2018 – The 7 tasks of Shuck – an update…

You may remember that last year I was set ‘The 7 tasks of Shuck’. (You can find full details here) – a number of hobby tasks to complete before the end of the year.

If you don’t remember them, here they are in summary format:

1 – Every single board game that hasn’t been played yet has to be played.

2 – Play at least one game with every painted army in the collection as of 01 Jan 18 (i.e. armies that get painted during 2018 don’t count).

3 – Make sure there is sufficient terrain to go with every currently painted army.

4 – Make sure there are no “orphan armies” in the collection (for these purposes, all of Neil’s regular opponents’ armies’ also count – i.e. because Dave has WW2 British, then Neil’s WW2 Germans aren’t orphans); but otherwise get an opposing army for it. Or get rid of the orphan army.

5 – Have a good suitable ruleset on hand suitable for every playable army by the end of the year. And that means playable for the size that the army actually is, not the desired end state (e.g. if Neil acquires a dozen old GW Squats, then a ruleset suitable for that, not a version of WH40K that is intended for 50 or so models per side).

6 – Enter three tournaments / games days (online counts) and/or put on demo games.

7 – And the big one: Have all miniatures painted by the end of 2018 (not including miniatures which come as part of boardgames and not including anything bought during 2018); getting/paying other people to pay them is fine, simple paint jobs are fine, but based and ready to play (In genres/periods where more than two fully painted armies or factions are owned, only two opposing factions need to be painted up e.g. Neil has US Army, USMC, NVA and VC for Vietnam – only the miniatures for one US faction and one Vietnamese faction need be finished).

So, how did I get on?

1. Whilst I don’t think I achieved playing every single game in my collection that hasn’t been played yet (lets face it, games like Deadzone haven’t come out of the box in two+ years…) I did play an awful lot of games in 2018 – I played 66 different games a total of 205 times (Which means that I played a game roughly every 42 hours in 2018 – if you say it like that, it sounds a bit scary!) Dilution Theory plays a big part in this, as I simply have too many games to play each one even once in a year – perhaps this is a sign that I need to cull my collection even further?
2. Totally failed this – I didn’t even manage to get my 15mm Germans onto the table for a game of Chain of Command last year…
3. Whilst I didn’t achieve this, I am well on the way. My Japanese scenery did well last year, and I bought a load of resin scenery for Burrows and Badgers (plus a host of different scratch build material). Maybe this year?
4. I think I might have actually achieved this one, although thinking about it I have a 3mm Cold War British Army which really needs another home. Most of my armies these days are bought in pairs, so perhaps that is cheating…
5. I think I had achieved this right at the start, although I need to actually catalogue what rules I would use in each case – this will need a blog post on it’s own…
6. The one task I have a huge tick against! I entered tournaments/gaming days for Test of Honour, Gangs of Rome, Saga and Keyforge last year, as well as running games of Dux Britanniarum during the OML6 gaming day.
7. ROFL. No.

 

Whilst these tasks may well run into 2019, it’s clear to me that my hobby does need another consolidation. I have to face the fact that keeping all the figures/games that I do in the hope that I might get to play with them ‘at some point in the future’ is unrealistic.

So perhaps my first ‘Task of Shuck’ for 2019 is to work out what in my collection I want to keep, and what I need to move on from.