New Year Plans

 

With the New Year having ticked over, I decided it would be worth having a bit of a think about my plans for 2024. With over a thousand miniatures turning up in the flat, but only painting 42, things need to change. I did manage to paint 85 in 2022, so I can definitely get more done.

I need to change how I think a little bit. I'll only be picking up a miniature if I'm intending to use it straight away, or if its not going to be available in the future. The volume of things I have in the flat is getting in the way of me doing actual hobby - sorting miniatures out is taking up a whole ton of time.

I'm also going to stop running a rolling 12 month count of how many things I've got finished and painted. It was a lot of work to track, and the moment I had a less productive month, suddenly I "should" finish a ton of things before starting anything new, and that could potentially make me miserable feeling obligated.

My new goal, more or less, is to get something done for a project each month, and a couple of small minis finished in between whatever that month's project is. That may vary - I'm working on a deadline for the D&D minis I aim to get done in January, so I'm not going to put that at risk for sake of getting some small things done. The idea is to let it average out over the year.

One thing that's become obvious to me is that for the random individual miniatures I have that aren't for projects, I've got well over a hundred of them already assembled, undercoated and ready for paint... Which means I don't really need to assemble any more this year. This is, again, the volume of miniatures I have giving me a false feeling of progress while taking time away from actually getting them painted.

So I'll aim away from assembling miniatures for the sake of it this year. There's a couple of games where I play miniatures unpainted - like Malifaux and Infinity - so I'll still get those assembled when I can. But the rule will be to assemble things I have a use for - either that I'm about to paint them, or that I intend to game with them.

The hobby room is a problem. It's meant to be a shared space, and my clutter is taking up too much of it. My absolute priority this year is to make half of the hobby workspace is clear for my wife to use, and that the table in there isn't used as a storage space, but either of us can set up there to work when we want to, and then clear up after we're done.

I do want this to be the year that I work out the paint scheme for my Nomads and get at least one of them painted up. I've been enjoying my games with Nomads, and I'm looking forward to having more. The paint course with Roman Lappat last year was what finally gave me the confidence I know enough to get the look I visualise when I think of my Nomads.

I would also like to dip back into my Combiend Army force as well at some point. They have a really striking, simple paint scheme. Getting a few painted will be a good opportunity to settle into something I'm comfortable with that gets good results relatively quickly. 

The plan of actually getting around to playing 40K last year got stymied by a series of bad luck. It's a weird one, because I have a whole bunch of plans for 40K - things to try playing, hobby projects to assemble and paint... But those plans all sit behind having a game, which sits behind having the time to do so, and I've got several busy weeks coming up . . .

In between getting some games in with my Deathwatch, I want to dig out and try my Astra Militarum again. Once the Codex comes out, I'll probably have a bit of a rationalisation of my Guard collection. The idea is to sell some old things, buy some new models, and get them painted up - moving a lot closer to the idea of "buy a kit, assemble and paint it" rather than building up a huge backlog of miniatures.

There's then other games, like Age of Sigmar and Malifaux. The plan was to pop to a Malifaux tournament last weekend, but then I ended up being ill and going precisely nowhere instead. I'm now better, thank goodness, but I missed out on the event. Age of Sigmar, I just need to, again, get a game in. It's sitting behind 40K at the moment because I have more coherent plans for 40K than AoS. In the same way that Dungeonbowl was tempting last year and I never got to it, Legions Imperialis and the Old World loom large this year...

All in all, my main goal this year is really about that tidying and focus - clearing away things that I'm not using, and making space - both physically and in terms of my life and time management. I'm hoping that at least by the summer, I'll be in a better, more "grown up" tidy place. I just need to keep the self discipline of the current tidying that I'm doing to get there.