Happy New Year!

A bit belated maybe, but happy holidays! Apologies for the lack of posting in the last month- Christmas, plus a general burnout from the Ogres and work didn't leave me with much time do much hobby related activities over the past month. While I didn't receive any hobby related gifts this year I did have several opportunities to reward myself over the past month, including:

• Battlefoam! Man, I have been waiting to say good bye to my egg cartons for a while now. They're a great and cheap way to move your infantry around but boy do they take up space! The Ogres didn't quite fit in their boxes as a few of my conversions don't even play nicely with ranks, but still, anything is an improvement over a box with some Easter grass.
• Baneblade!
  
  
  I discovered my first super-heavy on the consignment shelf at my LFGS assembled, primed in my army colors and half off. Ding!
• Flip video camera! While my camera has done OK in the video department I've never been overly impressed with the quality of the film. So far I've been satisfied by the Flip, and you'll have to let me know what you think about tomorrow's video battle report.

But of course, as the title of this post says, it is a new year, and with a new year comes New Year's Resolutions. Last year I made a few related to this blog, so let's see how I did:

1. Finish painting the models that I own and use.... hah. Hahahahahahahheee.... *degenerates into weeping*. Suffice it to say that I still have plenty of sprues scattered about the apartment, not to mention jumped into an entirely different game system's army with the Ogres. Still, I managed to get tons of painting done this past year so I'm satisfied on this account.
2. My blogs will update three times per week. Miserable failure for my personal blog, but what about Defending Humanity? I did 95 posts this past year, which only averages out to a bit less than 2 posts per week. Looking back I was strong for all but three months (including this past one... oy...) where my posting dropped off as my interest in painting and playing dropped to zil. Not much to do about it- it's how I go about things.

So what to do for this year? How about these:

1. Create a tournament army for 40k. I have a lot of Guard, but nothing that I would say is an optimal tourney build. As a way to put a capstone on my Guard buying frenzy I'd like to build and hone a tournament ready list, redoing and improving paint jobs on those models to go for the maximum scores possible. I like competition, I've gotten used to mechanized infantry, and I've got a pretty cool idea of where to start...
2. Expand into a second 40k army. This has been a big one on my mind for a while. I'll occasionally start scribbling army lists for other codexes or fantasize about awesome conversions that I could make if I only used some different rules/models. This is a thing to do especially this year as it's the first that I can legitimately afford to do this hobby rather than sacrificing something else to do so.
3. Fill out the choices for my Ogre army. The Ogres... hopefully they'll get a new army book soon so I can feel excited about them again. I have some cool conversion ideas for the big fatties but a combination of lack of players and lack of power is holding me back. Hopefully this resolution will power me through and get me to finish up an army that I can be proud of.
4. Get over a hundred followers. By hook or... well, pretty much by hook, I'd like to make this blog take off a bit more. Breaking a 100 followers seems like a good milestone to shoot for.
5. Increase my YouTube presence. I have a few devoted followers for my videos but, like the blog, I'd like to increase this by offering additional and more regular video content.

Well, that's probably enough to keep me busy for this year. There will be a battle report tomorrow, but for now I'd like to offer a general thanks to everyone who reads this silly blog and an even greater thanks to those  who've managed to read their way through this wall of text. Take care, and the Emperor protects.