Archive for the ‘Resolutions’ Category

So this year with my reduced hobby time I will be concentrating on a few select projects. Malifaux will be a major focus but I also want to give some love and encouragement to lesser rulesets. This also allows me to give some love and attention to the models in my collection that have yet to feel the caress of a brush.

  1. Complete the 2 Epic forces I started last year. I was close to completing my Eldar last year. When I say close I was almost at 3,000 points. This does not give a lot of wiggle room for tailoring my force so I will be adding to my force to get it to around 4,000 points. I will also attempt to get my Heresy Emperor’s Children up to the same level. I love the Heresy models and will be continuing painting purple this year. I will also be adding some titan support to both my loyalists and traitorous forces. This will also feed into playing lesser-played systems, below.
  2. Paint 1,000 points of ‘Of Gods and Mortals’. Published by Osprey Games this is a nice simple system with lots of room for customisation of forces, creating your own pantheon of gods and take part in epic battles. For me I will be doing a dark celtic force using some old Rackham models from their Drune range. My force consists of 4 units, 2 characters and Cernunnos the Horn’d God. This force can also be segued into a force for Dragon Rampant, another Osprey Games system.
  3. Organise and take part in various ‘Man Days’. With limited gaming time we have decided to have 1 day a month devoted to gaming with the guys. This is organised chaos where any system and games are welcome, turn up and play. Grab an opponent, organise before or on the day, or rope in anyone who wanders by to play a game. Our first Man Day will be 31st January and if successful will continue every month.
  4. Play more. Simple. Whether it’s in tournaments or just a relaxing board game with my wife I want to play more this year.

Ok, let’s get this out of the way. I failed in my hobby challenges. Completely! But I had a great year, attended some conventions, went half way around the world to play toy soldiers and painted stuff I had lying around for years. I’d call that a moral victory.

  1. The Rainbow Award. Play all 7 factions at 7 Malifaux events. Well that didn’t happen. It started well enough placing 2nd and 3rd in my first 2 events using factions I rarely play – Arcansists and Neverborn. I followed this up with another 3rd place with a faction I have never played before – Outcasts. I ended the year with 2 more events both of which I used 10 Thunders for. So that leaves Ressers, Guild and Gremlins for 2016. I did however increase my rankings position this year and finished in the Top 20 at the UK Nationals in November. Finishing 46th in the UK I’d call that a result!
  2. Play a game a week. Well let’s just say I played games whenever I could. I updated my year of gaming banner with every game I played. Don’t think I reached 52 weeks of 1-a-week gaming however.
  3. Paint 2 3,000 point forces for Epic. I got a significant amount done with my Eldar but my Space Marines are sorely lacking. I will get final numbers for this. I did manage to get to a gaming club while I was in Australia and witnessed a truly epic spectacle of Epicness – 48,000 points of Heresy Epic in a mad game.

Going forward I aim to get more Epic painted, more games played – I’m looking at you Guild Ball – and trying some new games – Mayhem 10mm, Of Gods and Mortals and Warmahordes as well as slot games at wizardslots with my wife and daughter.

It’s going to be a good year!

So 5 days in and 350 points of 1 Epic force assembled, painted and based. Not bad. Guardian Formation and transports completed. These were the first epic models I had painted in 5 years but by the end I was getting back into the way of things with extreme highlighting to make the effects noticeable from a distance. Looking forward to painting some Aspect Warriors next.

Also tonight is our first club night of the new year. Going to get my Malifaux fix for the week. Thinking Molly this week for some fun (and the new plastic Rogue Necromancy 😉 )

gamehard3

With my resolution from last year to play every system I own falling just shy in the home straight I will attempt to complete it this month. I only have Epic: Armageddon and Dystopian Wars left and both games have seen a resurgence in popularity locally. I possibly bit off slightly more than I could chew last year and was trying to juggle too many hobby things with wedding plans that always seemed to fall on a weekend. Despite this I managed to play a fair few games, attended 2 big tournaments for Malifaux, ran 2 large convention tournaments for Malifaux and got some more new blood into the hobby.

I had a blast playing some of my games that have been neglected, especially breaking out my Panzer Grenadiers for Secrets of the Third Reich, running them with some mecha units and Nazi werewolves. Who doesn’t love Nazi werewolves? With the rumours doing the rounds of a 2nd edition to SoTR using Kickstarter I have some hobby funds labelled for adding drop troops to my Panzer Grenadiers.

I also managed to get a game of Warmachine/Hordes in using my old Cryx forces. I love some of the aesthetics of the forces and absolutely adore my Circle Orboros models but I find this game a little too much of a learning curve for me to invest heavily in. I will continue to paint what I have, pick up a model here and there and throw down some dice when the mood takes me or a game is offered.

Epic has recently seen a rise in participation in 2 local game clubs which just sends me giddy with excitement. Epic/Space Marine was the first wargame I ever collected and I still remember my first purchase of the Epic Chaos Horde box, having no idea about the game the tiny miniatures just appealed to me. This year I will be starting 2 forces and will be gaming with them every chance I get.

Guildball will shortly be landing on the doorstep and as I backed it heavily (my largest kickstarter pledge) I will be getting some games of this organised. This definitely looks like a beer and pretzels game and hopefully the price point won’t immediatley put people off. The models are beautiful and the gameplay is fast, furious and fun.

So where does that leave me for this year. Well, as the title suggests I am going to try and get as many games in as possible this year. I will continue with Malifaux in a big way, the Bushido boardgame will be arriving later in the year and Epic and Dystopian Wars will see more tabletop time. So my resolutions are:

  1. Achieve the Rainbow award on Malifaux Rankings (Play all 7 factions in tournaments) Having collected so many models it doesn’t bear thinking about I want to use all of them this year.
  2. Play at least 1 game a week – This will include new and old games, as a side note I would like to try as many new games (wargame and boardgame) as I can
  3. Paint 2 3,000 point Epic forces – This will be good to paint up my existing forces and have more armies for other gamers to choose from.

So that’s it. These resolutions should be achievable and I have already started by painting some Epic and playing a game of Zombicide yesterday. Here’s to the rest of the year!

 

  • The game begins

  • Not looking good…

  • Il-Kaithe Guardian formation

What a year it has been! I started the year with 2 defined resolutions in mind and the mindset to accomplish both. It seemed like 2 simple tasks. I had 365 days to complete them. And what happens? Life! Once again life takes the front seat while hobby time becomes the backseat passenger. And I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

I got married in September so July-October was out for me but even with that I still managed to run 2 large Malifaux tournaments, organise sponsorship and prizes (even if the trophy was slightly late)

Let’s take a look back and see the challenges I set myself:

  1. Play 1 game of every system I own.
  2. Paint 365 points of models for skirmish games.

1. Game Systems

To be fair I kinda left this one a little too late. I managed to play Malifaux, Bushido, Secrets of the Third Reich, Warmachine & Hordes, Guildball and Flames of War. That’s 6 out of 8, 75%. Not bad and considering heading into December I had organised to play 2 games of Dystopian Wars and 2 weeks in a row there was terrible traffic jams caused by road accidents. Dystopian Wars and Epic are definitely on the cards for January so even if I am a month late I would still consider this a successful year of gaming.

2. Skirmish Painting

I have yet to tally up the exact amount of models painted but regardless I managed to attend every tournament I took part in with a fully painted and varied selection of models, some of which only arrived on my desk 2 weeks before said tournament. I would consider this a success too.

So finally the year draws to close but I have already some ideas in mind for next year. As mentioned previously Epic will be big in our community so I am planning a couple of armies for that. Like all recent Die Hard films there is a tagline for next year.

2015: A Good Year for Gaming

  • Epic:Armageddon War Griffons Warhound Titan

I started the year with the intention of doing something more than just collecting (read buying) new shiny models. I already have a buttload (metric tonne) of toy soldiers and not enough time to paint them all. Enter my New Year’s Resolution.

I aimed to paint 1 point a day for the entire year. This does not mean paint an arm on a 5 point model but just be able to sit back on December 31st and count up 365 points of models painted in a year. As i mainly play skirmish games this gives both a challenge since games are low points cost meaning lots of models but also a potential to reach out and grab other skirmish games to play, collect and paint. Enter Bushido #itsathing.

It started reasonably well and by January 5th I had finished a 5 SS Malifaux model, my female Drowned. Solustones, SS, are there way of points costing models. Bushido uses Rice Bowls. Secrets of the Third Reich uses RP but this is not a skirmish game so a 6RP unit may consist of 10 troops, 3 large monsters or a steampunk tank robot – I know, cool! right?

Then the procrastination hit, buying more new models and not painting those I had. Time was piling up and my points total for the year was not matching it. Time for some severe motivation.

With Paddyfaux looming up and extra raffle tickets on offer for painted crews I decided to up my game. Deciding on Neverborn to compliment my #ToMB project I knew I had to get a lot of models completed to give me a depth to my crew pool. So let’s take a look:

  • Drowned – 5SS
  • Lilith – 10SS
  • Barbaros – 10SS
  • 3 Terror Tots – 12SS
  • 2 Young Nephilim – 12SS
  • Mature Nephilim – 11SS
  • 3 Silurids – 21SS
  • 2 Waldgeists – 12SS
  • Lucius – 10SS
  • Austringer – 6SS
  • Black Blood Shaman – 7SS

This gives me a total of 116 points of models painted this year. It is now 17th March (Happy St patrick’s Day!) which makes 76 days so it looks like I have recovered from my February slump. Just a little motivation really does help.

With the new Malifaux Vassal league starting soon and with 10 Thunders as my chosen faction it looks like I have more motivation to paint up my 10 Thunder models to get practice games in.

Bob