I'm sitting here writing the wrap up a month early here on Thanksgiving day. I don't want to say I've "thrown in the towel" but the reality is I don't see my self being able to make any big project posts between now and the end of the year. I'm sure you can tell from the last post that this won't be a big exciting update. I mentioned in the last post that things were changing. I spent the last year adjusting to a new role at work (which required a fair bit of travel that has now mercifully calmed down) and more recently we welcomed the birth of our first child. Since then things have begun to calm a bit but more recently than that I've been dealing with my moms basement flooding. The damage was thankfully not too terrible but it's required me to take significant stock of what I want to bother transferring out of her house and frankly a lot of things got binned and did not make the cut.
This isn't meant to be any sort of pity party type of post but its all to put some vague perspective on things.
I had some opportunity to work from home recently which allowed me to paint the Vespid half of the new kill team box but haven't begun the other components yet. Beyond that I began cleaning my workspace out in a significant way.
We had a very interesting diversion recently as well. I spent a while waxing about why I've been gravitating harder towards board games and in the very beginning of September something wild happened. Paul calls me out of the blue asking if I need any games? An open ended rhetorical question of course. Long story short, a friend of a friend knows of someone who just inherited a massive collection of games. Ill skip the gory details but in brief we spent 700 dollars and, assuming I did the math right, acquired around 3500 worth of games. I paid somewhere around 8 dollars a game and got quite a few "grail" games. The guy loved his games and most of these had sleeves, expansions or promos included. Due to needing to catalog this stuff I've found myself weirdly fascinated by data lately. I'll leave that thread dangling with my most humbling stat. We've apparently never played approximately 40 percent of our collection.
So is this the part where I lay out lofty goals for the year? It is. Of note, theres 3 board game related ones in here. I may also dabble with board game reviews but time will tell on that front. I will for sure be making some board game related posts however as I work my way through the unplayed games in the collection.
Paint 2 factions for Crisis Protocol and play at least 2 games
Paint 2 cabinet pieces
Paint 2 complete forces for Shatterpoint and play at least 2 games
Finish a second army for Full Spectrum Dominance and try the game
Play 3 games of Trench crusade with painted models
Create a 4 x 4 Modular trench board (if we like the game)
Play 365 board games
Complete a Board game 10 x 10
Get the list of unplayed games down to 20% or less
Finish 1k of Word Bearers
Try Horus Heresy
Play Lord of the Rings with a newly painted list
End the year with a sub 200 golf score
Try spectre, arsenal, breacher or another "modern" game
Finish the TF2 Project
Paint the Halo Flashpoint box
Paint my spinespur collection
Try Blkout with painted models
Play a fantasy skirmish game
Play Mad Maximilian.
Finish the Hivestorm Box and play Kill Team
Play a Historical Game
Finish Reading 5 books
It's not all bad news however. While perusing my list of painted stuff this year I did notice I actually painted a fair amount of stuff.
I painted a fair bit of Legions Imperialis stuff early in the year. I also managed to paint an entire spearhead for Age of Sigmar. I got rid of quite a pile of stuff but what killed me (as always) is the cult of the new. Even though I painted the Stormcast, I purchased the new starter and have yet to make any progress on it. Same goes for the flesheater courts as well as Hivestorm. One major number killer was the purchase of 2 boxes of wargames atlantic samurai. Theyre tiny and take up almost no room but man are there a lot of figures in there.
I picked goals this year as I always do based on what I'm into now mixed with a touch of "whats going to catch my eye soon" which is hard because come Con season I usually get distracted. With a new child we won't be attending shows this year however which should cut down on that a fair amount.
Happy New Year and here's to the year ahead.