2012 in review & 2013 planning

Had a pretty busy December, mostly in terms of family commitments (had a lovely trip out west to visit SWMBOs family for Christmas) and getting caught up with stuff around the house.  Coming off the large amount of hobby work required to get my goblin team ready also meant my hobby fervour had mostly dissipated.

2012 was a really stellar year for me in terms of both gaming/hobbying and personal life.  It started pretty slowly but gained some steam with the "give him a goblin" contest, I was super impressed with the response to this! My first blood bowl tournament of 2012 begun with 3 straight wins (woo hoo!) but was followed by 3 straight losses (d'oh!) - a definite mixed bag.  It was February before I got my first painting point with the goblin for Abraxis.  March had it's ups and downs, with my dark elf blood bowl team winning our inaugural (thehobble.com) league season, but needed tie breakers to avoid the wooden spoon at the Canadian Open.  In April I earned my best 2 day tournament result ever, finishing in 4th place and I brought out my new Ganja Girls team for the first time.  May was pretty quiet on the blood bowl front other than league games.  June I managed another 4th place finish at the Orion Cup.  July was a road trip to Zlurpeebowl 8 in Indianapolis, which was an all around epic weekend and where our group won "Best Team" - after which things kept pretty quiet on the hobby front since a lot was happening leading up to getting married in early September (went off without a hitch thanks to my brilliant wife).  Barely weeks later I managed to win my first ever blood bowl tournament at Warpstone Cup in Niagara Falls with the inaugural outing of my new dwarf team.  October continued the trophy trend as I picked up "Most Casualties" and "Rising Star" at Deathbowl X in Ottawa.  Throughout the final months of the year I spent tons of time on my Insane Goblin Posse blood bowl team with the goal of taking home "Best Appearance" at Blingtoof 2 in Milton, which I achieved giving me a total of 5 trophies for 2012.  I didn't paint tons, but I did manage to get the most part of a couple blood bowl teams painted as well as some bits and bobs which dragged me just over my goal for painting points this year at 102 - so another goal achieved!


What's in the pipe for 2013?
First off, no "secret" projects so hopefully more blog posts.  I always find posting helps with motivation and it was very tough keeping the goblin team a secret, and it turned out to be unnecessary anyways.

So with the release of 6th edition for 40K, I had to pick up a couple of the box sets.  I did some trading and such as well to end up with a lot of chaos models, and a lot of ravenwing bikers.

a box of bikes

I am planning to do a moderate sized ravenwing army this year, simply because I want a proper 40K marine army that isn't a bunch of various chapters and because I hope to bring it to this years Astronomi-con in Toronto.  Instead of buying the ravenwing command squad I am just going to convert a bunch of the sergeants into a command squad, I got some attack bikes quite cheap and am now just sitting on the codex release before I do too much else.  I am planning to include a couple of their new flyers though - likely the one that is used against other flyers as that's definitely a weak point in biker armies.  I am also thinking about trying to do something crazy like paint up the whole army in one weekend.  It seems nuts but with so much black I think it is possible.

slaanesh/raptor legion

Secondly with the new chaos stuff I have been doing some small bits and bobs.  Ever since reading the short story compilations "legends of the space marines" and "heroes of the space marines" I have wanted to include the odd "corsair/turned" marine in my armies, with the thought of being able to run them under the chaos codex for apoc games or perhaps for narrative campaigns.  First I just built a raptor legion assault marine using a couple chaos bits.  Second I took the chosen with twin lightning claws and gave him a jump pack to be a possible sergeant - again for my raptor legion.  Currently am working on a Flesh Tearer "assault marine/raptor" using the chosen with a power axe and converting the axe itself into an icon of wrath.  I've got plans to go through a set of the chosen models like this and add a few more "in-between" figures as well.  I don't see myself playing like this very often, but its been pretty fun hobby wise.

khorne/flesh tearers

Also in the works this year is more necromunda gaming.  Necro definitely fell by the wayside last year with a severe lack of locale for our gaming (ie. I moved late 2011 and didn't have my man cave setup for gaming yet) - that has been rectified at the end of this year, with much sorting and tidying and such going on meaning I fully expect to get some necromunda games in this year - and several of the new guys I met in The Hobble this year are interested as well.  I have put together a couple packs of micro art studio laser cut walkway terrain, sprayed them metal and done an ink wash.  Now I just want to add a few extra bits and pieces to look a little more underhive-ish and that will be some major painting points to start off 2013.  Part two of necromunda action is the chaos cultists from the dark vengeance box set.  I still have about 50 figures, and they will make great redemptionist/scaavy/genestealer cult/etc./etc. models for necromunda, so I will probably work on a new necromunda gang this year too.

lots of necromunda walkways

I am expecting to receive a large chunk of my Flesh Tearers back this year from Ricalope.  I believe there's just a few terminators, finishing up a land raider and some jump pack death company to finish and fingers crossed I get it early this year.  If so that should spark some motivation to finish building some more pieces to mail over to him.  I also cannot wait to get my hands on these terminators so I can play some proper Space Hulk!  I've played a couple games with my brother this year, using stand in terminators from other chapters armies.  Will be great to play with the actual miniatures and be spoilt for choice (I used most of a second set of space hulk termies to create some additional figures - I still have all the board pieces/counters from the second set as well so my plan is to create "lettered" blips so I can play all the older missions, need to do some work on my genestealer cult figs too!