New Years Hobby Resolutions

2015

Now I know what you're thinking, "Ben, how did you come up with such an innovative and original blog post idea?".

Well this is just my pure genius intellect at work.

This time of year people like to make resolutions of things they want to get done over the next twelve months, get fit, learn to speak German, quit smoking etc.

To me, setting these goals because the date is 1/1 is utter nonsense, January 1st should not be the reason you decide to improve yourself or your life.

But wait, I'm going to be telling you my resolutions, isn't this hypocritical bullshit at it's highest?

Not exactly. Hobby resolutions, some of them at least make sense to have set over a season, the most obvious of which are tournament rankings.

The rest of which may be hypocritical to list, things such as painting etc. aren't really things planned due to the fact it's New Year but are just being mentioned because of it.

Cop out? Maybe, but my "resolutions" if we can even call them that still in this case all tie into each other one way or another and also I have some slightly less obvious things I want to mention.

To end this rant of an introduction all I really want to say is, the title is deceiving as this post is more of a list of announcements than resolutions. I will achieve them.

**warning, this is a very rough "classic" style blog post, as in, I haven't checked it for spelling grammar or held back adult language, so, just a polite warning**

Gaming

Let's cut to chase shall we, where do I aim to finish in the rankings once the last event of 2015 is over for Malifaux, that is what a lot of people would like to know more than anything else I would imagine.

Currently I am 47th overall in the UK and thanks to Mike Marshall updating Malifaux Rankings Best in Faction I can see I'm also 9th best Arcanist.

Now with the new information I would love to say I want to be at least in the top 3 Arcanists but that puts me somewhere in the masters end of the rankings.

I would love to get into the top 16 but I do not think for me it is really that viable, maybe I lack the self confidence but I feel that after watching the real fight for top 16 this year has had doing so in 2015 will be much more difficult.

So where do I want to be? 

Hit the top 25 in Rankings.

Originally almost up until writing this sentence that number was going to be 30, currently in that position is fellow SMP member Jake Barlow.

Why would I aim to only get as high as he is now, knowing that he will also rise in the rankings if he keeps to his form from the end of 2014? Thirtieth there just feels like "easy mode" and I always play games on at least "Normal" difficulty.

Maybe if I were to "man up" I'd play "Hard" and aim for Masters, I guess we'll see later in the year.

Outside of the Rankings you may notice I said I wanted to place higher as an Arcanist and yep, that means I will be sticking with the faction and not swapping like many people seem to be at this time of year.

This may seem a little boring, will I just play Mei, Marcus and Ramos, well no, but I will definitely be bringing them to events.

The thing is out of the seven Arcanist masters I have really only played with three and probably only about half the models I can have access to.

Four more masters plus any other addition things new books bring will be plenty for me to learn to play with and more, which I will get back to later.

Tabletop gaming is not all Malifaux for me, 2015 I will endeavour to play a lot more Relic Knights as well as kicking off with Guild Ball (pun intended) when it arrives and I definitely want to try Infamy once that game is in my hands too. 

Painting

I will start this simple.

Have each Arcanist crew boxes painted, under the condition that all are released in plastic.

I will also aim to do more, but as a bear minimum for Malifaux I want to be able to field the other four masters at events and I will not do so unless they are fully painted.

Relic Knights is the other thing that I want to have painted for sure and by the end of the year I want to have at least:

The entire Noh Empire faction painted and enough for a second cadre, be it Cerci Speed Circuit or Radiant.

Expect a post on this stuff in the near future.

Guild Ball and Infamy will be two things I also hope to have time for but they are not a goal of mine, maybe a possible secondary objective.

The other painting thing I would like to do is another #ToMB (Tale of Malifaux Bloggers) but that's for the next section.

The Blog and other Wargaming related Goals

I want to bring back #ToMB for 2015 and see it through.

I think that with a higher amount of plastics, a larger community and a past project like this to learn from I can take it on, this time picking up where Chris and Dave left off and hopefully improving.

I still at this stage am unsure what I would do, it would make sense to do one of the Arcanist masters as I aim to get them painted but if I follow the old format what-so-ever it will become difficult as I will not want to paint duplicates.

Luckily there are lots of great Malifaux crews for me to consider, so we shall see.

MFXTOP will also return but like ToMB I want to look to see how I can improve it, make it cooler, better.

Overall this is my goal for the blog in the future in general, the dream really is to get out of being just a blog and starting website. However that may be much larger than a "hobby resolution".

Get in Chronicles again.

I really enjoyed writing an article for Wyrd Chronicles, however minor to so many people it must seem for me it was a highlight of 2014, admittedly that is more of reflection of how I had not had a great year but getting to be in Wyrd's own e-zine filled me with pride and felt like a major accomplishment.

Run the best Malifaux tournaments in the south.

SMP was bought together originally to improve the tournament scene in the south May Feng has already sold out as has the Isle of Faux boys event "Isle of Faux 2".

It is great to see the team do well and also others like Clousseau with events at TTN and Gertfaux a brand new event also filling up.

No offense to any of them though, but I will be driving myself to make sure that mine are the best.

This is not a superiority complex, it is simply pride. I hope May Feng is great, I hope September's Curse '15 is even greater and...

with SMP I want to run a HUGE Two - day event.

I might be aiming to high, but I want to have an almost GT scale event happen down here in the South and I think I can make it happen, with enough planning and good help it can be done.

You heard it here (but probably not first).

Running a Relic Knight's event

is also on my list, I am leaving the word tournament off because however I will be trying my hardest to spread the love of the game I will not be able to fully control the tides my self to make it successful enough.

I think it will be, but I'm not making aims that I cannot hit for certain.

I also want to also see if I can run some smaller local Malifaux tournaments but that isn't as important to me as the big ones, but do not be surprised if you see me advertise more events near to my home.

Aim to win, not just compete.

Now this may be blind optimism but I am certain I can achieve these goals.
Maybe I've aimed to high, maybe I have aimed to low.

I would love to hear what people think so don't forget I am always on twitter.

-Ben (@psientologist)