Dawn of the Lead

By now we’ve all heard several variations of “2016 was the worst year ever” comments. Enough of those! We all know the horrible stuff that has been going on for the past year, but this isn’t a blog about all that. Instead, a quick recap of the year’s hobby-related things and a cautious look forward!

Miniature output this year has been decent-ish. I think my total comes to around 30+ minis, but it could have been much higher. At this rate I’ll have all of my unpainted lead and plastic nicely painted around age 70 or 80 – assuming I don’t buy anything new. Apparently my painting output in 2015 was 33 miniatures, so this seems to be a fairly standard rate. I’ve also cleared out a fair bit of old lead that I know I won’t get around to painting. If someone else can get fun out of them, they shouldn’t sit in a cupboard tucked away in a box for years and years.

Reaching goals definitely happened. In my “Looking back on 2015” post I was planning on the following for 2016:

• Painting up pirates, 18th century civilians, navy types and colonial soldiers (✓)
• Building a second terrain board as well as a few different extra pieces (✓)
• Modifying and painting a bunch of houses (✓)
• Basing and touching up loads of palm trees (✓)
• Building and painting plenty of scatter terrain (✓)
• Most likely sneaking a few RPG miniatures in as well (✓)
• Salute 2016 as well as visiting plenty of awesome sights and people in the UK and Ireland (✓)

Seriously, I managed all of that! In a hobby that for me is characterized by unfinished and discarded projects, periodical slumps and time and motivation constraints, I’m super happy to have reached my hobby goals for once. Salute was great, and meeting Paul of sho3box fame was definitely one of the high points of the hobby year.

The UK and Ireland trip was excellent in general, and I got to spend time with some wonderful people who I’ve met through this hobby. I spent an evening in the pub with Annie from Bad Squiddo and Dameon from Hasslefree, had a browse through boxes of Roy Duffy’s brilliantly painted miniatures and got to visit Pete “the Mouldmaker” Brown’s workshop and see miniatures cast. Good stuff!

Project-wise my pirate thing is still going strong. This is an actual surprise. I started the project in May 2015, and to my surprise it still hasn’t died. I’ve built terrain, I’ve gamed, I’ve read a ton of literature on the subject…what is this madness? Not that I’m complaining. The project has also seen me drift somewhat towards historical gaming. It’s a scary thought, so I’m painting the occasional undead pirate, ghost and crab man to keep me on the right track. The pirate ship that you may recall is still not finished, and it definitely should be. That brings me to…

Hobby plans for 2017

• Finish the pirate ship. Started in 2015, if it’s still unfinished by the end of 2017, it’s going in the project graveyard, and that would be a crying shame.
• Paint a dragon. More on this later.
• Keep up steady work on the pirate project. There’s still plenty to do and I’m enthusiastic, so this shouldn’t be a problem.
• Play games. Much as I love the modelling part of the hobby, I’ve found that the occasional game keeps me motivated.
• Increase miniatures output. Nothing drastic, but maybe I’ll aim for 40.
• Update the blog somewhat steadily, as always.

Next year might present some challenges to hobby activities due to (generally positive) real life things taking up time and concentration, but I’m definitely hopeful!

As I’ve mentioned before, my warmest thanks to all of you readers, both regulars and occasional visitors. Your feedback and engagement does wonders for my blogging motivation, and I’m happy to see people enjoy what I’m creating.

Have a great 2017, everyone!

Fireworks photo by VasenkaPhotography, used under CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)