Howdy, howdy folks, hope you've all had a very merry christmas, stuffed yourselves with as much turkey/ham/game of choice and santa brought you lots of hobby goodness. The year is almost over, I've just passed the 4th birthday of the blog, so its time for the obligatory look back at what has been achieved in the year, a sort of queens speech if you will, and of course next week will be a look ahead at what I hope to achieve in the coming year.
My year began with the genesis of One Force (to rule them all), my new marines and current favourite project of all time. Unfortunately, this pretty much scuppered one of my hobby resolutions from the off (see below). I also started out the year with recovering and re-posting my old posts that were lost when I updated the blogger template. There was also the release of the new paints which meant I had to update the paint scheme for One Force.
This year I've also seemed to get my spotting eye in, with some interesting results: KR Multicase Guest Spot, Secret Forgeworld miniature revealed.
I made it to Salute (1, 2, and 3), made my 100th Post, and finally made it back to Blog Wars 4: game 1 report, game 2 report, game 3 report.
I've trialled a few new techniques in my hobby: Casting hands, Magnetising self-help, and due to having generally less time to devote to my hobby, my painting hasn't quite been as prolific as last year, the main achievements were: One Force Terminators Completed, TFP: Badab Project competition, One Force commander, and the first 5 squad memebers (to be posted in the new year). I also completed a lot of my Necrons ready for Blog Wars 4, and rustled up a few more clanrats for the Skaven.
All told, this has allowed me to reach 101 painting points for the year 2012. That's about half the points I managed in 2011, but a lot of the models are much more detailed painting wise (2011 was bolstered by the quick and easy painting of a lot of Skaven and Necrons). I'm definitely planning on continuing with painting points as it is a nice measure of how you are doing with the creative side of the hobby, and the page linked is starting to become a jump off point for the posts of all my painted minis.
Probably favourite for me this year painting wise was getting to paint up a few centre-piece models such as the Deathwatch marine and the One Force commander as it gave me a chance to try and push myself a little with painting. I think in the future I'd like to try and take part in a couple of painting comps, just to give myself a bit of a challenge and try new techniques like the NMM I did on the Shadowseer in 2011.
Possibly the biggest thing to happen to the blog this year was my post Secret Forgeworld miniature revealed. It got picked up by Faeit 212 which lead to a gigantic surge in traffic to the blog. As a result, its now the most viewed page on my blog, and pushed the number of views from an expected 37,000 since inception to its current level above 41,000. You can see the upsurge in views in the stats-graphs below (all time, last week):
As is becoming customary for me, each year I make some resolutions to try and drive my hobby through the year. This years resolutions can be found here, and looking back over the year...
My year began with the genesis of One Force (to rule them all), my new marines and current favourite project of all time. Unfortunately, this pretty much scuppered one of my hobby resolutions from the off (see below). I also started out the year with recovering and re-posting my old posts that were lost when I updated the blogger template. There was also the release of the new paints which meant I had to update the paint scheme for One Force.
This year I've also seemed to get my spotting eye in, with some interesting results: KR Multicase Guest Spot, Secret Forgeworld miniature revealed.
I made it to Salute (1, 2, and 3), made my 100th Post, and finally made it back to Blog Wars 4: game 1 report, game 2 report, game 3 report.
I've trialled a few new techniques in my hobby: Casting hands, Magnetising self-help, and due to having generally less time to devote to my hobby, my painting hasn't quite been as prolific as last year, the main achievements were: One Force Terminators Completed, TFP: Badab Project competition, One Force commander, and the first 5 squad memebers (to be posted in the new year). I also completed a lot of my Necrons ready for Blog Wars 4, and rustled up a few more clanrats for the Skaven.
All told, this has allowed me to reach 101 painting points for the year 2012. That's about half the points I managed in 2011, but a lot of the models are much more detailed painting wise (2011 was bolstered by the quick and easy painting of a lot of Skaven and Necrons). I'm definitely planning on continuing with painting points as it is a nice measure of how you are doing with the creative side of the hobby, and the page linked is starting to become a jump off point for the posts of all my painted minis.
Probably favourite for me this year painting wise was getting to paint up a few centre-piece models such as the Deathwatch marine and the One Force commander as it gave me a chance to try and push myself a little with painting. I think in the future I'd like to try and take part in a couple of painting comps, just to give myself a bit of a challenge and try new techniques like the NMM I did on the Shadowseer in 2011.
Possibly the biggest thing to happen to the blog this year was my post Secret Forgeworld miniature revealed. It got picked up by Faeit 212 which lead to a gigantic surge in traffic to the blog. As a result, its now the most viewed page on my blog, and pushed the number of views from an expected 37,000 since inception to its current level above 41,000. You can see the upsurge in views in the stats-graphs below (all time, last week):
As is becoming customary for me, each year I make some resolutions to try and drive my hobby through the year. This years resolutions can be found here, and looking back over the year...
- Post once per week minimum.
- Success - I've managed at least one post per week all year, and on a few occasions even managed to sustain 2 posts a week. OK not every post has been a groundbreaking source of hobby goodness, but the need to have something to talk about each week has definitely kept my hobby mojo topped up.
- Painting Points
- Success - at the start of the year I went back and totted up the number of models I'd painted in previous years, and this year I've done my best to keep track of what I've managed. I haven't scored that highly this year, but its been respectable and I may be able to improve on it next year.
- Space Wolf Achievements
- Fail - in the main because my Wolves have been sidelined for most of this year as I've been experimenting with other armies, shame though as they were a fantastic idea, I'll still try and see what I can collect over time.
- Attend Blog Wars and at least one other tournament.
- Partial Success - I managed to make it to Blog Wars, but no other tournament. I did go to Salute though and have a few more things lined up for this year.
- No more purchases until my remaining Necrons (Wraiths, Spyders, Destroyers) and Skaven (IoB boxset, Stormvermin, Bell) have been painted and I have sold my spares (Land Raider, Drop Pods, Valkyrie etc.).
- Failure - I did sell about half of the stuff listed at the start of the year, and have recently listed some more, but I've not sold what I'd planned, and have bought even more stuff this year, especially stuff for One Force (lovely Forgeworld goodness) which I'm loving at the moment. Oh well.
So that's the year as it was. I'll wish you all a very merry rest of your Christmas, and a very happy new year for 2013, tune back in next week for my plans for the upcoming year.
Cheers - Andy
Cheers - Andy
