The Year in Review
I started off the year in fine style with a trip to WHW for GW's anniversary celebrations. We played an awesome game of Orks vs The Imperium to celebrate and my greenskins triumphed. It was an excellent way to kick off. Incidentally, we've booked some tables at the Sanctuary at the end of January for another big game between the Imperium and the Orks but this time I'll be joined by some of Nurgle's cronies.It was around this time that I put the Double Trouble tickets on sale and started the discussion about how the event would run. I'll talk more about DT later but suffice to say DT2 tickets will be on sale very early in the new year.
Over the first quarter of the year I spent my time building/magnetising my two new Imperial Knights followed by several airbrush sessions. It wasn't until March until I declared them "finished" just in time for them to help Matt and I to victory at an Outpost doubles event.
I then went into full time Double Trouble build up with plenty of shots of your progress getting your armies ready for the event. I'd like to do this again for DT2 but I'll let you know how you can submit your photos soon. It's a great excuse to start a new army or get a 750pt chunk of one of your existing armies painted up. My attempts to get my DE ready for the event resulted in a massive failure but at least some progress was made. I'd be very surprised if my DE get any love this coming year though. If anything I'll be culling their numbers with some eBay auctions.
Double Trouble was the mid point of the year and, venue issues aside, I thought it was a great success for the first event in a new format. I'm looking forward to DT2 and who knows, maybe I'll run two in 2017.
My blogging dropped off dramatically in the second half of the year. I posted 45 times in the first six months (mostly DT build up I'll grant you) but I've only posted 14 times since the start of July (including this post!). I didn't post in October at all!!! There were a multitude of reasons for this but hopefully my posting will be more consistent next year.
The latter half of the year also saw me playing very little 40K and instead I participated in some X-wing events. This was a nice change of pace and I'm looking forward to more X-wing in the coming year. I will say that X-wing is in danger of becoming over complex though as more and more releases hit. More on that another time.
The last major gaming of the year was Fluffaggedon for which I returned to my faithful Space Wolves. Not a stellar performance on my part but I thought Matt did an excellent job in running his first event. Hopefully he'll run more in 2017, I'll obviously keep you posted.
The year was rounded out with the start of my work on the garage conversion. The re-release of Blood Bowl was awesome and although little has changed I'm hoping the new set will boost it's popularity and hopefully I can get myself into some league play. I managed to get in a couple of games with my brother-in-law and a friend from work which certainly rekindled my love for the game.
My final gaming of the year was an X-wing session with Matt and despite losing both games I enjoyed myself and particularly liked smashing both of Matt's heroes in Gorechosen to end the night.
Blog Stats
Another dip in views this year from 340,000 last year to 250,000 this year. Doesn't sound so bad until you realise that a big chunk of those views have come from Russian bots of some description. Seems to have been an issue affecting a lot of blogs but makes it very difficult to tell how many people are actually viewing the site. I suspect a pretty large proportion of those views are coming from Russia though. I mean, assuming I've never had a view from Russia before (which isn't the case) there's 50,000 views from there in my blog's history. Still, the drop in views is hardly surprising when I've posted just under 60 times compared to 80 last year. Last month's views (16,300) were even lower than September last year which was the lowest since Feb 2013.
Like I say every year. I'd love there to be more hobby content on here next year but that obviously depends on how much I do. Maybe the new surroundings in the garage will inspire me?
Hobby Progress
Extremely little outside of my knights. I'm struggling to think of anything else I actually "finished" this year. The less said about this the better.
Tournaments
Unless I'm forgetting something I only played in three 40K events this year with a further two X-wing events. Didn't help that the WHW events didn't fall on great weekends for me but it's becoming increasingly difficult to commit to events. My hobby is so often motivated by needing to get things ready for an event so it's no surprise that I haven't achieved much.
Conclusion
Probably my worst year to date in terms of hobby progress, tournaments and blogging. I can't really put my finger on why. Total War: Warhammer certainly took a big chunk out of my free time but I just haven't been motivated. A lot of the problem has been the disorganisation in my gaming room. Maybe when the garage is done and everything is in a sensible place I'll feel more relaxed. Being able to watch TV shows on my PC whilst painting will make a big difference I think.
A bit of a forlorn feeling to this post for which I apologise. The solution is naive optimism for the year ahead so look forward to that in the next post!
Alex, don't stress and chill. Forget stats and post when you want to with decent content. We'll still read when you post! Enjoy your more laid back hobby progress and the hobby garage when its up and running! You deserve a break after your efforts with BlogWars and growing this community. Well done Fella.
ReplyDeleteHuge +1 to what Siph said, real life can easily get in the way of hobby progress, but whatever the volume we all appreciate the great quality posts you put out. Thanks !
DeleteYeah no point in stressing about things, I find it difficult to get motivated to paint and blog as well - you're not the only one! Just enjoy it, if you're worrying about things it becomes more of a chore not hobby.
ReplyDeleteHave a good new year!
I still think two Knights are a pretty healthy achievement, even over a year. Sure you want to get more done, who doesn't but don't dismiss the effort and they look awesome too.
ReplyDeleteAs for the blog, well I know how you feel and if things go a particular way for me next year I may have to drastically reduce my posting too. But we only have so much time and as much as we'd like to post about everything we also have to do stuff to post about, it's a vicious circle. Not to mention the blog needs to speak to us as much as the desire to paint, model or game.
Things will come around, and we have DT2 to look forward to, so bring on 2017!
I feel a little imature for saying this, but Australia, my home country, gave you 420 pageviews and you didn't make a joking note of it?
ReplyDeleteThose Knights look AWESOME! Don't bash yourself over that, if I manage to get any of my Corsairs looking even half that good this year I'd be happy.
Thank you for posting, I'll look forwards to reading more of your content in future. And good luck getting the garage sorted!