Some More Musings on Boardgames and My Yearly Hobby Goals

 This is a long, rambly introspective post about how the years been going. I've decided to leave the bulk of the post below the break so for those of you who aren't interesting in the boardgame/blog stuff can skip it easier.

It's nearing the end of the year so I thought I'd take a minute to drop my goals in here again and check in around those.

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

So let's talk about what happened. 

Going down the list from the top, I haven't touched anything related to either Crisis Protocol or Shatterpoint. I also really haven't purchased much for either which is nice. The purchasing in general has been pretty radically reduced as well. I'm sitting at 400ish points but haven't included the current batch of frostgrave, vikings or Dwarves in there until their bases are all finished. 

I finished one of two cabinet pieces and got a decent clip into a second. I finished up the Mando bust and immediately started into the Terrifier one. I might finish that this year but either way, its some forward progress.

I have made 0 progress on Trench Crusade. My regular opponent I believe is still waiting on his models, were both waiting on books. 

My halo box is painted, but not listed in my shamegolf numbers, because it needs basing of some sort. I haven't touched anything for Full Spectrum Dominance, TF2, Blkout, Moderns, Spinespur, or Mad Maximilian, or LoTR. 

I think a few things happened. First of all, I got bit by the historical bug again. Early this year I ordered some victrix napoleonics and just started chipping away on some forces for Muskets and Tomahawks. Much more recently, I started on some SAGA age of Vikings stuff. I dove sort of hard back into that side of things instead of trying to finish the existing projects. 

I also finished a huge pile of terrain for fantasy gaming. Something I'm super proud of but only tangentially on the list. I'm currently printing a huge pile of Old West terrain as well but again, only tangentially on the least. 

I've been thinking hard about the goals for next year and I think I have an idea of what to set them to for much more manageable results. 

Now! Let's talk boardgames and distractions. 

So, After last year, I (very incorrectly) assumed I would have a similar amount of time to game. Though I've actually had more "game days" my actual spare time has been spent mostly with family or as of late reading. (More on that at the end). I played a much much higher amount of solo games last year and though I'd like to get back into the swing of it, I just haven't had the time. The plan was to play an average of a game a year, and to cover the few games missed by getting sick of the new years break last year. I'm about a hundred behind. I don't see it happening but I'm still going to try. 

In a similar vein I tried to do a 10 x 10 this year. Not even close. But! Close enough to try a 5 x 5 next year. I also took a shot at doing an alphabet challenge. This is one I will almost definitely finish and will probably do again. It's fairly easy with my collection and just a fun little aside. 

I think the hardest part was I accidently picked conflicting goals. In a list of 365 plays for the year I thought that maybe I could do 100 of the same games, while also playing a huge amount of new games. I think next year its important to pick one not both. The one thing I realized above all else though is that I'm probably wasting money on expansions. We just don't play games enough to merit going all out on expansion content. It tends to make the game more difficult to table and frequently more difficult to learn/teach. Some games like Heat, solely benefit from it but other games like Cascadia, it doesn't seem at all worth the extra overhead. 

I'm sure you've noticed that I've been using this space a ton more. That's planned to continue. I think I'll be retiring the "new to me" Column for a while in exchange for a brief "Chipping away on the unplayed pile" quick fire type of post. I'm toying with a blog related goal or two for next year so we should keep that momentum going. 

Finally last parting thoughts for the time being. I'm currently chipping away on some demo forces for SAGA. I have a game of Warhammer Fantasy scheduled. I've been building chaos dwarves for AOS, an Old west town for various games. I've been slowly finishing up a second warband for Frostgrave. Mostly though, I've been reading. 

Back in high school I used to be a voracious reader. It was one of the main ways I passed the time. As time passed I read less and less. I found as an adult I struggle a bit with reading, especially longer novels because I tend to obsess over things like "how many more pages in this chapter" or " how much long is this book" and it makes it a bit difficult to really get into a book. I started this year with "read 5 books" on my list. I finished those by March mostly by setting aside a few minutes each night and trying to read 10 pages a day. If I read my 10 pages, I could put the book down but mostly I found that once I got going I'd usually read more. 

I then made the connection that if I read pdfs on my phone instead of physical books, I'd tend to just sort of keep scrolling endlessly, the way I did with TikTok or Reddit. The only problem there is if I got some sort of notification, I wouldn't always click back to the book, I'd frequently end up on the internet instead. 

All this to say, I finally took the plunge and bought an e-reader. I got a Kobo Clara B/W. Since getting it a little over a week ago I think I've read around 1500 pages. (the page numbers are a little bit wonky compared to the real versions of the books so that number is an educated guess). The thing fits in a pocket and I can bring it wherever. I've been using most of my spare time to plow through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Highly recommend.