Checking in on Hobby Goals

This will post while I'm at adepticon presumably screwing the whole list up and making all sorts of lofty mistakes.

 Though I didn't adhere to my original plan of "roughly two goals a month" I have been making steady progress on a few of these goals. Here is the updated list with some break downs

End the year with a sub 200 Golf Score

    The year of course is not yet over but as of this writing we're sitting pretty at 141. This was after receiving an all in pledge on yafsiga and selling off my Conquest Spires and AOS Slaanesh force.

Begin the Lord of the Rings Ringbearer Campaign

    I did paint a couple more figures for this and actually (using the mines of moria plastics) have enough to play the first scenario.

Play Spectre Ops

    Purchased a box of Wargames Atlantic Afghans and the digital conversion set from WAA

Print and Paint two sets of Team Fortress 2 Figures

    Printed one and a half sets and put paint on at least 4 of the figures.

Play To The Strongest with painted 10mm figures

Finally Try Age of Hannibal

    Both this and the goal above were waiting on bases to continue which have since arrived.

Play a game of A Song of Ice and Fire with a painted Baratheon Force

Finish 2k points of Old Dominion for Conquest and play a game

Completely Paint 2 complete factions for Crisis Protocol

    I have assembled everything in spider foes and am about halfway through painting it all. 

Finally Try Moonstone

Finally Try Mad Maximilian

Play at least one game of Necromunda

     Managed to play a game with my wife in February

Try Necropolis28

Try Mordheim

    3d printed an entire warband of witch hunters and roped two friends into a test game in april.

Play a Game of War of the Ring

Play a game of Horus Heresy

Finish at least one Cabinet piece (resin probably)

Play both Sludge and Turnip

Try the new edition of Kill Team

Play Never Mind the Billhooks

Attend one tourney or play event

Finish my Death ray Designs City Board

 

Now heres the bad news. This list was the original list that I had hoped to acomplish this year. Unfortunately (as one is to do with such severe hobby ADD as I have) there are a few other tasks I really want to try to knock out this year

Try Verrotwood

Finish my 3d printed Boarding Action board

Try One Page Rules Age of Fantasy Skirmish

Play a game of Brawl Arcane 28

Sculpt Print and Paint something of my own

Try Conquest First Blood

Try Battlefleet gothic and OPR equivalent

Play Deadzone

I know its awfully ambitious of me to add things to the original list when we're not even out of march, the list is barely cracked and some of these are completely unrelated or rather extravagant. I am who I am and I am want to give it a try.

Goal Completed - Try Moonstone

 So the wife and I had a chance to get some gaming in this past weekend and I had just put the finishing touches on the Moonstone Starter box I've been working on since lord knows when. I'm not generally one for an after action report but the game basically came down to the roll off for first activation of the final turn. It was a super close game with my wife playing the Goblins and me playing the humans. I went ahead and started prepping Boulder to add to my collection and something about the figure has grabbed me in a way figures haven't grabbed me in a while. Expect more photos of moonstone stuff down the road

Here are the contents of the two player starter box. I'll do a quick write up sometime soon about how i did the bases because they weren't a lot of effort and I'm very happy with them.  

As a starter set I think its a great buy, you get just enough to decide if you want to buy further and as a contained experience it was enjoyable. It has super unique mechanics and played quickly.

I managed to actually get a second game in as well and have some further quick thoughts on the rules. I think the game is really solid but I'm not sure where it sits on my shelf. I enjoyed it quite a bit and absolutely loved painting the models but with a lot of boutique games I feel like the sweet spot is "a group who plays where everyone has their own faction/collection" and with this game I simply can't imagine a group where a few people go in on it. Maybe it exists better as a convention style multiplayer game? I think the game is an underrated gem but I do sort of feel like I understand why I haven't spoke to anyone else playing it. Thankfully I love the figures enough that I'm happy with my small (and probably still growing) collection but I do wonder how often I'll end up playing it. 

I'd like to try a 3 player, a 4 player and maybe a campaign game before I decide if it will hit the table or go into the cabinet but I just adore the figures so much that I may just paint what I have. Either way this completes one of my self challenges and for that I'm happy. 

As a totally unrelated aside, I think my biggest road block to blogging has been pictures. I really want to get this thing rolling (case in point this was originally written on Jan 28.) but the room I paint in now is terrible for photos, and it always seems like such an ordeal to drag stuff upstairs just for photos. I've already easily done more hobby so far this year than last year in total but you'd never know it from lack of social media posting.

Team Fortress 2 Project (1) - Test Figure

 I've been long obsessed with the team based online shooter, Team Fortress 2. I've pumped  a little over 300 hours into the game according to steam which for me is a lot. I haven't played in a while now but this is a project I've had on the back of my mind for a while. 

Originally I was planning on writing a set of rules specifically to do skirmish gaming with the franchise but I have some different ideas to adapt a ruleset now. For now I just want to paint all 18 figures (and a couple accessories) and have a collection. If a game happens, cool, but I'm not sweating that. 

When I first got an idea to do this I found some files on Thingiverse and squirelled them away. Unfortunately as best laid plans go, this was going to throw up a bit of a roadblock. The files I found are super low res. Years ago, before I knew about printing and long before having a resin printer, I printed the scout in fdm and thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I had no clue the low res was part of the sculpt. I'm guessing these are ripped right from the game but I'm not sure. 

Heres a WIP photo with a bit of paint on it. I was gonna post a primed example but I forgot to get a photo and dove right into the painting.

 

I'm completely fine with a block paint and leaving it at that. First of all, these are just to have. There's no planned game or anything yet so I mostly just want "the complete set" with paint on it. Second of all, I think this style of no contrast painting works fine on these figures and the aesthetic of the game. I've got a few of the other classes already printed. I've been getting lucky with auto supports so far. I did have a couple pieces come off and break while removing supports but to be honest, theres no way stuff like the engineers lasso bit was going to last once the print was cured. More soon.

New Year, New Hobbies

 I feel like every year I start the year off with some sort of vague attempt to quantify the hobby or set goals or expectations and this year is no different.

I had a very interesting 2022. I got married, truly dived into a new career and generally I've changed a bit how I've felt about the hobby. I've waxed lyrical about how I feel about hobby content creation over the years on various platforms and I'll save that for a different post but for now I simply just want to lay out some plans for the year and attempt to make a bit better use of this platform going forward.

On New Years Eve, while watching The Banshees of Inisherin (absolutely wonderful by the way) I took a few minutes to write down a few "concrete goals" This year I just wanted to pick a bunch of stuff to get acomplished across the hobby as opposed to a static number of figures. A fair few of these are simply revolved around playing more games. Any time a goal says "play" I fully intend to have all of my figures involved in said game fully painted. Without further ado;

 

End the year with a sub 200 Golf Score

Begin the Lord of the Rings Ringbearer Campaign

Play Spectre Ops

Print and Paint two sets of Team Fortress 2 Figures

Play To The Strongest with painted 10mm figures

Finally Try Age of Hannibal

Play a game of A Song of Ice and Fire with a painted Baratheon Force

Finish 2k points of Old Dominion for Conquest and play a game

Completely Paint 2 complete factions for Crisis Protocol

Finally Try Moonstone

Finally Try Mad Maximilian

Play at least one game of Necromunda

Try Necropolis28

Try Mordheim

Play a Game of War of the Ring

Play a game of Horus Heresy

Finish at least one Cabinet piece (resin probably)

Play both Sludge and Turnip

Try the new edition of Kill Team

Play Never Mind the Billhooks

Attend one tourney or play event

Finish my Death ray Designs City Board

I intentionally picked mostly projects that were at least partially started in an attempt to finish some of these desk hogs while still allowing me some wiggle room to experiment with whatever new nonsense catches my eye. Ideally I want to finish the year out with a negative golf score but after looking over my numbers for last year (which come to grave with me) sub 200 is a real milestone. 

I've already made a great stride into one of these goals and am starting in on a second already so I feel surprisingly confident already. Theres approximately 22 line items here so to keep on pace i'd like to accomplish at least 2 of these a month.

Sludge and Turnip (1) - Down the Rabbit Hole

Full disclosure: It's late, I'm tired, this will be a wall of text

Have you ever found yourself consumed by a new project? The lure of a new era, the "shiny goblin syndrome" pull of new figures. Discovering all the new ins and outs of a new system. If you're a long time (or frankly short term) follower of this blog you know I tend to get drawn in to the "new" much more often than I'm putting the finishing touches on a project. What's grabbed me this time?

Well, it's none other than new kids on the block; Sludge and Turnip.  

Inserted through this ramble are the photos I found of both systems, that I used to con a long time gaming buddy down this path with me.

When they first released Sludge, I thought it was a neat concept but had no desire to go out and buy the dozen or so kits required for an army to kit bash it all together. I thought, "man, what a cool idea but I have enough on my plate" I found the project just a hair to esoteric for my usual "well I can always use the figures for multiple systems" line of thought. When Turnip first got some attention I didnt really make the connection between the two and just sort of thought it wasn't for me.

Like most projects, it stuck in the back of my mind and lingered there like a disease until eventually I came across Knucklebones Miniatures. This is another one of those patreons for STLs I keep coming back to. In his catalog, he has a pile of stuff suitable for the whole Sludge/Turnip craze and of course I started printing. 

For some inexplicable reason, this aesthetic has captured me and progress continues. One of my long time gaming partners has also taken the plunge and I've found out there's actually a somewhat local scene for the game so at this point its just a matter of finishing a few more units and then trying the two systems out. 

 So what is it?

I'll be honest, being relatively new to this scene I'll probably butcher some of this but Turnip28 seems to be one of those weird "movements" more than anything. Years and years before my time, GW released a game called Inquisitor. This was a bit of an odd duck in that the game was a little bit more rpg and character driven from the others and the figures in a much larger (54mm) scale. Each character was named and unique and totally customizable. Being long out of production but still having a fan following, all the neatest bits seem to have been distilled down to "aesthetic" 

As I mentioned, (and will probably mention again) this is all before my time and to be frank, information given to me 2nd or 3rd hand. Somewhere along the line, the community, trying to keep the spirit of the art and the aesthetic alive, kept it all going in 28mm. My introduction to this story is here with the amazing fanzine, 28mag 

This is far from only about inquisitor or any one specific thing but is an absolutely amazing magazine that anyone who likes converting, gaming, gw, or neat dark miniatures should check out now.

Sometime during the pandemic, a guy named Max Fitzgerald dreamt up the tangential world of Turnip28. I'm linking the goonhammer interview here because if you've read this far you'll probably read anything and its a good read to break down this odd duck.

 As I understand it though, the story is basically, "what if the Napoleonic wars turned to shit, got all weird wwi with it, and then they all started worshiping root vegetables?"

In the meantime a gentleman named Sean Sutter (creator of Relicblade) has been working on his own fanzine with several other indie game designers (called BLASTER) Introduced in Blaster vol. 3 is Sludge. I don't know that one game inspired the other in anyway but for me, this finally meant "I could use figures for both games" Sludge has more of a Renaissance feel to Turnips Napoleonic but they are close enough (Infantry, cav, artillery) to me to merit the dive. I'm glossing through the specifics here for a couple reasons but fully expect more content for both games and a podcast or two comparing them.

 So where does that leave us?

Well, in the time its taken me to actually finish this post, I actually painted an entire Turnip force and more or less enough stuff to play sludge minus a couple characters. Over the next few posts (hopefully coming very soon) I'll showcase some of the stuff I've finished and hopefully I'll be demoing both games with Paul very soon.

Cavemen (2) - Primevo

 I was incredibly excited for this one to come out and Paul and I finally had a chance to play it. I'm a huge fan of this game and wholeheartedly recommend it.

We did a full review over on the podcast which you can listen to HERE if you want to know more

Miniature Shame Golf - End of Summer Season

If you haven't read about this yet, check it out HERE

So lets check in. How did I do?

In short. Not great. I knew the results would be less than flattering but I thought I'd paint more in general. The total number is around what I thought it'd be but I did think I'd have more figures done to show for it. The constant reminder of a running total did however prevent me from buying more things than I normally would. As an off the top of my head example, I was really on the fence about grabbing the new kill team box and the penalties for buying something at launch were enough that I decided against it for now. 

Because of the rather loose nature of the rules, the challenge motivated me to finish a lot of stuff that was just sort of close to done but not finished because it was easy points. Right off the bat, the night before Stellacon, I finally got around finishing the bases on some old WW1 British as well as finishing a whole starter force of Germans, all for Blood and Valor (Review HERE)

Some day I'll come back and take better glamour shots of some of this stuff. I swear.

At Stellacon, I blew a whole bunch of stuff out, in the hopes of actually lowering the number some. Although that worked out nicely, I also walked away with 1k points of slaanesh and a Nights Watch army. Though I left that day with a negative score, it was the last time I'd have that. 

Twice this Summer I've found myself in Chicago at the excellent Games Plus store. Discovering an amazing game store like that will put a dent in your balance for sure. I walked out both times relatively light but definitely with an addition to my score.

The launch of Dominion was a huge dent because aside from being a huge box, I picked it up on release day and took the penalties there. So Far I've only finished these. I have plans to convert the Stormcast so those will have to wait until later. 

Some other addition to my pile of shame include some 3d printed terrain, a ton of stuff for conquest and the other half of my 3d printed 10mm ogre army. 

I did have one really excellent evening of painting where I finished a bunch of Lumineth stuff, a bunch of Crisis Protocol stuff and my first Moonstone figure.

There were a few other purchases here and there but unfortunately as of the end of this season, im sitting at 232 and coming in second to last place. I'm writing this a little early and there is a chance I'll get below the 200 mark but its unlikely. I have a few packages out standing (Lunar preorder, moonstone kickstarter) that will hurt when they arrive but I also don't know how much time I'll have to paint this month.

I'm definitely glad I participated but my goal for the fall season is absolutely to get bellow 100, and ideally below 0. Only time will tell