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Every year, I try to make a list of Goals I want to accomplish in the following year with my wargaming hobby. It is nothing to intense and helps guide my decisions about money and time as I go through the year.

I took a look back at my list, and evaluated my progress in July, and now that it is the end of the year it is time to look at it again!

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/12/random-2017-in-review.html

Overall, this was a good year for my hobby, even if my typical Peak Season in Novemebr through March has not really panned out that way yet. I got to play a lot more games than I have in the past, finished some of my own writing projects, and picked up a game or towo. When I turn to the Painting and Modelling front things fall down. Oh well!

Here are some game shots....

Blood Bowl


All Quiet on the Martian Front


Force-on-Force/Tomorrow's War




So, how about you? How was your year? Did you get a lot done? What was a stand-out moment?

I had a good year, though I wouldn't have expected it from where it started. At the end of 2016 our Warmachine night was suffering and our rather crummy FLGS was pretty empty. I'd gone on something of a quest to play anything in town, but outside of a bit of X-Wing and Kill Team things were pretty dead and I was mostly playing catchup on the painting backlog.

Everything changed in March however, when a new store opened and launched their shop promoting Guild Ball out of the gate. The game itself didn't really take off, but it drew a lot of disparate gaming groups in to one place. Arena Rex got thrown into the mix and I started to embrace the "play everything" mindset I'd toyed with in darker times.

A trip to MuseOnCon in May reinforced this, giving me a great tutorial (and terrain set) for Infinity and adding that to my mix along with the Knight Models stuff. This plus a resurgence of Warmachine carried the summer as 40k saw a lot of returning players. I just recently turned that Kill Team into a small army to join the fun there.

So... yeah... great year overall. We went from a dying Warmachine community to a vibrant Miniatures community. There's still a ton of work to be done to flesh out these little games into more regular play, but we've got more to work with now than ever before.

Well, i made myself the goals of painting more and improving my painting, and i did both! i'll never win awards, but i've learned some good basic tricks that have really helped me.

And the nice thing about improving is that it's made me more enthusiastic about painting, so i got more done because of that. My resolutions balanced each other out nicely.

I also managed to get some good family game times in, which makes me happy.

Good year for me. I got into Test of Honor as a bit of a throwaway project and have had a blast with it. Playing it brings me back to the dozens of Japanese samurai, ninja and martial arts films I watched as a teen. I ended up with nearly a hundred minis for ToH so I'm now pretty good at painting tabletop quality 17th Century Japanese samurai!

I made a conscious decision to quit TV and PC games this year and that has opened up a lot of time for analogue games and painting. While not 100% successful in my pledge (maybe 50%) it has meant more time for things I enjoy more. I'd recommend this action to anyone time poor. I just committed myself to a large American War of Independence project. Working on my first Indians at the moment. I wouldn't have dreamt I could have fitted such a project into my schedule this time last year.

The year got a rough start when the local warmachine community imploded. Some players annouced a boycott against eh only store that provided space for the game and I couldn't get a game in for the life of me. By the time tehy realized their mistake and rescinded the boycott, most players had already sold their armies.

Warhammer 40000 launched and I was pretty impressed by the free rules primer. I tried it out and was happy with the game that while not as tactically complex as WMH was certainly easier to get games in. I've since tossed my WMH stuff out and started playing w40k as my main system. I bought into Other Side, but recently found out that the other people in the area backed out of the kickerstarter at the last moment, but its water under the bridge now.

 Easy E wrote:
Every year, I try to make a list of Goals I want to accomplish int he following year with my wargaming hobby. it is nothing to intense and helps guide my decisions about money and time as I go through the year.

I took a look back at my list, and evaluated my progress in July, and now that it is the end of the year it is time to look at it again!

https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2017/12/random-2017-in-review.html

Overall, this was a good year for my hobby, even if my typical Peak Season in Novemebr through March has not really panned out that way yet. I got to play a lot more games than I have in the past, finished some of my own writing projects, and picke dup a game or too. When I turn to the Painting and modelling front things fall down. Oh well!

Here are some game shots....

Blood Bowl


All Quiet on the Martian Front


Force-on-Force/Tomorrow's War




So, how about you? How was your year? Did you get a lot done? What was a stand-out moment?

All Quiet on the Martian Front looks amazing. I've admired it from afar these last few years. A decent lotto win would be needed to enjoy all the super offerings open to gamers these days. Just to enable a person to quit work to free up the time.

Eh.

Did little to know painting this year, had little to no games and had little to no interaction with the local wargaming groups. Things just kept getting in the way of hobby time and when I did have time for myself I haven't had the energy to go out to FLGS and find games, nor have I had the patience to sit down and paint.

It's been a busy year, hoping I have a bit more time for myself this coming year.

I got back into the hobby in March after some 25 odd years. Started off with wanting a model to paint while I'm on disability. got dark imperium for my birthday and haven't looked back since. Kinda got mad at GW back in the day for squatting my Squats but I feel they're going on the right track with community engagement.

Made a goal of having a fully better than tabletop standard before I played a single game and I met it. Found my local 40k group and am having as much or more fun now than I had back in rogue trader.

Wanting to increase my hobby skills, I ordered a bunch of forge world stuff and currently having fun (challenging but fun) working on my Salamanders relic contemptor.

Next year my goal is to double the size of my Salamanders and maybe start an Admech or Guard army to reinforce the 18th.

I hope that everybody completed their objectives and make the next year even better.

Got into a fair few games a lot more over the last year, and I'm expecting a few more over the next year. My local Warmachine group died late last year, which was my main game at the time, and I had already begun to ramp down the trips to the local GW for 40k (the FLGS is just so much nicer, and I don't play GW games any more). Increased playing Malifaux, and attended quite a few tournaments earlier in the year (not any more though after a particularly bad experience involving one of the regulars) which gave me a lot of enthusiasm for the game (also read every single short story they've released which is an achievement in itself). Started Batman Miniatures, which very quickly became my main game, to the point of me now running semi-regular tournaments at both the FLGS and at conventions, which I would not have expected a couple of years ago. Infinity was always sort of just there as well, always the side game but always present (until recently, but it's seeing a resurgence in our group). GW games I dropped entirely, sold off most of my stuff (only keeping a token Ravenwing force should I eventually want to play again) and stopped keeping up with the latest releases. Next year I'm looking forward to starting Bolt Action and The Other Side, both with the Brits, for some more semi-historical gaming (I have a full Airborne army for BA built now, just have to paint over the summer break and then learn to play)

The best thing I think though is in the process of meeting and befriending both the Batman group and the Infinity group(which became my Malifaux group as well), it got me out of a major bout of depression and anxiety. Mid-late last year even gaming was a bit of a slog for me, and at certain points I was forcing myself to go and play so I wasn't sitting at home doing nothing (which in hindsight was a big cause of me dropping GW, cause I just wasn't motivated). By March of this year though, I was on a full recovery (and to this day still am!) and getting games in wherever possible, and I've made a whole heap of good friends along the way. I know a couple of them are frequent Dakka posters, so if you guys see this I want to thank you, and I look forward to seeing what lies ahead!

I’ve not done my full year end retrospective yet, but I did take my YTD painting shelf and move it into normal circulation. Not without a pic first though:


I do keep a copy of my New Year’s hobby resolutions on the first page of my blog, and edit them over the year

Here are my New Year’s resolutions:
1 Finish painting the odds and ends from my friend's SOB army that I worked on. Just a handfull of arcoflagelents, spare immolater weapons, some IG HQs . Nope.
2 Paint more then I buy. 64/71 painted/purchased. 8th ed starter box does bad things to the numbers
3 Paint my spare bits. I've magetized a number of things, painted the primary set up, but never get around to doing the other options. Did some plasma pistols
4 Try to get more games in. More then last year
5 Update my blog at least once a week, and maintain a consistent pace of work (1 mini a week). Hit the 1-a-week goal
6 Get my Eldar army to a larger level, 2 more full squads minimum, aiming to be more comfortable at 1,850, possibly 2k. Done!
7 Enter and finish an entry every month for the painting challenge. If the monthly challenge stops, enter at least one comp in the year. In addition, paint something odd from the back of the bench a/o try out a new technique every month. Just need to take final pics of my Dec entry.

Overall pretty happy with the year, especially with everything that’s been going on in my life.

Kind of a Meh year for me. I tried 8th 40k, and plan to keep trying, but it certainly hasn't taken off for me and I've played... ... maybe 3 games? Painting wise I did do quite a bit with my Gladiators, but that was about it, much of the other hobby time being taken up with things I was painting for others.



Shadow war was a bright spot - I think I played 5-6 games of that. Another was that I did a couple of the League of Riviter contests and enjoyed those.

The big plus is that I made some serious progress on getting a decent gaming space that might lead to great things in the coming year.

I'll do a full year-end summary in my P&M blog on New Year's Eve, complete with a pic of all the stuff I painted. As of right now, I'm pretty happy with my hobby progress. I definitely purchased more than I painted, unfortunately, but I did paint more this year than any other year, and the year isn't up yet. I hope to at least be able to add Mortarion to that year end roundup.

Sort of a good year for me.

I promised the better half I would not buy any new plastic at all and basically stuck to this until Death Guard, where I have been week.

While not buying stuff, I have made progress on the mountain of boxed, made, primed, half started models and scenery I have accumulated over the last few years.


The big breakthrough is pyscolological. It is okay to have models with just a few basecoats - ie about 5-10 and a basic Grey Base. You don't have to do layer, wash, layer more layer per GW. Cover the plastic. Wash. Base. Good to go. You can always come back it later when the other hundreds of pounds of models are done.

Went to Adepticon and had a blast. Didn't take anything with, but managed to get a few demo games in and got a gak ton of swag from VIG, including a (still sealed) box of Runewars, a Citadel Hard Case, and a bunch of random crap.

Actually started playing Age of Sigmar, and have a Tzeentch force that's ever growing. About 1500 points painted.

Got sucked into buying into 40k.8, too. Still haven't played a game, but have enough models to do a decent Death Guard force, and a budding Thousand Sons force.

Shadespire came in, and it's one of my recent faves. Got 2 of the 4 warbands done, the others in progress.

It feels odd to actually be mentioning GW games up there at all, since for the last like 23 years, I would rather have pissed glass than touch a GW product. Them booting Kirby out and making major direction changes is really quite the thing.

Goals for 2018:
Finish assembling and painting all the current Tzeentch stuff I have:
* Start Collecting Daemons of Tzeentch
* Tzaangor Enlightened
* Tzaangors (assembled and working now)
* Daemon Prince (assembled)
* Lord of Change

Build up a 40k Thousand Sons army. Currently that includes 2 squads of Rubric Marines, Scarab Terminators, 3 Exalted Sorcerers, and Ahriman. It's highly probable that there will be more purchases for this, especially if the Thousand Sons Codex comes out.

Blood Bowl tournament at Adepticon! Got my Mayamee Mice primed and ready to paint up (which may or may not happen before end of 2017, but definitely by March). Also at Adepticon will be a Shadespire tournament. Try not to come home with too much crap.

Keep pushing on doing more playtesting and work on my own games. With any luck, finish up all the concept art work and start filling in the needed color pieces. *Maybe* get the planned coloring books ready for a possible Kickstarter (depends on several factors that are too hard for me to predict at the moment).

Try like hell to keep to not buying new models faster than I paint existing stock. That is, I'm going to try to paint 3 "things" (units, characters, whatever is 1 box/blister) before allowing myself to buy 1 thing. (Wish me luck! All of you Figmentia sufferers know the struggle is real.)

See if I can unload all this NIB Warmachine crap on my shelves that I doubt I'll ever get back into. eBay probably.

I officially dropped WMH at the end of 2016 and for most of the year just played A Game Of Thrones : LCG which is absolutely an amazing game with the best community.

Been to probably 20/25 tournaments this year including a trip to Germany for the worlds biggest Thrones tournament.

I have bought back in to 40k and played 3 games, really excited to paint more again and Christmas will see a fair bit of plastic crack make its way in to my house.

It was a good year for me.

I ended last year really burnt out on X-wing and pretty decided it wasn't for me anymore. I played a ton of board games for the early part of the year and then in late May, my buddy and I decided to jump into FoW. Between June and now I collected and painted both a British and an American army for mid war and I'm working on a British army for late war. We also decided to give Bolt Action a try so I bought myself a rather large USMC army. I haven't played it yet, but I'm really looking forward to it!

Goals for 2018:
Finish my British late war army for FoW
Finish my USMC army for BA
Learn to play BA
Start an American or Soviet late war army for FoW

It's been a roller-coaster game year for me.

At the start of the year, I boxed up my game room so some renovations could be done on the room. It was a shock to see that I had somehow managed to fit three rooms worth of gaming material into one room. I made a conscious decision to not bring 2/3rds of the material back. That would have been fine if I hadn't started back up buying more stuff again.

The good news is that the stuff I have retained is only stuff I'll actually use - games that I never played were broken out, evaluated and either were ejected, knowing they wouldn't be played again or kept to be played currently or down the road a bit.

I did pick up Runewars this year, and actually played in a couple tournaments - third will be next Saturday. That's huge for me, last time I did any sort of organized play was back during Dark Age Mechwarrior, and between it and a rotten 40K tournament experience, I afterward swore off ever being involved in a tournament again.

X-wing has been sort of the reverse - I have so much, there seems no point in collecting more. And the local tournament scene is so toxic, I have steered clear. Can't even play casual without a couple players treating it like its a national qualifier.

In other news, I invested into 40K 8E, though ruleswise only at a very basic level - the indexes, card sets and the free rules booklet (though I did break down and buy the full book - though I now feel that was one of my dumber purchases). However, it did inspire me to buy several hundred dollars worth of miniatures (across 8 armies) to fill out my collection. I don't expect I will be buying much 40K in 2018, though - the Tau cards and Necron card are all I'm looking forward too.

Shadow War: Armageddon caught me off guard; it has become my son's favorite 40K game. However, I didn't buy into the new Necromunda - I already have the old rules and the new models didn't grab me. I wouldn't mind having the cardboard tiles, but I'm no hurry to seek them out.

Perhaps the biggest thing for me has been my return to playing D&D - at least, for the moment. At the beginning of the year, I had despaired that I no longer looked forward to playing D&D - something that's been in my life since I was literally 10 years old (in 1982). I've acquired a new group and we're currently running through my favorite adventure - Ravenloft. I'm hoping it will leave the group hungering for more D&D adventures, and I'm quite enthused about the idea of DMing once again.

Goal: End the year with no unpainted miniatures

As of a few days ago I finished every miniature I owned when I set the goal. The launch of 8th edition 40k and me getting back into 40k has meant I now have a bunch of unpainted stuff. The plan was to buy zero miniatures in 2017 and just finish what I had, but new 40k happened.

As for gaming: loads. At least weekly I was doing something gaming related.

I dropped X-Wing and sold all my ships half way through the year. Just noticed that it's all expanded universe stuff that no one but die hard fans could even recognize as Star Wars. And the proliferation of organized play meant that even my casually minded friends got in the habit of making every game a tournament practice game.

Basically played Guild Ball all year which isn't talked about much on Dakka (but has a reasonably strong following on its various facebook groups).

Largely carried on with my preferred team, Engineers, but did paint up a new Guild (Morticians) and took them to Vengeance, the biggest Guild Ball event of the year (110+ players). I came somewhere in the middle having got thrashed by one of the best players in the UK

In the last couple of months, Necromunda has lured me back into the world of GW and I'm looking forward to cracking open the box set tomorrow.

My key goal in 2017 was the 365 challenge finishing the equivalent of 1 model for every day of the year. I accomplished it with several dozen models in hand. I've been wargaming far less and boardgaming far more this year. The bang for buck in the big board game kickstarters is so much better than the equivalent in GW that even with 8th I'm just more interested in the fantasy genre for collecting and painting now I just need to get some interest in starting up a fantasy pick up game or another Frostgrave League at the club.

A good and bad year for me. On the down side I had two months of pretty good painting progress and next to nothing else and still have lots of half done projects and by lots I mean around forty.
On the positive I didn't over spend on new shiny stuff, got back into B5 ACTA and played a whole shed load of X-Wing (finally tally was an average of almost a game a day) attended two tournaments and even managed to do well at Nationals.

Finally found a Bolt Action group this month so I painted models and played my first proper table top wargame session since a failed attempt to get friends into the original Rogue Trader ruleset back in 1988. Took long enough... I think 2018 is the year I get into war gaming big time. Already looking at other skirmish rules and maybe Flames of War.

For me it was totally different than 2016... Very limited number of 40K games compared to 150+ games in 2016, but A LOT of SW:A and Oldcromunda games (two finished SW:A campaigns and a fully blown Oldcromunda campaign still going). Quite a lot of modelling (mostly terrain, but also started a small AdMech/Ash Waste nomads force, my first non-Eldar faction ever) and finally started painting last month after nearly 20 years break (still painting my first squad of Guardians, I'm rather slow painter). Goal for 2018 is mostly painting and some modeling of what is left in my Grey Pile of Shame, as I will undergo a knee surgery soon, so no standing at the table for at least a couple of months this year for me.

My year in the hobby has been totally dominated by 30k Iron Warriors. The army is currently around 10k fully painted, and another 2k ish left to paint, and they are done. I think I've had two games, so not the best year for that. 2018 seems even busier than 2017 already, so as long as I get a couple of things finished, I'll be satisfied.

Good year for me.

I painted a lot more models than my average, and used painted models in games a lot more than usual.

Most importantly, I applied for a studio position at GW, which was unsuccessful, but it made me realize that I could work in the industry.

I only wish I got to play more different games, it was almost entirely KoW all year long.

Not a bad year, punctuated by a house move which put the brakes on a few things.

Picked up Test of Honour which is a fun little game with much to recommend it, likewise the new version of 40k which has seem life breathed back into some stalled projects.

Yoof has started collecting Team Yankee, and is planning a small 40k force as well.

Now have a dedicated painting area, and space next year to even put up a decent sized gaming table.

Also started playing DBA which I'm enjoying

Down sides

Flames of War has essentially died on its feet with the V4 rules, with its dropping from several events I used to attend I've not managed any tournaments in 2017 - even "Campaign" had to be aborted due to an overseas trip with work

The new 40k has seen Gates of Antares sink without trace which is a pity.

Think if you did a house move you did well to get any hobby time in at all!

Mine has been appalling this year, combination of work and home stuff meant that projects have been progressing at a glacial pace.

One thing this has meant is that I've really started to get into board games - when you only have an hour or two but want to get together with friends it's like a whole new world has opened up to me, and have been really enjoying them.

Looking forward to this year and getting on with Team Yankee, Kingdom Death and Epic 40k projects - although a house move in the middle of the year might stymie all of that!

It wasn't a bad year.

I got more involved with painting my 30K army, and played a lot of that. When 8th edition dropped the gears kicked in to start preparing for ATC so 30K slowed down. Went to ATC, got my teeth kicked in 5 out of 6 games. Decided that wasn't going to happen again. Started working on tightening the team up, and building concepts for next year.

Been deployed second half of the year, so gaming has been limited, but my wife sent my all my paints and a bunch of unpainted models, so using the idle time to work on those.

This year, I plan on devoting myself to getting "gud". Going to travel to attend as many tournaments as I can in preparation for ATC again, and actually willing to buy models to optimize, instead of just playing with what I got.

This year was definitely not one filled with miniatures. I did not paint a lot and I didn't play a lot. Sometimes life takes you away from the hobby, hopefully 2018 brings me more time and motivation for the hobby.

I've got my end of the year blog post up.

Games played:
All Quiet on the Martian Front - 1
Arena Rex - 2
Blood & Plunder - 1
Blood Bowl - 22
Congo - 2
Empire of the Dead - 5
Fistful of Lead - 6
Gruntz - 2
Guild Ball - 3
L'Art de la Guerre - 13
Men of Company B - 1
Muskets & Tomahawks - 1
Open Combat - 2
Retro Raygun - 2
Saga - 6
Shadow War: Armageddon - 14
Strange Aeons - 5
Test of Honour - 3
Warhammer 40,000 - 3
Warhammer: Diskwars - 1
Warmaster Revolution - 1
Wrath of Kings - 1