I’m not one for New Years resolutions, but I wanted to set out a few hobby-related goals for 2019. The main driver for these is to clear some of my backlog, and also to let me play some games of Warhammer 40,000 for the first time since near the end of 7th Edition.

  • Finish Knight Household
    • 3x Questoris
    • Castellan
    • 6x Warglaives
  • Finish Adeptus Custodes Battalion
    • 3x Guard squads
    • 2x Vertus Praetor squads
    • 1x Terminator squad
    • Characters
  • Finish Adepta Sororitas Battalion
    • 3x battle squads
    • 2x Cannoness
    • Imagifier
    • Seraphim squad
    • <stretch> Celestine + Geminae

To achieve this, I think I’m going to have to cut down on the number of one-off miniatures and competition entries I paint.

As I’ve been experimenting more with IndieWeb ideas on this site, I’ve been kicking around the idea of open sourcing the custom theme I use to power this site (currently called “K”). Part of this is from a desire to start sharing useful code again. I haven’t really put anything out there in years now. Once upon a time, long before the rise of Github, any code I wrote for myself would at least have ended up as a downloadable .zip file.

The other reason I’ve been giving myself, is to add to the pool of MF2-compatible themes available, in an effort to give people more options for deploying Indieweb sites. Right now, the Indeweb wiki only lists a handful of themes as compatible out of the box, so the more that can be added, the better it will be for growing the community.

The thing is, the theme is very much not ready for other people to lay eyes on, in its current state:

  • I (currently) do a bunch of non-standard things under the hood.
  • I’m also not doing a bunch of theme “best practices”. Simply because I’ve not needed to.
  • I’ve not really cared much about testing in browsers beyond the ones I use day to day.
  • A lot of the code has been cobbled together as and when I’ve needed it, so there are loads of “standard” features straight-up not implemented.
  • There’s a tonne of things hard-coded specifically for me. Those would have to be stripped out or altered to be configurable. That’s more code I’d have to write.
  • I’ve hacked up a bunch of dependencies, in the name of optimisation for my own needs. A public release would need to include the full code of these dependencies, or it’ll severely restrict anyone who wants to use the theme.

All in all, there’s quite a lot to do to make the theme usable by anyone who isn’t me. My natural instinct is to hold it back until it’s “ready” but as I’ve been typing this out, I’ve been wondering if I should just go ahead and put the code on Github anyway?

I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to work on, now I’ve got past Armies on Parade. The last few weeks have been a hobby holiday so I could recharge and avoid burnout, but I’m getting to a point where I can feel a pull towards my workspace again. I’ve had a few ideas kicking around my head, along with several projects I could revisit. In the “revisit” category, I’ve got:

  • Idoneth Deepkin; I have some Eels, a Shark, and a King still waiting to be added to the small army I painted earlier in the year. I also have a few Daughters of Khaine models to add as Allies.
  • Adeptus Custodes; I’ve got a bunch of Custodian Guard built and primed in gold, just waiting for me to get the spark of inspiration again. Then I’ve got some bikes, Terminators, and a Dreadnought to build.
  • Adepta Sororitas; at the end of last year I picked up some of the old metal Sisters of Battle sculpts, which I planned to be a companion to the Custodes. With the beta Codex coming in Chapter Approved next month, it might be time to get them back on the painting table.
  • Dark Angels; I’ve been slowly chipping away at the mass of non-Primaris Space Marine kits I have stockpiled over the years by painting them as Dark Angels. I painted a couple of 5-man Tactical squads and Razorbacks last year, and it might be time to finish these to the point they’re usable on the table.
  • Alpha Legion/Deathwatch; I had an idea when Kill Team came out, that I would create a highly customised Alpha Legion warband, using Primaris bodies and the Deathwatch rules. I made a start, but Armies on Parade ended up being more work than I’d anticipated. A lot of the kits I’d acquired for this project ended up going into the Armies on Parade project as well.
  • Death Spectres; I still have plans to expand the army I started in Armies on Parade. I want to fill out at least a battalions-worth of models, so this project needs another troop choice and HQ to reach that goal.

None of these are particularly grabbing me right now. The most likely to get worked on are actually the Dark Angels, as my local GW store is looking for 1000 points of Dark Angels to display in their cabinets. By painting up three Ravenwing units I already have, I could get to that target pretty easily. But I just finished painting a bunch of black-armoured Space Marines, so I can feel my brain resisting.

Over on the new ideas side, there are:

  • Stormcast Eternals.
  • Nighthaunt.
  • Imperial Knights.
  • Various “competition pieces.”

At the moment, I’m leaning very heavily to Knights. I have accumulated three kits over the years, but have never got around to doing anything with them. The thought of having a “grab and go” army of just three-five models definitely appeals to me, and painting such large models would be a great change of pace. I’m in two minds whether I’d want to go with the fairly realistic, heavily weathered style I often apply to large vehicles – or to go with something simpler and cleaner. I’d also like to do some minor conversions and reposing, but I don’t know if that’s just setting myself up for a lot more work than I’m looking for.

Both of the Stormcasts and Nighthaunt ideas are really just painting the lovely models from the Soul Wars box. I’ve had an idea for applying more of a heraldic look to the Stormcasts, but I haven’t nailed down all of the details yet. I might save them for Armies on Parade 2019.

Competition entries is as it sounds. I have at least two competitions pencilled in for the next nine months, and it might be a good idea to make a start on these. I have one firm idea for the second contest, that will take quite a lot of effort, and a couple of secondary ideas where I know what I want to paint, just not how. I might start chipping away at my most developed idea, and leave the others for now. There’s also a themed monthly competition that happens in my area, so sometimes I’ll want to take part at those.

So as you can see, I’ve got a lot of choice! In fact, it’s too much choice, really, and choice paralysis has been kicking in something fierce. At this point I’m 80% sure I’ll start on some the Knights, as those seem like win-win: clearing something from my backlog, and being a viable army with only a few models needed.

But as any GW hobbyist knows, there’s always something new and shiny on the horizon to distract us…!

I don’t know what this is, beyond a “Spindle Drone” from the upcoming Warhammer Quest: Blackstone Fortress game, but it sure has got me interested and excited to find out more! In 25 years, I can’t recall ever before seeing or reading about anything like it in the Warhammer 40,000 lore.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/BlackstonePreview-Nov1-Content1jvfr.jpg

Given the setting of the game, and some of the teases, it seems likely it’s tied to either the Eldar/Old Ones or the Necrontyr/C’Tan. But the legs and the curves of the armour remind me more of the Tyranids than anything else, despite it appearing to be (entirely?) mechanical.

Blackstone Fortress should be out by the end of November, so it shouldn’t be too long before we get some answers.

Installing Red Dead Redemption 2 on PS4 took two (Blu-Ray!) discs and 90 minutes to install. It was very much like PC gaming in the days everything came on physical media.