As I am waiting for my hobby funds to recharge for The Forest project, and am currently vacilitating between my remaining major painting projects - Quar/ECW/Greece/Japan - I thought I'd stocktake where I'm at with my hobby goals.
Terrain. 'Create 3 store-able terrain sets.' Exceeded - Blood Bowl pitch, dungeons, forest, 15mm WW2 ruins. Plus found and painted various ladders, barrels, fences - with some sci fi furniture out on the paint bench.
Thoughts: Terrain is a huge 'blocker' - not of line of sight, but as a preventer of projects. I.e. building sci fi terrain to allow myself to play Zone Raiders also inspired me to paint and use my 40K miniatures and launched my d12 KillFinity Team project which has been my most fun this year. Building a forest for my medieval STALKER project also unblocked my French Indian Dino Wars projects. Each time I built new terrain, it spawned a whole lot of new painting and rules projects. "If you build it they will come"
This has made me really aware of how I can unblock other unused projects. My Japanese project will probably get suitable buildings, and I'll add some cherry trees to my forest selection. I'm going to make some "Greek/Roman" columned ruins to inspire ancient projects.
I don't super enjoy terrain building. Like buying paints and brushes it is kinda the 'job before the job' - e.g. I don't mind mowing but I do dislike changing mower blades and oil filters before I start.
But I've realized terrain (and storing it) is pretty integral to my hobby momentum - inspiring painting and working on projects - and overall enjoyment.
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Minis. 'Assemble 50 models or two warbands from spare/unused sprues.' Yep - easily with various 40K, ECW, fantasy and medieval minis. 'Buy minis for existing project' - yep, I bought some Dark Eldar and Mechanicus once all my old 5th ed 40K stuff was painted* for KillFinity, and some reptoids for my French Indian (+dino) Wars. *Except orks. I hate painting those guys.
Thoughts: Having a big selection of sprues (bitz box) can conversely help remove waste - by buying some new Frostgrave and WA boxes I could use their spares parts to convert previously unwanted miniatures. I cleared my backlog by buying more!
The lesson I learned was sometimes you need to spend a bit more to 'unblock' a project. Which is why I now own 25 or so Bloody Miniatures ECW - to inspire me to revive my rather bland Warlord ECW rank-and-file...
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Rules. 'Design and play-test one new home-brew system.' Success! d12 KillFinity (a mash-up of a simplified Infinity using d12s; a flavour of old-school Kill Team with a bit of a BLKOUT vibe) was really fun to play with my kids and it's one of my favourite homebrew sets.
One goal was to 'print out and review existing old-school OOP rulebook or free indie set.' I feel Mordheim counts so yes. Also have printed the new Quar (free) rules.
I have not 'bought one new rule book that works for existing minis/project + one new rule book that just looks cool.' .......That's because I refuse to play $25 for a pdf or +$30 postage for a book. Wait - I did get Acolyte, Grimdark Future and Planet 28 so they must have either been cheap or free. I got Symbaroum (RPG!) - thanks Humble Bundle - as it seemed uncannily like my Forest project (I can steal ideas.)
I have not 'revised and playtest 3 out of my many sets of homebrew rules.' That's because KillFinity and The Forest projects have eaten so much time. But my son is reminding me about our "World of Tanks/Tankmunda/Tankhiem" post apocalyptic-tank-RPG which is Mortal Engines+Mad Max+WW2 tanks+Necromunda and he is asking it to be revived.
He complained: "We need to give it a name that does not sound like a rip off of another game."
"Tankwarrior?"
"No."
"Battletenk?"
"No"
He's hard to please.
The current 'lessons' I've learned is that RPGs generally have very clunky mechanics - I've been exploring some to see if they can be converted to wargames. In most cases, they are mechanically very poor. I'm interested in mechanics where the math is done pre-dice roll (i.e. you decide a target number, modify, then roll dice vs you roll dice then add or subtract modifiers. I'm also interested in area (abstract) terrain vs precise LoS. In one, the mini may be 'in cover' even if it is 1" or so from the actual cover - the actual location of the mini is pretty imprecise. At the far other end of the spectrum, even the model's hand position matters. Most wargames lie somewhere in between.
I'm beginning to prep my Quar. While I'm more interested in the original skirmish SoBH spinoff Songs of Our Ancestors, I have downloaded their new (free) platoon-ish level set, Clash of Rhyfles and have begun experimenting with them. Some interesting ideas in the rules...
Blog. 'Two posts per month.' Easy so far.
Paint. A goal was to 'paint at least 100 minis'; and ensure I've painted amount of existing minis = new purchases. Well I've painted 631 and whilst I've bought 150 or so so I've chewed through ~400 or so of my backlog. I've also painted not two but three unfinished projects (40K, Dino Wars and SOTR) and am about to embark on a fourth.
The lesson learned so far is how important it is to paint regularly. I make a point each day to do something - it could be just basing 10 minis, or just painting on all the belts and boots. Or just undercoating some terrain barrels. It all adds up staggeringly fast - I've painted 635 models this year and built 3 tables of terrain. Friends often relax with a glass of wine each night; what if I spent the same time painting?
Budget. OK I've gone well past my $350 baseline - boxes of Frostgrave/Wargames Atlantic being the prime culprits ~$200, with some $150 in 40K boxes (Dark Eldar, Mechanicus), ECW metals ($120), French Indian Dino Wars ($100). That said, 95% of purchases have been instantly painted and played with so it's not like they are sitting around in a pile unused.
There's no lesson here besides "it's easy to spend money online." That said, my "you must buy less than what you recently painted" rule has kept things under control. I.e. I want to buy more Frostgrave plastics but am waiting til I paint double that from my backlog.
Downsize/Storage. 'Get rid of 4+ A4 IKEA boxes of rules, minis, old terrain etc.' Yep. Despite building new terrain I'm down to 8 from 40 trays of projects, and have cleared 4 complete wall shelves in my shed.
The lesson learned here is the neater things are, the easier it is to find/use them. It's something I parrot to my kids but don't always apply to myself. I've 'discovered' and painted quite a few random minis in weird locations. I've moved much of my materials from deep big boxes in shelves to ~20 now-vacant project trays which can be easily labelled... and thus located with less rummaging.
Overall I'm pretty content with my year so far in wargaming. I'm on track to beat my old yearly paint record (which was 800-900ish) and I'm not only clearing my backlog but completing entire projects (i.e. rules + terrain + all minis painted + games played) as well as condensing my hobby space...
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