My year in hobby - a roundup

Turns out, the world didn't end...

So as 2012 drew to a close (noticeably un-apocalypsey) I decided to sit down and take a look back over the last 12 months of hobby (the awkward past-tense is because I missed the end of the year. Sorry about that) and make some 2013 hobby-resolutions.

That many

Well, looking back over the last year it's fair to say that my entire hobby life has been dominated by a single word - Kickstarter - I've personally backed 17 projects (it would of been 18, but I missed the Zombicide one)

Overall I'm pleased with my kickstartering, and I'm happy that I helped (although in a small way) to push though some cool products (2013 is the year of the board game, take my word on that). One downside is that kickstarter has contributed, in a major way, to the Hobby ADD that I, and most hobbyists, suffer from (more on that in the resolutions).

As well as all that GW have released Dark Vengeance and whatever incredibly long title they've given the Hobbit boxed set. Both of these are pretty cool (I'm certainly going to pick up the Hobbit box as soon as a have the cash spare) but Dark Vengeance have helped me in two ways. Firstly it gave my the right kickstart (arh, it's everywhere!) a Lost and the Damned army for 40k, and secondly the bits helped me establish my small eBay shop as a genuine place that people goto to buy stuff, we have repeat customers and everything now! (More on that at the end).

Anyway, enough looking back, lets look forward with the hobby resolutions!

1: Choose a damn army, and finish it! - I've got a pile of unpainted models that's just going to get bigger and the total number of painted armies I have is still zero. In 2013 I want to redress the balance slightly and end the year with at least 1 painted army.

And, in direct contradiction to the above...

2: Get into some of the smaller games systems - the initial buy in for 40k and Fantasy is too high now, so I'm going to investigate some of the smaller systems (I.e. Kings of Warpath, HoMachine, Malifaux, Dystopian Legions) and see how I like them.

3: Make a games table and play some games - I've finally got a hobby room now (so I can stop doing my hobby at work), all I need is a games table (related to resolution 2, I can only spare 4'x4' so the skirmish style games would fit just fine).

4: board games! - I've already pronounced 2013 to be the year of the board game (just up there, see?) so it's time for me to put my money where my mouth is and actually buy some.

I think that's all the resolutions for now (hobby ones anyway, I've got a re-occurring rowing machine related one from outside of the hobby) but what else for the future?

Well, I mentioned above that I have a small eBay store called Pandemonium Games. I run it mostly in my spare time (my main jobs are running an online store that sells recycled and environmentally friendly gifts and operating a Waterjet Cutter - how do you end up with jobs so diverse? Finish university with a BA) but recently it's started to punch above its weight and is beginning to prove itself as more than a distraction and is starting to turn into a viable business.

Whilst currently we're no Wayland, or Troll Tader, or Bitz Box we are starting to carve out our own little niche. All of this is great news, because owning a games store would be pretty awesome. To further help this, once we've got the website up and running, I'm going to make Officina Chaotica the official blog of my store.

What this means to anyone reading this (and judging from my google stats, I'm talking directly to a single Russian spambot) is that very occasionally (once every couple of months probably) I'll post something along the lines of "Hey! This is a thing we have, if you want it, you can buy it here!".

The upside to all this is that since this will technically be a company blog I'll be able to work on it during work hours, so I'll be able to post more! And, if I'm cheeky enough, I could try and argue that me doing hobby is actually me working on content for the blog. That might not fly though.

Happy, belated, New Years and have a great 2013!

Matt.

 

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