2024’s coming to a close, and so the Goonhammer goons are reflecting on their hobby progress and whether to give themselves a pat on the back, or a slice of humble pie. Today, it’s Charlie B’s turn.
As the internet’s hobbyists share their year’s efforts, I see I have once again painted less than the fast people, and to a lower standard than the competition crowd. It’s that bit of the calendar in which the internet’s usual trick of making us compare ourselves to each other is at its peak.
Despite knowing this is generally unconstructive, it’s hard not to do it anyway.
I have friends who have told me the standard of my painting makes them feel insecure about their own miniatures, and yet there are, very clearly, an enormous number of painters far more skilled than me. By definition, 99.9% of us are less technically proficient hobbyists than someone, just as 99.9% of us are more proficient than someone else.
Since most of our hobby is accrued skill, and only some of it innate talent, I am forced to conclude that we’re good at the stuff we’re sufficiently interested in. For instance, I am not interested in spending 100 hours on a single miniature, so I won’t be getting anywhere in a painting competition. When I see a Slayer Sword winning entry, I enjoy the artistry, and feel relieved I’m not trying to do something similar.
Likewise, when someone who really likes painting huge armies sees a squad that took me 60 hours to paint, the correct feeling should be relief that they are (I hope) doing something more efficient.
All of this is a preamble to the fact that, even against my own gentle standards, I have painted a fraction of what I did last year. Despite that, I am perfectly happy. The point of the hobby is to give me something amusing to do, when and only when I want to do it. The only important questions are, one, whether I enjoyed my hobby (I did), two, whether I’d like to do more (also yes), and three, whether I helped other hobbyists in my group (I believe so).
January
In my 2023 review I signed off frothing about how my mate Tom was about to run a roleplaying wargame campaign for my Space Marines and Drew’s Eldar versus some Tyranids. If you want to read how that went, Drew and I collaborated on a campaign journal for the Beard Bunker. Among the things I made in preparation for that campaign was a map featuring lots of individual unit markers we could move around to record where our forces were deployed as the campaign progressed.
The campaign got me predictably enthused about Space Marines, despite having painted a whole bunch of them in the run-up, and this enthusiasm was expressed via the medium of a Librarian in Terminator Armour:
February
Yeah nah. I’ve been painting like a man possessed for a few months, so I take some time to play through Cyberpunk 2077 for a second time, and have a grand old time playing a corpo who’s turned on her former life with the zeal of the newly converted.
March
The paint squig nibbles my amygdala, and I placate it by finally getting around to painting the Vindicare from that first year of Warhammer+, but without the giant statue. I carefully slice it off the statue and sculpt a rock on the base so that the Exitus Rifle is semi-horizontal. I’ve yet to use him in a game, but his time will come. You can get notes on the minimal conversion work here.
The hobby butterfly flits across to my Goffs next, and I paint Squig Destroyer, featuring a heavily converted ram that counts as a deff rolla, since it feels weird to have an Ork vehicle without doing some sort of conversion work.
Just to make sure there’s truly no through-line to my efforts, I then paint some Tabletop World townhouses in preparation for a Warhammer Fantasy game I’m running for some friends.
April
After a false start and lots of indecision, I finally figure out a method of painting the Sanctum Administratus terrain that I’m happy with. I also land a new job after 11 years at my last place, and am both scared and excited.
May
Seemingly determined to clear out the last dregs of various almost-complete projects, I return to the mechanised Imperial Guard army I grunted out at the start of 40K’s 8th edition. Back then, there were no female Cadian heads, and as a result my army was a total sausage fest. Happily, GW put out an upgrade sprue of the old kit prior to refreshing the whole range, and so I built up ten female soldiers and sprinkled them among my thirty dudes. This of course forced me to repaint a lot of squad numbers on the platoon’s shoulder pads, which sure was a lot of work on minis I’d previously finished, but sometimes the Departmento Munitorum demands additional logistics. You know how it is.
To cap that off, I add a Primaris Psyker to the army. This involves some mild conversion work, and if you like the results, I explained what I did in this Beard Bunker post.
June
Kasrkin losing deep strike and having another squad in my mechanised platoon sure does mean my ‘mechanised’ platoon is now short of two Chimeras. I fix that.
My Astra Militarum/Imperial Guard itch sated, the hobby butterfly flutters back to Space Marines. My friends kindly bought me a Hammerfall Bunker for my birthday back in April, since they know I covet the idea of an orbital drop bunker even though it’s a rubbish unit that can’t even deep strike. This serves a second purpose, however: I do some light conversion work so that its turret can serve both on the bunker, and as the turret on a Gladiator chassis to give me a Primaris Whirlwind, since my army feels like it should have artillery support. Will indirect fire get nerfed into the ground in 2024? Yes. Do I care? No. Narratio ante victoriam! (Narrative before victory.)
You can read about the (minimal) work needed for the Whirlwind thing in this Beard Bunker post.
June’s going well, but it’s got more to give, so I do some more work on my modular urban terrain and make my first modular roads out of foamex.
July
Vaguely managing to stick with a theme for five minutes, I add a few bikes to my Outrider squadron, even though they’re not an amazing unit, and even though three is a better number for a cheap distraction than five, because five is a more useful number if you’re slowly collecting a whole company.
Is this obsessive behaviour in pursuit of a meaningless goal? No! Having a whole company of plastic blue space mans is terribly important.
I do a bunch more hobby this month, but it’s in the form of Photoshop since I’m making map assets for Eridani Warzones, the new way my group are handling ongoing campaigns in our little slice of the galaxy.
August
I get no personal hobby this month, since it’s spent doing a lot of internal playtesting on an upcoming project for Goonhammer. Is it a follow-up to last year’s co-op mode Fury of the Swarm? Possibly yes.
September
For various reasons entirely unrelated to the work done in August, my friend Harvey helps me out by tag-teaming the Kill Team: Octarius terrain. We get it done in an evening, and we are pleased. It sees immediate use.
Enthused by the power of collaborative terrain painting, Drew and I help Harvey with his Thatos-pattern hab village, lovingly named Stilt Town. We get the lot done in a weekend, and all of a sudden have an awesome new gaggle of dollhouses to slaughter each other in.
October
The inaugural battle on Stilt Town results in my painting some personalised heraldry on one of my Bladeguard:
The real meat of the month, however, is painting a mildly converted Desolation Squad. I like the idea that rather than hip firing giant missiles (lol) their guns are actually laser designators for Hammerfall Bunker missiles. Completing this squad brings my “1000 point Space Marine showcase project” to 70 battle brothers and about 4000 points. Reasonable. And. Proportionate.
A good chunk of my time this month is spent working on the cover illustration for the Goonhammer project, which is a kind of hobby progress I guess? Still, it eats away at the time I’d usually be painting wee soldiers.
November
This is spent doing yet more illustrations for the Goonhammer project, so the only physical hobby I get done is making a housewarming present for my friend Drew, who’s just moved into her first house. I build a Hobbit hole into a book nook to decorate her shelves, and you can read about building it right here on Goonhammer.
December
Somewhat burned out on playing Orks, and recognising that I should offer my regular opponents something other than Imperial armies to fight against, I start painting a faction I’ve never done before: Chaos Space Marines! They’re Iron Warriors offshoots, so the more minimalist design of Mk.III armour from the Horus Heresy range makes more sense to me than the official Chaos Marines for 40K. Getting through the bulk of these lads is a breeze thanks to their paint scheme, and of course I immediately counterbalance this ease by freehanding their custom faction icons onto their pauldrons, since they hold their old Legion in contempt and are now doing their own thing.
I’m starting out by painting a 500 point Boarding Patrol, and I’ll expand to 1,000 points from there. The freehand shoulder pads are definitely the main challenge with this army, so we’ll see how it goes. As I write this, I’ve just finished the first squad.
Looking ahead
If 2024 taught me anything, it’s that I have no idea what I’ll be doing from one month to the next. I can see the big Goonhammer project taking a lot of my time, but in my personal hobby that makes it even more important for me to let the hobby butterfly flap where it may.
If you, like me, have had to spend time thinking about how to avoid comparing yourself to others, please do drop a comment below. You never know who it might help. And more importantly: I wish you a Merry Jingly, whatever flavour of Jingly you celebrate.
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