2013: the hobby year ahead

Since it's the first day of the new year, I decided to set out a few modest goals for the year ahead. I bet no other bloggers have thought of doing this ...

These aims are fairly broad, and I'm not going to put too much pressure on myself to get everything done. I used to put far too much pressure on myself to get things done in this hobby and found it sucked the fun out of it.

So, read on to see what my plans are, and therefore what you can expect to see on my blog!

Finish my Space Wolves army

This is the big one really, but I think it's achievable. According to my database (yeah, I made a database to track this army ... ) I have 78 individual models left to paint out of a total of 95*. Once that's done, my Space Wolves will be all wrapped up and I can move on to other projects. That's not to say I won't take a break from them from time to time (I don't want to get wolfed out). So to put this in some kind of context, and it will make an interesting note for this time next year, this is the current status of my Wolf army:

Painted:

• Wolf Lord
• Rune Priest
• Grey Hunter pack (10 men)
• Long Fang pack (5 men)

Almost painted:

• Wolf Guard Terminators (5 men)

Unpainted:

• Wolf Priest
• 2 Grey Hunter packs (2 packs of 10 men)
• Long Fang pack (6 men)
• Blood Claw pack (15 men)
• more Wolf Guard Terminators (5 men)
• Wolf Guard in Power Armour (6 men)
• Fenrisian Wolves (6 men ... er ... wolves)
• Dreadnought
• Wolf Scouts (6 men)
• Lone Wolf
• 6 Drop Pods

The main goal at the moment is to get enough painted to play with – it's a rule of mine that I can only play games with fully painted and based miniatures. I should get there in a few weeks, then I'll worry about the rest. So long as most of this army is done by the end of the year, I'll be happy enough. If it's all done, I'll be ecstatic.

* I included my test model (a Grey Hunter) in the unpainted category for simplicity.

Create a diorama

For some time I had in the back of my mind to create a diorama and when I saw Night Runner's work on True Mini Wargamer it encouraged me to go actually ahead and properly form a plan.

Once my Space Wolves are done, I'll have two armies I can game with (the other being Ultramarines) and I don't play enough games to feel it is necessary for me to build a third army. I may do for fun (Deathwing is looking pretty interesting ... ), but it's not something I need be concerned about in the near future.

As the hobby side is the part of the hobby I enjoy the most, I figured why not try something new and a diorama or two (or three) seemed like a way to go.

I was very excited by Forge World's Betrayal book for the Horus Heresy and the miniature range they are putting out for it is totally mindblowing for me. As a massive fan of the Black Library novels, this whole Horus Heresy in miniature thing really appealed to me.

However, creating a Legion army would be kind of pointless for me. If I was part of a gaming group who were going to play a Horus Heresy campaign, I'd do it like a shot. But I'm not in that position, so that army would just go sadly neglected. Besides, I'd never settle on what legion to run.

Then it struck me: why not create dioramas and vignettes based on the Horus Heresy?

This started me thinking of various scenes in the books I might like to recreate and little ideas of my own. I could even just build and paint up a cool unit I liked (for example, the new Justaerin Terminators) on a scenic base.

Naturally, I will do something like this for each of the Primarch miniatures. I got Angron on release (how could I not?) and it is likely he will form part of my first diorama. It will be called The Red Angel and be based on the moment in Galaxy in Flames when Angron took to the field on Isstvan III and slaughtered his sons.

I have some other ideas mulling around in my head (Little Horus slaying Torgaddon, and a duel on a spiral staircase are two thoughts), but will carry on re-reading the Black Library Horus Heresy novels for now and let my thoughts brew.

I'm quite excited by the prospect of creating dioramas. It will push not only my modelling and painting of characters, but also scenery.

Explore new techniques

This is always an ongoing thing I think. With my Wolves I have been trying to move away from the more traditional GW-style painting techniques of edge highlighting and bright colours. Not because I don't like them, I just don't want to use them at the moment. I'm also trying to make things quick and effective with a fairly limited colour palette.

But there are things I would like to explore that I have not before. In fact, my diorama work should hopefully provide an opportunity to use new techniques. There are two particular things that I want to use which I haven't before: weathering powders and decals. If I can try these out and perhaps add them to my hobby repertoire, I'll consider that a success.

Write tutorials

So far on my blog, by far the most popular posts have been tutorials. Indeed, as I type this out of the five posts I currently have that are tagged "tutorial", four of them rank on my list of five most popular posts.

I am starting to get a better hold of and refine the techniques I am using for my Space Wolves, so I will try and post some tutorials based on those during the next year. 

Don't just leave my Grey Knights sitting on my shelf ...

When Sixth Edition came out, I bought a small ally force of Grey Knights consisting of a Librarian, a Terminator Squad, a Strike/Interceptor Squad, and a Dreadknight. These are built, but not even primed. I would like to make some kind of start on these this year. There's not much to paint, so maybe I should aim to finish these.

Anyway; here's the current state of my Dreadknight.

I've not even bothered photographing anything else. Currently, all this work was a bit of a waste of time and money so I really must rectify that!

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So than, that's the plan. As I said, this isn't a firm set of goals as I want the flexibility to do other things if I feel like it. This hobby is supposed to be fun after all.

Anyway; Happy New Year to you all! I hope you have enjoyed my blog and my work so far, and that you continue to do so this year.

Finally; to those who are following my blog either in a formal sense through subscription etc. or even just casually visiting from time to time, I would like to thank you greatly. I really appreciate it.