Friday 3 January 2014

New Year's Dissolutions


Well, Bah Weep Graaaagnah Wheep Ni Ni Bong everybody and Happy 2014!  As I am sure many people and news sources have reported, it is now a whole new year in the Western calendar.  The Earth has completed one full orbit from its initial arbitrary starting point. Yay.

As is traditional, now is the time for resolutions to be made before be swiftly rationalised into ever more watered-down and unimpressive versions of themselves prior to being disregarded and forgotten about entirely for the rest of the year.  Yeah, bleak, innit?

Nevertheless, I plan to thwart this sequence of events by aiming deliberately low to start off with.  Ha-hah!  I’ve got the standard personal resolutions (become less spherical, learn Gaelic, win a fight with bear, etc.) but the hobby ones are, I think, most applicable for this venue.

1) Update the blog once a week.  I know, I’ve been playing this tune badly for quite a while (again, with decreasing standards of what’s acceptable), but I couldn’t resist give on more encore that no-one asked for.  Hopefully I can make Mondays regular post days.

2) Have at least one painting session a week.  Regardless of how much I get done during that session, if I can get into the habit of sitting down with a paintbrush and some models, eventually something will get finished.  I don’t actually enjoy painting.  I’m slightly jealous of those who do, as it is a major part of the hobby and playing with and against painted models just feels better than the bare plastic or undercoat versions.  My entire painting philosophy and method throughout most of my hobby life has been conveyor-belt style painting to get armies ready for events.  I think I still need that as a motivating factor, so I should have a bunch of club and third-party events over the coming year to keep some level of deadline pressure going.

3) Attend the Overlords at least once a month.  Apart from the occasional special event, I was barely in the HQ at all over the past year.  I live annoyingly far away from it for public transport not to be a massive ballache.  However, another driving test beckons in February, so maybe (if I don’t cock it all up again) this process will be made significantly easier.  I feel like I should make more of an effort to support the club over just turning up at the Podcast Bunker every few weeks to talk bollocks for three hours.  Plus, I now also have:

4) The Escalation League! Really up for giving this a go as it gives me a good consistently moving deadline for fairly small points-value painting every month.  For those not part of the Overlords Facebook Group, the escalation league is a club event whereby everyone starts with 500pts at the beginning of the year, and end with 2.5k at the end.  The points value goes up each month and you’re expected to play at least two games at that month’s points.  The nice bit about it is, that you can’t get rid of units you’ve previously added to the list, and your downgrading opportunities are limited to 10% of the current points value.  This means that you have to think about what units you include in each army expansion, because once they’re there, you’re stuck with them.  This works nicely for me because, I can choose some slightly unusual choice and try to find a niche for them over the year because, well, I’ve got to.  I’m throwing down with Chaos Marines over here and, for once, I won’t be allying in anything from the Daemons Codex.  Admittedly those armies complement each other very well, but I have other plans; ones that allow me to use models I barely ever have a role for, but would be perfect for the League.

5) Write more fiction.  I’m fairly certain I will never be an author, but I still come up with stories for various things that crop up in my head.  I mainly just lack the focus to put many (or any) of them down on paper.  I’m going to try to change that this year, and I’m aiming for a monthly short fiction post on this blog, just to keep in practice and mess around with a few ideas.  As ever, thoughts and feedback on whatever I write will be appreciated.

And that’s that as far as these resolutions go.  There are many more posts on the horizon, more fiction to read (and write), more podcasts to befoul, more games to play and a club to mismanage.  I’m swamped…

So long!

No comments: