December 30, 2011

Look What I Did: 2011

The year is quickly coming to a close and rather than look at my hobby table and dwell on all of the work I need to get done, I'll choose on this day to reminisce on all that I have actually accomplished. It's been a busy/full year for me for the hobby, and I didn't fully realize this until I actually put some thought into it. With the AdMech fandex taking up more than half of the year and Necrons coming out towards the end, I've been swamped, but very delighted. I'm looking forward to 2012 and all it will bring. Traitor Legions, 6th Edition, the end of the world; the list goes on. As for 2011, I present to you the start of the newest article series I have dubbed; Look What I Did.

AdMech FanDex
A majority of the year I spent working on the Adeptus Mechanicus Fan-Made Codex. This was a big year for the fandex. It saw its 3rd and final version before 6th Edition and with that numerous additions to the book including full color pictures of the models I'm using, a crap-load of fluff thanks to the abundance of help from my fluff-writing team, new units and even a website WuMan is hosting for me.

Along with all of my work, others in the community have helped get the word out and written some very kind words about this project:

The Porkster even came in 2nd place in a list-building competition using the fandex as a ruleset. And I also found myself chatting it up with Pat over at the 11th Company podcast about the book.

AdMech Models
One of the goals I had for the 3rd version of the fandex was to include pictures of the models just like any other official codex. To do so I had to get a lot of modeling done and also seek the help of superior painting talents. Thanks to the help of Mr. Lemon, KHops and James my conversions were painted up beautifully for the fandex's release and are currently on display in my LFGS. Here's a few pictures of the finished models from this year:

Necrons
Ahhh, the only thing that could take me away from the AdMech. Originally I planned to push out one more version of the fandex before 6th. Once the murmurs of Necrons starting looking solidified I decided not to kill myself via an overabundance of projects. So, with the 3rd version of the fandex complete and my AdMech army on display in my LFGS, it was time to get back to my first 40k love; the Necrons. The new codex saw a massive improvement in flexibility, power, playstyle and even fluff in my opinion. Everyone has a different take on the new 'dex and that's super neato, but as a Necron enthusiast of many years and after playing the new rules on a regular basis and not losing a single game, yet; the new codex is amazing in all respects. I never thought I'd say this, but thank you Matt Ward. You actually managed to not completely ruin something.

Within 2011 I have been working on strategy more than anything trying to define what my preference in playstyle is for the Necrons as this book has a lot of choices in this respect. After a couple of months I think I've decided on a playstyle for a 1000pt list and once I've reached that plateau I'll build from there. Another thing to consider is half of the models for the Necrons aren't out, yet. So while I'm itching to make conversions for Crypteks, Spyders and Stalkers, I'm trying to hold out until the 2nd wave of models comes through.

2011's Stats
AdMech Models Awaiting Painting: 28
AdMech Models Finished: 77
Necron Models Awaiting Painting: 4
Necron Models Finished: 6

The stats above I'm damn proud of. Despite the small numbers and the fact that 95% of the painting done wasn't done by myself, a majority of the year was dedicated to refining the rules of the AdMech fandex which was time well spent for me. Once again, thank you to everyone's help from the painters to the fluff-writers and everyone inbetween.

That's it for this year. In and out of the the hobby, 2011 had some really great highs and some really bad lows, but overall I can't complain. Life is all about the rollercoaster ride, if you only had ups you'd eventually breach the atmosphere losing the ability to breath and well...that just sounds unpleasant. So to all my readers, thanks for reading and here's to 2012!

Happy New Year everyone.

3 comments:

  1. Pleasure friend, here's to more, in 2004 (sounds better than in 2012) ;)

    CS

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  2. It looks like if you only rate your year based on 40k it was all ups! It's a good thing there's the rest of the world to drag you down :)

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