2022 Hobby Goals and Resolutions

01 Jan 2022

Happy New Year! I’m thinking about what I want to achieve hobby-wise in 2022, so I’m making some goals and resolutions for the new year. I have three big goals, two resolutions, and some lesser goals.

Goals

Goals must have reasonably well-defined completion parameters: goal posts, if you will.

Note: I’m using checkboxes here to indicate if I’ve achieved something. As the year goes on, I’ll come back and edit this post to mark off the goals and sub-goals I’ve accomplished.

1. Release a Game

Magewinds is the working title for a super-small, super-tight skirmish ruleset I’ve been working on in the latter half of 2021 - although really it’s the culmination of ideas I’ve been prototyping and playing with for several years.

It’s sort of like a cheapskate version of Warhammer Underworlds. Each player has 4 or 5 miniatures of their own choosing, representing very distinct fighter classes, and they duke it out on a tiny battlefield. Combat is speedy, punchy and interactive. There’s also nifty magic system. It may not be the perfect game, but I’m increasingly pleased with it.

I need to get back on the development horse after I fell off it when life got busy in the Autumn. In some form or another, I will ship this game in 2022!

Complete the Mechanical Draft.
Complete the Full Draft.
The Other 90% of Development…
Release the game!

I will kick my ass into gear and get it out the door! And while I’m doing that, I’ll build and paint a bunch of warbands for it…

2. Try Some New Tech

I should push myself to use materials and techniques that I haven’t before. I reckon I stagnated a bit in 2021, learning-wise, but I want to always be expanding my horizons and trying new things. Before the year is out I will try:

Painting with oils.
Painting with heavy-body acrylics.
Something ambitious with the airbrush - ambitious enough to require masking.
Superglue accelerant. Is it really any good?
Sprue goo!
Resin water/goo effects.
Foamex sheets, for basing terrain on.

That last one ties nicely into…

3. Terrain

There are several projects, some of which are quite big, that I’m considering all to be part of the same goal: to make more terrain!

Finish the Warhammer Fortress: I started painting my Warhammer Fortress (which I got second-hand from a very generous friend) in 2021 but only finished two pieces of it because I couldn’t be bothered going outside to spray sections of it. I hope to construct some supporting pieces of scratch-built scenery to go with it once it’s done: things like steps, ladders, maybe even rubble and whole collapsed sections.
Large LOS-blocking rocks, a little bit grassy and foresty to go with my grasslands gaming mat.
Large LOS-blocking snowy rocks and ice blocks to go with my frosty gaming mat.
More playable hills: I made some hills before but I think they should have shorter, steeper, more cliff-like slopes to be easy to play with, particularly for Age of Sigmar but for other games too. These could be grassy or frosty, whatever I have time for.
Modular stone platforms, appropriate for Frostgrave, that can be used to raise bits of the ruined city above the rest. Stairs to go with them.
Things made from leftover sprue: barricades, ladders, walkways… Very excited to try this.
Ruins: I have some of the defiled Azyrite Ruins released with Warcry that I acquired via Mortal Realms magazine and Catacombs. My plan for these is to build some taller buildings out of them than what I currently have.
Frosty graveyard: I have a lot of Garden of Morr bits (courtesy of the same generous benefactor as the Fortress) to do something with, as well as some miscellaneous tombstones. Might be cool to try to build some large LOS-blocking or stand-on-able pieces with tombs integrated into them…

Resolutions

Resolutions are more nebulous than goals. They cannot be completed, only committed to.

1. Less In, More Out

“Reduce my backlog before I get anything new”: Everyone says they’re going to do this, and then fails spectacularly. It might be a bit easier for me this year coming I’ll be buying the flat, and then doing improvements to said flat, and then trying to put any remaining savings towards some other stuff I need. Therefore it’ll be harder to make purchasing decisions based solely on wants.

I do tend to end up acquiring quite a lot of free (or very cheap) shit every year from friends who’re clearing old stuff out. Being more reluctant to buy things won’t save me from that - I’ll just have to get better at saying “Don’t tempt me Frodo!”, or words to that effect.

At the end of the year, I’ll only feel bad if I’ve acquired more than I finished. No sweat.

2: Document More

Some of my recent projects haven’t even made it to Twitter or Instagram, let alone this blog, and I feel bad about that. It’s time to up my game! I’ll take better work-in-progress pics, better finished pics, and better notes as I go so that at the end it’s easy to do a quick write up for my website or at least a tweet or Instagram post.

Lesser Goals

These are goals I’ll prioritise less, but I might as well list them here.

‘Finish’ my Nighthaunt

In April-ish 2021 I built and painted a lot of Nighthaunt and I had lots of fun playing with the army in the late Spring before Third Edition came out. Haven’t played with it since, for various reasons, one of them being that I’d like to build and paint a few extraneous but very cool units:

All of these are sitting wrapped up in their respective issues of Mortal Realms magazine, ready to go. There may be some other less important models kicking about, too.

Play Oathmark

I have a yearning in my soul for a rank-and-flank game, though I couldn’t tell you why. It’s just… emotionally appealing to me: big blocks of infantry, marching, wheeling, flanking, charging. That kind of thing.

While I’m deeply curious about several games in this subgenre, like Kings of War or The Old World (whenever it arrives), it looks like Osprey Games’ Oathmark is the best fit for me right now. It’s miniatures-agnostic, lets you get creative with mixed-species kingdoms, all the (relatively simple) rules come in one thin and aesthetically-pleasing book, and it’s designed by good old Joseph McCullough of Frostgrave fame. Most importantly of all, a friend of mine has already painted up part of an army for it, so there’s a chance I might actually get to play it some day.

Anyway, to play Oathmark I’ll need an army, which in my case will be a big mixture of various models I’ve acquired cheaply over the years: Lord of the Rings elves and men, old Warhammer Fantasy Battles dwarves, elves, goblins… a whole bunch of random crap, some of which can do double-duty in my Cities of Sigmar army. I’ll also need to pick up some new things for this project, like maybe a dragon? I’ve got to have a dragon, right?

Put together an army.
Play a test game.
Play a proper game.

Play Cursed City

Expansions for the latest Warhammer Quest are definitely on the way now that the core box is getting a reprint. That means I should get it out on the table again! Me and Nat only played a couple of games of it so far. I’ll aim to play three more, hopefully with a full four players.

One game.
Two game!
Three game!!

Collect and Paint the Rest of Direchasm

I’ve resigned myself to the fact I’m probably not going to keep up with Warhammer Underworlds from now on, but I still want to finish painting up all the warbands from Season 4, Direchasm.

Build and paint Kainan’s Reapers.
Build and paint Hedkrakka’s Madmob.
Get, build and paint Elathain’s Soulraid.
Get, build and paint the Crimson Court.

Okay, let’s see how that all goes. I wish you all the best in your own hobby (and non-hobby) endeavours in 2022!