I’ve seen a few “year in review” posts popping up on blogs I follow, so here’s my own take. The post title isn’t all that accurate in my case, though, because my “year” actually began in June, when I moved into my current home and finally had the opportunity to unpack my workshop and get to work on miniatures stuff after an 8-month absence.

I wasn’t just diving back into existing projects in 2016. As a recent transplant to Oregon, I was also focused on meeting people, making friends and building the framework for a local game group.

When you’re new in town, it’s always a good idea to start with the common denominator for your particular hobby. For wargaming, that is certainly Warhammer 40,000. I played 40k back in the 1990s but cast it aside in favor of slimmer, less restrictive miniatures games such as Song of Blades & Heroes. But I always appreciated the voluminous lore of the Warhammer 40k universe, and the heavy metal aspect of so many of those early miniatures. So when I arrived in Oregon and saw that the local club was mostly comprised of 40k players, I decided to dip a toe back into the grim darkness of the far future.

So I started building a small Night Lords Chaos Space Marine warband, inspired by my love of those gorgeous old models I used to salivate over in the pages of White Dwarf. What followed was a bit of a retrospective dive into the hobby, as I acquired older vintage metal figures as well as newer crisp plastic sculpts. And lightning bolts. Lots and lots of lightning bolts.

Along the way I discovered One Page 40k, which turned out to be exactly what I was seeking in terms of a fast-playing ruleset that captured the spirit of 40k without tons of additional material. I was lucky enough to fall in with a group of local gamers here in town who were similarly taken by 1P40K, and we’ve played a couple games already (with more on the horizon!).

I also derived quite a bit of inspiration and motivation from 1 Hour A Night, a bunch of wargamers on Facebook who created a group to help encourage each other to keep moving forward on hobby projects. According to their mantra, if you can dedicate just one hour a night to your projects, by the end of the year you can look back with a real sense of accomplishment. I’m glad to be a part of such a motivational group!

Here are a few more pics of my Night Lords army. All of this was completed since June 2016. That’s Be’lakor the demon prince lurking in the background of some photos. Click here to read more about him if you’re interested! The Rhino was painted up by my friend Findlay through his commission painting service (Barbarian Painting)!

Over the summer I took a break from my own stuff to paint up a batch of Necromunda Orlocks for my buddy back in Chicago.

I also knocked out a few batches of terrain in 2016. I’ve always found that building terrain has helped me explore a particular milieu or setting beyond just painting miniatures.

This batch of medieval fantasy ruins was built for Frostgrave. My Frostgrave board isn’t particularly winter-y, so I didn’t go overboard with the snowy highlights. These were fast builds, intended to quickly fill up my table in advance of a scheduled game. I learned a lot about building with foam craft bricks, and I’m looking forward to churning out another similar batch in the near future.

And this pile of desert/wasteland hills was thrown together in a hurry this month in anticipation of a big upcoming game this weekend! Let’s just say that my hot wire foam cutter got a good workout over the last few weeks. When you absolutely need to fill a table with terrain, you can’t go wrong with pink (or blue) foam sheets.

That’s my year (since June at least)! How did you fare this year?