Review of my New Year's Resolutions (early I know!)

Well it may only be June but, as I mentioned the other day, I've met one of my New Year targets by having more than 200 followers. Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read this blog. It's especially impressive when you consider how wordy my posts normally are!

Anyway, realising I'd hit that target half way through the year got me thinking about how my other resolutions were coming along.

Attend More Tournaments
Well so far I'm not doing all too well on this front. We may have been to the GW Doubles in January (and won it) but the only other tournament I've played in this year was Blog Wars 5. Obviously there'll be Blog Wars 6 and the Doubles again in September but it'd be good to get to a few more tournaments in the next six months.

I've been looking in various places across the interweb and I've struggled to find events that really appeal to me. Matt and I will, however, be attending a small doubles event at the Outpost in Sheffield on July 13th. There are still plenty of places left if anyone is interested by the way. Head over to their forums to check them out. Last year I attended 4 singles and two doubles. So far I'm on target for 3 doubles events but I'd really like to get to some more singles. I'm especially keen to try out my latest version of my Tau list which I think could be pretty competitive but not too spammy.

Blog Wars 5 & 6

Despite venue issues that were out of my control, we switched to a new venue and I'm pretty happy with how things went. The feedback I got from people was pretty positive and I'll be discussing the ways I want to improve things for Blog Wars 6. The venue was excellent for the most part so I'm hoping to stick with them for the next one. Any suggestions about what you'd like to see at BW6 are, of course, always welcome. Provisional details of BW6 are on the page you can find on the right but look out for the official announcement and ticket release.

Paint More Models
My aim of painting at least two of my armies to their finished standard isn't going all that well. I've painted a decent number of units so far this year to table top standard but I still don't have an army that I'd be happy to enter into a painting competition at a tournament. My current love of Tau might inspire me to get them looking good for the next tournament though so I may at least get one army done. Part of the problem has been focussing on one army when there's been several codexes already this year.

I've decided I'm not going to get any Eldar for the time being whilst I focus on getting the models I already have up to a high standard. I'd be disappointed if I didn't get my Tau army pretty much finished as the vast majority of my models are already painted to a decent gaming standard.

Finish My Gaming Table & Scenery

As you may have read a couple of months ago, I managed to finally get to work on my gaming table. I'm very pleased with the result. I do want to tweak it a little bit and it'd be nice to get it varnished up but for now I'm happy with it.

However, I've made next to no progress on my scenery. I'm going to take some inspiration from the NWGC and consider using lino off-cuts as a basis for my tables. I've always wanted to have several different environments to play in and there's no reason I couldn't have a blue/white piece of lino for snow terrain which I just take off, roll up and replace with some sand coloured lino for a desert theme. I'll be keeping an eye on my local carpet shops to see if I can get some bargains.

With my Tau army up to a gaming standard I'm determined to spend some time getting my scenery sorted. I'm going to call this project "The Summer of Scenery" because I like to give names to things but basically the plan is to turn all my grey/black unloved scenery into a cohesive themed set that will enchance my gaming experience rather than detract from it as it does at the moment. I think the thing with scenery is that it feels like it'll take a lot of effort but in actual fact you can make big strides with minimal time investment.

Bloodbowl
The first thing I painted up this year was my Dwarf blood bowl team and I'm not sure I've had a game with them yet, maybe one. I floated the idea of a Bloodbowl ladder on the Outpost forums but sadly there weren't many takers. I would love to play in a tournament at some point this year though as I really love the game and it's a shame I don't get to play it more. There's rumours of a new boxed game for it later in the year so maybe that'll inject some enthusiasm back into it for people.

Other Specialist Games
I said I was determined to play through some of the other specialist games this year too. Whilst I've somewhat lost interest in Necromunda there may be the possibility of starting up another campaign. However, the good news is that Matt and I have arranged an evening to play further into the Space Hulk campaign. It'd be great if we'd managed to play through it once and then swapped side and played through again by the end of the year.

We've also got a Dreadfleet day planned with a couple of friends. It may have many detractors but I'm actually quite a fan of it and it's a welcome change of scenery from 40K. That and it involves a couple of people who aren't all that interested in 40K. I had mentioned Malifaux as a possible option and I know Matt is keen to give it a go but frankly the models just don't do it for me.

Blogging

The blog did get a little bit of a revamp earlier in the year. I updated the banner to better represent the armies I talk about and I've fiddled with the layout a bit. One thing I would like to do though is update the reading list (which I'll post more about soon).

I'm extremely pleased that I got to 200+ followers by half way through the year. It'd be amazing if I could make it to 250+ by the end of December. Mind you I know Google is trying to move away from that system and get people to use Google+ so that might not happen.

I've still not managed to get more hobby content onto the blog. Most of the time my painting is done in a hurry to get an army ready for a tournament but perhaps I'll spend some more time on blogging about it for the rest of the year. I've not properly looked into the photography stuff yet either.

Conclusion
Well, on the face of it the only thing I've actually managed this year is 200+ followers and building my gaming table. There's a lot of work to be done in the next six months then!

Thanks once again to everyone who reads the blog and I hope you're all still reading at the end of the year!