The mainstay of my gaming is, as ever, Dungeons and Dragons. Our current campaign thunders ever onward (pun intended), even if the posts are not up-to-date with our progress. I am very happy with how its working out, both gaming-wise and blogging-wise. Two different players lifted the dual burden of scribe and chronicler off my shoulders, and slowly but surely, we're getting through. During the summer months when I lacked time for hands-on hobbying, I delved into our first 5E campaign and wrote about our adventures in their entirety. The posts are coming out whenever I don't have time to do anything else and I need to fill my weekly quota.
The second PnP RPG that I play, M.A.G.U.S. progresses more slowly, with 6-7 sessions this year. Real life hit like a truck, and I wasn't the only one affected. I hadn't the energy or motivation to write about our adventures as they came (mostly because I was DMing and did not take notes as a result), but I'll recount my memories as soon as I am able.
As far as Warhammer 40k goes, I joined the emerging local tournament scene at the beginning of the year, only to realize that it just isn't my cup of tea. As soon as people got real competitive, it became an all-or-nothing do-or-die thing that I could not afford to invest into. Instead, I came up with an idea for a narrative campaign, much to the enjoyment of myself and my opponent. I only got in a couple of casual games in between, and I am now in the middle of the second narrative campaign set in the same "cinematic universe".
The autumn saw my glorious return to Age of Sigmar when the local community started up a Path to Glory campaign. Two missions in, it's not terrible.
Off to the technological side of the hobby, I tried to supplement my existing collection with a cheap and fast source of lower quality miniatures by joining a group of friends and buying a 3d printer. Overall, it's been a disappointment. It needed an excessive amount of effort to put together only to fail miserably when printing. After a batch of custom components, it's still not working very well, and the printed miniatures need a lot of post-production enhancements (thus failing both at speed of delivery and cost of investment in time). We are awaiting another batch of replacement parts, and hoping for the best.
And now on to the bread-and-butter of hobbying: miniature painting. With the dramatic decrease of spare time available for at-home hobbying, the quantity of miniatures painted this year has decreased accordingly. I like to think that this is also due to the increased quality that I now produce, which again demands more time per miniature.
This year saw the return of the painting competitions, which I duly participated in to the best of my ability. After having no success at the first two, I did manage to score a first place in the advanced category at the third one this December. Needless to say, this provided an excellent boost to my morale!
To round off the rant about painting, here's what I managed to paint this year (minus the two Space Marine captains given away as gifts, and a female archer residing at the place where we usually play M.A.G.U.S.):
And now for the traditional New Year promises... I once again do not promise not to buy anything. Wrath and Rapture is just out, and that new herald looks amazing. The best I can do is to promise that I'll continue to paint my miniatures to the best of my abilities. In fact, a new challenge that I'm itching to tackle is to do as many conversions as possible, making my miniatures look even better by being unique. So here's to a successful 2019!
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