2012 - A Hobby Retrospective

This time last year, I put up some plans for what I'd do in 2012.  As the year's almost done, time to have a quick look at how I got on.

Great Italian Wars

Ah, yes, my big project for 2012.  Well this started off well, as I painted up all the figures I'd bought and started on a couple pieces of terrain.  Sadly, this project didn't survive the decision of Venexia Miniatures to shut up shop, depriving me of the main range of figures I'd planned to use.  Now I could have gone onto another range of figures, but as I'd taken the time and effort to select the ranges and check their compatibility etc, I simply didn't feel like making the compromise on this.  Officially on hold, as Venexia's range have been sold onto an American company, but they've yet to see the light of day.

In the future, I think I'll follow my usual practice and load up on figures early on, precisely to avoid this happening again (although, I've mentioned a few time on here that our hobby has proven to be remarkably resilient considering how far up shit creek we collectively are.)

Improve my painting & Infinity, Hordes and Warmachine

Hmmm, bit of a fail here.  I painted about fifteen different miniatures, but haven't really managed to finish up any of the starter lists I'd written.  Fairly sure it's an ego thing holding me back here, the figures I paint aren't as good as I imagine they will be.  Things are definitely improving, but it's slow going.  Recently I've been enjoying the Iron Kingdoms RPG and I've seen some upcoming figures for Infinity.  I think this looks like a decent quarter two project next year.

Dystopian Wars

My aim was to finish up all the fleets I had without going crazy and buying more.  Mission accomplished as I finished up my Empire of the Blazing Sun fleet (and took it to a tournament) as well as a Covenant of Antartica and Prussian Empire fleet (both sent off to eBay.)  I've not had DW on the table in a while, but it's nice to have a fleet ready to go if needed.

Flames of War

Another success in that I've painted up the target 600 points of Fallshirmjager.  Again, I've not yet had a game with these yet, but I have all the figures I'll ever need so I'll keep plugging away at them.

So I missed a few of my, admittedly vague, goals this year, but in other ways, it's been an excellent years gaming.  In 2011 I played many more games in any year since my school days, while 2012 has been even more prolific.  I've branched out and gotten over a dozen RPG sessions in and picked up a few games that, in the past, I wouldn't have thought were really "me."  Definitely going to put up another set of resolutions/targets for next year, but this time, I think I'll schedule updates throughout the year to track my progress.  I also want to put up one of those painting checklists on the blog.