2013 in Review

2013 is almost over and this makes it a good time to take a thoughtful look back over the year that was.

Another year done and dusted

2013 was the year i returned to warhammer and wargaming as a whole. During 2012 wargaming had fallen by the wayside for me, i had a low paying job and no way to get to the various gaming clubs around the country. In contrast 2013 started with me joining the Kapiti Wargames Club, which for the first half of the year was the Kapiti Warhammer 40k and Roleplay club for me. Then the glorious month of June came around, and with it a new job, new salary and a restart of my Warhammer Fantasy command with the Wood Elves. It also saw me start this blog, which has grown quite substantially from its small beginnings. 

The first image of my wood elves on this blog, note the chip board base

As is normal after June comes July and with it and ton of practice for Call to Arms, which was to be my first warhammer tournament for 7 years. July was the month in which the core of my wood elf list would be formed and tested, various units would be tried and some would be deemed useful and others useless.

CTA was to be the big event for both July and August, the practice and preparation for it took up most of my hobby time for both those months. The Tournament itself was very enjoyable. However i do still have one slight gripe, i came 14th equal battle points wise but my final score was 23rd due to painting. This began my long standing stance against painting scores at tournaments (My argument against painting scores can be found here)

This photo and the ones below it are all from the CTA tournament

After CTA came Warpfire and Skitterleap, two tournaments that i did poorly at but was able to learn alot from, as you learn more in defeat than you do in victory.Both events cemented in my mind what did and didn't work well in a wood elf list and so the army evolved with each engagement. More happened in those months then just tournaments. One thing of note was the building of my Malal themed Chaos Space Marines. The idea for these guys had come from a white dwarf a had read a very long time ago, i was able to rebuild those same chaos space marines and now have 30 of them.

Basic Marines

The Man, Exalted of Malal

Rital, Chaos Sorcerer

Chaos Chosen

Obliterators

2013 has also seen my issues with Warhammer 40k come to a head, with the release of 40k 6th ed and 6th ed army books. My issues with 40k have been mentioned in a early post but can be easily summed up like this: 40k has turned into a pay to win game, were if you can buy 3 rip tides or other such power units then you will win the vast majority of games, and my big fear is that Warhammer Fantasy will head the same direction.

This was also the year that i finally decided to refuse to pay GW's stupid greedy prices for its made in China products and seek out alternate GW models. The most successful of these alternate GW model supplies have been Mantic games and Avatars of War. In addition December was the month that i decided to boycott models bought either direct from GW or through a supplier, having finally become sick of giving increasing amounts of my money for less models. And clearly people like the idea as the boycott post is the 7th most viewed post published on this blog. 

Looking ahead to 2014 i plan to finish of 2400 points of empire and then ship them all off to painted up in Auckland.  I also want to go ahead with the dwarf slayer army and i will continue with modeling the Malal chaos space marines. But the big thing (warhammer wise) for 2014 will be the wood elf release. The week that the wood elf book comes out there will be a post a day detailing various aspects of the new book, and of course each post will be overflowing with excessive excitement.

To wrap up this post i would to thank all my readers, commenters and followers of my blog, you guys make writing these posts worth it. I would also like to thank everyone who has added The Dice Odyssey to their blog roll as without you guys we would a far less viewers. I hope you all have a good 31st of December 2013 and a very enjoyable 2014. Until next time.
Rex