2023 Hobby Recap

2023 felt like another fairly slow year for the hobby, but I think I squeaked out a bit more content than 2022, mostly due to a switch to painting with Contrast paints in the summer that enabled me to crank out fair number of infantry. 

2020 output:

• 54 infantry
• 3 vehicles/artillery
• 2 terrain pieces
• 18 blog posts
• 6 games played
• 7 battle reports
• 18 total blog posts

2021 output:

• 81 infantry
• 1 vehicle
• 3 terrain pieces
• 7 games played
• 6 battle reports
• 52 total blog posts

2022 output:

• 27 infantry
• 4 vehicles
• 1 terrain piece
• 4 games
• 3 battle reports
• 22 total blog posts

2023 output:

• White Scars Contemptor dreadnought
• 2 White Scars Rhinos
• 10 Sons of Horus Cataphractii terminators
• 5 White Scars recon marines with sniper rifles
• 10 White Scars scouts with sniper rifles
• 39 Xhorik grenadiers and characters
• 8 militia representing other fighting forces of the Xhorik Campaign
• White Scars vs World Eaters and Death Guard with battle report
• Sons of Horus vs Death Guard vs World Eaters with battle report
• Xhorik 87th vs Ghoulv's Iron Battalion (Militia v Militia) with battle report
• White Scars vs Blood Angels vs Salamanders without battle report
• Sons of Horus vs Blood Angles battle report only (catchup from last year)

Total:

• 72 infantry
• 3 vehicles
• 0 terrain pieces
• 4 games
• 4 battle reports
• 20 total blog posts

Not a bad output, although I regret that we did not get a game in over the Christmas/New Year's break like we normally do. It is getting tougher and tougher to find time for a game night. 

I lost my big 8 ft x 5 ft battlefield to an unfortunate accident this year, so building a new battlefield for large games is on my goal list for 2024.

On the gaming front, I got in a good mix of games and got to use each of my three main Heresy factions at least once. Overall results were not so god, with one win (with my militia, shockingly!) and three losses (two with Scars and one with Sons), including coming in last place in both three-way games. 

From a painting standpoint, I did not meet my goal of making the Scars competitive. I built and painted two more Rhinos because they are thematic, but I should have added two Land Raiders instead. I started on two Sicaran variants, but they are sitting 20% painted on my desk because working on them has not sounded like fun. I did manage to add a lot of sniper rifles so I will be able to try out a Recon Company Rite of War in 2024 if I want, which sounds compelling for the White Scars as they were the original scouts and forerunners of the Great Crusade. 

Goals for 2024 are: 

• Get the Scars to a point where they are competitive in games (maybe!)
• Add the next tranche to the Sons of Horus
• Dig into my backlog of Drop Troopers, using Contrast recipes to speed things up
• Build a new battlefield
• Finish a piece of terrain (I have several half built on my desk)
• Come up with some interesting ideas for the campaign and progress the story with a few games

It will be a challenge to get to all of these with my limited hobby time but it is reasonable.