Goodbye 2023, hello 2024

Happy New Year to you all!

Im a little later than usual with my end of year hobby review post, but at least I'm here now. Welcome to my annual hobby ramble! 

I actually had a really good hobby year in 2023. I joined a new gaming group at the start of the year, so I've been gaming a lot more than I normally do.

They're a great bunch of guys and I've had some really fun games, including participating in a 40k League and trying to introduce them to smaller games like Middle Earth and Heresy. 

On the whole it's been pretty successful and I've had a blast. It's also given me a huge boost to my mental health and a good excuse to get out and be more sociable, so I consider that a win all round. 

I'm honestly little shocked at just how much I've been playing. I've always been far more of a hobbyist than a gamer, but it's been rather excellent getting out and getting some serious gaming in. In previous years I was able to get one game a month if I was lucky. 2023 saw me play 55 games. That's an average of more than one a week! 

It did feel like I'd gotten less stuff painted as a result though, as I've been playing instead of painting on my main night off every week. Turns out though that when I gathered everything together for a photo, I was very wrong:

That's a pretty massive chunk of hobby progress!

 I still thought it was a bit less than previous years, but it turns out I'd pulled out 454 points of hobby progress, which was actually a few points up on last year. I guess I'm just really crap at judging these things! 

I guess I was a little fooled by the fact I've been working on a lot of points-heavy big things, but I certainly won't complain. All hobby progress is good progress! 

It has helped that I've been trying to only game with fully painted models whenever possible. There's nothing like wanting to try something new to give me the push to crank out some fresh models! 

So moving on, where am I going in 2024? Well I've decided to keep it simple this year. At least to begin with I want to get a few existing projects finished, like my 30k Emperor's Children and Imperial Fists, as well as keep working on my Old World armies. 

That latter one is likely to occupy most of my immediate attention, especially with pre orders having been announced. I'm just so excited to have Warhammer Fantasy back! 

I reckon most of January will be consumed with mass production of Orcs and Gobbos. I've got a good method down for them now, so I should be able to zoom through a ton of them, it's just a matter of putting in the time. 

I'm kicking myself a little at having let my Old World projects slip so much, even though I've known the game is coming for four years. I was hoping to have a couple fully playable armies ready to go for launch, but now I'm running out of time, especially as I know a lot of the local players are chomping at the bit to dive in with it. 

I've just got to try and play catch up as best I can. At least it'll keep me busy and motivated! 

Apart from that, i just want to generally focus on getting stuff done for a while. I'm quite comfortably in positive painting points now, but my backlog is still pretty ridiculous, so a bit of a pause on model buying outside of Old World makes a lot of sense for a few months. Quite honestly, I could probably not buy a single model for the next few years and still not run out of stuff to be working on! 

The first few months of the year is normally a good time for me to focus on my backlog anyway, as the hours at work go way down, so I don't have a huge amount of disposable income. It also gives me more free time for hobby, so it just makes sense to focus that for a little while. 

Whatever I end up doing, I do want to try and post on here more regularly. I'm fully aware that in 2024, hobby blogs are a pretty dead form of media. Social media is definitely where it's at for online hobby. There's something very satisfying about maintaining this blog though, so I want to keep it going as long as I can, even if noone's really paying attention to it.

So that's it for this year's round up. It's a little less structured and wandering than usual, but you don't come here for concise thoughts anyway, so it's all good.

Have a fantastic 2024 and I'll catch you all soon! 

2021 Review

As 2021 draws to a close and we go hurtling into 2022 with frightening speed, its time for my usual look back at my hobby year and forward at the year ahead. It's always nice to do these kinds of posts as it gives me a chance to see how far I've come in the last 12 months, as well as giving me the opportunity to gather my thoughts on where I'm going 

2021 has been an odd, but overall pretty good year hobby wise. Despite starting the year in lockdown, I managed to fit in a ton of games as things opened again, across a decent range of systems. 40k and Titanicus seem to have become my main focus, as well as a good amount of Middle Earth of course. It's been really excellent reconnecting with gaming friends who I've been separated from by the pandemic. My main source of socialisation has always been through gaming, so it's really made quite a difference to my mental health to have that back. Last year was really quite rough on me, even if I didn't realise it at the time. I'm certainly feeling a lot more grounded now I have that social outlet back in my life. 

That reconnection and the fact that games are actually being played has meant that I actually painted far more this year than I did even last year where we spent most of it in lockdown. Gaming and events has always been an excellent motivator for getting stuff done!

I can't help but be pretty impressed with that level of output tbh. I've been ridiculously productive and I feel my quality is going up all the time as well. My two best painted awards felt pretty good too! I'm actually shocked that I got best painted twice in rapid succession. I really don't think the armies which won were that impressive tbh, but I guess I've mastered the knack of making armies look good from about two feet away! 

I've got another Middle Earth event next week (assuming we don't get whacked by restrictions), so I'll have to see if I can get a hat trick!

Unfortunately for my backlog, a lot of the painting I've gotten done hasn't actually been from my existing projects, which means that shockingly I'm still in negative figures for my painting points! The big one was when I started Orks in the summer, which ballooned my total to ridiculous levels quite quickly, as well as the various other bits and pieces I picked up across the year. Anyone keeping an eye on my painting points would have seen them zigzig across the negative numbers quite drastically as I desperately tried to wrestle it under control! 

That's why I want to spent at least the early part of 2022 focusing on working on my existing projects. I'm sick of the endless fight against my backlog, so I'm going to be trying not to buy anything new for a few months. My big goal of the year is to get to the point where I have a fully painted force for every system I play, so I can only game with painted models. In turn, that should allow me to be strict with getting stuff painted before I play them. We'll see how that goes, but I think it's a pretty good goal to have. 

With that in mind, I've actually started 2022 o a really positive note. I've been sprucing up and adding to my Mirkwood Elves which I took to Shaun's event at the start of 2020.

That seems so long ago now. Covid really has warped my sense of time. Anyway, I decided to add a few highlights to my existing models and make them pop a bit more, ready for the event I'm attending next weekend. 

It certainly worked! I've absolutely fallen in love how they look now and it's making me want to go back and revisit the non Ranger elements of my Mirkwood army and bring them up to this level, plus actually finish the bits I lost interest in before. I have a bunch of armoured Elves I need to do, plus five different versions of Thrandui which have sat on my desk for longer than I even want to think about. 

I guess that's going to be my next project after turning my attention to sprucing up my Corsairs for this weekend as well, but tbh I'm not as fussed about those. It's nice to get my new year hobby off to a roaring start though.

Anyway, I've rambled enough for now. Happy New Year to you all and I hope your year is full of happy hobbying. I'll catch you all soon! 

Hitting the ground running in 2021

Happy New Year! 

I was going to write a really long end of year review post for 2020, but quite frankly last year is one which noone wants to look back on, much less relive in any detail. Instead I'm going to hit the ground running on the new year and hope things look up in 2021. Oh wait, we're back in Lockdown here in the UK. Never mind...

On a more positive note I've got a week off work and suddenly finding myself with nothing better to do, so I've spent it being pretty productive with attacking my backlog. It's gone pretty well so far:

I've managed to knock out four characters over the course of the first three days of the year. Really not a bad start at all. They've turned out pretty well, even if I say so myself. Mounted Legolas in particular was a joy to paint up. I've wanted that sculpt ever since I got into the game, so I was super happy when it cropped up on Made to Order at the end of last year. 

Lots of progress also means I had a chance to test out the lightbox which a friend very kindly bought me for Christmas, so you may see an uptick in the quality of photography on here once I've had a bit of a play around on with it.

Naturally the first photo I took was of something that didn't fit in the box:

That's everything I painted last year. I originally took the photo for the scrapped review post, but I still wanted to show it off.  That's 498 painting points across twelve months. Quite impressive I'm sure you'll agree. What's even more impressive though is the fact that I'm still in negative figures! Covid really hasn't been good for my self restraint on starting new projects. 

That's why the first part of this year is going to be spent trying to clear through my mighty backlog. If you saw my last post, you'll know that I've got plenty to keep me busy for a while.

Luckily I'm feeling really productive right now, so I'm going to channel that productivity into producing tangible results before that feeling fades again.

Currently on my work bench are this:

And these:

That's the Mirkwood Terrain I've been working on for my home board for a while now, then a couple of Harry Potter characters which I bought in my frenzy of impulse buying back in the summer. They should keep me busy for a while, whilst scratching my hobby itch in two very different ways.

I'll keep you updated on how I get on. 

2019 into 2020: a slightly late New Year post.

 Happy New Year to everyone!

I've been away from blogging for a few months, mostly because of lack of reliable internet. It's been really frustrating, but I'm back now though and I figured I'd do a quick year review post and talk about my plans for 2020. I was hoping to get this out before the new year, but life gets inconveniently busy over the holidays unfortunately, so I'm sure you'll forgive the untimely nature of this post.

Overall I feel it's been a really fantastic year, both personally and hobby-wise. I've travelled around quite a bit this year, met some amazing people (both in and out of the gaming community) and generally had a pretty good time.

In terms of hobby, not only have I played some fantastic games, I've also managed to stick to 90% of the goals I set for myself back in January and achieve an ambition which I've had ever since I was twelve!

I'm referring of course to my adventures in the Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game. Anyone who actualy pays attentions to my 'games played' sidebar will realise that I've been playing an awful lot of it this year. I've always something which I've wanted to do, having been a Tolkien nerd since an early age and been fascinated by the LOTR sections in the back of old White Dwarf magazines. There's never been a group near me who played it though, so I haven't been able to jump into the game.

 That changed back in January when I met Shaun through my local gaming shop. He's been a prominent member of the SBG community for years and it didn't take long for him to draw me in too. A single demo game was all it took!

I've found the LOTR/Hobbit community so friendly and welcoming, I feel I've really found my hobby happy place. That's probably the biggest reason why Middle Earth projects have made up the vast majority of the frankly ridiculous amount of painting which I've done this year. It's almost scary how easy it is to slip into a new army project when playing that system, something which I really should work harder to keep a lid on this year.

To give you an idea, this is a photo of all the Middle Earth miniatures which I've completed since February:

Those were on top of the various 40k and other projects I've completed, making for a grand total of 585 painting points earned across the year!

In fact I've been so productive that for a brief, shining moment, I actually broke into positive painting figures- something which I thought would never happen! The arrival of my Mirkwood army shattered that moment, but it's something that actually happened, abeit briefly and my hobby backlog is certainly a lot more managable now than it's ever been.

The only downside is that between all that painting and real life stuff happening, I've somewhat let blogging fall by the wayside this year. It's a shame because with 2019 being the most productive hobby year I've had for a long time, this should have been reflected in my blogging output, but in fact it was the quietest year on the Wandering Mind since I started it in 2009.

It's a situation which I'm determined to resolve going into 2020. I find blogging about my hobby really rewarding. If nothing else, it's a record of what I've done. I also love sharing my work with the world, even if not many people actually see it. I think part of the reason it's fallen off is that Facebook groups are far easier to post and share my work to these days. Doing that is nowhere near as satisfying though, Hopefully 2020 will be the year I finally get back to a more or less regular posting schedule.

Ok, now I've wittered on a bit, you're probably wondering: What are my plans for the coming year?
Well I'm glad you (hypothetically) asked:

 I don't really have any big new projects lined up got this year. With fully painted armies ready to go for each of the major systems I play, I'm in a pretty good place. I've got nothing huge looming which I need to tackle, but I've got a couple of ideas on where I want to go from here.

I think I'm initially just going to focus one finishing up projects I've already got going but gotten distracted from. The main ones I can think of right now are:

1. Mirkwood Elves

I need 333 points of these done for an event Shaun is holding at the start of February. Luckily I only need 13 models and I have 7 of those finished already, so this should be pretty quick to do.

I'm particularly proud of how my Rangers are shaping up for that force:

They're a bit more vibrant that most Wood Elves you see, something which was very much deliberate. Pretty much every Mirkwood force I've seen painted so far has a very muted pallete, which in turn makes the army look boring as hell to look at on the table. Don't get me wrong, I understand why people have made thos choices, it's just not what I want for my Wood Elves.

After getting the event army done I'll probably expand the force out 700-800pts at some point. I got Thranduil and some Armoured Elves for Christmas so they've gone on my painting list too, but they're not nearly as urgent, so I'll get around to them at some point. 

2. Nurgle Odds and End

I promised a friend of mine last year I'd paint up a load of his Death Guard and Nurgle Deamons, but with one thing and another I kept getting distracted. 

These are going to be tackled in early 2020 as fairly high priority, probably starting with a massive blob of Poxwalkers and Plaguebearers. Wish me luck!

3. Mordor Terrain 

If you've been paying attention to the few posts which I made this year, you'll realise this is another project I got majorly distracted from in 2019. I bought a box of Warcry terrain intending to turn it into a Mordor themed board, but then I had to finish off my Corsairs for an event, then got distracted even further by Mirkwood.

I want to get this done and dusted in the next couple of months so I can have a Middle Earth board to play on at home. Most of my home terrain is 40k-based with lots of city ruins, rubble and industrial gubbins - not exactly evocative of the grandeur of Middle Earth. Considering that SBG is rapidly becoming the main system which I play, this will enhance my play experience immensely!

That should leave me a bit of time to return to a project which I abandoned a couple of years ago:

 4. Fantasy Dark Elves

This is something which isn't really a priority but I'm wanting to weave between my other projects this year. 

The Old World announcement from GW a couple of months back has gotten me pretty excited for the return of square bases in some form. With this in mind, I figure I should get my Druchii finished ready to play with for when it eventually comes. I first bought my Dark Elves back in 2009, so I think it's high time I actually finished them to a good standard. I also have a couple of friends who are keen to dust off their old armies too, so even if these rumblings of the return of the Old World don't amount to much, it'll be good to play a few games of Fantasy again.

On top of that, I've got friend who's hinting at gifting me his old Orcs and Wood Elves, so there's a possibility that there's that to look out for at some point in 2020 too. As if I don't have enough projects to be getting on with!


So there you go, that's my slightly rambling review of 2019 done and dusted, along with a quick look ahead at 2020. With the blog going dark for so long, it felt pretty good to be able to return with quite a chunky post for people to sink their teeth into. Hopefully I can keep up the writing habit this year, but as ever we'll have to see.

Happy New Year once again. I hope you all have a great year both in and out of the hobby!

Plans for 2018 - old armies, new projects

It's a new year, meaning it's time to start planning my hobby for 2018.

I was hoping to write a lovely long Hobby Review post looking back over 2017, but a nasty bout of Nurgle-induced illness over the New Year period basically put a stop on that one. Instead I figured I'd use my first post of 2018 to look ahead at what projects I want to do this year.

First thing's first I've been having a sort out and having a good going through of what I have (hint: It's a lot!). I figure that if I can get organised, it'll be easier to work out where I'm going.

 I started with my Emperor's Children:

It's a fairly impressive collection, considering I only revived my old EC's back in June. I went a little nuts after the release of 8th edition and launched headlong into a buying frenzy, leaving me with a ton of half painted models. 

I'm hoping to finish them up this year before I buy anything else for the army. Luckily most of what I have just needs washing and detailing to finish them up, rather than having to be painted from scratch.

Once I've got my basic 40k list finished, Im planning to do a FW order for a few bits to make them usable in 30k too, including starting my long-planned Daemon Fulgrim conversion. GW might beat me to that one, but considering how little love Slaanesh has been getting recently, I'm pretty certain we won't be seeing a plastic Fulgrim or Emperor's Children any time soon.

Leaving the world of excess behind, next up are my Thousand Sons:

I was making good progress on these in the first six months of last year, spurred on by the release of Inferno. Unfortunately the massive distraction named 8th Edition came along, bringing with it the uncertainty surrounding the future of 30k. That pretty much meant that my Thousand Sons fell to the wayside, mostly due to lack the sudden of opponents to play against as most of my local 30k players flocked back to 40k.

Now that FW have released the Age of Darkness rulebook and people in my area are playing 30k again, I want to jump back to these and get them finished. Much like my EC's, I don't think it'll take much effort to do. I just need to sit down and focus on them for a few months. They'll make quite a nice pallete cleanser for when I'm sick of painting pink and purple!

If you're wondering what happened to the Ordo Xenos forces which I was working on earlier this year, I've unfortunately decided to shelve them for a while until either Deathwatch or the Inquisition get a codex (preferably both!). The army just doesn't play the way I feel they should in 8th using the Index rules, so I'm leaving them until they get the codex treatment. It's a shame, but I just can't muster the enthusiasm for working on them like used to, so it makes sense to take a break from them.

On the other hand, there's one project which I'm really looking forward to making a start on soon: 

I picked up these Mordians from a friend just before Christmas and are going to put through the stripping tub in the next few weeks.

I've always wanted a Mordian army and with the new Guard codex seeing the return of Regimental Doctrines, I figured I'd finally take the plunge with them. I'm planning on doing a large order with Victoria Miniatures at some point in the next few months to add to the two squads I've got here. Their range of 'Mordians' are beautiful and should not only give me the option to build loadouts which GW no longer produces, but also let me model the Napoleonic-esque firing lines which I've always pictured.

They even do sculpts for female guardsmen! Something which is distinctly lacking from the GW range.

All this is going to be very much a side project though until i get my two Marine-based armies finished. I've waited 15 years to collect Mordians, so a few more months won't make too much difference.

So there you are, those are my plans for at least the early part of this year. There's plenty to do, but I'm hoping that documenting it all on here should keep me motivated. I've kind of let this blog lapse over the past year or so. I'm wanting to change that and kick it back into something resembling a regular posting schedule.

Wish me luck!

What are your plans for hobbying this year?

2016 in Review - 2017 plans

The time has come to once again have a look back over my hobby across the year.

I feel 2016 has been a good year for me hobby-wise. My new job has meant I've finally been able to afford to invest the money I want into my projects, whilst unfortunately sapping me of the time to do them!

That said, I've managed to get a good amount of games in. I've played 24 games out of my intended 26. Whilst falling just shy of my target,  it's had the intended effect - reinvigorating my gaming life and providing inspiration and motivation for my projects. I've also connected with not just one, but two awesome groups in my local area. I've met some great people and finally found myself a regular 30k-playing group to indulge my love of the Horus Heresy with. That's on top of getting a good friend of mine into collecting a Night Lords force. I've even found some opponents to play 8th Edition Fantasy against, so it's been a very good year, I'd say.

Unfortunately the same success hasn't been mirrored in the painting side of things. It's kind of become a yearly tradition that I declare that I will be massively more productive than usual with my painting and I will have several painted armies to show for it by December the 31st. These proclamations usually fall by the wayside sometime around February. I think you can guess what happened in 2016?

You guessed correctly.

In fairness I decided wisely midway through the year to drop the targets of specific projects and just aim to be generally productive. My hope for achieving this was to adopt a painting points system and by trying to paint for about half an hour every day. Unfortunately between real life and preparation for Pokemon Championships, I haven't done anything since October except put a few layers on the Terminators from the Prospero box. Also, various impulse buys have shot my painting points total to the wrong side of hilarious!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, this is going to change next year. I now have pretty much everything I need for my current projects. All that remains is to paint them. In hindsight, half an hour every single day was a bit too much to keep up with. I work night shifts most of the week, as well as having several other very time consuming hobbies. I just didn't have the time to put aside for painting. When I did get a chance to sit down and paint, the fact that I was so behind on my daily painting just made it feel like a chore, rather than something I did for fun.

What I'm thinking is that next year I should be aiming to sit down and paint for at least half an hour three times a week. That's much easier to manage, whilst still giving a good rate of progress. Plus it means I won't be demoralised so much if I happen to miss a couple of days. Drastically reducing my number of current projects should help too. I only have four main things I'm working on atm:

Thousand Sons - These have become my main gaming force, which coupled with the recent releases have worked wonders for my motivation for getting them finished. This will be a nice and simple 2500 point Zone  Mortalis force. After that I'm hoping to add 500 points of White Scar allies, but that's a little way off yet.

I'm also hoping to make some bits and pieces so these guys can pull double duty as a 30k or 40k force. The recent Chaos releases have gotten me quite fired up to try out the new Traitor Legion rules!


Sons of Horus - This has fallen at the wayside somewhat, probably because it's a repaint rather than a new project, so I don't have my usual 'fire' when I work on them. I have a sneaky suspicion a friend of mine has bought me Horus for Christmas though, so it's possible my motivation will go through the roof for these guys very soon!


Dark Elves - Currently the oldest army I own and the one with the fewest painted models (10 Crossbowmen). On the other hand, the fact that one of my local gaming clubs is running a narrative Fantasy campaign atm means that I really wanted to get these fully painted. I have all the models I need for this save for one Hydra, so in theory I should be able to complete this fairly quickly.

My Lords, Heroes and a couple of monsters are likely to be amongst the first projects I finish in the new year and batch painting infantry shouldn't present too much of a challenge either.


Inquisition - These have been put on hold until I get the new Imperial Agents book and I can see what rules and combos they've changed/removed. These aren't going away though. The fact that each model is so individual means that I find myself returning to these guys whenever I want a break from my other projects.

I also want to keep working on my homemade Zone Mortalis project this year, but that's not a priority right now. I game mostly at clubs rather than at home, so having a painted army is more important to me than having a niche set of terrain for those few times when I play games at home. It'll be nice to have once I get around to it though.

At some point I also want to get a display cabinet for my finished models. Being able to see them displayed in all their glory (not to mention being beyond the reach of the cat, who seems to have developed a taste for plastic crack) should help my motivation immensely.

So to sum up, my goals for 2017 are:

- try to paint at least three times a week for half an hour.

- continue my current projects and try not to start any more.

- continue my painting points system.

- try and get 26 games in across the year. One every two weeks in average seems a reasonable goal to try and hit.

Current painting point total: 93 bought/ 6 painted

My hobby 'stash' currently looks like this:

I also have these sprayed and ready to go. I'm not going to touch them until January the 1st though.

Wish me luck!

What are your hobby plans for 2017?

Goodbye 2015, Hello 2016

It's normally about this time of year that I start posting about grand, overblown pledges for my coming year in the hobby. Not this year though. I've learnt the hard way that real life has a habit of screwing over all my plans.

Because of this, in 2016 I'm going to keep it simple and make just three pledges:

1. Play more games

This is going to be the main one for me. 2015 has been quite a slow year for gaming, mostly due to the fact that I've spent most of this year unemployed, This coupled with having to move flat in August to an area where organising games is difficult, I really haven't done much gaming since July beyond the odd game of BFG or Betrayal at Calth.

With this in mind, my primary pledge in 2016 is to play more games. If I can aim to play 26 games across the year, I'll already be ahead on last year. I figure playing an average of one game every two weeks shouldn't be too strenuous.

A big part of achieving this will be to find myself a gaming group. In Peterborough, I attended an awesome club (Peterborough Wargames Club, check them out here). Thanks to PWC I tried a wide variety of games and they were primarily responsible for me branching out beyond GW in my gaming. Now I've moved to Norfolk though, I've found myself without a group to play with (the groups I played with when I lived here a few years ago have mostly disbanded) - a state of affairs I intend to correct!

I think my first step will be to get involved in the 30k Community in Norwich. I've visited them at Athena Games a couple of times, but haven't had a chance to actually play against them yet. It'll be good to actually be  able to face other 30k armies, as my Sons of Horus have mostly faced 40k armies in the past.

My other plan is to sort myself out with a gaming table for my flat, so I can actually play against the few gamers I know who live close enough to play games against at home. I'll be building a double-sided modular board to fit onto it, so I can play both Battlefleet Gothic and standard 40k/Fantasy/Skirmish games.

This brings me quite nicely onto my second pledge...


2. Clear my Backlog

At the moment I have a massive backlog of models to paint - a result of being a self-confessed hobby butterfly. I'm hoping to clear a good portion of this over the next couple of months. This means actually finishing projects for a change, instead of leaving them half-finished.

Right now I have the following which needs finishing:

• Sons of Horus (3000 points)
• Thousand Sons with White Scars allies (3000 points)
• Battlefleet Gothic Sons of Horus fleet (2000 points)
• Battlefleet Gothic Ork fleet (2000 points)
• Battlefleet Gothic Terrain
• Deathwatch/ Inquisition (1500 points)
• Malifaux Show Girls crew (basic crew box)
  

I think that's plenty to be getting on with for now. A big motivation for me is the idea of being able to display them in my living room now that I have my own place. My plan is to start nothing new until they're finished. My only hobby purchases will be parts I need to finish these projects. To keep me motivated even further, I make my third pledge...


3. Document it all!
Nothing keeps me more motivated than sharing what I'm doing with the hobby community. As well as blogging about my work on here, I'm also a member of Warseer, The First Expedition and Bolter & Chainsword, as well as countless hobby groups on Facebook.

Everything I build and paint will be shared online, to motivate me as well as to pick up tips and advice improve my hobby skills. I'll try and post on here at least once or twice a week, keeping track of my progress on my pledges. Hopefully all this will allow me to actually follow through on my pledges for once.


So there you go, my aims for 2016 set out and ready to go. My life is far more settled now than it's been in previous years, so I reckon I stand a good chance of actually sticking to my pledges this year. As ever, we'll have to see though.

What are your hobby goals for 2016?

Cygor Bloodthirster WIP

Ok, plans for new hobby area have been put on hold, due to the need to find a new flat, but in the meantime, I'm still working on clearing my backlog of projects for the new year.

First up is my Bloodthirster, converted from the Cygor/Ghorgon kit. I know I said in my original list that it was going to be made from a Zombie Dragon, but that was before I saw this kit. Right from the moment I saw it i knew I'd found the donor model for my plastic Bloodthrister. The Zombie Dragon pieces (minus the wings) have been put aside for another project.



As you can see it's closer to the original model than much of the rest of my Deamon army and still very WIP, but it's getting there.



So far I've started sculpting on the chest armour (to be finished over Christmas) and started adding the distinctive mane of hair that appears on the metal/finecast version. This is going to take the longest, i think, as i'm modelling each strand of hair individually

I'm also going to be scratch-building an axe and whip for him, as well as obviously adding the other wing.



He's obviously going to be quite a bit bigger than the GW version, but I've always thought that the current Bloodthirster is way too small and goofy looking for a walking demi-god of war anyway.

By the looks of things my one is going to end up sized about halfway between the GW and Forgeworld version, which means I should be able to use it as either.

More on this very soon, as well as the other projects...

New Year Hobby Resolutions

1. Buy less, paint more

I have no less(but probably quite a few more)than 250 unpainted models at the moment, mainly for fantasy, but also a lot of 40k. I seriously need to get some stuff painted.

Plus money’s going to be tighter for me this year, so I’m planning a single big purchase (a realm of battle game board), then only bits and pieces as time goes along. If I limit myself to £20-30 maximum hobby spending on average a month, it should be fine.

2.Complete an army

Tying in with the idea of spending less and painting more, I actually want to get at least one of my armies fully painted and I’m giving myself a deadline of 31st December 2010. This army is most likely going to be my Blood Pact, who are mainly being built out of stuff from my bitz box and models I already own (but not necessarily opened)

3. Keep track of my painting

Using that points system that I’ve seen various bloggers use to keep track of my painting. If someone could direct me to someone who uses it who I can copy it off, I’d be most grateful