New Year - same old guy...
2011 was a write off for me really. All I wanted to do last year was build and paint my Middenheim themed Empire army for Warhammer Fantasy - but I didn't like the way Fantasy was developing. Large units are fine but when they're mixed in with GW selling only small boxes of expensive models (such as Greatswords) and the sight of lots of large monster sized models being sold just left me cold. The Storm of Magic release seemed to prove that GW only really wanted people to buy lots of toys for whatever army they had - and seeing army lists in White Dwarf where Teclis was fighting alongside Khorne forces just finished me off. Added to this, I wasn't happy with GW swapping from metal to resin with the Finecast releases - it definately seemed to be driven by higher profit margins. So - I totally lost interest in Games Workshop and it's meant I've stopped subscribing to White Dwarf which I've been collecting since 2000. I also binned (literally) every copy of White Dwarf I owned - it took me two car trips to the dump to be able to ferry them all to the recycling centre... I still am playing Blood bowl and I did spend over £200 on GW BB models - I bought the Elf, Vampire, Nurgle and Khemri teams including cheerleaders. I did that as they were the last four teams I needed to finish my collection - and I wanted to get them before GW either stopped selling them completely or changed them into Finecast.
On the plus side though, I have enjoyed collecting and playing Firestorm Armada. I have bought more Aquan and Dindrenzi models so I will aim to get those painted and get some more games in on that system. The club's current BB league is drawing to an end so I'll have a while before the next one starts to get another team painted - plus I will be running Bunker Bowl III in October and hoping to go to a couple of other BB tourneys as well. I will try to get a new team painted for those - maybe Dark Elves. I've also got a lot of other side projects that could do with some attention - I bought the rulebook and some models for Gladiator by Warhammer Historical and I'd like to play that. I also traded a lot of old Mordheim models with Alex Bews who runs the Lead Adventure forum; he sent me a bundle of SuperFigs models which would make great additions to my existing collection of super hero models for SuperSystem. Let's not forget the Hydra Miniatures War Rocket for which I have two fleets - Galacteer and Imperial. I also just got the Star Fleet: A Call To Arms rulebook just out made by Mongoose Publishing - that looks great. So many projects for 2012 - but none of them will be GW related except for the Gladiator or Blood Bowl minis...
So - let's hope 2012 is a bit more productive for me on the hobby front. I just need to get back into my hobby mojo now that the house move is over.