Believe it or not, we are almost half way through 2018. Where do you stand on your mid-year Hobby Resolutions? Let’s check in together!
New AoS is coming soon to an FLGS near you, and the dog days of summer are here already. So this seems like a perfect time to look back at our 2018 hobby resolutions and see how you are doing!
Let’s start by looking back at mine from my January article.
Resolution 1 – Playing two games a month: Started this one off strong with getting games in every other weekend, but lately life has gotten in the way of dice and my group is down to 1. However, with the new releases and with life slowing down a little bit, I remain optimistic that I can increase to every other weekend again. Status: Sort of on target….
Resolution 2 – Become a better painter: Going strong with this one, see my latest article on some new tricks I am trying here. But overall, I have become more adventurous with my paint selections, mixing paints, and messing around with various kinds of undercoating. Also, I have an airbrush that I want to get more comfortable with, which is a goal for this summer. Status: On target
Resolution 3 – Increase two side armies to 1500 points: I have pretty much accomplished this, though not in the way I intended. Looking at all the miniatures I had sitting around I decided to consolidate some to focus more on main armies. This was great in three ways, first, they were both sold to people locally, so I brought two more people into our hobby group. Second, I got cash monies, and third, it really helped me focus on building the armies that I had. Once I get the new starter set I will have over 1500 points of Stormcast, Disciples of Tzeentch, Slaves to Darkness, and can work on Nighthaunts and my aelfs (seriously please do something with these GW). Status: On target
Resolution 4 – Continue to explore the miniature wargaming board game scene. I play Shadespire whenever I can and continue to have a lot of fun with it. However, beyond that and Age of Sigmar, I do not play any other wargame at all. You could even say I have decreased this as I traded my 40k starter set models for Age of Sigmar stuff just because I realize I only have time for 1 game. Status: Failure
Next, let’s look at what I guessed GW would do with this year and see if I am on target with any of my predictions.
- New Generals Handbook it’s coming earlier then I thought it would be, but they are not merging some of the older units as much as I thought they would. I love that they put witch elves and doomfire warlocks with Daughters of Khaine, but I thought they missed the boat by not putting the Scourge Privateers with the Idoneth Deepkin: Status kind of, right?
- Releasing special rules for more factions. They have hinted at this with the faction focus, but we won’t know how many until I get my hands on the GHB 2018. Status: Up in the air
- New Death faction and bringing together all the death factions that were scattered. Legions of Nagash unified all the existing models that are legal in Age of Sigmar (sorry tomb kings) and the new Nighthaunt faction has some of my favorite models to date. Status: On the money
- Multi-faction armies. Nothing yet outside of one or two battalions which is a shame. I was hoping to see a book that released all sorts of battalions that had models from more than 1 allegiance, but nothing has been teased. Status: Up in smoke
- Rerelease Mordenhiem set in the Mortal Realms. Nothing yet. Status: Just a dream
I was not far off the mark, in terms of what I thought they were going to do but I definitely did not predict Age of Sigmar 2.0 and the magic expansion. Since everyone loves playing guessing games lets add another couple for in for kicks.
- Guess 1: Shadespire year 2 warbands: In no order here is the shadespire warbands coming out for year two. Stormcast (Sacrosanct Chamber), Nighthaunts, Maggotkin of Nurgle, Disciples of Tzeentch, Seraphon, New Grots, Kharadron Overlords, and finally Free Peoples (think witch hunters).
- Guess 2: There will be 5 armies that get model updates (not named Stormcast or Nighthaunt) or new releases. In no order: A new all Grot army, updated and new Slaves to Darkness models, more Kharadron Overlords, new Skaven models, and finally a new Aelf faction from the Realm of Shadow.
- Guess 3: By the end of the year, GW will announce that the 2019 AoS campaign centers around freeing Slaanesh and shows off a new Keeper of Secrets model.
Looking at my resolutions let amend them a little bit and see if we can’t meet them all by the end of this year. By being flexible it allows me to still accomplish some of what I wanted to, without giving up and accomplishing none of them.
Resolution 1: Playing two games a month. With the new version of Age of Sigmar coming out I do not think it will be hard to accomplish this. I will even take it one step further and try and participate in a weekend-long tournament this October for the Michigan GT.
Resolution 2: I have already seen the benefits of painting more, so I am going to give myself a three-part model challenge for the second half of this year. One is to have all 8 warbands of Shadespire painted by Thanksgiving to play with family from out of town, currently,y I have 4 out of the 8 done and am working on my 5th right now for my June painting club commitment. (seriously join a painting group) My second goal will be to have another “large” model done, currently have the new Lord of Change model not even primed sitting on my shelf taunting me for some color. Finally, my third and the hardest goal will be to have more painted models then unpainted at the end of the year. Currently, I am sitting at 126 painted models (I had way more before I sold my Khorne Brotherhood) and 101 unpainted models. When I buy the new starter set and magic expansion the unpainted number will be much higher….
Resolution 3: Increase army size. My Stormcast will be over 2000 with this new set so I have no problems with that. However, I will one up this and make it a goal to have my Nighthaunts reach 1000 points (and keep my more painted then unpainted resolution).
Resolution 4: I am going to have to swap this with another one, just because I do not have the time (have not won the lotto yet) to play multiple games that take hours very often. So instead I would like to make some more scenery. (old link but more posts coming soon) With the goal being to acquire (buy or make) enough to fill up another half of a gaming board. This will give my group some more options as we currently have enough to fill up a 6-foot by 4-foot table if we use all our stuff but being able to choose what scenery would be a welcome change.
There you have it, my goals moving forward this year! I think I can do a pretty good job of meeting them… Now if you excuse me I need to put a pot of coffee on and grab my paint brush.
More Thoughts on Age of Sigmar
