043 - Gaming Resolutions for 2012

It's customary for bloggers this week to be posting about their New Year resolutions, and pretty much without exception they'll be resolving to play more games and make some headway with their mountain of unpainted metal, plastic and resin. I have much the same aims, and a couple of others:

1. Painting Progress
I didn't manage to meet the target that I set myself in November, which was to finish 50% of my current collection. I did manage to paint Nino Ortega, and Nightmare Teddy, and I'm most of the way through Lord Chompy Bits, but I'm still below the half-way mark (unless you count Nightmare Teddy as 5 models due to his size? No...?). In fact, due to a couple of purchases last week in preparation for the Masters tournament, I'm still sitting at only 43% painted!

The new aim for the end of 2012 will therefore be 60% painted. I think this is very achieveable, mainly because of the fact that I already own the models for my next 3 crews, so there is less incentive to buy new stuff. I'll still be expanding my existing crews with new releases, but those will come at a much slower pace than they did in my first year of the game.

2. Gaming Progress
Despite placing relatively highly in the UK rankings last year, I don't feel I performed particularly well. I'm notorious for forgetting my strategy and schemes, and for making ridiculous errors that often cost me a lot of VPs. Specifically this year I will be aiming to:
1) Keep my objectives front of mind. Writing them down and keeping them visible with my stat cards will hopefully help.
2) Make every activation count. Related to point 1, I have a habit of just moving forwards or engaging enemy models when it might not be helping to advance my goals or block my opponent's.
3) Keep a record of all my games that I can refer to at the end of the year.

3. Scenery Progress
My gaming board is coming along nicely. I've finished all nine 1' square sections, and am starting to plan out the terrain and features that will go on it by sticking down pieces of paper with blu-tac. I find I can visualise things better this way compared to drawing it out on paper.

My resolution here is to complete the board, use it for some games at home, and run at least one demo event on it at one of the numerous gaming conventions at some point later in the year.

4. Blog Progress
I'm pretty happy with how the blog is going. I'm posting between 2-5 times a month depending on what's happening, and I think I'm covering a decent mixture of topics. Going forwards I'd like to focus a bit more on posting up my work in progress, and to post more battle reports. I have a plan to develop a better template for my battle reports too.

Well that's me filled with resolve - let's check back in a year to see how it goes!

Mike