Happy New Year folks! December came and went in an absolute blur which sadly meant I didn’t quite get any blog posts finished, but that does mean I’ve a few queued up for January.
This time of year is infamous within the hobby for various initiatives – New Year New Army is exceptionally common and with the imminent (and surprisingly early) release of The Old World, I can see a lot of Tomb King and Bretonian miniatures on peoples painting desk very soon. PaintSlam is now a main staple of the year, run by Jess on her social media accounts and is a great way to log your completed miniatures. White Dwarf Hobby Bingo is worth a mention too, giving points for completing specific activities such as painting a Hero model or playing a specific game system. There’s quite a few others being championed by various community members too.
As with most New Year Resolutions many of these initiatives die a slow and painful death following a burst of enthusiasm during the dull grey weeks of January, once the nicer weather comes along there are more and more demands on people’s time and those hobby commitments fizzle out. Although this harsh and slightly fatalistic view is pretty accurate, that’s no reason not to set some achievable goals and targets for the year. Note the emphasis on achievable here – a little bit of pressure is good but remember this is a hobby and we’re meant to be doing this for enjoyment, not to beat yourself up because you didn’t have time to do something.
The key element is whatever goals and targets you set yourself, the underlying aim is to do more hobby and make the most out of the time you have available. I cannot emphasise this enough, getting in a small amount of hobby every day can reward you in so many ways from improving your mental health through to improving as a painter.
So what are my goals I hear you ask (or not, regardless I’m still going to tell you). Firstly I want to do a “24 for 24” – 24 minutes of hobby for 24 days a month during 2024. I’m using a very loose interpretation of hobby too – covering everything from painting and 3d sculpting to reading White Dwarf or a Black Library book, this should mean things like a holiday won’t stop the hobby train. Each day I do something hobby related for 24 minutes or more, I’ll colour in a block on a year planner with a colour that corresponds to what I did. That will also hopefully help as a visual prompt when I need to mix things up when I’ve over focused on one aspect of my hobby.
Next up, I have some more specific targets
Complete a usable Legions Imperialis force
Sort out a gaming table for Legions Imperials and get some games in
Create a tutorial on painting World Eaters in Epic scale
Paint the second wave of Death Guard for my Age of Darkness army
More work on my Golden Demon walker project
Participate in a Necromunda Campaign weekend (Feb)
More blog posts – weekly would be great
Finish designing a range of custom Legions Imperialis bases
Create a few more YouTube videos & more blog tutorials
It’s a fairly sizable list looking at it, but manageable based on past experiences. Both my Death Guard and Legions Imperials painting methods are fairly optimised for a nice consistent finish across the force, but without going overboard on the detail (my Achilles heel).
Now that’s not to say this list might not dramatically change – who knows what plans Games Workshop has round the corner for us, Battlefleet Gothic would certainly cause me to rethink things!
