The year that was 2015

So now that 2015 has actually finished and I've had an afternoon to myself (in preference to getting myself ready for an INSET tomorrow) I thought I'd treat myself to a rare moment of reflection and self-indulgence as I look back through my hobby year, as through the eyes of this blog. Usually my hobby thinking time is about the future and what I'll paint/collect/convert etc next, but it is nice to see what I've achieved and this blog is great for keeping a record, else I'd have no idea.

Well I've completed 62 blog posts in 2015, the vast majority of which featured painted models or scenery which was dedicated to my growing Nurgle Warband, through completing entries for the Lost and the Damned retinue table, or for warbands, Scenery, Tutorials, Fighting Fantasy, Orctober or Heroquest. Towards the end of the year I focused much more on making dungeon tiles for Heroquest (to play with my daughters) and the introduction of Frostgrave to my hobby time. In fact my last two purchases of the year were the rulebooks to Dragon Rampart and Blades of Song and Heroes; so it should be of no surprise that the start of 2016 will be dedicated to WARBANDS.

I've always liked the idea of smaller groups of figures (as you can tell by my love of GW's RoC) and 2016 will see me create several different warbands that can be used across a range of different systems and I will be creating loads more scenery with which to game with too.

I mentioned that the vast majority of my posts showcased my painted miniatures/scenery, but it was interesting to see what the top 3 most popular posts were (by traffic and comment). By far the most read blogpost was one I typed on a whim and did not include any of my miniatures (!) but rather a quickly written summary of how Age of Sigmar seemed to me to be linked quite closely to my beloved RoC:

1.  Age of Sigmar and Realms of Chaos

Second was one of my tutorial series on how to make cheap, quick and easy dungeon tiles:

2. Tutorial: Dungeon Tiles

And third was my idea about making a RoC warband using only bitz from my bitzbox:

3. Bitzbox Warband Challenge

These three posts were by far and away the most read and commented on, so perhaps I can surmise that new ideas, tutorials and conversions are my forte and that I need to step up the quality of my staple diet of painted miniatures..... My top posts on an actual painted miniatures were tied between my family Heroquest models:

4.  Family Heroquest

And my homage to the cover of Fighting Fantasy's Freeway Fighter:

4. Fighting Fantasy Freeway Fighter

Next year I hope to get one of my RoC models/warbands as a most popular post. The least 3 read posts of the year? Well in order of least innterest:

1. Blood Bowl Dwarf referee

2. Tutorial: Snow and Ice bases (admittetdly this was posted before I shared my blog on the Oldhammer Facebook page which provides the most amount of traffic to my blog)

3. Chaos Dwarf Mortar

Perhaps 1 and 3 are both a bit niche and not obviously related to any of my broader projects (althought the mortar will be part of my growing Chaos Alies project). Just no love for the only dwarves I painted this year.

That's a review of what all you readers decided to read (or not), but what of my favourite model/post? I did enjoy recreating the Freeway Fighter car as it challenged my modelling and painting skills, I enjoyed painting miniatures for some of my readers and I had a good go at painting some freehand banners based on some Fighting Fantasy images, but it was the return to my first Oldhammer love and the first models I painted (and fell in love with as a boy) that I enjoyed the most and perhaps the most proud of, my Orc warband:

My Orc Warband

So here's the breakdown of what I actually completed over the course of 2015, a total of 77 miniatures and 17 pieces of scenery, so a tally of 94!.

Miniatures:

1 Winged minotaur
1 Throned Skeleton based on Ian McCaig's illustration
9 Oldhammer Orcs
3 Oldhammer Chaos Thugs
6 Jes Goodwin Ogres
2 Chaos Dwarfs and 1 Mortar
5 Family Heroquest Adventurers
1 Bloodbowl Dwarf Referee
2 Speedpainted Jes Goodwin Wardancers
1 Great Unclean One
1 Plaguemarine
1 Nurgle Centaur
2 Witch Elves
2 Elves
6 Oldhammer Human Runaways
1 Plaguebearer
1 Freeway Fighter car
2 Freeway Fighter drivers
1 Plague Elemental
20 Bloodbowl Orcs, Goblins and a Troll
4 Disciples of Red Redemption as Chaos Cultists
1 Nurgle Chaos Warrior
1 Chaos Sorcerer
1 Nurgle Sorcerer and familiar
1 40k Redemptionist
1 Sanity Claws

In terms of scenery:

5 Wall sections
1 Mausoleum
4 Trees
7 Dungeon tiles


So here's looking forward to realising more ideas and creating some new stuff in 2016 and hopefully getting more games in both at BOYL 2016 and perhaps before (especially warband based games..)

Many thanks for reading and contributing to this blog, it really does help to continue to inspire and motivate me, as does the blog network across the Internet. There's so much great stuff out there and apologies that I don't always comment on every great thing I see on other's blogs, but that's my new year's resolution for 2016!