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Goal is way to strong of a word for it. I tend to think of them as guard rails to keep me from chasing after the new shiny all the time and to keep me on the straight and narrow. They keep me grounded for any given year, and give me something to measure my progress with. Since I don't really have a pile of shame, it works out pretty well for me.

I tend to break my goals down into 5 categories:

1. Purchases
2. Painting/Modelling
3. Gaming
4. Rules writing
5. Other Gaming Stuff

You can read full details on my blog here:
https://bloodandspectacles.blogspot.com/2025/01/random-blood-and-spectacles-2025.html

But here is a synopsis :

Purchases:
1. Stay caught up on the Osprey Wargaming Series
2. Purchase some sort of Naval wargame
3. A Heroquest Expansion
4. Cowboys, terrain, mat, and a ruleset
5. A new Project army
6. 3 Fantasy Ice Hockey Teams

Painting:
1. Finish my Anglo-Saxon army
2. Paint Mage in the Mirror
3. Paint what I buy

Gaming:
1. Host my Battle of Kadesh Demo Game for non-wargamers
2. Finish my Under the Martian Yoke Solo-campaign
3. Play Heroquest
4. Get my local game group to try something different

Rules Writing:
1. PHUCK!: Fantasy Ice Hockey
2. Glittering Void: Space Mecha Theatre RPG
3. Wars of the Republic/Men of Bronze supplement
4. Move some other projects to Post-Production

Other Stuff
1. Keep my weekly RPG session going
2. Keep up-to-date on my painting/.gaming tracker

I am still on the fence about Social Media for next year. My local community also has a few other ideas floating around, but I am mostly going to ignore those for now. I will believe some of it, when it happens.

How about you? What do you have on the docket for next year. At the worst, you can come back at the end of 2025 and laugh at how foolishly ambitious you were!

I'll throw my hat in the ring to state my intentions for 2025. Last year was a decent year in terms of painting but I deliberately didn't push the boat out in terms of techniques.

I can't find my hobby goals from 2024, but the main goal is always to paint more minis than the previous year. 2023 saw 45 minis painted and 2024 saw 101 (plus terrain) get done!

Overall Goals:
Paint more minis than last year. 45 minis wasn't hard to beat so 101 is a decent challenge. (0/101)
Paint more minis than I buy. I am eyeing up nothing so far with the exception of Eldar so I am aiming to cut the pile of shame with this goal while saving some cash. (0/0)

Painting Goals:
Paint my Avatar of Khaine to display/competition standard
Paint 5 vehicles (28mm scale)
Finish/Paint ALL owned Blood Bowl teams (Ogres, Humans, Orcs, plus sideline staff)
Finish my Legions Imperialis Solar Auxilia
Paint 1 (at least) scale model
Get some Legions Imperialis Terrain done AND build a board?

Gaming Goals:
Keeping playing Blood Bowl (ongoing)
Learn to play Kill Team
Join a Legions Imperialis Slow Grow (joined)
Play more Titanicus
Try out Bolt Action

Social Media/Online Goals:
I sort of gave up on Instagram last year. I might try again.
I never made a blog on Dakka last. I might try and revive one or two to keep the hobby mojo going.

So there we go. I think some of these are unrealistic like doing a board for LI and trying out Bolt Action, as well as posting more on social media but we'll see.

I generally keep the same goals, and adjust number and swap out some secondaries, or replace focus projects.

2025:
Here are my New Year’s resolutions:
1 Paint 12 members for the primaris battle company 0/12
2 Paint at least 24 Tyranids, and strive to keep them PoS neutral. 0/24
3 Paint more than I buy. 0/0
4 Paint at least 3 units that have been in the primed pile/Pile of Shame for 3+ years
5 Update my blog at least once a week, and maintain a consistent pace of work (1 mini a week).
6 Paint at least two units for 4 different factions. 0/8
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.
8 Paint a tank. 0/1
9 Get more games in. At least 6. 2/6

Finish the In-Progress units for
-K47 British
-Runewars Daqan Fantasy Human army

Built and/or Paint by Adepticon
-4 Necromunda STyle Tower Structures
-28 Indsutrial Bridges
-1 TT Combat Cargo Ship

Continue to Host Twice-Monthly Meetings of Chicago Skirmish Wargames Club.

Run a summer campaign of Necromunda or a similar Sci-Fi skirmish ruleset.

Possible Stretch Goals.
-Assemble and paint 3 Vehicle units for K47
-Assemble and Paint 3 additional units for Fantasy Human Army
-Paint Anthropomorphic animal Sci-Fi Warband.

My 2025 hobby goals:

Playing - very simple goal.
*Play as much as possible - be it minis, boardgames, or RPGs.
I will succeed on this one.
(2025 is officially off to a great start for this goal! Between Wed Jan 8 - Sunday Jan 12th I have 1 HH game, 2 40k games, 1 Signar game, & 3 RPG sessions on the calander.)

Buying
*Buy less than last year.
This will likely fail as I build 40k Krieg.

Painting - this goal will likely fail harder than the Buying one, but....
Get more stuff painted. Hopefully that'll turn out to be more than in 2024.
More specifically:
*Finish painting my LI Solar force
*get another 2-3 Kill Teams done
*get at least 1 Bolt Action army finished
*get the additional/misc goblins thatve accumulated for Sigmar painted up to match those done back in 2020
*get ONE of the following 40k forces fully painted:
Grey Knights/Custodes/Imperial Agents
*Paint the occasional random mini.

Mine is simple and focused.

Build/Convert/Paint the AdMech Knight House Sidus of Ryza for both 40k and Adeptus Titanicus.

Build/Paint AdMech allies for the Knight House. (Yes. I know the Cognis Forgepact isn't supposed to be as good as the regular Detachment, but I'm building a AdMech themed force!)

Build Legio Crucius (The Warmongers) for Adeptus Titanicus.

And the ultimate goal, is to hunt down an old Armorcast Titan and paint it up in Legio Crucius colors.

I still need to find transfers for these guys...

If/When I finish this, I'll move on to the Custodes.

My goals are very simple.
Buy toys
Build toys
Paint toys
Play with toys

Last year was a bit of a disaster for me in terms of getting stuff done. I painted just over a 100 LoTR orcs in a month and got RSI for my troubles. Still recovering over 6 months later.

My goals for this year are:

1. Recover and don't hurt myself again.
2. Paint enough Samurai (Got 27 models primed) to take part in a game I've committed to.
3. Collect the new Lotr stuff and if it looks like I'll get to play it, maybe paint some.
4. Paint whatever I can from my Samurai, Tyranids and By Fire and Sword.
5. Try to avoid getting talked into a new game or scale. Probably fail it like every year.

Mostly care about 1 and 2.

To quote my plog:

"So, what's on the to-do list for this year?
- New year, new armies for 40k - Eldar & Tyranids
- New year, new army for 30k - Mechanicum
- New year, new armies for both 30k & 40k - Adeptus Custodes & Imperial Knights
- Add at least 1 power- or terminator-armoured model to my Death Guard - the Poxwalkers have to be led by something!
- Complete at least 1,500 points of models for 40k across all factions
- Paint at least 1 Blood Bowl team
- Complete a fecking 2023 Hobby Bingo card
- "Paint more than I purchase" - ("Yeah, right," say the studio audience)
- End the year with fewer entries than I know of on my "WIP at the start of the year" list than I start the year with (14 entries on that list at the start of 2025; see below)
- Paint some non-GW models (probably Battletech and/or Burrows & Badgers)"

I should also add "- Launch the podcast I've been working on" to that list.

Okay, I'll bite. My goals for 2025, as I laid them out in my P&M blog:
1: As ever, my goal for the year is to finish 100 models, in any combination of games/systems/armies. Rules are the same, massive models still only count as one. Gotta pump my numbers up, we've been having rookie numbers for too long.
2: Paint some non-GW models. This year, this might actually be kind of a free space, so I'll set a specific goal of 30+ non-GW models done. This might seem kind of high, but to reach it I'll have to actually put some effort in towards my box games probably.
3: Continue to play some non-40k games. This could end up being another free space, as right now I'm planning to take at least a few months off of playing 40k. We'll see if I can stay away for that long. I'll make a specific goal of playing at least 6 games of stuff that isn't 40k.
4: Paint a variety of both leaders, mooks, and monsters/vehicles. I feel like I did okay with this last year, but I want to continue the trend. Not sure what specific numbers I'll aim for, so this one's perhaps a bit nebulous, but...eh.
5: Finish painting some stuff that is currently WIP. Minimum of 10 models that were partially painted at the end of 2024. I'm tired of leaving dregs behind; my numbers for 2024 would have been somewhat better if I had just made myself actually finish things instead of losing interest halfway through.
6: For a more specific and focused goal: Finish, or at least make good progress on, either the Leviathan starter set (40k 10th), Skaventide Stormcast half (AoS 4th), or the Dominion set (AoS 3rd). Maybe I should add the Pelennor Fields set as part of this (Middle-Earth), or the Tomb Kings of Khemri starter box (Old World). Starter boxes make nice easy project goals.
7: I'll repeat last year's goal of dealing with my bits box situation. Some stuff is going to go to the FLGS to donate to their own bits collection, but other stuff needs to be sorted by me into the appropriate boxes. It would really help with the clutter in my apartment.
8: Another repeat goal, and one I think most hobbyists should share: Paint more stuff than I buy. This is going to be a tall order this year, as I'm already planning on picking up both the Battle for Edoras box (the new Middle-Earth starter) and the Death Korps of Krieg army set whenever it drops, as well as a few other things. It's a tough goal, but the attempt must be made.

To go in depth on why each goal is there:
1: I want to paint 100+ models in a year because this will actually result in me getting projects finished and shrinking my pile of shame. Just last night I had my brother and his wife visit, and they were looking at rows and rows of unpainted Lord of the Rings guys, and it made me sad that more of them weren't painted.
2: I've got several big board games, including Ankh, Primal: The Awakening, and recently Dune: War for Arrakis, and they all have a lot of minis that will need paint. Hell, I backed the Primal kickstarter because I wanted to paint the giant monsters in that game, and so far I haven't really even touched them. I need to get stuff done on these, and it'll make a nice break from painting endless waves of just Games Workshop's (admittedly excellent) models.
3: I've tended to only play 40k as my wargame of choice, but I kind of want to diversify a bit. After all, I don't have all these AoS, Middle-Earth, and the aforementioned kickstarter games' models just for them to sit around and collect dust.
4: My original goal for this one was going to be just a "feels right" kind of thing, but I think I'll set a goal of doing at least 3 of each of those categories (leader/character, monster/vehicle, and unit of 5+ troops). Again, I just don't want to leave out the basic guys in favor of the fancy leaders, and larger models provide an extra challenge, so I want to tackle some of each.
5: I've got way too many partially painted models kicking around, mostly 40k stuff that I quickly bashed out a basic color scheme on for a tournament and don't consider finished to a good enough standard. I need to go ahead and finish these.
6: Similar to 5 above, I've got the contents of a number of different starter sets that need to be painted. My usual goal is to have the starter set for a 40k or AoS edition finished before the next edition drops; unfortunately, I haven't actually succeeded in that since 8th edition 40k's Dark Imperium box.
7: I've got kit boxes with sprues of just bits cluttered all over my apartment; I need to deal with this situation. Bead boxes/tackle boxes full of bits take up a lot less room than all the model boxes do.
8: This one speaks for itself, really. I want to have my pile of shame shrink rather than grow. I not only need to paint more, but I should buy less. After all, there's no point in me buying if if I'm not going to do anything with it, right? Since I set this goal, I did decide that I'm probably not going to get the Krieg box, so that's one purchase I don't have to worry about.
Besides these goals, I also want to keep up with my P&M blog better, as I might get more viewers if I do so and it'll help keep me motivated to keep on hobbying. Video games have a big tendency to distract me, and I tend to just feel lazy after a day of work, so I can use all the motivation I can get!

Very roughly

Primary goals:
- run an international Turnip28 event (to a level that it will be the high point of attendees' hobby life for the year)
- publish a game
- bring my Heresy army to 3000 pts painted (was last year's goal, managed 1600)

Other:
- paint a Titanicus maniple
- convert and paint a bunch more Turnip28 factions
- do something for every "active" system (in addition to the above Kings of War, Dystopian Wars, Dracula's America...)
- try a few games from the 1-box-wargame challenge (shortlist: Hardboiled, Widget League, Buccaneer's Bluff, Oats Brother...)