Goodbye 2021, Hello 2022

Happy New Year! It' got to be better than the last one.

 

I managed to paint two more figures before the ball dropped. Finished early in the day, actually. Two more old Grenadier "Future Wars" figures, that should wrap up the figures I need for the moment for the gangs/punks/starport scum/etc. factions in Five Parsecs. Full pic of the group on the Five Parsecs page (see below/above) On to another faction!

 

Blog Update

• I enabled comments again. I'll see how that goes. If I start getting inundated with spam again I may shut that option down again. One of my concerns is getting flagged as a phishing or malware site because of the spam posts. I've seen that happen on other blogs, and there are few that are sadly completely blocked by my anti-virus software.
• Since I'm hoping to start playing some solo sci-fi games (Five Parsecs from Home is the current game plan) I've added a couple of static pages to the blog to track my painting progress & my crew. Links are near the top of the page.
  

2021 Review

As usual, I posted a list of goals for 2021. They weren't necessarily planned as a strict checklist, but just things I was looking forward to doing. As it turns out, 2021 was a bit of a garbage year, even compared to 2020. Some of the smaller painting challenges I look forward to each year, like Orctober and my own habit of painting a giant or two in April passed me by like a speeding car. I never had much time to give them more than a sad passing thought.

 

Painting:  The focus for the first half of the year was completing my Old World Army Challenge 4 project. This was my third year participating and unlike past years, I barely made it through several months. Unfortunately it was sometimes difficult to find any painting time at all, which created a gloomy feel of obligation sometimes. But at the core, it was something I had really been looking forward to and the real problem was the rest of my schedule not allowing for much personal time. Looking back, I'm happy with the Eldar and really enjoyed experimenting with color, writing the entries, and in particular the Gothmower.

 

After the OWAC was finished, there was a bit of a lull in painting until the end of the year. I was completely off target in terms of my predicted "goals" but the trade off  is that I made significant progress towards having enough painted figures to start a Five Parsecs campaign! A few more 'bots, some "supporting characters," space worms, Spiders From Mars, Astro-Zombies, and a variety of ne'er-do-wells. I even built a new photo board, a tiny bit of terrain, and a basic 3'x3' board for games.

Otherwise, I think all I painted was a handful of undead, including a "Life & Death" pair that I plan on following up with in the future. Literally & figuratively.

Gaming: Unfortunately, this was an utter bust. I had wanted to do either another solo Sellswords & Spellslingers campaign, or try my hand at Rangers of Shadow Deep. Neither happened. I thought maybe I could at least take a set of solo sci-fi rules for a test drive, but didn't get a single game (though I did roll up a random Five Parsecs crew!) We didn't do much in the way of family board/card games all year. At the end of 2020 I was really hoping the pandemic would improve -- and it did briefly -- enough for some actual face to face games with old or new friends. Back a few years ago I had planned on making 2021 a "year of gaming" to get back some of the old joy as a 50th birthday gift to myself. (I turned 50 in December.) But the world had different plans.

Shopping: OK, this isn't a category or a goal. Just an observation. I bought more new figures in 2021 than in any other year in recent history. Maybe subconsciously trying to compensate for lack of gaming, blogging, friends, etc. and the struggles with painting? I got several Midlam Miniatures kickstarter rewards (more hobgoblins, townsfolk, hobbits), sci-fi figures from Skull & Crown (space dwarfs), Satry Art Studio (sister marines), Khurusan (space raptors and human sci-fi guard/soldiers), misc. bits for a small skirmish project in the Althammer "New World" (Messoamerican fantasy), some LotR warg riders for conversion to Hobhound cavalry, and a couple of orders of misc. figures from Badger Games and RPE (mostly sci-fi stuff.) Now that I've cataloged it, maybe it's not THAT much. But I've kept pretty tight reins on new acquisitions for a long time, trying to match my pace of purchases with my painting. This year was out of balance, I guess. Time to ramp up the painting!

Looking Forward to 2022

Painting

• Old World Army Challenge 5. I'm painting undead the first six months of 2022. You can read about it in my intro post. I'm looking forward to this, although after last year's project the bar is set somewhat (intentionally) low. But as long as I meet the basic requirements, I've got "add ons" planned so I can scale it up if I want.
• More sci-fi/Five Parsecs. I want to play some games, and I've still got quit a bit of enthusiasm for this, so I will continue to paint more as time allows. Specific plans include those listed below, some pics of the unpainted on the Five Parsecs page.
  
• Planetary nomads/scavengers (Copplestone & Grenadier)
  
• Soldiers/mercenaries (Khurusan)
• Salvage Team (Skull & Crown)
• Soldiers/mercenaries (Satyr Art Studio)
• Robots (various)
• Pirates/Raiders/Vigilantes (Stargrave, if I can get motivated to build plastic figures)
• A dragon. I have several cleaned & primed but for some reason I've been intimidated by the idea of not living up to the task of painting one. More specifically painting a non-undead one, since I have painted skeletal and zombie dragons in recent years. I don't know why I've got such a mental block on doing this but 2021 is the year to overcome this!
• A Tale of Two Hobs
• Hobgoblins/hob-orcs aka half orcs. I still have the figures from the last Midlam KS to paint, and a handful of GW LotR wardg riders that I plan on converting to hobhound cavalry.
• Hobbits. I've been saying I'll get back to the halflings & rest of the Jackrabbit Trading Company for years, but never quite get around to them. Maybe this year...?
• Terrain. I need sci-fi terrain to play games! I have also been wanting to make more large trees like the one I did for my Wood Elf Old World Army Challenge project. (Though storage of the trees is a bit of a problem.) I also have a resin inn I bought a couple years ago that I'd love to paint up & use in some home-brew Sellswords scenarios.
  

 

 

Gaming

• Anything will be a step up from 2021.
• Five Parsecs. I have a crew rolled up, a solid start on a pool of adversaries, and started on terrain. Hoping to start up in the first half of the year.
• Sellswords. I should return to this. I enjoyed my first campaign in 2020. Provided I can get my table cleared off (need to figure out a way to store all the sci-fi figures I painted last year!) all that I need is time.
• Alternately I still wouldn't mind trying Rangers of Shadow Deep.
• Games vs. other humans? I have no idea whatthe pandemic and my schedule will allow. But I can dream.
• I wouldn't mind trying to get my family to try some of the above games as co-op instead of solo.
  

 

 

 

The Slowdown Lowdown

The new job is great, but exhausting. Especially as I am spending half of January travelling. So that quick painting on the Lord of the Feast is about all I'm going to get done this month. I'll be home for a while after the end of January, but not sure how much painting time I will have. Still, I've been thinking a little more about what I'd like to paint in the next few months, and the coming year. So the slightly revised list is:

• Fomorians/Fimir
• Finish the eight GW orc conversions I started last year.
• Paint the Troll Outpost hero.
• Paint the remaining Oldhammer lead Fimir.
• Convert & paint the few remaining Reaper orcs I've currently got, plus the batch of new ones I'm awaiting from the Bones 3 Kickstarter.
• Giants
• Paint the oldschool Citadel C28 giant I've got.
• (I've re-considered, and I'd like to get a set of the three multi-piece C28 giants -- so, acquiring the other two is another goal).
• Paint the last metal giant Citadel produced (its already assembled & basecoated).
• Paint the Warploque giant!!.
• Acquire the Otherworld Giant (the last "must have" giant on my list)
• Halflings
• Paint the Westfalia KS reward halflings.
• Rogue Trader
• Paint a few figures. Still up in the air... Robot Pirates vs. Spacetime Bandits. Still just a half-baked idea anyway.
• Trolls (No reason or plans behind these -- they're just cool figures I really want to paint!)
• Paint the first three trolls from Drew Williams.
• Paint the second three trolls from Drew when they arrive.
• Empire
• Paint more halberdiers
• Paint more landskneckt dwarfs
• Aqcuire and paint that last MM41 Marauder fucking Ogre I've been after for years!
• Undead
• Paint oldschool wights & wight lord
• Paint last few Nightmare Legion.
• Odds & Ends. Whatever else I feel like painting. The dead are always waiting...

If I get to half of what I posted above, I'll be happy. Realistically, I'm thinking about what I can do away from the painting/modeling table instead. So I'm thinking about finally giving some structure & polish the campaign concepts I've been brainstorming on for... a couple years? I think the hobbit merchant/mercenary company introduction I did late 2016 was a good start. I've got scenarios outlined for that too. So maybe I can indulge in some writing, sketching, organizing, etc. when I can't get to a painting table in 2017.

Which brings me to a long-term goal. I turn 50 in 2021. Still a few years off... but not so far away. I used to love doing something fun for my birthday each year, but once I hit my 40s it's mostly been just another day in the grind.

2016 was a nice fun tease of a year-- I got together & played KoW (which I am totally sold on) a couple times with old friends that I desperately miss. I had a great time at my first Oldhammer USA event. So although it seems like it's going to be harder to repeat even my humble 2016 schedule, I'm going to be a self-centered bastard about turning 50, deny growing older, and play games with toy soldiers as much as I can. So I'd like to get a campaign concept wrapped up by the end of 2020, and then play out a bunch of games with old friends, new friends, and, sure, total strangers at a few conventions/events throughout 2021.

And if I'm going to try pulling something super-geeky off for my 50th, I may as well do it right. The Eccentric Gamer's Mid-Life Crisis. So... Printed campaign pack? Or at least printed maps? Stickers? T-Shirts? Cast miniatures? Micro-brew? The possibilities are endless. My resources (mainly money and time) might not be, but my ideas.... endless. ;)

(WTF?!? I remember when the year 2021 was something used for reference in post-apocalyptic gaming settings... now I'm making real-life gaming plans for that year?!)