Gaming Resolutions for 2014 and An Ellyrian Reaver

I hope everyone had a great Christmas, and I wish everyone the best for the new year.

It's New Year's Eve, which means that it's resolution time.  Before committing myself to a bunch of goals, let's take a look at last year's goals:

1)  Take a Painting Lesson:  Check this one off as positive.  I had the chance to talk to and watch two really good painters at work, and I picked up a few tips that will hopefully improve my scores.

2)  Get Another Horde of White Lions Painted:  Check this one off as well.  I can now field two units of 30 lions.  With the new rule changes, however, I tend not to use two hordes. That said, I'm hoping to drop a unit of 50 on the table at some point.

3)  Get a Full Blown Caledor Army on the Table in Time for Brawler Bash: I got half of this one.  I've posted a shot and have since added a dragon themed skycutter.  The army looks sharp and has scored well at the tournaments in which I have used it.  I did not, however, get a new display board finished.

4)  Play Teclis at a 7th Edition Tournament:  Of course, Teclis was the ultimate 7th edition cheese, but I did take him to Scarab Con.  I probably didn't place as highly as I should have considering the list I was using.  I also didn't find tossing six dice at spells over and over again particularly fun or satisfying.  Alas.

5)  Construct an Alith Anar Army:  I struck out on this one.  I made a list with some proxies and played a practice game against Paul.  It was a fun army to play, but I got distracted by other projects.

If you are keeping score at home, I completed 3.5 out of 5 of my goals.  That's a much better success rate than those that I set for my general life (I was 0-2 there).  We shall see how I do with my 2014 goals, which I think are a bit more challenging than last years:

1)  Finish My Elf Army:  Every time I think I'm finished, they keep pulling me back in.  That said, once I finish the following, I think I'll be done:  an honest dragon to frost phoenix conversion, one more dragon skycutter, one more eagle dragon, 3 units of reavers (pictured below),10 sisters, and a Carmine dragon.  (The model tally sheet for goal 1:  4 large models, 15 cavalry, 10 infantry).

2)  Get a Daemon Army on the Table:  I really want to take my time and put together a well painted daemon army, complete with resin bases.  I don't have a specific list yet, but my vision involves getting the following finished:  great unclean one conversion, 2 heralds of tzeentch, a herald of nurgle, blue scribe conversion, 30 plaguebearers, 20 horrors, 12 bloodletters, 9 plague toads, 2 skull cannon conversions, 2 burning chariots, 3 plague drones, and resin bases for all of them. (The model tally here will be 1 large model, 65 infantry, 13 monstrous cav/infantry, 4 chariots).

3)  Complete a Display Board for Both Armies:  The display boards in the Mid-Atlantic tournaments have gotten crazy good.  I really need to upgrade mine.  I have two really good ideas, but I'm not sure if I have the skills to pull them off.

4)  Get Five Tables of High Quality Terrain Completed:  I want to be able to better support some of my tournament organizers, and it seems when the tournaments get really large terrain seems to be a big issue.  I have some nice pieces, but I need to collect a bit more (looking at some river sets, some more GW hills, and some modular forests).  I also need to paint 4 of the GW building sets that I have. (The model tally here will be 4 GW buildings and 5 GW hills)

5)  Qualify for the Masters Again:  I think the Masters tournaments have great potential to unit the various scenes across our country, and it's really exciting to be part of that.  It's only going to get more difficult to qualify, and I'm not sure that my personal life will allow me to attend as many tournaments as last year.

6)  Organize a League and/or Tournament:  This is something that I've been thinking about for some time, and I'm hoping to try my hand at this aspect of the hobby.

7)  Blog More:  I like having a record of my gaming thoughts (it amuses me to see how excited I was about Tomb Kings, considering I sold the army before it ever really saw the table), and the occasional comment is nice as well (thanks to Da Masta Cheef for his frequent comments here!). I'd like to get at least two posts a month and maybe join a larger network.

Looking back over these, I think I will be pushed to get them all completed.  Hopefully, I'll keep my motivation high, get everything finished, and have a great time doing so.

I'm going to keep a running tally of everything I have to finish this year:

0/5 Large Models; 0/75 infantry; 0/15 cavalry; 0/13 monstrous stuff; 0/4 chariots; 0/4 buildings; 0/5 hills