Year in Review
As I’ve mentioned before, 2014’s been rough. Way too much work and not nearly enough Stuff I’d Rather Be Doing. It absolutely feels like it was a failure in a number of ways.
But, when I look at the numbers and not how beat up I feel: it really wasn’t as grim as I want to say it was. I mean, I’m going to just cut ahead and put this here:
Pretty much from start-to-finish, this was one of, if not the (and by a significant margin) most productive year I’ve ever had. I realized that that’s the track I was on in early August: just in time for me to hit work exhaustion. That was a very positive realization; not only did it help keep me motivated, but I pretty much went into overdrive.
- January through April (and even a on into March) had me working on Deadzone minis. The Kickstarter stuff showed up mid-December, and I’d gotten to work on it right away. I pretty much just painted everything I thought I could paint: Plague (since I figured it’d go quickly– it did), then Rebs, and finally Mercs. Enforcers weren’t (and still aren’t) on the table, because most of the faction’s been delayed until recently, and I can’t help but prefer GW Orks to the Marauders.
- May was “goofy idea month.” I got a bug up my butt about doing a ghostly Romans warband for Saga, with some pretty clear goals around what I wanted to do with them in terms of focusing on speed and getting them done. Although they were successful (about a week?), I’ve only had the chance to play with them all of twice.
- June and July had me primarily doing NoVA Open prep. My thoughts around getting ready for NoVA Open 2014 are hauntingly similar to those for 2013 – Shortest path to playable, etc. To get to ready for 2014 involved more models, but they were (generally) less involved.Also, Historicon was good to me:
- August hit, and hard. For some tragic reasons, a vacation was cancelled and I hit a wall. Shut myself up for a bit over a week and didn’t see anyone but the pets. Also, I built a Bolt Action army, which I then almost entirely painted in September. Like, I painted a test model in August, and had nine bodies that I wrapped up in early October, but I pretty much painted the whole damned thing in a single month.This is more than a smidge significant. I painted a Saga warband in about a week, but although I think it’s Clever, it’s not Golden Daemon quality. The USMC starter+ (I added a handful of models to the Warlord starter) was somewhat larger, also (kinda-sorta) painted within a timebox, and is significantly higher quality. I was satisfied enough with them to decide to drop my first batch into the Capital Palette, with some success.
- The second (but regrettably not final) Deadzone wave showed up in October, so that’s how I spent most of the month. Since the second wave included some more terrain, I’d held off on assembling or painting any of it until the rest showed up… and I no longer had any reason to hold off. So, the bulk of November was spent painting Deadzone terrain.
- In December, I wrapped up my first Infinity warband (squad? team?). I’m pleased with them, and am looking forward to pushing them around.
Hobby Activity
So, like I said: this past year was nuts for getting stuff done. Nuts. Forget building stuff (which I’m fast starting to consider Uninteresting in terms of progress), I painted:
- A Saga warband
- A Bolt Action army
- An Infinity team
plus a bunch of just other stuff.
I don’t think I’m going to wrap the following chartdump in much text; I think it’s all pretty self-explanatory. I got a lot done this year.
One thing I did do new this year was track how much I spent on models vs. how much the models I’d painted were worth. Because this is a hobby that encourages one to have tubs of unpainted minis, the thought was it’d encourage me to 1) paint about as much as I buy (reducing unpainted minis) and 2) spend less on minis (a built-in cheat was that I’d list how much I paid when I bought a model and how much it retailed for when I painted it… ).
This chart shows two things: the relative spend per month (a negative number meant I painted more minis that I bought, a positive number means I bought more minis than I painted, a flat number that I kept an equilibrium) and the overall number from month-to-month.
Numbers have been obscured to hide my shame.
I actually think this was pretty effective. Really, the worst thing that happened was the By Fire & Sword: Deluge Kickstarter.
Also, the need to just move all of this stuff out of a Google Spreadsheet and into an actual database is increasingly pressing. Half the time Google chokes on this thing… and need to update the above graph to be a rolling one: things shouldn’t zero out at the beginning of the year, you know?
GOALS
2014 Goals
- Finish – Complete Success. As I’ve mentioned, I got a lot of stuff Done this year.
- Paint – Complete Success. Hells, yeah.
- Compete – Failure. I hit NoVA and played in a mini Bolt Action tournament, but that’s it. I don’t consider that enough: I even missed Dragon Wars this year.
- Game – Failure. According to my sheet, I played 28 games, total, in 2014. This is awful.
- HIstoricals – Success. Like, huge success!
- Continue Dumping Stuff – Total Failure. I don’t think I eBayed anything in 2014.
- Finish a Deadzone warband – Success. I got two factions fully painted until Wave 2 showed up.
- Finish a Muskets & Tomahawks warband – Failure. I’ve got one built, but it’s another silly idea. I have the minis for a normal one, I just have to build them. Oh, and paint them.
- Post more RPG content – Technical Success. I mean, I posted RPG content. Precious little. My Rogue Trader NPC generator from, like, a year ago, was the most viewed poste this year.
- Organize a Charity RTT – Failure. I didn’t get to game, much less organize.
2015 Goals
The standard:
- Finish
- Paint
- Compete – Though this will be less key to me. Tournaments matter less than actual gaming at this point.
And:
- Game – This is going to be my number one goal for 2015.
- Dump Stuff – And this will be my number two goal.
- Finish a Muskets & Tomahawks Warband – I have no excuse not to get this done.
I’d love to have some more specific goals, but really: I just want to get my painted : unpainted ratio more sane and roll more dice.