Happy New Year and December 2023 review

2023 is coming to its end, so enjoy today's New Year's Eve and have a Happy New Year!

We take the chance to do our review on December, and extended to the whole year.

I am still "regenerating" from the Legions Imperialis release, and tried to empty my backlog as much as possible for a clean(er) slate in the next year.

129 new posts this year, 53 of which were reviews, and about 15 event related posts. Which means, I didn't write as much about my own projects, as I intended. It is not so much, that I didn't came around to do progress on them, I created more drafts and prepared things, that aren't published until those projects have a certain degree of "maturity". For example, I am working on another vintage Blood Bowl team and a second edition surprise project, that I haven't talked about on here at all, not even hinted.

While we recorded the re-cap of the year with the Games 'n Dice podcast, where Dino and I moved up a bit from just guests, to almost regulars, I reflected on the year myself. We certainly used the time, and I would have loved it, if I had more time on my hands. For that reason, time management is an important thing for me. There are parts that I can influence, and others are just out of my hands.

To declutter the back-end of the blog, I try to keep the drafts below a certain number, but moved for example articles that were more or less notes from here to notion. I store things like stock, army lists, notes on the paint jobs and so on on there, and as notion is highly interacting, you can upload images and include various kind of data. And as it is online, I can access the information from my various devices, which is really helpful. As I don't store any sensitive information there (oh no, somebody might know how I paint my Battlefleet Gothic ships...), I don't mind it being in a cloud.

Beyond that, as this is a bilingual blog (and you can swap the language from English to German by clicking on the language button in the top right), I spent a lot of time translating the articles. I usually write the content in English and then translate it back to German, as it is easier for me this way around. For a little bit longer than a year I am using DeepL for the rough draft and edit it in person, this saves me about 2 hours on most reviews. I am proud about the quality of my content, but translating for example the Bolt Action campaign supplements, is more than 4 pages / 1.800 words and that takes time, so I am quite thankful for those tools.

Brexit and its implications have been very much a pain. With IOSS, which a few traders now offer, it has become easier to handle, but as most companies don't have a eurohub, the lead time I have to prepare content is shorter compared to pre-brexit. Especially in combination with UPS. To give you an example, I have a deadline coming Saturday and while other items that were sent from China or other non-EU countries (after the UK shipment), are already on their way or were already delivered, UPS hasn't moved past creating a label - over a week later than the article was notified. I want to create proper content, without adding stress to myself, and if I only have 2 or 3 days between arrival and planned release, that is not helpful. Another reason, why I will cut back on reviews and provide a different kind of content.

But let us talk about the more positive things.

My miniature of the year certainly is the Death Dealer style Harbinger of Decay that was previewed on Warhammer Fest and later released. I didn't come around to buy it, as I find it a bit expensive, but as it is now sold out, that problem solved itself.

Another very positive thing was the Painting Phase. I very much enjoy their interviews, the friendly chat, as it is not just their guests plugging their latest kickstarter, but actually telling interesting stories and providing industry insights. My favourite episodes are the ones with former product designer Tom Hibberd, explaining the motivation and limitations of certain product ranges.

I even managed to get some things painted this year, the core of my Legio Astraman for Adeptus Titanicus (still missing decals) and some samplers for Legions Imperialis. Other items, among others for Blood Bowl, are strongly work-in-progress.

Regarding events, quite a lot happened during spring and summer. We were able to do a combined family / wargaming dads weekend to Hamburg for Tactica, as well as a guys weekend in Nottingham in August for Bring Out Your Lead and yet another visit to Warhammer World and Warlord Games. Due to scheduling conflicts I had to skip a few events towards the end of the year, like Scale Model Challenge in October, the TinSoldiers of Antwerp gaming event on Crisis weekend or the Painting Weekend on an old manor, both in November. It felt a bit weird, that the wargaming year ended for me in September, why I pushed myself to go to SPIEL in Essen, which I could skip again for multiple years, as it is wargaming wise just not that interesting.

Battle for Uulda in February

Tactica Hamburg in February

Fantasy Spiele Würzburg in April

Internal CONflict in May

Bring Out Your Lead in August

Rhein Main Multiversum in September

SPIEL Essen in October

Unfortunately 2024 starts in a similar way, due to continuing scheduling conflicts, I won't be able to participate in Szenario Con, as well as the next instalment of Battle for Uulda, which would be extended to include Legions Imperialis as well (this is a big bummer, as such a deadline is a great motivation to get things painted). Which means, my first proper event for 2024 will probably be the PaintPal Weekend at the end of February. In March we will see Bitbox return and that date is so fixed for me, that I won't accept any kind of scheduling conflicts for that Sunday. Obviously I look forward to the next Ad Arma, CONflict and Rhein-Main-Multiversum events, over the summer, with autumn having the RETURN OF THE KING! - Crisis in November (Yes, you read that right, it'll be back, smaller but not less fun), as well as the next Painting Weekend, that I'll hopefully be able to participate in. And if it is possible, I'd try to squeeze in ScaleModelChallenge as well as the Dutch Oldhammer Con.

The schedule for January and February is pretty much set. We will start with the remaining Bolt Action reviews, I'll extend the coverage on Legions Imperialis, will ramp up the preparations for Old World, where the release will be soon(tm), along with some further content on miniature-based board games (we will cover the Marvel Crisis Protocol and Zombies).

3d printing will be more present as well. I did some test prints for Warmaster as mentioned earlier, I printed two statues for Dino's Mortal Gods demo table project, and for the upcoming Old World reviews some scale references from Highland Miniatures. Beyond that, I'll print a lot of scatter terrain and smaller bits and pieces to add to terrain builds and other models. Especially for projects like Necromunda I simply see this as an option to make more realistic, vivid terrain builds. And for a lot of retro-projects it is great to print missing bits and pieces, like shields or back packs.

One of the Christmas presents for our eldest was a Woom Bike of the next size. These can be tricky to get and are quite stable in pricing. We got our hands on another one in red, but the wish list for Santa was very clear, that it shall not be another red bike. Well, as foiling it wasn't an option and I didn't want to just paint it, I went with Plasti-Dip in Purple Haze. Worked quite well and was my hobby project last week. Besides, it provides a bit of protection to the frame and I can simply remove the coat once our second child will use it.

I enjoy cooking and I kept trying new recipes and as well as coming back to old ones. While I came back around to refining my pizza recipes, including going for variants like deep dishes, I tried some more Asian cuisine, like a Udon noodle soup and various curries (not pictured). This is not completely tabletop unrelated, as there's usually food when people come over, and due to lack of options, I prepare something instead of ordering in. Anyhow, as I don't post these on my chaosbunker channels, you can follow me on dennismit2n for those.

Since SPIEL we did a lot of board gaming at home, as I want to establish a bit of a gaming etiquette at home, support logic thinking and handling of not winning with our kids. It is a bit hard to get games that are not entirely random or just flipping or throwing tokens around. With Heroquest, the game is 14+ due to its parts, but the rules are easy enough for a 6-year-old to pick up. And what was good enough to get me into wargaming, is good enough for the next generation as well (especially with the updates to the miniatures). Beyond that we stayed with dragon-themed games (with was a pure coincidence) after Dragomino with Lecker Lava and Fiery Dragons / Drachenstark.

 Until then - Happy new year and we read again in the kick-off!