2025 wrap-up and 2026 hobby goals

2025 hobby goals review

It's time to look back at my 2025 hobby goals and see how many of them I forgot about.

• Get my narrative Seraphon army to 2000 points

I'm calling this one done. I'm not sure I technically made 2000 points, but I painted a bunch of new Seraphon and took them to the Shadowcon narrative event and had a lot of fun with them. I'm really pleased with how they came out, and my bastiladon is my favourite mini I painted in 2025. At some point I'd like to paint more and make it into a viable competitive army, but that's not going to be my main AoS hobby focus for 2026.

My bastiladon

• Play some games with Kruleboyz

I haven't done this. Looking back at my hobby goal post, I said I was planning to play some games with Kruleboyz and with Slaves to Darkness and see which I enjoyed most, and I'm pretty sure I got as far as the Slaves to Darkness bit, decided I was keen to play them more, and never did the Kruleboyz bit.I think this is probably the third year in a row that I put this as a hobby goal and have failed it, so I'm probably just going to give up now and leave them sitting on the shelf until I'm actually excited to play them. 

• Get myself to a place where I feel happier about doing badly at tournaments

I think I have to call this one failed. I had a couple of bad results in the last few AoS tournaments I went to this year ( a 1-2 and a 1.5-3.5), and I can't say I feel great about either of them. In the one-dayer in particular I think I was probably noticeably a bit salty in my last game, which I regret, and doing badly definitely impacts my enjoyment of a tournament more than I would like it to. So i guess I'm carrying this one over to 2026 and trying to be a better loser.

• Be competitive at Underworlds

I think I achieved this. I didn't win a tournament, but I went 4-2 at a Grand Clash and 4-1 at one of the other events I went to, so I'm pretty happy with my Underworlds results. There's definitely room for improvement, and I want to get a lot of Underworlds practice in in early 2026 in the run-up to the next Grand Clash, but I'm happy that I did myself justice here.

• Play some Saga and MESBG

50% success: I didn't play any MESBG, but I did play some Saga and have plans to play more in early 2026. I would still like to play some MESBG at some point, but I'm not sure my current armies work very well in the new edition. I did paint a new Iron Hills force in 2025, but I can't say I love the army (it's a 3D printed force I bought off a friend and immediately kind of regretted), and I'm not particularly excited to play with it. My long term hobby plans include painting a War of the Rohirrim Edoras force for MESBG, but I'm not sure whether I'll get round to doing this in 2026. Saga on the other hand I'm halfway through painting a new army for (see my 2026 hobby goals below), and while I have no desire to play Saga competitively, I'm hopeful that I'll find time for a couple of days of casual gaming with them. 

So that's 2.5 goals completed out of 5, not the best record. Let's see if I can do better in 2026.

2026 hobby goals

• Start a narrative Helsmiths army

This is (hopefully) going to be my maijn hobby focus for 2026. I got the Helsmith's army box for Christmas, and I have a narrative idea for a Helsmiths army who worship the Horned Rat that I'm excited to start working on soon. I want to aim for a fairly high painting standard, so it won't be a quick project. Ideally I would like to get 1000 points done in 2026, but I'm not going to tie myself to that.

• Finish my Saga Age of Chivalry army and play some games with them

I'm hoping this can be a quick win, as I've already painted a third of this army and I have a meet-up pencilled in for February to get them on the table. I'm planning to focus on this project in January and get the army done quickly (most of it involves painting armoured knights which are going to be 80% silver, so it should be reasonably straightforward).

A unit of archers for my English army for Saga: Age of Chivalry

• Get better at Underworlds

As I talked about in a recent blog, I really enjoyed watching the Underworlds stream from the recent World Championships and seeing what top end play looks like. While I think I'm a decent Underworlds player already, there's certainly a lot of room for improvement and I want to focus on trying to improve my play. In particular I think I could get better at board choice and token placement; and at having a good awareness of what my opponent might be trying to do and how I can counter that. I'm not going to tie this goal to tournament results, but I want to feel by the end of the year that I'm a better player than I was at the start.

• Organise some kind of event/tournament/league/thing

I'm keeping this one intentionally vague! I think I've talked before on this blog about being interested in trying to organise some kind of local Underworlds league and that's still on my mind as something I'd like to do, I have a few other ideas too that may or may not ever come to anything. Essentially I'd like to do a bit more for the hobby communities I'm part of than I currently do.

• Play a game of Burrows and Badgers

I painted up a bunch of Burrows and Badgers minis towards the end of 2025, and I really want to get them on the table in 2026. Like with Saga, I'm not looking to get very seriously into it, but hopefully I can find time to have a meet-up or two with some friends and get some games in.

A hedgehog and a shrew for Burrows and Badgers

We'll leave it there. At the time of writing these feel pretty achievable, but I don't have a great past record, so we'll see how it goes. I hope everyone reading this achieves whatever hobby goals you want to do in 2026!