Forgone Miniatures - 2022 End of Year Wrap Up
It’s that time of year again, where I look back on the year and reflect on the progress that I have made. This will be the first full year of the blog, having started in February of 2020.
First things first, where have I been? My last article was published at the end of September and it’s been radio silence since then. In essence, I got burnt out and stopped painting for a while. In my defence, I did get married at the beginning of October so it was a rather stressful time. But the nail in the coffin really was deciding in my Mansions of Madness Investigators article to put more effort in all my miniatures. And whilst miniatures do look so much better with layers and edge highlights, the extra time and effort required just killed my enthusiasm for painting. Especially as everything I was working on was ear-marked for maximum effort and whilst I did have fun painting that White Speaker for a competition I couldn’t sustain that level of work for every miniature I was working on. So I crashed and burned.
Good news though dear reader this is not a farewell article, I have indeed returned to the way of the paint brush and there will be new posts in the new year. In fact I have a couple locked and loaded, I just need to crack out the camera and take a few glamour shots. I have even completed some models since my hiatus and I need to make a start on writing the articles themselves. So content is coming.
We’ll circle back to what’s coming in the new year but for now let’s look back at what I have actually worked on this year. So this year and not including this article, I have published 41 articles compared to the 40 last year. Not bad all things considered. I was certainly more consistent this year: from the 4th of January I posted a painting article every week for fifteen weeks, I then took a break from the middle of April to the end of May, and once I got back I posted every week for eighteen weeks up until my burn out at the end of September. One of my goals next year will be to keep that consistency going.
I may not have published much more compared to last year but I have crushed it in web traffic. Last year I got a grand total of 1590 visitors to my little corner of the internet. This year? 4700 visits! Nearly triple the number from last year. Very pleased with that, it goes to show what some decent search engine optimisation (SEO) can do. My most visited page was the Redguard and Cragheart article with just over six hundred views, ironically that’s an article from 2021. To be honest, the Gloomhaven articles have all been fairly popular, occupying the top five spots in terms of page views. Bodes well for me once I get my hands on Frosthaven. Even more ironic than a 2021 article garnering the most page views was my most engaging article was the first one I ever published: the Village Attacks Dullahan with just four views but an average time on page of nearly 14 minutes.
So let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Last year I boldly proclaimed that I wasn’t going to buy anymore Warhammer so that I could focus on my horrendous pile of boardgame miniatures that I need to paint. Now I’m here to tell you that I absolutely bought some Warhammer this year. Not much mind, mostly the limited edition commemorative series models. Although I did pop into my local Warhammer store for its anniversary and picked up a box of Sisters Noviates, some Plaguebearers and some Nurglings. To the second proclamation I fared better, painting a grand total of 205 boardgame miniatures this year. Not as many as I had hoped, but I still made a fair dent in the numbers. I think the trouble is that I ended up painting a lot of single miniatures like the Gloomhaven classes and not all that much batch painting. Sure the Zombicide Invader Xenos and Village Attacks: Horror of the Sand Yunfakh Hunters accounted for more than half the miniatures I painted this year but they were just about the only boardgame miniatures that I batch painted this year. There were a few others like the Mansions of Madness monsters but none of those were in particularly large numbers. But I suppose that’s the nature of boardgames at the moment, particularly Kickstater boardgames, lots of “hero” miniatures with different sculpts and relatively few “monsters” to paint. This is certainly where I’m finding myself with Village Attacks and Zombicide Invader, most of the baddies are painted so now it’s just a case of wading through the buckets of individually sculpted heroes and expansions. Perhaps I’ll invest in some Army Painter Speed Paints and see about this fabled “slapchop” method of painting. Afterall I did chew through the Massive Darkness and Village Attacks hordes with contrast paints a few years back.
Speaking of the future, time to look ahead to what I’ll be working on next year. Obviously, I still have a lot of boardgame miniatures to get through. I do want to devote some time to getting both Village Attacks and Zombicide Invader finished. And as mentioned above I might give the slapchop method a test to see if it’s any quicker.
I have been banging on about getting the Valhalla miniatures done for a while now. But good news on that front, I have the first batch primed and ready to go. Additionally in progress are Skaeth’s Wild Hunt and The Crimson Court warbands for Warhammer Underworlds. So I will be looking to finish those off next year and actually play a damn game of Warhammer Underworlds.
This isn’t even all of the Commemorative Series that I have
I suspect I may spend a lot of next year playing catchup with all the Warhammer I have missed. I have a pile of about ten commemorative series models that I need to make a start on. Not to mention all the Kill Team releases I have refrained from buying like the Death Korps of Krieg and the Blooded traitor guard. Plus there’s a few more Aeronautica Imperialis kits that I have been meaning to pick up. Then there are the non-Games Workshop game systems. I’ve been meaning to dip my toes into both Malifaux and Conquest for a while now. In fact, for the latter I have a box of Household Knights that I need to make a start on. There are also the two Star Wars Bandai kits that my father-in-law got me last Christmas that I must do this year lest he disowns me.
But more than anything, what I want this year is to make a start on my Great Work. Since before I started this blog I have been wanting to run a single-player narrative campaign. The idea is to play a series of Warhammer games and then craft a story both within and around those games. I already have the setting and some background written, I just need to get some models and terrain done. I really hope that if I can clear some things off my painting desk that I can find some time to sink into my passion project. I can’t say much about it yet, but I am very excited to finally make a start on it.
So in summary, my goals for next year:
Finish painting the Warhammer Underworlds warbands.
Finish painting the Valhalla kickstarter miniatures.
Build and paint the Bandai X-Wing and TIE fighter.
Make significant gains on the remaining Village Attacks and Zombicide Invader miniatures.
Be in a position to start my narrative campaign.
Paint the Frosthaven starting classes.
I feel like these are all fairly achievable over the next twelve months.
Bring it on!