It's the new year and this is my first update in nearly 4 months. By no means this was intentional. There are many reasons for the hiatus, but to go into those reasons now would probably derail this post. I hope I can discuss some of those reasons in the future but for now I want to focus on moving forward. Here are my Chaos Magic plans and goals for 2018:
Flames of War and Team Yankee - I have decided to drop Flames of War and Team Yankee. There are a lot of games I'm interested in and I have very limited resources to apply towards those games. While I'm use to playing with proxies, I'm hate it and want whatever money I put into the hobby to go towards not having to proxy. For me Flames of War and Team Yankee is competing with Warhammer in this vein. Anything I want to get in Flames of War is just a drop in the bucket compared to what I need. The reason for this is the Flames of War Germany has so many lists with so many options that I could easy find 5 different late war German list and not duplicate any unit between them. Now if I made a single list and just try to collect models for that single list, then Flames of War would probably be the best game for me to get to playing without proxies. But that is not how I want to play war games. It is also not a very good idea since Battlefront changes the official point limits of games every year. Not saying Battlefront is bad for doing that, but it does help explain why Flames of War is not good for me to invest in this year. My reason for dropping Team Yankee is slightly different but still related to limited resources. I still have a ways to go before I can play a 100 point game with West Germans and even further to go before a can play a good list at 100 points. Given that the local interest in Team Yankee has wain a lot, it makes more sense to me to instead invest in other games. Team Yankee (as well as Flames of War) has an unique problem in that I need to invest a lot into carrying cases. What I have now works fine with every game I'm playing except Team Yankee and Flames of War. At this time I don't want to spend any of my limited resources on carrying cases.
What this means is that I will not be picking up any new models, participating in any campaigns or write any short stories set in those games. With Flames of War still being active locally, I may still play one offs. I will also keep up with the rules and write any articles I think are worthwhile for others. It is also possible if I get into the habit of working on models regularly I may work on Flames of War and/or Team Yankee models I currently have and needs finishing. I will be posting pictures of any models that are newly painted. I know from last year that things can happen to change my plans and there is something I can foresee happening that could possibly have me picking Flames of War and/or Team Yankee back up. Nevertheless, I don't see me dealing with Flames of War/Team Yankee until 2019.
Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar - I really miss playing 40k. The last time I was really involved in the game was mid 5th edition. I then discovered Warhammer Fantasy and completely left 40k behind because I was far more interested in the fantasy genre than sci-fi. I played 40k a handful of times since and I never really felt the spark. At one point I had the opportunity to play with friends every (or maybe every other) Saturday morning. I was not a morning person and it felt like a real chore to get out and play. So that opportunity closed on me and I didn't miss it. I played 40k last weekend on Saturday morning and I couldn't wait to do it again. I'm still not a morning person but I'm now excited enough to be willing to get up every Saturday to play if possible. When I left 40k, I did not have many miniatures, partly because I tried to build 3 separate armies. This time I want to concentrate on a single army. A Sisters of Battle army with some various Imperium aspects. I've nickname the army "Sisters with Friends."
I wanted to spend Christmas money to get one new thing for my 40k army. Sadly my local store don't have much I want to buy on the shelf. I thought I had to settle for either the Triumvirate of the Imperium boxset which has the Saint but includes Belisarius Cawl which I have no interest in or the Talons of the Emperor which has more troops but is more expensive. After thinking it over I decided it would be better to get more troops to start. So of course when I finally decide to buy the box set that has been sitting in my store for 8 months was purchase under my nose recently. I can't even order it as its currently out of stock! So I ended up with the Triumvirate box set instead. Next month I will picking up a box of Sister of Silence and Sisters of Battle command retinue. I love the rules for the Imagifier and Hospitaller so I wanted to get those models soon. I actually wanted to get the Hospitaller ever since I started playing. At the time I was sad that she could only go with Inquisitors but now she is with Sisters of Battle proper.
After next month I will probably only picking up single sisters packs every other month or so. I need a lot of special weapon girls and I currently have very little. For the first half the year I see my self only playing for fun with lots proxies. Once I feel comfortable with the rules I will start considering local tournaments as I do have a Blood Angels force I brought from a friend. After a few months I should be able to make a hodgepodge tournament Imperium force. Later in the year I will see about setting up a kill-team mini campaign. By the end of the year my 40k goal is to have 25 models painted and participate in one event.
Age of Sigmar was a game I thought about dropping but this past weekend while I was playing 40k there was an Age of Sigmar tournament. I got to meet players that are into 40k and Age of Sigmar and were willing to travel to tournaments around the country. Traveling to tournaments is something I've wanted to do regularly do for a while. Even though I've only played a handful of AoS games, I've always stay somewhat up to date with the AoS environment by following Vince Venturella youtube channel. Now knowing there is a fairly strong AoS local community, it doesn't feel right to completely ignore it. Especially when I can supplement my AoS Poison Army with my older chaos stuff to make it playable. I still have a lot of work to do on the Poison models that I have. If I do get any new models for it, it will be the Skaven Plague Claw and/or the Verminlord. My AoS goal is to have 30 models for my Poison Army painted.
Smaller Goals - Reflecting back on 2017 I notice a flaw in myself. I tend to make my goals way too big. I make plans that require hundreds of painted miniatures and several detail terrain pieces that goes from there when I don't own most of those miniatures, much less even have them assembled and painted. That is why I'm trying to make my goals this year smaller scale. I might have too many goals, but at least each individual goal should be something I can achieve. And as long as I'm able to complete some goals and still make progress with others, I will consider this year a great success. I still have my big plans but I now realize I need to wait on them until I have a build a proper foundation.
More War Journals - The idea behind War Journal was to have a series dedicated to a particular war game that had a regular schedule release. Maybe with a co-host, maybe on my own. My first attempt at War Journal was for Battletech. That never got off the ground due to scheduling conflicts and failing to find a place to record. Later I did 26 episodes of War Journal: Flames of War with Tracy George. This year I want to start two new War Journals. One on Relic Knights which I've been promising to do for years. The other I want to be on Dracula's America. Both will be solo projects (though it is possible I could have guests) but will have their differences as well. Relic Knights will be about what it is like to start the hobby from the beginning and document my progress. Dracula's America will be closer to what War Journal: Flames of War was, except it will just be me and have video instead of an audio only podcast. My goal is to do at least 6 War Journal episodes.
Short Stories - The initial purpose of this blog was to have a place to host narrative fiction of my adventures in fantasy campaigns. Very little was done on this front because our campaigns ended before I could get much written. This year I want to go back to Chaos Magic roots a little bit by publishing more narrative fiction. The Border Prince Campaign ended early and unfinished but I am still using my army's fiction in the overall Chaos Magic mythology. There are a few campaign turns that don't have a corresponding short story. I had story ideas for them but I never got around to flushing them out. Writing those missing turn fictions will be a major goal for me. Also I have a couple of short story ideas that are not necessarily connected to any campaigns that I want to write. These stories will help flush out other parts of my Chaos Magic mythology. Doing any new fiction for new campaigns is unlikely for the time being.
Catching Up on Past Articles - In addition to missing turn fiction, there are some articles I said I would write that I never got to. The main ones I'm thinking of are the ones discussing my time at the Warlord's convention last year. I still have my notes on days two and three. I got sidetrack with other things and never wrote my article on day 2 and day 3. A 2018 goal of mine is to write 10 articles I said were coming. Included in this are Topics of the Week questions that I wanted to write about and I think are still interesting to have a piece on.
Other Things - Beside the two Warhammer games I'm still interested in BattleTech, Darcula's America and Test of Honour. These games require a lot less resources than Warhammer. The BattleTech community is far more forgiving with using proxies than any other community I've been apart of. That means I only need a handful mechs to play BattleTech outside of large epic battles. Dracula's America is a low model count skirmish game. Using Reaper's Miniatures, each figure averages to around $5 each and I already have the bulk of what I need for a while. Test of Honour is the most expensive of the three in the short run. However each box set usually has 10 to 30 models in it. The exception being the newly release Ninja of Iga expansion. The fact that Ninja of Iga only has metal figures (unlike earlier expansions that had 1 metal figure and multiple plastic minis) explains the low model count and higher price. Being that I love ninjas, I will have to pick it up at some point. I've recently grab Chobei's Renegades box set with Christmas money so I probably won't need to get any more Test of Honour stuff this year once I have the Ninja of Iga as well. My BattleTech goal is to paint 5 mechs and play a few games. My Dracula's America goal is to paint 9 figures. For Test of Honour, my goal is to paint 50 figures by the end of the year.
Lastly, beside War Journal, I have another series I want to do this year. It is a show that will mix League of Legends and Dracula's America. The idea is that I think a few characters in League of Legends would fit right in with the setting of Dracula's America. Trying convert miniatures to look like League's champions will be a major part of the show eventually. The first episode will explain more with how the series will work. I hope to do at least six episodes by the end of the year.
And those are all my hobby goals I've set for myself this year. I'm sorry for not having updated in so long. I don't plan on that happening again. Thank you for reading and I got work to do. Happy Gaming!
