Resolutions 2024: May 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 May 2024. Let’s start with a reminder of the resolutions and where we got to in April:

Resolutions Recap

Painting

Paint at least 4 Warhammer armies of approx 2000 points (Apr status: 0/4)
Paint an Underworlds Warband (Apr status: Complete! 1/1)
Paint two Malifaux crews (Apr status: 0/2)
Paint 2 starting forces each for 2 different skirmish games (Apr status: 1/4)
Take part in at least 4 club painting contests (Apr status: 2/4)
Paint 366 miniatures (Apr status: 158/366)
Paint more than I purchase or print (Apr status: on track!)

Gaming

Play at least 40 different games this year (Apr status: 20/40)
Play 6 games that I already own but had not yet played. (Apr status: 0/6)
Play at least 3 non-D&D RPGs (Apr status: 2/3)

Writing

Publish a blog post per day (Apr status: on track!)
Publish 6 items on DriveThruRPG (Apr status: 0/6)
Write 18 reviews (including Game of the Month reviews) (Apr status: 17/18)

So, how did May go?

Painting

After an illness-related slump, I did get some more miniatures done this month, including the Chaos Dwarf Infernal Guard that have sat on my desk for far too long:

I’m not super delighted with how they turned out, but they’re alright.

Sadly, these turned out to be the only miniatures that I finished this month. I instead spent time cleaning up some infantry miniatures:

I’m feeling a bit annoyed that I never managed to finish off those Plague Censer Bearers. They’re sitting mostly complete, but an unexpectedly hectic week led to that can being kicked down the road. Fine! They’ll just have to be my first miniatures of June.

So, then, what are my totals for this month?

Bought: 6 minis
Printed: 21 minis
Painted: 20 minis

A little disappointing, but with reasons. One extra print was added this week. This is my long-mulled-over proxy for Ushoran to match my Flesh-Eater Courts.

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

Purchased: 35 minis
Printed: 98 minis
Painted: 178 minis

The Slow Grow is still not where I want it to be, but as I mentioned in this month’s post, I feel that I’ve now at least got a plan. I’m probably going to hold off on the next slow grow post until I’ve made a bit of progress on that plan. Like, maybe half of the planned models completed, perhaps?

Gaming

This month has been a better month for gaming, too. I got a lot of different games to the table, including some new ones, and some that I had not yet played this year.

I managed to get a lot more Age of Sigmar to the table this month than I had expected. I had a lot of fun trying out the Triumph and Treachery rules for multiplayer Age of Sigmar games. That was fantastic.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Stuart Disbury (@tavendale)

Here’s the list of games that I had played already this year, before the start of May:

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
Dixit
In the Hall of the Mountain King
Quadropolis

I also added a mighty 5 games to the list in May:

1960: The Making of the President
Everdell
Age of Fantasy
Call of Cthulhu
Raiders of the North Sea

Everdell is our Game of the Month, and I managed to squeeze in 4 games of it. I really liked it. It’s sat on my shelf for a good while, having been picked up between Oppenheimer and Barbie in our Barbenheimer weekend last summer. It’s been an absolute joy to get to the table.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Stuart Disbury (@tavendale)

I had a fantastic one-shot of Call of Cthulhu the other week, and was delighted when Raiders of the North Sea squeaked onto my played list on the 30th. That game didn’t look so appealing to me, but we ended up having a blast in what turned out to be a really close game.

A good month!

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 May goes, here are the highlights:

City of the Undead might be my first negative review on here. Well, I suppose there was also the Munchkin one… I generally only really discuss media that I enjoy, but it was sent to me as a review copy and I felt compelled to follow through on an honest review.

14 is a great novel that I go back to again and again. I’ll definitely be reviewing the rest of that series.

The Braindead review might seem a bit random. I had intended to do some RPG content based on the show, but it didn’t really pan out. It sat in my drafts for a couple of years and I just decided to cut out the game content and finish off the review to draw a line under it.

Still no progress on any DTRPG material… I think I’m going to stop expecting that to change. I’m happy with how the blog is going and it’s just not a priority. I could see myself getting some done, but I’m unlikely to meet the resolution.

May Summary

Painting

Paint at least 4 Warhammer armies of approx 2000 points (May status: 0/4)
Paint an Underworlds Warband (May status: Complete! 1/1)
Paint two Malifaux crews (May status: 0/2)
Paint 2 starting forces each for 2 different skirmish games (May status: 1/4)
Take part in at least 4 club painting contests (May status: Complete! 4/4)
Paint 366 miniatures (May status: 178/366)
Paint more than I purchase or print (May status: on track!)

Gaming

Play at least 40 different games this year (May status: 25/40)
Play 6 games that I already own but had not yet played. (May status: 1/6)
Play at least 3 non-D&D RPGs (May status: Complete! 3/3)

Writing

Publish a blog post per day (May status: on track!)
Publish 6 items on DriveThruRPG (May status: 0/6)
Write 18 reviews (including Game of the Month reviews) (May status: Complete! 25/18)

And that was May. Catch you in June!