Resolutions 2024: March Roundup

It’s one thing to set resolutions, and quite another to hold oneself to them. I intend to review my progress monthly toward each of the resolutions. Welcome, then, to our roundup for March 2024. Let’s start with a reminder of the resolutions and where we got to in February:

Resolutions Recap

Painting

Paint at least 4 Warhammer armies of approx 2000 points (Feb status: 0/4)
Paint an Underworlds Warband (Feb status: Complete! 1/1)
Paint two Malifaux crews (Feb status: 0/2)
Paint 2 starting forces each for 2 different skirmish games (Feb status: 1/4)
Take part in at least 4 club painting contests (Feb status: 1/4)
Paint 366 miniatures (Feb status: 90/366)
Paint more than I purchase or print (Feb status: on track!)

Gaming

Play at least 40 different games this year (Feb status: 17/40)
Play 6 games that I already own but had not yet played. (Feb status: 0/6)
Play at least 3 non-D&D RPGs (Feb status: 2/3)

Writing

Publish a blog post per day (Feb status: on track!)
Publish 6 items on DriveThruRPG (Feb status: 0/6)
Write 18 reviews (including Game of the Month reviews) (Feb status: 7/18)

So, how did March go?

Painting

March began quite slowly and it was over a week before I had anything completed. I eventually managed to finish up this batch of Plague Monks. This was the third set of 20, giving me a total of 60 of the wee chaps.

I think 60 is enough to be getting on with for a while, yes? I’ve finished the bulk of this army now, with just a few odds and ends to clean up. The biggies are Thanquol and a Plague Furnace, but I should also get some Censer Bearers done, too.

I then shifted my wandering hobby eye to some Flesh-Eater Courts. The Royal Beastflayers were next on my list:

These turned out alright. I do think the scale is a bit problematic, and they will be a bit too big compared to the rest of the army. Still, I do intend to use them in Warcry, where they’ll look fine, and ultimately this army is a bit of a mish-mash, anyway.

Sticking with the Flesh-Eaters, I decided to do a character for them, both because I wanted to, and I need to have a character submission for a club painting contest. The dreaded Abhorrant Archregent made it to my desk:

I’m quite happy with him. Not the bestest paintjob ever, but he’s fun. Beautiful steed, too.

I then started to panic that I had not made any real progress on my slow grow goals for the month. I decided that the best way to alleviate this was to immediately commit to a wizard model that was not actually part of the plan to begin with:

She turned out quite well, but this was not a smart choice.

More usefully, I also pushed on and got this unit of Halberdiers finished:

I’m pretty happy with these! The green looks fantastic, the grey/white pops, and the water on the bases looks way better than it has any right to. I’m delighted with them, actually.

So, then, in terms of totals, where are we? Well, I printed a lot of miniatures this month. Two units of 20 troops for The Old Worlds, and another unit of 10 to put towards next month’s Slow Grow targets. Oh, and I’ve just done 10 Plague Censer Bearers, too. No purchases, though. That’s great!

Bought: 0 minis
Printed: 60 minis
Painted: 62

This means that my totals for the year so far are:

Purchased: 29 minis
Printed: 67 minis
Painted: 152 minis

Once again, I should have finished the Skaven this month, and I did not. Next month, I’ll try to get Thanquol at least built, if not painted. I’ve got a Plague Furnace that I built in 2010 that I should paint up. I need to clean, cure, and paint the Censer Bearers, too. At that point, I’ll be done.

The Slow Grow carries on, too. 10 Blunderbusses need to be done for the Chaos Dwarfs, and then either some Handgunners or some Pistoliers for the Empire. I’ll eventually do both, but I’m leaning towards the Pistoliers, just to give me something different to do, so I’m not just mirroring both armies in terms of the sorts of units I’m doing.

We’ll see how it goes!

Gaming

This month, I have been mostly playing Apiary.

Like, seriously. It’s been a constant companion at the table. I’ve got s lot of thoughts about the game, which featured in my game of the Month review yesterday. I also played some Robot Quest Arena, Century, Soulbound, and Age of Sigmar. All of these were games I had already played this year, and which appear on the list of games played before the start of March:

Century: Golem Edition
Architects of the West Kingdom
Sushi Go!
Warhammer Underworlds
Age of Sigmar: Soulbound
Traveller
Dungeons & Dragons
Santorini
King of Tokyo
Ticket to Ride
Warhammer: Age of Sigmar
Ark Nova
Arcane Academy
Robot Quest Arena
UNO
Root
Apiary

I only actually added a single game to the list in march:

Dixit

I like Dixit. It doesn’t get to the table much with adults, but it’s a hit with kids. It’s a nice game to play with friends, as you can really lean on extant relationships in giving and deciphering clues.

Writing

I’ve managed to maintain my goal of posting a blog post per day. I’m happy to be doing well on that front. As far as March goes, here are the highlights:

I’m happy with the shift into doing book reviews. I’ve been enjoying them a lot. I think, going forward, that I need to return to doing a bit more RPG content. I did a few multi-part series last year that I was happy with. I need to plan one of those.

Still no progress on any DTRPG material…