2024 Hobby Resolution

    This year has been pretty crazy for the old pile of opportunities. You can check out my wild and out of control purchasing habits here. There were a few times that I was giving myself some "retail therapy" after some longer days of parenting alone. Last year this happened quite frequently as my partner went home to support a family member.

    With the variety of painting and crafting I did, I made a system of points to see exactly how much I accomplished. Troops would be +1, Mounted +2, Monsters +3, Small terrain +1 and Large terrain +3. I calculated that my yearly hobby debt was -180. Half those points came from the Zombicide Black Plague and Wolfburg expansion I bought preowned, a total of 97 points in Troops. This has got me looking through all my miniatures, thinking about exciting kitbashing, and sparking the joy of some of the miniatures I had when I picked up the model. 

Here are my 2024 Hobby Resolutions:

Paint what I got! I am privileged to have so many miniatures in my collection. It's time paint up what I have. My lizard brain was working when I saw that Thunder Games and Gifts was closing down, so being the sneaky hobbyist I did make an order and I DID order it LAST year.... but they arrived in 2024. I will be starting off with a small amount of miniatures (only about -32 points) in the 2024 purchase pile. Sometimes you just need that cheesecake when you are on a diet, don't judge me.

Schedule board game/ wargame nights: Between my partner and I working shift work, getting in board games at night is a bit challenging. Usually it needs to be at our house or one of us can go out. I'll try to get better at getting out with both of us.

Learn and play easy convention wargames: I have bought many indie wargames, Planet 28, Song of blades and heroes, Space/sword weirdos, Brawl Arcane 28, etc. These are mostly super simple systems that are designed to get miniatures on the table fast. It would be great to teach it at Prairie Expo, a local convention put on by Comic readers or put on something myself.

Play Solo: There is a lot of solo RPGs and wargames, it would be great to get them on the table instead of video games. I have had a bad habit of staying up too late and the extra screens don't help this. This would help with the previous resolution too, letting me learn at my own pace.

That's all for now, maybe there will be more as we go through this year.

Next on the Hobby Desk

    I have started to paint up the Fellowship from Lord of the Rings. Two are done, with a third on it's way. They are dogged of course by the Ringwraith that share my paint desk as well.

    

Rebel Troopers, zombies and the rest of 2023

Looking at how many miniatures I picked up this year, I blame you Zombicide with expansion secondary market purchase, I have started to look through all the miniatures that I own. After all, these were fun projects that I was interested in at one point or another and can rekindle that spark of inspiration. Star Wars Legion is one such project, I had painted the Imperial side of the starter set awhile ago, it was time to start the Rebels

At first I painted 10 rebel troops. But decided to finish the full set, 28 infantry, 2 AT-RT walkers and Luke Skywalker. For how slow I paint it has taken me to right before Christmas to finish up. The white spray primer I used, I believe it was a rustolium, made my paint hydrophobic, forcing me to use more paint to get it to stick. 

By the end I just wanted it done, so some of the Rebels look better then others. Alas, they are done.

Star Wars Legion Starter Set Rebels side

Two All Terrain Reconnaissance Transport

Luke Skywalker

    And now for the random stuff that I painted that isn't Star Wars related, oh, wait, Ron Perlman was a character in the Clone Wars series? What a good segway! Man, that guy is in everything! Without further adieu, here are some zombies I painted and Ron Perlman, both from Zpocalypse.

Zpocalypse zombies

Zombies and deranged Ron Perlman

Okay, he looks more like Ron in person

    Also one hero from Descent first edition, not sure about the base so I left it black for now. I looked up her name after I painted her all pink.

Red Scorpion

     That's about it besides some adventures I painted up, but I will post them once I get better pictures of them. 

Next on the Hobby Desk

Time to ring in the new year and paint what you got! I recently cleaned my hobby space and found many purchases that I'd love to paint! It's time to colour, and kitbash their world. It's time to dig into my pile of opportunity! Resolution time!