Year 2017 catch up...

When it comes to the hobby quite a lot of happened in 2017 on both an industry scale and on a personal level. On one hand I have painted and gamed more than any previous year and my Abydos Necrons have actually seen 2017 undefeated with 18 consecutive wins.

And that has been my project for the main part of the year. A relatively simple scheme allowing me to have a full army painted, although by no means has every Necron model I own been completed. Nonetheless I have a fully painted army of around 2000pts now and I have been able to use it and this in itself is an improvement on previous years.

My Abydos Necrons. Formidable. 

In addition I entered Armies on Parade for the first time, just so that I had, and took a fair bit of pride in my entry but due to various reasons I'm not convinced that I would enter it again, though I do have a particularly ambitious concept in mind once again.

WIP. A lot of fun, and a lot of mess in the making of this. 

The light was effective. Though I had hoped to use UV to show off the army. 

The Finished article on display. Sadly not deemed good enough to place for any awards  

As well as my Necrons I have also been painting the contents of Imperial Assault (and many expansions) and with the new app that has been released, Legends of the Alliance I anticipate more use for these going forward. I have enjoyed painting them and it's a shame that I will not be picking up Legion as one Star Wars Infantry Miniatures game is more than enough for me.

Imperial Assault output. Who needs Legion?

A lot of fun to paint. 

Industry-wide it has been a turbulent year for hobbyists with a number of smaller studios in companies feeling the pinch and closing. Warcradle has acquired Spartan Games IPs and I look forward to seeing what they are going to do with their newly established Dystopian Universe, it will be interesting to see how they tie the disparate elements together (Wild West/Desert settings have traditionally never meshed with Naval games. And that's to say nothing of their commitment to support Firestorm Armada and Uncharted Seas. However it is worth noting that although we are in the time of more new games than ever being released mainly due to Kickstarter this is a double-edged sword and I firmly believe that Kickstarter can cause as many problems as opportunities.

Certainly it is no coincidence that both of the larger casualties this year, Hawk and Spartan Games have both recently run Kickstarter campaigns that may have been a stretch too far, (just as I predicted last year) I feel Kickstarter bubble may have burst and I have only backed one in the last year, partly due to financial constraints and partly due to mixed experiences in the past.

Cant wait for these to turn up. June Hopefully. 

Really looking forward to playing Deep Madness

Of course we cannot discuss 2017 without talking about Games Workshop who released an 8th edition of Warhammer 40,000 this year. A much streamlined game, I have played more 8th edition in the six months since it was released than I played 7th in the entire of its lifespan. 7th edition had grown into a bloated mess and with a focus on formations and needing multiple books to play the game had just not become any fun to play, the improvement the 8th has made over the game cannot be understated.

In addition Games Workshop is releasing a lot of models at the moment and although I might not agree with the aesthetic direction that some of these models are heading in, I think in general the quality has been quite high. Certainly Games Workshop has recovered a lot of the ground that they had lost to other companies and the new CEO seems to be doing a grand job. After all this is new Games Workshop we're talking about.

Sadly it was not all triumph and joy and we lost Alan Bligh in 2017. This appears to have had a significant impact on the Horus Heresy line and it is clear that his death was of great significance to GW in more ways than just the loss of the man himself. Hopefully his fine work will be carried on in  way that does his memory justice.  

Personally I have had a challenging year and though I wish I could say this is a rare occurrence it has impacted my hobby in various ways. Becoming single in the latter half of the year has at least allowed me more time to paint so silver linings and all that. An increase in hobby output has also seen regrettably a lessening of content for the Conclave and I hope to be able to reach a happy medium in 2018. Speaking of 2018 both me and I have his ideas and projects and hopefully some of these will come to fruition. I will be starting a new army for the new year and we will have a post talking about this soon.

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You get to a certain age and time becomes something you don’t notice until you look back and notice how much of it passed. So being middle aged it can be quite a shock to find a year has passed and you’re struggling to find what you did with all that time. Hopefully and lapses can still be made up as I should have more years yet to come than I’ve already used.

So, 2017. From a hobby perspective the usual not playing or painting enough is the perennial problem though I am very pleased with what I did get done. Games wise Allen and I played some second edition, some kill team and plenty of 8^th edition, which I'll come back to. Painting wise 2016’s Word Bearers momentum dried up completely and I have done pretty much nothing with them. My renegade Knight is in exactly the same position over a year later, legs base coated and not much else. What I did get done though was expand my Death Guard and Nurgle forces with the release of Death Guard in 8^th edition. I stress ‘expanded’ as I had a Death Guard force before it was cool and cannot be accused of being a hobby magpie jumping on the latest craze.

Nasty. 

But nicely painted. 

Outside of 40K I have been learning more about Age of Sigmar and my disdain for the game is slowly draining away. It isn’t Fantasy, once you understand that and treat it as its own thing it isn’t half bad and with 40K 8^th taking its cues from AoS with a lot of the game improvements it is hard to stay as mad as before. I’ve even been playing (and losing) Warhammer Skirmish with my other half which as been getting me to paint fantasy, all models on  square bases still though, I would like to be able to play Fantasy and AoS with all my models.

Classics. 

Grave Guard

Even further out from 40K I’ve been dabbling with Wild West Exodus and revisiting the Spartan catalogue for work reasons. In fact the demise of Spartan has been only one of a number of examples of the fragile nature of the gaming industry. It is a niche industry and right now it is overburdened with choices. Those that wish to do well really need to push the quality of their product and run themselves as an efficient business if they want to still be here at the end of 2018. The main problem that the industry faces right now is Kickstarter. Whether it is everyone and his dog putting up a quality (or not) project that can tempt customers money away from more mainstream products that then hurts retailers as their potential customers go direct to source or whether it is a poorly managed Kickstarter that brings an established company to near collapse, Kickstarter is an issue the gaming industry needs to address soon.

But as ever the bulk of the year and our hobby in particular has been dominated by Games Workshop. This year seems to have been packed with more goings on than many of the previous years combined! Speculation that 40K was going to the Age of Sigmar treatment in the worst possible sense were proven unfounded as 8^th edition is a superb game receiving unprecedented levels of support enabled by GW’s excellent customer service and community support teams. GW is in control of what people see but it never feels heavy handed, in fact it feels like the doors of the studio are being flung open on a regular basis to show us things before White Dwarf leaks can ruin the surprise. Long may it continue! Hand in hand with this goes the great new fat version of White Dwarf which has become a substantial read once more with stuff in there I actually want to sit down and learn rather than just flicking through in five minutes.

8^th edition really has helped contribute to the feeling that we are back in the golden days of the late 90s / early 2000s. The emergence of ‘Old hammer’ concepts and designs along with the sheer wealth of products available to the new player, particularly the easy to build and multiple price point starter sets for both 40k and AoS means that it has never been easier for new players to get involved and fill GW’s coffers so they can continue to release more and more models each month.

The only fly in the ointment seems to be GW moving away from multi part plastic kits and more towards single build poses. The models that we have received because of this shift are stunning but GW is still pushing for larger and larger games and it does feel like our armies may lose some of their individuality because of it. There is also the question of scale shift. Honestly, Space Marines did need rescaling in my opinion and the Primaris are probably the best way to go about it. Regular Space Marines no longer feature in promotional photography and all are replaced with Primaris, which are gorgeous but because they are so gorgeous they make our established collections feel a bit, immature. Regardless, Allen and I have played loads of games of 8^th compared to previous editions and expect to play many more in 2018.

Alongside the good news coming from the 41^st millennium Age of Sigmar received the Kharadrons, steampunk sky sailor dwarves. Even the most die hard AoS critic could not fail to be won over by the awesome models even if they still don’t want to play the game. I’ve already incorporated plenty of the models into my squat collection without the need to convert anything which has the added bonus of allowing me to play AoS if I so wish.

Another success story of 2017 has been Specialist Games. After Blood Bowl’s triumphant return in 2017 it continued to prove popular and we have recently received Necromunda as well! It’s like being a teenager again but with more disposable income. What has been released already has been awesome and by this time next year the original six gangs should all be released and we’ll be speculating about Outlanders.

So that’s 2017, what am I hoping for in 2018? I want to have expanded my Covenant fleet for Dystopian Wars and have a fully painted (or three) Wild West Exodus posse. For AoS I want to get through the skirmish campaign we are playing at home with two fully painted war bands and then go onto Path to Glory to get some more fantasy painted up. 40K I would like to see some official Squats, whatever form they may take. I will continue adding painted models to my Death Guard and  be working on mine and Allen’s 2018 project that we’ll detail soon.