It already seems odd to be looking back, after I’ve already looked forward and set my goals for 2021, but, it’s time to close out 2021 with a look at how I did on my resolutions for last year.  As usual, I’ll go through my resolutions one-by-one and see whether I completed them.

Here it goes:

Assembly Backlog – PASS

This one is always a lot of fun for me, as I always have stuff to build, it’s always a challenge to keep up, and I always have fun with it.  One the one hand, I didn’t really make as much time for model building this year and it was a challenge to schedule when I did.  On the other hand, that time was precious, and it made the models I did get the chance to build better.  I also feel like I’ve learned some new techniques this year, which has improved the quality of my construction.  This is a weird thing to think about, since I’ve been building models for almost 20 years now, but I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to improve and learn some new tricks.

Sell Off Models I Don’t Plan On Using – FAIL

This one was simultaneously very close and also not even close.  I got rid of a fair handful of models and stuff this year that I never plan on using.  In that sense, I did pretty good.  Still, when it came to actually pulling up Ebay and listing stuff, I didn’t actually start.  That step of actually taking pictures of everything, writing descriptions, deciding on an initial price, for whatever reason, was too tall.  I’m sure I’ll get around to doing this eventually, but it’ll likely take some reserves of mental energy.

Build a Terrain Table – FAIL

This was my big resolution last year, and I feel really good about how much I did get done, though, if I’m honest with myself, it’s not done which was a bit of a bummer.  At the end, it really came down to the painting step.  In this case, it wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, quite the contrary in fact, it was simply making the time to do it, which became very sporadic near the end of the year.

Of course, this isn’t just going to languish – I will be finishing it and have already made progress in the last couple of weeks.  There will be pictures (somewhere) when it’s done and Brooke and I get the chance to play our first game.

Finish a Campaign Game – PASS

For my campaign game this year, Brooke and I played through Etherfields.  I really enjoyed this game – it’s large, but its theme was deep and expertly executed which made for a very interesting experience.  What’s more, the mechanics of the card play felt really good, which made playing the game a lot of fun too.

Create/Implement a Box Organization Scheme – PASS

When it comes to box organization, I really bounce off of standard inserts.  While I understand their use for shipping, for whatever reason, I’ve never liked them for box organization when storing and playing a game.  That’s why I’m always creating tabs, boxes, and other things to store my game components once I inevitably throw away the insert.  This year, not only did I want to organize one of my bigger games, I also wanted to ensure I had a pattern for that going forward.

And, to accomplish that, I used Betrayal at the House on the Hill as a template.  While my printer was mostly busy with terrain, I did get the chance to print out some boxes and get this one all organized.  I also wanted to fit both betrayal games into a single box, which was a bit of a challenge since Betrayal Legacy is an in-progress campaign game, but it actually worked pretty well.  Not only did everything fit nicely into one box, there’s room for the components to move around a bit as the campaign plays out.

Paint Some Board Game Models – PASS

With all the terrain painting, I apparently thought I also needed to paint some miniatures…  …But I did succeed at this.  I wanted to see what kind of “sundrop” I could do, so I painted up a few models from Descent: Journeys in the Dark, then did the core box minis from Tainted Grail.

For this, I’ll admit that I’m not going to run out and paint all my minis this year.  They turned out pretty good, but I’m not sure that the result was worth it.  The zenithal undercoat worked pretty well, but (as expected), was pretty speckly due to the fact I was doing it with spray paint rather than an air brush.  And I was pretty unimpressed with the GW contrast paints – they were pretty inconsistent in terms of how they worked, and they darkened things up a lot.  Also, I found them to be sticky, which totally threw me off.

If I were to try it again (and I might), I may try to airbrush on the zenithal undercoat, then just do something like a thin wash or ink rather than the contrast paint.  I’m not sure whether that time will come, but it’s something I’ll have learned from this experiment.

Make 25 Different Bread Varieties – PASS

As usual, I’m still making bread pretty regularly.  To make 25 different varieties though, was a bit of a stretch – I had to think about what I was going to make and what stuff I had made previously.  With a 35-36 available, I had plenty of room for crossover, but I think I did pretty well with 29.

While I definitely enjoyed the variety, this year I’m looking forward to not having to worry about what breads I have made before deciding what to make at any given point.  I feel like I usually do pretty well about keeping variety up without this resolution, but it was a good experiment to try for a year.

Verdict

Overall, with 5/7 this year, I feel pretty good.  My biggest disappointment was my gaming table, as that was definitely my most ambitious, and I thought I could get that done within the time frame.  Still, looking back, I’m pretty happy with what I was able to accomplish in 2021, and excited to see what I can do in 2022.