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Well, what an interesting year. In 2020, I learned that invading Martians are not the only one susceptible to Earth germs!

Despite the pandemic, the year was not terrible from a Hobby perspective. I managed to play a few games, paint some models, and write some rules. What more can a humble gamer want?

A full recap is here: https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2020/10/random-end-of-2020-recollection.html

However, here is the "executive summary" of 2020:

1. I picked up the rules for 4 new games, and stayed up to date on the Osprey Wargaming Series
2. I completed my Pile of Shame twice in 2020!
3. Painted a total of 141 miniatures..... I count 6mm by the base and not the individual model.
4. Played about 24 games of various types
5. Published 4 games to the Wargame Vault, and put 2 in the WIP section of the blog

Not too shabby for a single year. How about you?

I painted more models in 2020 that I think I have any year before, or I think I will any year after. I don't really keep tabs on what I painted one year to the next and I tend to paint models in phases such as painted well enough to place on the table (a number of colors blocked in) and what GW has called battleready. So, it is tough to really say exactly how many models I have painted since I don't really count that first coverage of painting as close to done where I do when they are 'battleready'.

So I believe for 2020, I have painted for Age of Sigmar: 40 Chaos Warriors, 1 band of Warcry: Untamed Beasts, 1 band of Warcry: Iron Golems, 2 bands of Warcry: Unmade, 2 Chaos Spawns, 5 Chaos Knights, Chaos Sorcerer, Chaos Lord on foot.

I also had my first big painting commission of Death Guard. I also painted my Death Guard kill team with them: 80+ Poxwalkers, at least 50 Plague Marines, 8 Blightlord/Deathshroud Terminators, Typhus, 2 Lords of Contagions, 2 Plague? Socrcerers, Foul Blightspawn, 3 Drones, 1 hauler, 1 Rhino.

I also took my Genestealer Cult from kill team to full 2000pt capable army this year which meant I painted: 30 Acolytes, 50 Neophytes, 15 bikers, 12+ Genestealers, 4 Ridgerunners. I still have a lot of work on my GSC to finish though.

My Primaris army would have been done this year if not for Indomitus and the new releases I haven't even bothered to purchase yet. This year I did manage to add another 10 Reivers, 10 Intercessors, 6 Aggressors, 6 Inceptors, 10 Incursors, 1 Redemptor Dreadnought, 2 Primaris LTs, Primaris Apothecary and everything not HQ/biker from Indomitus. I probably could have finished everything, but decided what was the point since more would be added pretty soon.

This year is also when I completely updated my Black Legion to the new models and gave my old ones to a up-and-coming Black Legion player to get him a little closer to field a full army. In painting this meant: 30+ Chaos Space Marines, 15 Chaos Terminators, 20 Havocs and two Predators. I also finally re-based my Dark Vengeance Chosen to 32mm bases.

I also worked some on my Kill Team factions most notably Tau, Admech and Orks. Mostly models that I don't really plan on fielding but had as part of the model kit.

I can't remember if I painted up much terrain this year. I know 2020 was the point that I could say I had too much terrain to setup 4 Kill Team boards now. I also remember for the first couple of months of the year I would try and paint one new piece of terrain to see if the regular Kill Team players in my group could guess which one was the new bit.

Lastly, I haven't completely paint any of it, but I did build, prime and partly basecoat a Lumineth Realm Lords army.



All-and-all a very successful hobby year. Especially considering I had a couple of months that I didn't do anything as life events had overwhelmed me too much. For 2021, I am poised to finish up painting my CSM, Primaris and GSC armies. I think I will also manage to get many of my kill teams all painted up depending on how the new version of Kill Team works. I doubt I will finish my Slaves to Darkness army (I still haven't built Archaon) nor my Lumineth army, but anything is possible. I also have a lot of terrain that I hope to finish up, but don't think I will completely finish in 2021 as it is low priority.

Just before the UK lockdown began I picked up the Titanicus set, 2x Warhounds and 2x Reavers to go with my existing Astorum force in the foolish belief that this would all be over in a couple of months...

I also moved from London back to my hometown, meaning I can go back to the FLGS I had been a part of for many years. Additionally, since I'll still be working in London when this dies down I can still visit the numerous clubs and FLGSs in the area.

Boosted my existing Guard force with a Stormhammer and an Baneblade to go with the 3 superheavies already in the force. I decided to go all out on the Baneblade and was able to magnetise it into a fully-customisable Octoblade, with every variant possible. While I'm rather miffed the Stormhammer got even crappier in the FW PDF it's still an impressive centerpiece,

My fiance also helped me expand my army for my birthday and picked out a Thousand Sons SC box, which I have since expanded with an additional squad of Rubrics and a squad of Termies. I also have a couple of classic Chaos Dreadnoughts (not Helbrutes) on the way, and after some last minute Christmas shopping/drinking, treated myself to a Lord of Change and SC Daemons of Tzeench box, which should arrive sometime this week.

In my sig is a link to the P&M Blog for the Thousand Sons, some of which I'm very proud of, feel free to have a look!

What's my 2020 look like (as of 12/17)....

*D&D (5e) - counting tonight, 45 sessions of the Thur. night game. This is our typical average for a year.
D&D (5e) - 7 sessions of the "shop game" played at the local shop early in the year. And then the pandemic ended that.... And since the shop changed hours on the day it ran it's also not likely to return.
AoS (Path to Glory league) at the shop - 6 games. And then pandemic fouled it all up....
*AoS (matched) about a dozen games since the pandemic
*40K (matched) - about a dozen games of 8th/9th, pretty evenly split.
40K 9e (Crusade) - 5 games, Oct - present, all carefully arranged etc.
Flames of War (WWII) - several games back in Jan/Feb
Flames of War (WWIII Team Yankee) - several games back in Jan/Feb.
Flames of War (WWI) - 1 game in early Jan.
Black Seas by Warlord (sailing ships) - 1 game back in Jan.
Gaslands - 2 games this summer as a test of both system & interest. ++ Just crafting cars/terrain & waiting out the pandemic.
*Axis & Allies (assorted versions) - 15 games. We play every few weeks. Winner picks the next version. The big 2020 difference is that with some of the players off/out of work the circle has played MORE A/A March+. We used to play once/month. Now it's twice. I've only made it to 15 of the 22 games :(.
*Many many board-games.

*Select circle: Playing games with these people during the pandemic poses no more risk to any of us than was already present during the week. Or will be present next week. So we might as well order a pizza, roll some dice, & spend another 6 hrs together....

I've also had plenty of time to build & paint.
Building?
Well, I'm always building something.... But this year I: spent several months doing the thread rigging on 3 Black Seas fleets (very tedious), built around 3k pts of new Necrons, built a Brown Water Navy river boat force for Flames of War (Nam), built 3k pts of AoS Lumenoth Elves, around 200 random minis (assorted systems/companies/uses), and now I'm starting on the SM 1/2 of my Indom box + several Primaris tanks.
I also crafted a few Gaslands cars, some terrain for that system, and a whole mess of trees.
Painting?
Normally I tend to paint randomly as the whim strikes. Or when there's a pressing need (say I'm working on commission).
This year though: 3 Black Seas fleets (I HAD to paint them 1st before doing the thread rigging). Just over 300 goblins (+ some orcs & warmachines) for AoS. About 50some of those random minis I built. The infantry portion of the Brown water 'Nam force. And everything else listed in the above build, save 6 Necron Tomb Blades & the Primaris stuff is primed & much has its base coat.
Terrain wise I painted up some Gaslands stuff.

Next games of any sort Jan.1st....

Sort of funny.

Last January, I decided to do a Death Guard army.

Timely.

For this year, I had planned a small 1,500pts Custodes army (with a few ideas to upgrade to 2,000) that I wanted to build and paint to have, for the first time ever, a fully painted army. Projects always balloon out of proportion somehow so I wanted to get this one done and figured with the relatively low number of models, I could manage that despite having 3 other armies to work on too!

It started well and I was slowly building and painting for the first 3 months. Then we were sent home for the pandemic. With all this newfound free time, I manage to work on many other project in parallel and made great progress on my other armies at the same time. Of course the Custodes project ballooned too and went way beyond the original plan! But I managed to pull through nonetheless, and I just recently finished off the whole thing!

All-in-all, here's what I managed to do this year;

Built and painted 3,700pts of Custodes including the following;
- Shield Captain x3
- Shield Captain in Terminator x1
- Custodian with Spear x6
- Custodian with Shield x6
- Custodian with Pyrithite x5
- Sagittarum x10
- Warden x5
- Allarus x5
- Vexila x1
- Venatari x5
- Pallas Grav-Attack x2
- Caladius Grav-Tank x1
- Coronus Grav-Carrier x1


During that project as I ordered more units and waiting for them to arrive, I also worked on other armies and completed the following (in no particular order);

Tyranids (Painted)
- Winged Hive Tyrant
- Tyrant Guards x4
- Neurothrope x1
- Ripper Swarm bases x7
- Raveners x5
- Biovore x1
- Canrifex x1 (in-progress right now, but to be done later tonight or tomorrow)

Tyranids (built)
- Carnifex Stone Crusher x3


Thousand Sons (Painted)
- Rubric Maribes x10
- Tzaangors x21
- Maulerfiend x1
- Cultist x10
- Sorcerer in Terminator x1
- Exalted Sorcerer on Disk x1
- Exalted Sorcerer x1

Thousand Sons (built)
- Mutalith Beast conversion x1


Eldar (painted)
- Start collecting box x1

Eldar (built)
- Wraithlord (metal) x2
- War Walker (Metal) x3
- Scout (Artel W) x5
- Dark Reaper (Artel W) x5


Probably my most productive year ever, at least for painting! I don't think I ever painted that much, and the Custodes are my first ever fully painted army with nothing waiting to be finished! Pretty stoked about that!

An interesting hobby/gaming year.

For 40K I was able to paint:

a. Necrons: 30 Warriors, 5 Immortals, Triarch Stalker, Doomscythe, Doomstalker, 3 Skorpekh Destroyers, Indomitus Characters
b. Dark Angels: 15 Tactical, 3 Ravenwing Bikes, 20 Deathwing Terminators, 5 Cataphractii Terminators, Leviathan Dreadnought, 3 Bladeguard, 3 Eradicators, 3 Outriders, Indomitus Characters
c. Astra Militarum: 30 Scions, 1 Taurox Prime

I was lucky enough to play in four local tournaments and about 30 FLGS Matched Play games. My basement gaming table also saw lots of use for 40K and Kill Team during the first lockdown with my son. We just started our second lockdown and have started a Crusade.

I am always impressed by how much painting people get done! I thought 100-150 models a year was pretty good, but I see that is child's play to many people.

A model a day is my usual rate. Somehow I did 651 last year. Likely because to having little else to do. Also a few very easy projects. I did 100 Night's Watch models for ASoIaF in a few weeks with an airbrush for example. Bought way too much new stuff though with things like Indomitus and didn't chip down on the shame pile as much as I'd like.

 Easy E wrote:
I am always impressed by how much painting people get done! I thought 100-150 models a year was pretty good, but I see that is child's play to many people.

Well 2020 was pretty abnormal for me painting wise.
Other than a commission or some project that requires paint* I tend to paint more when depressed &/or really stressed. I began Feb depressed as hell due to my Mother passing in Jan & then March --> we added stress + alot of free/empty time.... So hundreds of goblins.

*Projects that've required painting:
Spring of 2019 I ran a D&D game/adventure involving 150 unique NPC minis. After several play-tests it was determined that it was almost impossible to tell the NPC minis apart sans actual paint. One grey mini just blended into every other grey mini too much, bogging things down. So....
Late 2019/early 2020 I built several fleets for an Age of Sail game. It's nigh impossible to paint the ships after doing the thread rigging. So....

Outside of depression/stress my general personal output is about 25 minis/year.

I managed to use the extra time from covid lockdowns to paint. Started a tau army, and pretty much got it completed. Got a ton of first born marines done, and even a large raft fo primaris. It's about 500 total models.

Models/Items painted in 2020: 134. Most of that was terrain or old metal Necromunda figures. Although some old metal Eldar managed to get painted as well. Pictures are in my various painting logs.

Cheers,

CB

I had a few 2020 resolutions that I wanted to keep to and in the end, I completed two of my four resolutions:

1) Paint more than I buy - This was a lie that didn't last too long. I picked up far too many issues of mortal realms, picked up Indomitus and picked up a bunch of Tyranids from eBay

2) Enter a painting competition - Covid kinda scuppered this one, but I did enter a few of the Dakka Painting Challenges so I learned a good bit from those entries and enjoyed the process of them too.

3) Finish Blackstone Fortress (core set) - This was achievable but I just preferred other projects.

4) Learn new airbrush techniques - This one was my most successful hobby resolution. I learned finer highlighting, masking, stencil making, how to paint a power sword and improved my blending.

Overall, I painted 45 models, which was very poor but better than the previous year I think. Covid restrictions also caused all kinds of issues for me in my personal life. This year I plan on improving that.

My biggest feeling of accomplishment was finally wrapping up the Phoenix for Kingdom Death. It was the last major monster I needed to do.

I still have a few armor kits, but I'll get to those eventually. I like painting the pinups more, and I painted all but three or four of the Death High models.

I managed to wrap up quite a few big Creature Caster models in 2020 as well, and for as much as I enjoy massive resin kits, they also tend to give me all sorts of painting anxiety and I never get around to them, usually due to my inability to decide how I want to proceed with them.

Those two were major resolutions I wanted to complete for 2020, and I did it! I don't think I bothered making any for 21 yet. Maybe paint the Sunstalker and Dragon King from Kingdom Death?

I also have to mention I'm quite proud of the fact that I managed to wrap up another year of filming and putting up hobby stuff on Youtube EVERY SINGLE DAY of 2020.

I went back and tried to start counting up figures I painted by going through last year's videos and stopped after I topped 400, and that was around summer time. That's nuts.

There are some seriously impressive hobby accomplishments in this thread.

For my part, I managed 101 completed models in 2020. That included the Indomitus Necrons, some old Epic and new Titanicus Knights, my first primaris squads, Imperial Guard command squads I’ve been putting off for ages (hate painting banners) and at year end, 2.4 meters of imperial defence network.

Whilst we had lockdowns here in NZ, I work in the health sector, so unfortunately rather than being sent home for weeks/months to hobby, I was stuck at work for months! As such, I’m quite pleased with my output.