2012 Year In Review

Year In Review

  • January saw a good amount of activity: Empire dude building. I knocked out that Fimir, who stands as probably my favorite mini of the year.
  • February, March, and April were basically spent building and (somewhat less so) painting Empire minis.  Unsurprising but, honestly, probably a little uninteresting. Pics of unpainted, unconverted minis are boring.  Sorry about that!
  • In May, I tried adapting to the new Citadel paints.  I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say that this completely and totally killed any and all momentum I had for my Empire army.  They’re good paints, but something about the transition just deflated my enthusiasm balloon.More significantly, and unmentioned here, I went through tumultuous times in May: with a lot of job-related transition, uncertainty, and stress. It all worked out for the best but, yeesh.  That probably had a hand in it as well.
  • June saw the new edition of 40K!  Despite almost getting killed picking it up, I haven’t hardly done anything with it. I’ve played some desultory games with it over the past six months, but between tournament and Not Being Able To Game, I just haven’t done much with it.It was also when I started going a little bit Kickstarter crazy. More on that later.
  • July was probably the hobby high point of the year for me. For starters, I was lucky enough to make it out to Games Day!  Despite what was the worst Golden Daemon showing I’ve ever had (nothing made Final Cut), I had such a good time, and the GW staff was so above-and-beyond helpful, I hardly noticed!I overspent on Forgeworld resin (which remains unpainted).

    I didn’t paint or build much, but what I did do I’m super-happy with (Warpfire Throwers, the Demigryph).

  • August didn’t see much. I painted an Ork model for the heck of it and had such a good time doing it, now I’m neck-deep in a small Ork army.
  • September – Those Orks I just mentioned? It didn’t take long for me to start drowning in them.  Also, there was the NoVA Open, which was a lot of fun and will likely be even better in 2013.  Traveling for Grand Tournaments just isn’t something the cards for me, so I think it’s safe to call the NoVA the gaming highlight of the year for me.
  • October wasn’t exactly a dead month for me. I built some Orks, but this blog ran silent about it. Bare plastic might be boring, but I really don’t like letting this thing run quiet that long.
  • November saw, as expected, more Ork building. A couple of blog posts, but not much.
  • December was a dead month. No posts and, according to my tracker, no hobby. This isn’t exactly true: I’ve got 10 Boyz mid-painting on my desk, and have been slowly making progress on them since Thanksgiving… but nothing done. This is entirely because this has been an unusually crazy holiday season: a week in Texas, a second Christmas beforehand, preparation for both have left me frazzled and without productive time.
A lot of my hobby steam’s been stolen by scheduling: Mrs. Rushputin’s work schedule’s changed such that the only weekday evening we get to spend together is Tuesday… which is also the the CGL‘s gaming night at Game Parlor.  Since I like my hobby but love my wife, that’s really put a damper on my ability to get out and game.  Not being able to game’s put a damper on my motivation to paintThis year hasn’t been a dud, but it does kinda feel like it? I definitely rolled into 2012 like a motherfething juggernaut… and have definitely crawled out of it, blinking and trying to catch my breath.

Hobby Activity

Hobby’s been down overall… but not quite as hopelessly as it feels sometimes. I might not have painted much, but I’ve certainly built quite a bit.

It’s pretty tough to look at that and feel good about it. I suppose remembering that December-January was an abnormally productive time for me takes the sting out a little bit, but dang.

No unpleasant surprises here! A lot of Empire and a lot of Orks spent time in my workspace in 2012.
Grim as this chart is, it’s not surprising.  In 2012, I did a lot of building, but not much painting. I’m going to have to change that in 2013.  It’s also
Still: now’s probably the best of possible times to revisit the chart I posted in early November to put this year into perspective.

Gaming Activity

Somewhere along the way in early 2012: I fell off of logging my games. I find this interesting, because the only place I see my hobby tracker sheet get used is on Bill’s blog, and it looks to be where he gets the most use out of it. Significantly, no data means no chart.

It’s probably for the best. I really don’t think I want to confront how little I pushed my toy soldiers around this past year. I’ll have to get back on the wagon, though.

Site Activity

It should be immediately obvious to anyone at this point that the blog’s been in a bit of a slump…

Even putting aside the dead months of October and December, I’ve been less active on the blog overall.  So, if you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around!

Traffic peaked over the summer: Games Day and NoVA, I think, were responsible for most of this.

Comparatively, though, traffic’s a little down (14% overall).  I’m too lazy to check, but I expect that if I were to remove all of the YTTH drama traffic from last year, though, it’s probably more or less unchanged.  Given how little I posted this year, I’m delighted to call “more or less unchanged” a Win.

Crowdfunding

I’d done a couple of Kickstarters before (one in 2010, one in 2011) but like many 2012 was the year of crowdfunding. There’s a lot to be said on the phenomenon: but other people will probably say it more cogently and this thing’s gonna run long, so I won’t.   I’ll just touch on my experiences with it over 2012. (I’ll include IndieGoGo campaigns in my reckonings, too.)

  • Total campaigns: 27
  • Campaigns due in 2012: 17
  • Campaigns delivered in 2012: 1
  • Campaigns partially delivered in 2012: 5
  • Campaigns more than 2 months late: 5
  • Campaigns that should have been delivered in 2012 but did not: 12
  • Campaigns that are super late and pissing me off about it: 1
I haven’t actually seen a whole lot delivered from crowdfunding just yet: all of 1 campaign in 2012 has fully closed out with me.  That sounds worse than it is: I’ve got a couple that are shipping in multiple parts, and have seen results from 5 of them, which is great.
Most of them are late, but either haven’t been unreasonably so (I think we all have to expect some schedule flexibility from these), or have been good about communicating what’s going on and adjusting expectations as quickly as possible. Sedition Wars, for example, is over two months late, but they warned us about that pretty early on, so I’m perfectly content.
There only one that really stands out as goddamn unforgivably late.  When I consider the facts, it’s not surprising: there’s a lot of work for them to do and it makes sense for them to start with the small and work to the big… but it’s at six months late and looks to be at least eight. That means their estimate delivery date sucked.In terms of what sort of campaigns I pitched in on in 2012:

  • Board Games: 1
  • Gadgets: 2
  • Miniatures: 10
  • RPGs: 9
  • Video Games: 4

Goals

2012

My goals from last year started general…

  • FinishUtter failure. I don’t think I finished any significant project this year. I built a lot of stuff, but didn’t get much totally done. Boo.
  • Paint Technical Success. I painted. Not enough to feel good about how I painted, though.
  • Compete Technical Success. I played in a few tournaments and NoVA. I had a good time with all of them, but competing once a quarter, again, isn’t enough for me to fist pump about how competitive I was in 2012.

Then, I got more specific:

  • Make Significant Progress on an Empire ArmyFailure. If I’d left out “significant” I’d probably have called it a pass, but I got a couple of months in on it and then dropped it.
  • Avoid DramaSuccess. My low post-rate probably didn’t hurt, but overall I didn’t really get involved in internet screaming.  That hasn’t meant that I haven’t seen it, though.  I’m starting to have some concerns about how toxic the hobby gaming community is or isn’t.
  • Step It UpSuccess. I’m claiming this because I started using rushp.tn has a URL shortener, which I think is hella cool, but that’s it.  All of the card/sign files have been mostly untouched. I probably should get on that.
  • Dump Stuff – Success. I didn’t do as thorough a job of this as I’d have liked, but I did purge a lot of RPG books with Casey‘s help, which is a big step.  I hope to start dumping some boardgames on Craigslist in the next couple of weeks.

2013

I’m going to keep the general goals:

  • Finish
  • Paint
  • Compete

And for specific goals:

  • Game – Similar, but different from “Compete.” I need to figure out how to get out and start rolling dice around toys again.  I’m kind of a homebody who’s only really comfortable with a regular schedule for things, and losing Tuesday night’s knocked me off my stride and I need to get over it already.
  • Pace Myself – I really need to paint more than I buy.  I’ve already dropped out of a high-mini-count Kickstarter, and have vowed to just not buy any damn minis until March (with an exception for the new Dark Angels minis, and only those after I’ve worked up a list).  I’m considering tracking my mini purchases on my hobby sheet to keep me honest.
  • Historicals – My hankering to start doing something with the English Civil War’s done nothing but pick up steam all year; getting a few boxes of Pike & Shotte minis from Warlord for Christmas has only sealed it: I need to do something with it in 2013.
  • Continue Dumping Stuff – I still have too much crap. I’m on the right track: let’s stay on it.
  • Post More to CMON – I’ve posted all of one mini to CMON (with a 7.6 that I’m delighted with).  Time to do more.