Dino’s annual preview 2023

Aha, so it's 2023, anything special coming up this year? Well, I'm turning 42 and as everyone knows, 42 is the answer to all questions! To all questions? At least to one question I have the answer: do I need more minis? No, not 42...

The Great Moderation is a concept that I have been following for several years now, where I limit my budget to 20,- € per month, with the goal to increase my painting output of existing miniatures and to limit the new purchases in my hobby. As it turned out, 240,- € per year is quite a lot if you already have a bunch of miniatures at home and the pile just grows and grows. For this reason, I plan to cut my budget again - ironically, my strategy has also found approval in the forum of the Tabletopwelt and a group project has emerged from it, so to speak, the not so anonymous round of addicted hobbyists, in which if possible no new purchases should be made. However, everyone receives 150, - € annual budget - for slip ups. This seems feasible to me, since I have everything here, within the projects I pursue

But before I move on to tackle one of the leftover projects, I want to paint the new acquisitions from last year first, because there is also a part remaining. In addition, I will set myself a fairly small annual goal in 2023, since my hobby time continues to melt due to my professional commitments.

In fact, that's already all I'm tackling painting-wise this year. I'd also like to complete painting the greek buildings, but I won't tackle those again until I have access to an airbrush. For now, the tree man for the Old World Alliance team is on the list and a gunbot for StarGrave.

This is followed by the statue, with which I was simply not satisfied last year and which is currently taking a bath in Sterillium. In the same block I also want to paint the priest of Zeus. That way I can kick my opponents butt at Mortal Gods even on 500 points. Of course, I need at least some terrain to set the scene properly - so the ruin I already started last year will also be painted.

It's hard to believe, but this also marks the first half of my 2023 hobby year. I really don't think I'll be able to do any more, but I'm leaving myself a little room for my wish list, in the form of more Blitz Bowl players and a few crew members for my StarGrave mercenaries.

Besides my painting goals, I would also like to do some reviews in the first half of the year. Footsore Miniatures was so kind to provide me with some miniatures from the Mythic series and boy, does it itch to make a new army project out of it. With a little luck I'll get at least two of the five centaurs on the painting table.

The second half of the year will be dominated by WarCry. We already had a Lords of WarCry project running here, but I checked it off as a failure for now. Therefore comes the second attempt with the Christmas present of my wife, a warvand of barbarians. I'm tackling this project together with Wolpertinger, since a joint project simply generates more momentum. In addition, he has left me the Godsworn Hunt, a really nice set of models.

We want to try to paint either alternately or one miniature a month completely and to as high a standard as possible. This will keep us in the flow and also take the pressure off the project - a little pressure while progressing is good, but too much of it will harm it.

So, as you can see, I'm rather deep in the pile, and that's a good thing. Assuming that I really won't have to buy any new Minis this year, I'm really well supplied hobbywise. What I am rather lacking is still terrain, because I would like to do some hobby staging. But I'll go into that a bit more in a future article.

Ah yes, articles...last year I brought it to a whopping 27. That is more than twice as much as I had originally planned for. Unfortunately, I’ll have to cut back on that too, which is simply due to my new job. I enjoy it and want to put some more energy into it as I aim to get my career going again. Of course I will try to keep in touch with the tabletop community as much as possible!

Greetings from the Chaosbunker

Dino