Resolve and Temptation part 1

If only it worked on me

At this time of year, I'm betting that a fair few of us have made some kind of resolution, a fresh commitment to finish off some of those old projects. The little voice in your head - I must finish painting X this year, and I should really get some more of Y built and primed ready for paint, and dig Z out from under the pile and dust it off. And already I have run out of letters to illustrate the point! I have at least half a dozen unfinished armies in my collection, with probably a similar number waiting for some attention, any attention would be nice, even just a cursory opening of the drawer once a year for a breath of air and a glimpse of sunlight.

In the past I have made new year resolutions, only to see them fail miserably at the end of the twelve months. So I stopped making them, easiest way to avoid failure right? I now rely on my painting log list as a reminder of what to paint. When a unit is built, it goes on to the list. When the unit is painted, it gets crossed off. Simple to do and easy to glance across and check my progress. There's a few uncrossed items that stretch back several years, but in general it keeps me reasonably focussed and I make progress.

However, there are always new releases and old favourites that compete for our precious hobby time. There are some very tempting new shinies coming around, which I want to avoid if at all possible - though of course I will be enthusing about them in part 2! One way to avoid them might be to construct a list of the recently bought shinies, to remind me what I should be working on, to help me resist the even newer ones. It's not much of a plan, but here goes, in reverse order, the projects I really want to get painted....this year.....maybe.....

The new kid on the block

Lion Rampant War of the Roses contingent. This is a project I really cannot fail. I have committed to completing a unit a month as part of our gaming group Tale4Nerds project, so failure is not an option.
Chance of success: 99%

Dystopian Legions starter set. I made a really good, er, start, on the starter set - got a squad of French painted and another part painted before I hit the wall. I love the figures aesthetic, they are easyish to paint, but a pain to assemble in some cases. The rulebook is nice and seemed reasonably straight forward, with a few introductory scenarios. There's even some scenery to build and use. So there are plusses and minuses to consider, but I reckon I will get this done this year.
Chance of success: 60%

I had this as a poster back in the 1980's!

Lord of the Rings armies. This is a vague category, it encompasses a large part of my collection and is where all my fantasy efforts reside at the moment. In the already started corner I have Rohan and Dwarfs, both I would expect to get some attention this year. In the nearly finished corner I have my Mordor and Uruks, quite sizeable forces really - well sizeable for skirmish games. These could well get a unit of warg riders and a few other bits added. In the terrain corner I have a few ruins built, some trees almost finished and a vague idea in my head for hills. In the completely unstarted corner I have, well, let's not go there if we want to keep this project reasonably doable. If I keep it beardy (Rohan and Dwarfish) and concentrate on building a nice battle area, I think there's got to be progress here.
Chance of success: 75%

These are my three main projects for the year, as it stands now. I know that I will deviate to other projects, I always do. I have started an eclectic collection for use in fantasy skirmish, for steampunk gaming, or purely because I just like the figures. These are future projects in their gestation period, but no doubt some of these will steal my time at some point. I don't regard this as a failure. As long as stuff gets painted and dice get rolled, it's all good. But I would dearly like to see two out of three of these main project finished by year end.