2013 In Review (Part 2)

Now that I have a bit of breathing space, it’s a good time for a more personal look at my hobby year.

Compared to 2012, last year was comparatively quiet hobby-wise. This was for the most part due to Real Life getting far too much of a look in. January saw me starting a new post at work which required a significant amount of training and retraining which was bookended by yet another move to an even busier area in November! Alas my pay as remained the same so you can’t have everything, but I’m just grateful I have a job I usually enjoy and am halfway competent at.

Coupled to this was our protracted and somewhat stressful purchase of our first home. After months of prep our offer was accepted in early October but due to legal shenanigans at the seller’s end we were unable to move in until December 20th. Needless to say, we’re still unpacking! Also, I’d like to once again pay tribute to our many wonderful friends who helped us out with the move:

Norma
Ged
Charlie
Martin
Suzy
Tim
Elizabeth
Ben
Richard
Steve

We could not have done it without you.

Right, onto the actual hobby stuff.

For me this was the Year of Chaos. I finally got my Heralds of Desolation into a fighting (but not winning) condition. I’m particularly pleased with how my Chaos Lord and Terminators turned out, and am very pleased with my converted Hellbrute. I’ve wanted to build a Chaos Space Marine army since the release of the second edition’s Codex Chaos in the mid-nineties but I knew I could never do the army justice, while there are thousands of better looking Chaos forces out there, I’m really happy with the progress I’m making with them.

The next army that I’ve been working on, although not nearly as much as I’d hoped, has been my Bretonnian force. Now, I say ‘working on’, I really mean undercoating and gaming with as I participated in a few more rounds of The Rock in The Badlands campaign with my mates. Unfortunately due to more Real Life reasons, the campaign’s on a bit of a hiatus but we’re optimistic that it’ll restart sometime soon (*prod, prod*).

I also, completely by accident, started a Dark Angel allied contingent for my Imperial Guard army. In truth, this was inevitable since I picked up the Dark Vengeance box set upon its release but I admirably kept temptation at bay for almost a year until a slightly drunken perusal of the iPhone eBay app in July. I now have a solid foundation of core units which I hope to paint up soon.

Finally, and as I direct result of the development above, I entered my first painting competition at my local Games Workshop. Even though I only came third (out of three…), I thoroughly enjoyed the process and would love to repeat the experience at least a couple of times this year. I don’t think I’ll ever be worrying the likes of Golden Daemon, but I think such things will help me improve as a painter.

As for my plans for 2014, well I’ll leave that for a later post. I still have so many boxes to unpack!