2023 wrap-up

It’s time to look back at my year in the hobby and reflect on what I did and didn’t do. The TLDR version is: I went to a whole bunch of events, I painted a fair bit but not as much as last year, and I did about 50% of the things I started the year saying I was going to do.

How did I do against my hobby goals for 2023?

I didn’t write a blog about my hobby goals for 2023, but a search of the Discord archives revealed that I set myself the following hobby goals:

-          Finish the Blood Kraken Reavers

Done. I finished off this army, and took it to two events: one competitive and one narrative. It’s been a few months since I last did anything with them, so writing this blog was a nice prompt to take a look at them and remind myself how happy I am with them. I think they’re my best painted finished army, and I’m really happy with how the narrative elements and conversions worked out. I’d like to play more with them, so one project I’m considering for 2024 is adding some Varanguard, which while not a great fit for the narrative side of the army would make them much more viable for taking to tournaments.

-          Finish my Kruleboyz

Not done. I painted half of Gobsprakk way back in March, then got ill and ran out of steam and didn’t look at an orruk for the rest of the year. I do still want to finish the army though, so this one will be carrying over to 2024.

-          Play an event with the Blood Kraken Reavers and with the Kruleboyz

50% done, I didn’t play an event with the Kruleboyz on account of them not being finished.

-          Persuade a London store to run an Underworlds event

I didn’t manage to do this (I did try a bit but it didn’t go anywhere), but the good news is that someone else in the London community has, and I’m due to go to a tournament they’ve organised at Bad Moon Café on 6^th January. So I guess I can count this one as a sort of win?

-          Spend some time actively trying to get better at painting

Not done. I genuinely intended to sign up to a Patreon and watch some tutorials and make an effort to improve my painting, but it never happened. I do feel that this was a year when I tried quite hard at painting, the 1000 points of Seraphon I painted are probably the army I’ve put the most painting effort into. But the spirit of this goal was definitely to try to learn some new techniques and do some painting for the sake of learning rather than for army painting, which didn’t happen. Not sure if I’ll carry this over to 2024 or not, I’d like to do it at some point but I already have a long list of things I’d like to paint in 2024, so I suspect that enthusiasm for army painting will win out over dedicating time to work on my skills.

-          Restart my blog and blog once a month

Pretty much done. Counting this blog, I blogged eleven times in 2023 which is close enough to once a month that I reckon I can tick this off. I’m glad I did this one, I like having an output for event write-ups and random hobby thoughts, and having regained some momentum I reckon I’ll be able to keep it going into 2024.

So out of six hobby goals, I completely did two, partially did two, and dismally failed two. Perhaps not exactly resounding success, but could have been worse.

The Blood Kraken Reavers

What did I paint in 2023?

My spreadsheet says that I’ve painted 117 models so far in 2023, if I have a productive next day and a half I might make it up to over 120. That’s actually the fewest I’ve painted since I started counting in 2019, but that’s largely because (spoilers for the next section) I went to more events this year than in any of those previous years, which meant I had less time for painting. I’m also rapidly running out of space to put new models, so slowing down is not a bad thing.

At the time of writing I have thirty-two unpainted models waiting to be painted, which is more than I usually like to have, but is largely because I got a box of twenty-four Lord of the Rings dwarves for Christmas. I’m hoping I can get those all done in early January to get back down to under twenty minis in my shame pile, which is my comfort zone.

My two main hobby projects for 2023 were finishing the Blood Kraken Reavers, and painting my first 1000 points of Seraphon, which led to me getting my first ever hobby prize at an event, the third placed coolest army award at the ‘A Shadow In the West’ narrative event in October. I’m very happy with how I’ve painted the Seraphon but they’ve not quite grabbed me as an army yet. I’m hoping that will come when I paint the next 1000 points, which I’m planning to do a bunch more conversions for to introduce more narrative flavour. I did enjoy painting them though, the main reason I started the army was that I really like the new model range for Seraphon, so I’m excited to paint some more of the newer kits there.

My favourite minis I’ve painted this year though have got to be the Vulkyn Flameseekers, the Warcry fyreslayer warband that includes Games Workshop’s first female fyreslayer minis. I painted these up recently and every single mini in the kit was a delight to paint. Hopefully we’ll see more female duardin in 2024.

Two of my Vulkyn Flameseekers

Events in 2023

2023 was very much a year of events for me. At the moment I’m in the fortunate position of having a lot of capacity to play games at weekends, which could well change significantly in a few years’ time depending on some decisions coming up around jobs and where my partner and I are going to live. So in 2023 I wanted to make the most of the opportunity to get games in while I could, and went to a whole bunch of hobby events.

I think in total I did:

• ·         4 AoS tournaments (two two-dayers and two one-dayers)
• ·         5 Underworlds tournaments
• ·         3 narrative events (two AoS, one AoS28)
• ·         1 Warcry event
• ·         1 weekend meet-up with the Rollmodels community
• ·         Warhammer Fest

I’ve already blogged about many of these so I won’t go into a lot of detail here, I’ll just say that they were all really fun. In particular I’m really happy that I took the plunge and went to some full-on narrative events, all three of the narrative events I went to were an absolute blast and I’m very keen to do more of them in 2024 and beyond.

I’m pretty happy with how I got on at Underworlds events this year, I won one small local tournament, and won more games than I lost at four out of the five tournaments I went to. I’ve never had a bad time at an Underworlds tournament and all the ones I’ve been to this year were great fun. My regular Underworlds gaming group mostly play practice games over webcam so it’s always nice to see them in person at events, and the London community is going from strength to strength at the moment which has been really good to see.

Folks from the London and London-adjacent Underworlds community at a WHW tournament

AoS tournaments were more of a mixed bag success-wise, I did ok in a couple of them but going 2-3 at Blackout after winning my first two games was a big disappointment. I’d really like to be better at AoS but I feel like I’ve plateaued a bit in the last year or so and I’m not sure what I can do to improve beyond just playing more games. In the last month or so I’ve had a particularly bad time trying to learn to play Ossiarch Bonereapers, which have a very good win rate according to all the stats but which I’ve done terribly with. That said, I’m still very much enjoying AoS and I think the game is in a very good place, I just wish I was better at it.

Wrap-up

Overall it’s been a pretty good year for me in the hobby. I’ve got a lot of happy memories from events I’ve been to, and am feeling very enthused about both the painting and gaming sides of the hobby going into 2024. I’ve already got three tournaments lined up for January, so I’m excited for those, and I have a bunch of dwarves on my painting desk which is always a good thing.