The end of the year show

With 2017 coming to an end, it's time to think about how my hobby year has gone and whether I managed to achieve my overambitious goals for the year.

But first, I've got one more painted model to show for the year...

Woo! purple shooty thing again!

It's yet another Shaltari model! I can't really picture anyone caring too much, but this is a second Jaguar warstrider. I've had a single Jaguar for a while and it's probably the only Dropzone unit I have that doesn't consistently explode. That's not a high bar to clear, but I'll take success where I can find it, so I've added a second one. Presumably this will encourage my opponents to find effective counters to these, meaning that they can explode regularly too. So that's something to look forward to.

Anyway, returning briefly to the point. My goals for the year were to paint more models than I gained, and to avoid starting any new projects that needed me to buy new stuff.

Looking back over the year I can see that I've painted:

Lots of Dropfleet Commander Shaltari spaceships
Not so many Dropzone Commander Shaltari ground units
Some 6mm American Civil War units and terrain
Some modern frogmen, which have yet to reach a table anywhere
A selection of Terminator Genisys machines and resistance, also yet to see a table
A handful of zombies and survivors (ditto)
A post-apocalyptic caravan outpost thing (ditto again)
Some Bolt Action Germans (ditto once more).

That's a lot of text, so here's the caravan again.

This all amounts to 182 painted models. That doesn't sound too shabby, although some of the models would almost pass through the eye of a needle.

However, I also bought, and was given... too much stuff to go through again here.

I will say that I stuck to the goal of not buying anything to start a new project... but then I didn't need to given the diverse array of projects I already had.

It's particularly telling that my two biggest bouts of "getting new stuff" (spending a warlord voucher I got at Christmas and my first ever trip to Salute) netted me something like 70 models... none of which have been painted since.

I've also been given another 19 models today, what with secret Santa and the usual generosity of Kieron coming into play.

Totalling everything up, I've acquired 181 models over the course of the year. This also includes the Ainsty castings school bus thing that I've wanted for ages and got for Christmas.

So, if I compare the models I've acquired to the number I've painted, I get this:

Painted: 182
Acquired: 181

I've done it! However, it's by the smallest margin possible. This doesn't really tie in brilliantly with my bold statements a year ago about "making a worthwhile dent in the lead mountain".

A Shaltari ship, for more texty-breaky-uppy help

I'm going to take another crack at it though. I do find the large pile of unpainted stuff that I have lying around... annoying, more than anything. It all represents ideas that I've been really keen on at one point or another, but have then never managed to turn into anything real. Bah.

So here we go. Once again, my goal for the new year is to paint more models than I get, so that the pile of unpainted stuff gets smaller instead of bigger.

I've got a bit of a better chance this year because:

A) I've spent this year's traditional Christmas voucher from the mother-in-law already, and I've gone for 5 models that I think I'll actually paint, rather than 57 models from all over the place like I did last time.
B) I don't have a huge Kickstarter pledge on the way to dump loads of extra stuff on the heap again.

Right, that's lots of words and now I'm bored. I might post something soon about some of the projects I'm planning to go at soon... but then again I might not. So there.

Happy New Year everyone!

Starting something new

This isn't entirely new really, but it is a change from what I've been doing.

Every year at Christmas I tend to get vouchers, which normally results in adding a extra pile of varied things to the enormous trembling heap of unpainted stuff I already have. A while ago (can't remember if it was last year or the year before) I decided I'd like a "proper" German army for Bolt Action so I ended up with a big bunch of grenadier sprues.

Of course, I immediately set about ignoring them completely.

But then! All of a sudden I decided to start painting some of them. As always when starting new I tried to do far too many in a single batch so they took me ages, but I'm pretty happy with the results and I think in smaller groups they wouldn't take me too long to add to.

Of course, I've immediately got distracted and will start something else.

But anyway, let's have a look at what I've produced...

A little squad with an NCO

An officer with entirely fair assault rifle

Another little squad with NCO

Although it's clearly two many models to have painted in one go, I deliberately did these as an officer and two minimum-sized squads, so that I get a legal force (if not an especially sensible one) straight away and can then begin adding to it.

Since I already have a couple of vehicles, this means that I can make 888 points of wehrmacht now if I make everything veteran - and I also have volkssturm troops that I could add to that. So that's nice.

I'd also like to point out that giving them all assault rifles is entirely fair and not something that anyone should complain about. In fact, to get him to hold the assault rifle and binoculars I had to do a minor conversion on the officer which worked out ok.

So that's it! I might manage to get these to a table at some point, so that would be nice. What's next?

Oh yeah, numbers...

Painted: 181
Acquired: 161

I'm now twenty points ahead. This does of course mean that one of my ever-so-helpful gaming colleagues will have found something to get me for secret santa that adds more than 20 models to the pile, so I need to try to get something more done before that happens...