It’s easy to come up with rather unrealistic new year’s resolutions – go to the gym every day, paint every miniature you own or to take over the world. All of them will have a roaring head start and die out as fast as fidget spinners and Leave campaigners promises.
I’m limiting my games
My games for this year are Kings of War (both mass battle and Vanguard) and 40k. I don’t want to commit to other games and spread myself too thinly. I love Warmachine and have been itching to try mk3 (still not gotten around to it), but that is a game where you have to go full throttle and between all of my hobby commitments, I simply wouldn’t have time. Kings of War and 40k are my games of choice.
I want an army for each that I’m proud of
I generally rush my painting, aiming to get Kings of War armies completed for tournaments rather than taking my time and completing an army that I’m proud of. I don’t have a fully painted Ork army for 40k, and my models tend to be either ones I painted a long time ago, or an unpainted conversion that I didn’t finish.
That’s to change this year.
I have two armies to complete – an Abyssals army for Kings of War and my Orks for 40k. My old Abyssal army is falling apart (well, it’s been falling apart for over a year now) pretty much beyond repair because of a lack of pinning or foresight. My Orks are a mixture of several different times that I’ve restarted 40k – I used to have a much more cohesive army but I appear to have lost several vehicles and a full foam tray of infantry.
The Abyssals have been started. I have a test miniature completed and I’ve got some test basing done. One of the points that’s holding me back a little bit is that I want to be as close to 100% Mantic minis as possible. While I had a nearly 100% Mantic army this year (minus one model, Chroneas, that Mantic will be making in the future), I want to try a new army build next year. That’s going to be tricky but I have a few plans.
For my Orks, I’m going to pick one particular paint scheme that I already started and stick to it. I’ll be looking at finishing off various scratch builds and getting enough infantry finished in a single, consistent colour scheme.
I won a “Best Army” award a couple of years back at a Czech tournament (my #displayboardwanker tipped me over the edge of other armies that were perhaps a bit better painted). I don’t want to put it down as an objective to win a Best Army award this year, but it will be a bonus. Hobby is important to me and I would love to win a Best Army award but with the likes of Paul Welsh and Chris Walsh in the community, I have little chance of outright winning one! If I do it’s a bonus, but I don’t want to set myself up for an unrealistic goal.
Sell off the backlog
I need a clearout. Big time. Years of collecting and not finishing has been continuously mounting up.
I’ve been hesitant in the past about selling minis, sometimes entire armies, in case I want to come back to them in the future. No more.
I need to be less attached to my backlog and more willing to sell unused minis and armies on. Even at a significant “loss”, I need to reclaim space in my house and get my collection under control. In a worst case scenario, I’ll even dump minis on friends if I’ll never get round to them or even bin them if they don’t sell.
I’ll go down to a couple of key armies in Kings of War (Abyssals, Abyssal Dwarfs and Ogres), Orks for 40k and I’ll probably keep my Warmachine Cryx collection just in case my hobby calendar does clear up. I’ll have a set of sci fi terrain and a set of fantasy terrain. Anything extra gets dumped in the local hobby store or gaming club’s terrain bins. The same goes bits wise – only keeping spares for the armies I’m keeping and anything else gets sold or binned (a bit of it can be made into terrain of course).
Get into fewer petty fights
Let people be wrong.
Anyone who’s interacted with me is probably well aware that I struggle to hold my tongue when I know someone’s demonstrably wrong. Most recently there was the drama over how the CoK18 changes leaked into the public domain. Myself, Paul and Jon were all privy to the full story and how it was a misunderstanding, rather than the (inaccurate) view that Mantic wanted the changes released. Unfortunately, we were under attack by people without the full story and the resulting drama reflected poorly on everyone.
So yeah, try not to get into extended discussions. Let people be wrong. That doesn’t mean I’ll compromise on principles, such as not being sexist or racist (and it’s fucking ridiculous that these ideas are now anti-establishment), but get into fewer fights over it. If people want to believe that 80% of NHS workers are immigrants then provide a link that proves them wrong and leave it at that. If someone claims something that’s incorrect but I can’t prove due to NDA, state it and leave the conversation. Done.
Write another book
Get another KoW expansion written.
I’m still drafting ideas, but I know that Mantic will be wanting another expansion at some point later this year. I want to have one ready to go. It’ll undoubtedly feature a narrative campaign, but I’ve always held that such books should have additional content to appeal to all players, not just those for the narrative campaign.
So yeah.
5 hobby resolutions. All of them achievable and all of them that will improve my hobby for 2018.
Nick Williams 
Get into fewer petty fights, one I struggle with myself. One thing I’ve learned is that stupid is a strong horse and some people are determined to ride it until it dies. You just can’t help them.
LikeLike
Oh god yes. The saying that when you argue with an idiot they’ll just drag you down to their level and beat you with experience is absolutely true.
There’s no closure even if you “win”. They won’t acknowledge that you’re right, under any circumstances and won’t ever reexamine any of their views even when proven wrong time and time again.
LikeLike
In my experience, there are very few examples of arguments in which one side is 100% incorrect (online or not). In most cases it is either a matter of opinion (in which there is no ‘correct’) or both parties are simply talking past each other.
Online forums (and facebook) are a difficult place to resolve differences because of the detached nature of the platform. I sometimes seem to be misunderstood online, but I can’t even remember the last time I had an argument in real life.
LikeLike
Last year I decided to start a “painting plan,” which required me to list all my unpainted item and then prioritize/schedule their completion with the rule that no new projects until the current one was finished.
Once I listed out all my unpainted miniatures and put them to a plan I realized I had a 3 year backlog of painting to do. Having that realization did more for me to get cracking and stop buying more than anything else! It also made me reckon with the reality that I needed to sell off excess miniatures.
Since last January I have painted more than I have my entire wargaming career (about 10 years total) and I sold off two Kings of War armies and one 40k army. It feels surprisingly good to get rid of some of my wargaming hoard.
LikeLike
That sounds like a great idea and one I’ll look at doing. I’ve definitely got several years worth of models lined up so I’ll probably make a list of what I need to get done for my Orks & Abyssals. So yeah. Pretty much anything that’s not on that list will get scrapped 🙂
LikeLike
Your resolution on not arguing is one that will bring you much peace moving forward. I almost lost my best friend over a game of Warhammer FB, the fight lasted over an hour ruined the game and made things weird in my group for years. When Wes and I discussed that a hobby and especially a game designed to entertain created so much stress that it is just plain immature to get so worked up over it. Avoid conflict on things that are just not that important.
LikeLike
I don’t really argue in person much, it’s just that discussion on the internet without any body language or social cues (not that I feel those would particularly help with some of the people I’ve… interacted with) can get heated just by misreading tone 🙂 Say my piece if I have one, then get out.
LikeLike
It’s not anti-establishment to be sexist and racist. It’s anti establishment to object to the non-objective way these concepts are a) deliberately vaguely defined so as to encompass a whole lot more than is commonly understood and b) used to delegitimise valid criticism of ideas and actions by using them as an all purpose smear to shut down said criticism or any discussion to follow. ‘Hate speech’ can be defined as whatever you want
It to be and so is used to draw a whole host of reasonable topics and opinions into being ‘beyond the pale’ and therefore to be shut down. And we tend to believe the people who loudly shout the declamations of ‘sexist’ ‘racist’ and hate speech, as if there’s no need to question the labels.
LikeLike
Needless to say, “omg hating muslims isn’t racist because it’s not a race” isn’t one of those discussions that I’m going to get involved with 😉
Regardless, my comments were directed more towards things such as Brexit and Trump winning on campaigns that were racist, from the various comments that Trump made about Mexicans and Muslims and the leave campaigns near copy+paste of Nazi propaganda and complete fabrications regarding Turkey to stoke up racial tension. Sexism also seems to be mainstream with Trump making various comments and demeaning women on the basis of them being women, and May commenting that “there are girl jobs and boy jobs”. I’m not shutting down speech that I feel is sexist or racist and not sure where you got that impression. Much the opposite – I think that it should be openly discussed and that “that’s sexist/racist/homophobic/bigoted/whatever” shouldn’t shut down a conversation and should just be used as a statement of position while criticising someone’s speech.
Anyway, like I said in the article. I’ll say my piece and bow out 🙂 Have a nice day.
LikeLike
I have, in the last year or two, managed to reduce the number of pointless online arguments I get into from far too many to zero. One thing that helped was realising that I was overconfident in many of my opinions and that many hadn’t been reached rationally. I spent time reading stuff on Less Wrong. Once I realised that, I also realised that very few other people’s opinions were reached rationally either, and that attempt at rational argument was totally pointless – neither party would change their mind and they’d like each other less afterwards. You do have to ignore a lot of people being (probably) wrong about a lot of stuff, but if you can remember that you weren’t going to change their minds anyway it gets easier.
LikeLiked by 1 person