firestorm, one Stalingrad FoW).

10/ Paint at least 300 models total over the course of the year 
300 models may sound ambitious - it is. But I'm hoping that I'll have the impetus and motivation to see it through. It sounds like a lot sitting here in front of the laptop, but the Skaven make up nearly half of that total together with the Blood Bowl teams. If I finish those three targets, I'm halfway to completely this one as well.

11/ Finish painting my 15mm French Napoleonics 
This is something I really should have done ages ago. I've got a sizeable force already, but I've still got plenty of infantry and artillery left to paint and I could do with expanding my cavalry as well. They're easy to paint, so I've really got no excuse other than procrastination...

12/ Paint up the 28mm Arthurian Saxons I've had knocking around for ages so I can get some Arthurian gaming in...

This is something we've been itching to get started with, but there's always been something else to distract us. It's about time I made a start on these, with the added benefit that it might also encourage some of the others to get their painted up as well.

13/ Sculpt a model completely from scratch
I got new sculpting tools for Christmas, and I've always wanted to have a go at sculpting a model from scratch. There are plenty of tutorials around on the net that I've read over, so this year I'm going to give it a go.

So there we go. Time to sign off, and I'll see you in 2011!

2 comments:

  1. Good luck Beithir!

    As a piece of Blood Bowl related advice, 18 players for any team is unecessary as the maximum roster size is 16. With Orcs even 16 is excessive, unless you want to assemble them for aesthetics or OCD. Rostering 14 at a time would be unusual, and generally the boost to your TR outweighs the positives of carrying an extra body. I usually stick with 13 on the roster, and have 14 models available plus stars and staff. Model wise my team consists of 2 Linemen, 4 Blitzers, 4 Black Orcs, 2 Throwers, a Troll, and a Goblin. Covers all the bases bar Star Players.

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  2. Yeah, I know I don't really need 18 players but I like to have options - we're only going to be playing pick-up games until Summer, so I like to have the flexibility to change teams around. I started out with just the plastic teams from the boxset which means I've only got 2 Blitzers & Black Orcs - I'd like to have 2 more of each, so I can field a team similar to yours.

    Cheers for the comment Robbie!

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