2024 wrap-up

 It’s time for the obligatory end of year blog when I look back at the hobby goals I set myself at the start of 2024, and think ‘oh gosh, I did mean to do that, didn’t I.’

• Finish painting a useable 2000 point Kruleboyz army

I think I can just about say I did this one. I started the year with around 1500 points of Kruleboyz and I did go back and paint some more bits to take it over 2000 points, but then AoS 4 came along and I was suddenly woefully short of Gutrippaz. I then forgot all about Kruleboyz for a while as I was focused on my OBR army, but there are twenty Gutrippaz on my painting table at the time of writing this, and I’m planning to start using the army in matched play in early 2025.

• Paint a Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game warband and play a few games with them

This one I definitely did, no generous accounting needed. I painted a bunch of dwarves for the Army of Thror, and played some games with them. I enjoyed the system a lot and would have liked to have played more, but MESBG ended up taking a bit of a back seat to other gaming systems for me in the second half of the year. I’m planning to pick up the new edition rules books over Christmas though, so I’d like to get back into it in early 2025 and perhaps paint up an evil army.

My dwarves (with the flowers on their bases) fighting another dwarf army in a very non-lore approriate game of MESBG.

• Paint at least another 1000 points of Seraphon for my narrative Seraphon project

This one didn’t happen. I had a bit of a hobby slump in the middle of the year at the point when I’d planned to focus on this, and then my AoS hobby efforts ended up being focused on getting my matched play armies AoS 4 ready. I do still plan to get my Seraphon to at least 2000 points though, and I have some ideas for what I want to add to them, so I’ll carry this goal over to 2025.

• Don’t start any new AoS armies

Success! I added a bunch of stuff to my existing armies in 2024, including painting over 2000 points of additions for my OBR army, but I was never really tempted to start something new. At the time of writing I don’t have any big plans for new armies in 2025 either, but I’m not going to carry forward this goal – I’ve had a year of being sensible, so if I have a cool new army idea or start feeling like I want to play something different in matched play I’m going to let myself lean into it.

I added a few bits to my Slaves to Darkness, including Abraxia

• Keep up this blog, keep up my podcast, and be better at promoting both of them

I reckon I can claim success here. I didn’t blog as much as in 2023, but including this one I wrote seven posts which isn’t too bad. The pod has kept up pretty reasonable output, and while I can’t say I’ve been brilliant at promoting either I’ve been making a bit more of an effort in the last few months. I’ve met a few people at events who are pod listeners, and while it still blows my mind that people outside my hobby community actually want to listen to us it’s nice to know there are listeners out there! (If you are reading this blog and are not familiar with the pod, it’s called ‘Three and Two: a matched play Age of Sigmar podcast’, and should be on most podcast apps).

• Improve my hobby photography set-up, and practice taking shots of my minis

I did the bit about improving my hobby photography set-up: I made a bunch of small scenic boards with different terrain types that I can pose minis on when taking photos of them. I’m really pleased with how this worked out, and I’ll probably make some more in future to match the bases of any new army projects. I’ve done less well on practicing mini photography, but I did at least one practice session so I’m counting this as done.

 

Some Darkoath models photographed on the desert themed base I made to go with them.

Overall that’s not been too bad an effort, I did or partially did five out of six 2024 goals.

I also had three things I wanted to achieve but were more aspirational than definite goals:

• Don’t come last at Brotherhood.

We did this! Team Rollmodels reached the heady heights of 13^th place at the Brotherhood AoS team tournament back in January 2024, which was our best ever finish and made me very happy.

• Win an Underworlds tournament.

I didn’t do this, but I was pretty happy overall with how I did at Underworlds events. I think my best was a 4-1 at the last one I went to in November. I suspect I’ll be less successful in 2025 with the new edition of Underworlds, as I’m currently feeling like I don’t have much grasp on the competitive meta, but we’ll see how that goes.

• Get my Living City army back into a playable state

In the end I decided to abandon any attempts to make my ghost dwarf Living City army matched play viable. It seems pretty likely that most of the remaining non-human elements of Cities of Sigmar will go to legends at some point during 4^th edition, and I don’t want to spend a bunch of effort making the army work only to have it all change again. But I did take the army to a narrative event in 2024, and I have plans to add some new stuff to it to further develop it for narrative play, so I’ve ended the year feeling pretty positive about the army.

My ghost dwarf steamtank fights off some chaos knights at A Shadow in the West

Reflections on 2024

Looking back at my stats for 2024, at the time of writing I’ve painted 117 models. I might add another 5 or so by the end of the year, but it will still be my lowest annual total since I started counting. That’s mainly because of a big hobby slump in the summer, when a combination of being busy with other aspects of my life and feeling a bit apprehensive about what AoS 4^th edition was going to bring meant that I wasn’t feeling much enthusiasm for painting. My favourite thing that I’ve painted in 2024 is Nagash, he’s not a model I ever expected to paint, but I ended up adding him to my OBR army and I enjoyed painting him a lot.

I’ve played 171 games in 2024, just over half of which were Underworlds, and most of the rest AoS or Spearhead. I’ve never tracked games played before but this is probably the most I’ve ever played, I went to a lot of events this year. My competitive gaming highlight was probably the Goonhammer Open for AoS back in March, at which I came third with my gargants. But my overall favourite event was the Shadow in the West narrative event in October, where I took my ghost dwarves, which are my favourite army, and had an absolute blast playing some cool narrative games with a load of lovely people.

Both of my main systems (AoS and Underworlds) got new editions in 2024, overall I think both of these were for the better, but I feel like I’ve struggled a bit with keeping up in matched play. At the end of AoS 3^rd edition I had a really good grasp on my gargant army and was starting to feel like I could potentially go 4-1 at an event with them, whereas in 4^th edition I’ve been much less successful with my OBR and have yet to achieve even a 3-2. OBR are a really good army that other people have been winning events with, so this is definitely a me problem! I’m still enjoying the games, and I do feel like I’m on an upward trajectory, but I don’t feel like my brain has quite caught up with the new edition and how I need to adapt to it yet.

The Underworlds new edition is much more recent and I haven’t properly got my head round it yet, I’ve only played around 10 games so there are still warbands and deck builds I’ve not seen in action and don’t have a great grasp of. The edition desperately needs an FAQ to fix a few early balance issues and clarify some rules questions, so I’m hoping that comes out in early 2025 to bring a bit more stability to the meta. I’m going to a Grand Clash at Warhammer World in February, so I’d like to get a bunch of practice games in in January and get to a place where I feel like I have a decent understanding of the new edition.

I’ve yet to set my 2025 hobby goals, but I’ll giving some thought to that over the next few weeks so look out for another blog post soon.