Every year I like to look back over all the miniatures I’ve painted and celebrate my achievements as well as set myself some new goals for the coming year.
This year has been crazy. I set myself some goals in January and having completed most of them by July I set myself some more. This has obviously been due to the pandemic. After all, during a normal year I tend to paint four or five nights a week but this year I’ve been painting every night.
Firstly let's take a look at what I actually painted this year.
6 Horrified
13 Lord of the Rings
10 Otherworld
5 Run Fight or Die zombies
That’s a total of 523 and does not include scenery and props such as the Battle Bus. In terms of achievements I checked them all off bar one and that was to finish Tail Feathers. Let's take a look at a conflated list of last years pledges
Finish Invader 96 Minis - Completed
Finish Descent 53 minis - Completed with the caveat that I bought more that has not yet all been painted
Finish Imperial Assault 6 minis - Completed with an additional mini for good luck
Paint TMNT Change is Constant 59 minis - Completed
Paint Tail Feathers 7 minis - Failed
Finish Super Dungeon Explore 30 minis - Completed but again with the caveat that I bought more once I was done.
Paint 280 minis across all ranges - Completed.
Obviously I smashed most of these and took some serious diversions along the way. Massive Darkness was not planned, neither was doing some Lord of the Rings repaints. Pulp City was a lovely distraction and I managed to complete at least three teams which is good. I may very well return to Pulp City this year but I also have a ton of board games to paint.
At one point during Lockdown it was looking likely I would run out of things to paint. I had a lot of kickstarters due to arrive but unpainted games in hand were running low. Fortunately this year that does not look to be a problem! Let’s take a look at my new pledges
Finish TMNT - 66 minis
Finish Clan Kitsune and Paint Caverns of Roxor and Devil Island for Super Dungeon Explore - 59
Paint Shadow of the Bat & Arkham Asylum - 55 Minis
Finish Massive Darkness - 9 Minis
Paint Zombicide 2nd Edition Base game - 88 Minis
Paint Marvel United and all retail Expansions - 36 Minis
Paint Aftermath - 23 Minis
Paint a total of 400 miniatures across all ranges
Okay the first one is an obvious one, TMNT I have in hand and is popular on my facebook feed so finishing that should be a no brainer, I could even be done with it by mid february if all goes well.
After that will be either Aftermath or Super Dungeon as they are the games I have in hand, with the exception of Devil Island which is still at the printers. Massive Darkness will take me about a week to finish so that will happily slot in anywhere.
After that it’s going to be a case of whatever arrives first, most like Marvel United. With this goal I am pledging to paint just the base game and expansions, so none of the exclusives. Obviously I will paint those too but the retail stuff keeps this goal to a manageable level.
The same goes for Batman and Zombicide, base games first, extras later. Both games have been requested by followers on my social media and both are likely to arrive around the same time so I’m not sure which I'll jump on first, although Zombicide will have the better minis.
For the yearly total I’ve gone for 400, usually I set this total much lower (around 180) to make it achievable but given last year's total this may still be a lowball estimate. If I painted everything on the list it would add up to 336 and I’d be very happy with that progress but 400 will force me to work on some other projects or paint some of those Kickstarter extras too!
That’s about it from me, here’s a few more pictures from this year’s painting progress and you can always see more in the galleries.
Until next time, keep on painting…
The Duke