Year Ending...Standing and what is on the horizon

And so 2011 is soon coming to an end.  This will be my last post of this year.  The year seems to have flown by.   So, I have decided to do a sort of summary.

I’m a numbers kind of guy, its my business to crunch numbers, not money but numbers in designing things. So numbers always fascinate me. Early in the year I decided to add the Hobby Activity log you see on the right. The final tally:

Models Built/Converted: 225
Models Painted: 74
Models Purchased: 191
Tournaments Played: 4
Go-Kart Races Entered: 11

Now this was not intended to stroke my ego, but was more intended as a motivator and budget type of thing for myself. I learned a lot by intentionally doing this, and quite honestly it capped some of my spending as I saw the gap between what was bought, converted/modeled/ and what was painted. I did not play as many games this year. And it feels like I converted less minis, mainly because I stopped taking on commissions. My painting is certainly lagging behind. It also felt like I raced more than 11 races in the go-kart, my highest finish was second in a heat race, no wins, that does hurt my ego. Some of that I believe was equipment related, but we intend to work on solving that over the winter off season.  One thing is certain, I enjoyed the racing more than the tournaments played.  Four tournaments played, 2 of which were at Adepticon last spring in Warhammer Ancient Battles.  I played the singles with my Romans and played fairly well, rather unusual for me, and came away best sports, even more unusual.  Then teamed Mike Butcher, my crusaders with his Saxons, and we played well and the Team that we named Grumpy Old Coots came away with Best Sports, again highly unusual.

As for the blog, today we are at 181 followers, that has increased gradually as I suspected it would. My blog list is growing, and my forum activity is decreasing a bit.

This I find interesting, here are the top ten in posts as they stand all time on my blog along with the number of hits currently:
Review of Conquest Games Mounted Normans:  2,105 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/conquest-games-mounted-norman-knights.html

My first Skaven War Litter conversion: 1,586 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/something-differentskaven-war-litter.html

My first Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine: 1,478 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/nurgle-infested-chaos-space-marine.html

Converting Chaos Warrior to Chaos Space Marine post:  848 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/07/chaos-warrior-to-chaos-space-marine.html

Boba Fett Chaos Space Marine conversion:  737 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/boba-fett-space-marine-conversion.html

Pics of My WAB Imperial Roman Army:  657 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/01/pics-of-my-wab-roman-army-in-full-force.html

My Chaos Warrior Unit and its conversions:  640 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-chaos-warrior-unit-beginning-to-take.html

My Preheresy Iron Warrior - Old Stuff Wednesday:  512 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/old-stuff-wednesday-julypre-heresy-iron.html

One of my Exalted Champions:  469 Views
http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/08/one-exalted-champion-done.html

My First Orc Fight Scene for a unit:   447 Views
 http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/09/orc-boyzfight-scene-1.html

It appears people really liked looking at my take on Conquest Games Norman Cavalry.  I’ve been quite surprised by that. When I wrote that piece I never thought it would receive more hits than my conversion work and paint work. The other thing I noticed was the popularity of Warhammer 40k, it is really quite unquestionably the most popular of the gaming system that I’m working in as it owns the majority of the top spots.  My Old Stuff Wednesdays are certainly popular as they have held 3-4 of the top ten spots throughout the year, but only one stands at the end of the year.

So there you have it my blog. I really need to figure out a better looking banner across the top. I also need to find a cooler looking background.  And I am very much open to suggestions that you the readers may have, I don’t always ignore them.

In the coming year I certainly intend to do Vikings, Spacemarines, more crusaders, more Chaos Warriors, more Fantasy orcs, and eventually some British Napoleonics.