2013 Year Ending - My Hobby Review

And so 2013 is soon coming to an end. This will be my last post of this year. The year like last seems to have flown by. Maybe its just that I'm getting old or something.

Much like I did last year, I have decided to do a sort of summary and a comparison of sorts. So I pulled up that post and took a look at it. Numbers are fascinating sometimes, must be the engineer in me, I continued the Hobby Activity Log you can see on the right. The final tally:

                                        2013     2012     2011

Models Built/Converted: 258       258         225

Models Painted:               161        46           74

Models Purchased:           225      181         191

Tournaments Played:          3          5              4

Go-Kart Races Entered:     59       72             11

I don't know how I did that Models Built/Converted. I stepped up the painting a bit, with the help of a lot of Vikings, that I have yet to get a good camera to take pictures of and post on the blog. I somehow purchased more models, and the majority this year were not Games Workshop models, but were Gripping Beast once again. I played less, due mostly in part to the closing of our local game place and openning of one that I really cannot afford to be seen in. I somehow raced fewer races but attended more racing events. I most have lost count somewhere, but I did injure my back and busted up a hand pretty bad over the summer.

Now as I have said before, this was not intended to stroke my ego, but was more intended as a motivator and budget type of thing for myself. I have learned a lot by intentionally doing this. I started the blog back in April of 2009 and prior to that spent tons of time posting on forums. I believe it has capped some of my spending. My gameplay has dropped considerably, because of not going anywhere to play and then I'm racing during the best time of the year to be outside. I converted less minis, but built a ton of models mainly because of my work on Historical armies and the large size of them. My painting is lagging behind again.

Last year I raced the full season locally on the oval in the modern left turn only (LTO) racing go-kart, and won the track championship. This year I missed a 6 races on the oval and finished 5th in the points, with a few 2nd place finishes in the Feature races, but no win on the oval. That did not surprise me as I was more focused on the sprint tracks and vintage karting, and it took probably a month on the oval just get our new chassis figured out. I jumped into the vintage kart for some sprint track (similar to roading racing but a smaller scale) and won the at Springfield, which was extremely cool. My dad and I were pretty successful in the Vintage karts win 4 out of the 5 events this season and finishing 1-2 at our home state track. I also raced in my first grand prix street race, something that I will never forget.

Two tournaments played at Adepticon last spring in Warhammer Ancient Battles. I played the singles with my Vikings played pretty well. Then I teamed Mike Butcher, my Vikings with his Saxons, and we played well. That was good fun.

As for the blog, today we are at 278 followers compared to 254 followers last year at this time, and the blog had 181 followers in 2011, that has increased gradually, as I suspected it would. My blog list is growing, and my forum activity has decreased drastically and probably will continue to decrease even more.

I continued to develop my Youtube Channel which the videos are all about my racing. I added a helmet camera which turned out to be a great thing for my family and friends and I. Much of my family and friends cannot attend the races, especially the out of state ones and this has given them a cool experience. Its also helped me as a driver. So I purchased another camera that should have a bit better video, but I have yet to use it on track. I also started up a Facebook page for my race team, that will help with separating the miniature hobby from the racing hobby. Which I'm sure many of you are in favor of. But please take the time to "Like" our Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Welte-Racing/505442252871148?ref=tn_tnmn
It helps with us attracting sponsors and such.

　

TOP TEN POST LIST:

2012 had the top ten viewed posts as:
#1 - FireForge Games - Teutonic Knights Review: 5,224

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2012/03/fireforge-games-teutonic-knights-kit.html

#2 - Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine: 4,063

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/nurgle-infested-chaos-space-marine.html

#3 - Chaos Warriors to Chaos Space Marine: 3,518

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/07/chaos-warrior-to-chaos-space-marine.html

#4 - Gripping Beast Plastic Viking Hirdmem Review: 3,332

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/gripping-beast-plastic-viking-hirdmen.html

#5 - Something Different....Skaven War Litter: 3,058

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/something-differentskaven-war-litter.html

#6 - My Chaos Warrior Unit Beginning to take shape: 2,548

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-chaos-warrior-unit-beginning-to-take.html

#7 - Boba Fett Space Marine Conversion: 2,495

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/boba-fett-space-marine-conversion.html

#8 - Old Stuff Wednesday - July - Pre-Heresy Iron Warrior: 2,210

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/old-stuff-wednesday-julypre-heresy-iron.html

#9 - Space Wolf Scout Conversions: 2,105

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/09/space-wolf-scout-conversionsusing-chaos.html

#10 - Khorne Chaos Space Marine Conversion: 1,590

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/khorne-chaos-space-marine.html



So 2013 has the Top Ten posts as follows:

#1 - FireForge Games - Teutonic Knights Review: 8,261

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2012/03/fireforge-games-teutonic-knights-kit.html

#2 - Gripping Beast Plastic Viking Hirdmem Review: 5,640

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/gripping-beast-plastic-viking-hirdmen.html

#3 - Nurgle infested Chaos Space Marine: 4,726

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/nurgle-infested-chaos-space-marine.html

#4 - Chaos Warriors to Chaos Space Marine: 4,318

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/07/chaos-warrior-to-chaos-space-marine.html

#5 - Something Different....Skaven War Litter: 3,559

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/something-differentskaven-war-litter.html

#6 - My Chaos Warrior Unit Beginning to take shape: 3,500

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/06/my-chaos-warrior-unit-beginning-to-take.html

#7 - Old Stuff Wednesday - July - Pre-Heresy Iron Warrior: 3,238

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/07/old-stuff-wednesday-julypre-heresy-iron.html

#8 - Boba Fett Space Marine Conversion: 3,040

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2010/06/boba-fett-space-marine-conversion.html

#9 - Green Stuff Cloth Tutorial: 2,995

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/12/green-stuff-cloth-tutorial-space.html

#10 - Space Wolf Scout Conversions: 2,944

http://psychosispc-themadhouseworkshop.blogspot.com/2011/09/space-wolf-scout-conversionsusing-chaos.html

It appears people really liked looking at my review takes. I’ve been quite surprised by that. The other thing that is always shown is the popularity of Warhammer 40k, it is really quite unquestionably the most popular of the gaming systems and I really have not done anything in 40k for years. My Old Stuff Wednesdays are certainly popular as ever also, as they are routinely high in hits on a monthly basis, even though only one is in the Top 10, there are a number that are just outside of the top ten. And one of my tutorials climbed in to the top ten for the first time.

So there you have it once again, my blog. Good bye to 2013.

I am very much open to suggestions that you the readers may have, I don’t always ignore them.