A 2019 Retrospective - James' 2019 in review and goals for 2020

Well that went fast! 2019 is almost at a close and with it my first year of "real" hobbying - where I actually managed to build, paint and play with my models and not just continue to amass a collection of grey, meaningless plastic to sit on my shelves and make me feel guilty.

It feels customary that at the end of the year you spend some time looking back at what you've managed to achieve and what your plans are for the next year, so with that in mind here at the blog we've all been writing posts on what we've accomplished in 2019 and what great things we've got planned for 2020! And as per usual I'm the last one to get my post up and just in time as well. Some things will never change

Vigilus Defiant: A 40k Tale of Four Warlords

This was the big one for the year and it took up quite a large amount of my hobby time, but boy was it worth it! We started all the way back in Jan with the simple goal of each building up a decent collection for an Imperial army of your choice. For me that meant painting the boys in gold - the Adeptus Custodes. This was an army I'd been sat on for a year by that point, having amassed a sizeable collection upon the armies initial release in Jan 2018. The Tale provided a perfect opportunity to crack on and finally put some paint to models. The project ran for 6 months initially, at which point the Vigilus campaign had come to an end and we'd all ended up with some fairly decent armies (and some of us, like Medge, had instead decided to complete 3 armies in the same space of time) and the goal was to attend a doubles event to cap the whole Tale off. That didn't quite pan out given the fact that no one else showed up, so we were left with a rather lackluster finish to the whole project. Until I stumbled upon the Fun'N'Fluff tournament in London.

As the armies we'd been building weren't really designed for high level tournament play the Fun'N'Fluff tournament presented the perfect opportunity to take all the models we'd worked on throughout the year and get them all onto the table for some fun and relaxed games and really cap off the Tale with a bang. After some last minute additions to my army myself, Tim and Medge descended on Darksphere in Sheperds Bush to see just how capable we were as generals. All in all it was a great weekend and somehow I managed to finish 30th out of 72 with a 2-1-2 record (the draw should have been a win if I remembered secondaries on the last turn, a mistake I'll never make again!), something I'm very happy with given it was my first singles tournament.

As well as dipping my toe in the more competitive side of 40k I've managed to paint up a respectable 2000 points of Custodes that I'm really proud of and am eager to add more to in the coming year.

Blackstone Fortress

A small project that I've started working through at the end of this year has been Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress. This is a game I've been meaning to really get stuck in and play for a while and, now that I've found a dedicated group of explorers to game with, we've been marching through the Blackstone Fortress on a mission to discover the Hidden Vault (and we're almost done, just the Vault itself to complete!!). It's been a nice change of pace to paint these models up and so far I've managed to get 4 of the hostile groups done - the Spindle Drones, Ur-Ghul's, Negavolt Cultists and Chaos Beastmen. I've also got a squad of Traitor Guardsman sprayed and ready to paint when I need a break from one of my other projects.

Overall I'm happy with the amount I've gotten done so far and hope to continue slowly plinking away at the units as I go. As me and my merry band of explorers have almost finished the Quest for the Hidden Vault that means we can move onto a new point of interest in the Fortress soon. There's been talk on Precipice of a new monstrosity lurking in the darkness, a creature of razored mandibles and scything talons capable of tearing a man in two. Sounds like the Ambull has surfaced at last...

Goals for 2020
This for me is the most important part of this post. I think I achieved a lot of what I set out to do this year, which was largely get a decent chunk of my Custodes painted and into a table top ready army. However there's still a lot of room for improvement and so I wanted to set myself a series of hobby goals for 2020 to keep me focused and, most importantly, finishing the year with more stuff painted than I started it with.

- Paint 1000 points of Ossiarch Bonereapers by 30th April
As it's a new year that of course means in classic hobby tradition that it's a perfect time to begin collecting a new army. In my case that'll be the Ossiarch Bonereapers - Nagash's unrelenting army of constructs bent on reshaping the realms into a perfect Necrotopia. This'll be my steps back into Age of Sigmar after over a year of not playing. I'm really excited to dive back into the game as it's such a great rule set and I'm looking forward to painting all of my new Bonereapers. I'll be doing regular updates as part of the Tale so stay tuned for those every month.

- Paint the entire Blackstone Fortress Core Box by 30th June
This is something I really want to keep moving with and figure if I slowly chip away at a unit or two per month I'll have the whole box done in no time. It's been going well so far so fingers crossed I can keep up the momentum

- Paint Necromunda: Dark Uprising by 31st December
I was supremely lucky this Christmas and managed to get my hands on a box of Necromunda: Dark Uprising. Necromunda is a game I really enjoy playing, it's perfect for club nights and as it's a skirmish game I find it's a more relaxed and enjoyable way to still get a game in, but not have to worry about being as competitive as possible. Dark Uprising provides me with a perfect collection to get playing more skirmish level games at the club. 2 full gangs and a whole host of terrain is ideal and fortunately our local club has a thriving Necromunda scene to allow me to play all the games I need.

- Get more involved in the social media side of the hobby
One of the things I use to inspire myself to get back into a project is all the amazing photos that hobbyists post on Instagram and Twitter of their latest completed models (this has also lead me down rabbit holes of desperately wanting to start new armies...) and so it's something I'd like to get involved in in 2020. To really get this off the ground I just want to improve my photo set up a bit but then I'll be off to the races. I'll also be taking part in #Painthammer2020, a yearly Twitter event that encourages everyone to crack their brushes out and get painting through their collection of grey. My hope is to use this all as a means of regularly getting me to sit at the painting desk for a while every day just to keep the new content coming. With that in mind...

- Post more articles to the Blog!
Our first year blogging has worked out really well. We've gotten a lot of content up and a surprising amount of hits on it all (My articles managed over 1000 views which really shocks me given I don't really advertise them anywhere). However my total articles for the blog only amounted to 17 in total, which is nowhere near the amount I wanted. With that in mind I'd like to try and crest 2 posts a month next year, with an eye to breaking past 30. With the amount we've all got planned that should be very manageable.

- Get to at least one event in 2020
This is the final goal for 2020 and one I desperately want to stick to. Every event I've been to over the my time in the hobby (a whopping two so far) has been absolutely wonderful fun. I'd like to push myself to get to more this year and a big part of that will be getting my armies painted and ready to go. I'm assuming my lovely Custodes won't get an update to bring them to a solid power level in 2020 so that means I'll likely be jumping into the world of competitive AoS again. Whether that be a doubles event, Throne of Skulls or even both remains to be seen.

So that's my hobby for 2019. I can honestly say this has easily been the best year I've ever had in the hobby. I've finally got a properly painted army for 40k, the blog's been doing well and is only set to improve next year and best of all I got to do all of this with my best friends. Can't ask for much more than that I say. I'm excited to get cracking with 2020 already. We've a new Tale on the way in January as we all return to the Mortal Realms which is going to be great fun, so keep your eyes on the blog for that. 

With all that said it's a great big thank you from me for reading any of my posts and popping onto our little blog in general. Hope you've all had a great Holiday season and Happy New Year! Here's to another great year of Warhammer!

Until next time,

James