That end of year post - 2018 edition

   It's that time of year again, so love them or hate them* your feeds are going to be full of round-up posts.

*Personally, I love them

Last year's resolutions were:

So this year I want to focus on some key resolutions:

1. Keep my 52 games a year target - as I now work from home making sure I get out of the house at least one day a week is extra important. So I stopped working from home within a few months of the new year, but the sentiment remained - 93/52 games played - Pass
2. Paint more than I buy - I managed this, this year and would like to keep getting my lead pile down, either by painting it, or by selling it off. - This year saw both a fairly drastic reduction in the amount of models I bought but also a mass selling of old projects which meant my Pile of Potential is looking much better than before - Pass
3. Finish some key projects; 15mm armies for Sword and Spear - Failed, Napoleonic British for Sharp Practice - Passed until I bought more, Sons of Horus 30k - Finished my initial plans and my 5th company of Space Marines - Didn't even touch this project - Half/Half.
   
4. Start far far less new armies. Not sure how to quantify this as a pass or fail but if I don't own any models for an army already, I don't want to get carried away with it and keep disrupting my painting queue. - As I said going in, I don't know how to quantify this one, but I finished about 3 or 4 projects depending how you quantity 'finished' and only actually bought 3 new sets of rules (Pikeman's Lament, Kill Team and Adeptus Titanicus) and started 2 new projects (Ultramarines for 30k and a Legio for Titanicus), so I think this one counts as a Pass (if more in the spirit of the thing than actual practice).

   General Stats:
Most played game: Warhammer 30k
Most played army: Sons of Horus
   Neither of those are likely to be a shock, but I found it interesting that is 5 years of keeping my gaming stats this is the 4th year in a row with a different most played game and 5th year in a row with a different most played army.

   As I did last year, I thought I finish the post with some pictures of games from the past year, most of which won't have been on this blog before.

One of my big aims for the year was, not only to play 30k, but to play a game of 30k at Warhammer World. It wasn't the massive game I had planned but it was really good fun.

I've played a fair bit of Blood Bowl this year too, including trying out my Halfling team for the first time and while they are terrible as a team, watching them take out a ball carrier then almost score is absolutely brilliant.

Then below we have a game that has gone down in infamy, 11 players dead or seriously injuried in the photo and that was just after half time.

   I did notice, while putting this post together, that I have played less 'pretty' looking games this year, which is something I need to have a look into fixing. Is it because I have been trying more small demo games, rather than playing regularly with the same opponents or is it just because I have become lazier in my pre-game packing?

   After a fairly successful year, in terms of pure aims, I am pretty happy to keep a similar list of targets, so this year's resolutions are:

1. 52 games target - classic and a good thing to keep to
2. Paint more than I buy - damaged my backlog last year, so want to keep that up
3. Not to buy into any small scale skirmish games this year - esp not fad looking ones
4. Finish some key projects (again) - Sword and Spear, at least one of my Dark Age projects (I have 3 that need most of the army painted) and 2.5k of 30k Ultramarines
5. Play some key rulesets - Sword and Spear (been meaning to try this since it came out), bigger games of Sharp Practice 2, more 30k (still loving playing this), Titanicus, Kill Team - this list could go on and on.

Thanks for reading and a happy new year