2023 was a great hobby year. I've played more, painted more and... actually just got rid of a lot of backlog and clutter, reducing my sea grey and increasing my actual useable collections.
Let's take a glimpse:
De-clutter
This was the most impactful one to me. I had accumulated things over the years and they had been slowing me down, both mentally and literally objectively by just getting in the way. I sold, donated and otherwise passed on a bunch of stuff:
- Painted Infinity Morat that I was never really going to get to play again
- A whole slew of unassembled Infinity Aleph
- A huge Conan board game that "I will paint and play someday" forever
- A huge load of D&D Bones Miniatures
- Lots of storage and transport foam
- A T'au army that I never really played
- A lot of Deathguard units
- My beloved Industrial terrain set that was simply too large for a 2 bedroom family apartment
- A LOT of space marines accumulated over the years
Seriously, if you are a hobbyist and collector like me, you should seriously do yearly purges of the backlog. I feel so liberated from not having those with me anymore that I have had a renewal in energy.
Don't get rid of everything, but do get rid of a LOT of it.
Gaming
Starting with the oddballs, I played a varied number of games, from Combat Patrol, Boarding Action, Training and Practice, coaching 10th edition and just playing for fun, including a silly mega battle at the Highgate Games Workshop store.
Then there are the league games, which were the majority of my gaming for 2023:
I finished up the 2022 league with my Chaos Daemons, placed badly but had fun.
I played a whole league with my old Space Wolves, I did ok considering their un-optimized lists, but I had lots of fun with it.
Then finally I played the whole Index era of 10th edition with my shiny and utterly broken index Necrons. Was good while it lasted and I did pretty well on it.
Played an incredible narrative battle as a farewell to 9th edition.
Hobby
10th edition really breathed life into the hobby:
Painted a whole lot of warriors to bring my total mustered forces to about 60.
Painted an assortment of other support units for my Necrons.
I also really made progress with my Black Legion and Chaos army, with the odd Space Wolf scout sergeants to take advantage of free gear!
And to finish off the year I used my pre-Christmas vacation break (and undoubtedly a few extra days) to get about 100 Tyranid models assembled and painted!
Infrastructure
I upgraded my miniature transport capacity by magnetizing my Necron bases, a process that is still ongoing now, but it was totally worth doing.
I also upgraded the display cabinet with better lightning so all the armies can shine brightly!
The pile of opportunity
Of course I did de-clutter, but still keep a wealthy dose of stored plastic and WiPs, the star this year is a full collection of Legions Imperialis who will definitely be finished an painted... someday...
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