I don’t really do monthly hobby challenges anymore. While the first Hobby Progress Challenge from the Independent Characters I did pushed me to work on my army, my life and my job means that I’m pretty much destined to fail. And there’s something about that that seems…contrived.

Then I ran across the Wargame Hobby Bingo card from The Rob Hawkins Hobby Blog, and well…I’m sold. I thought I’d talk about it a little bit, and then track my progress as I go. Because why not?

First, the card itself, in it’s blank form:

One of the ideas I liked about this one, vs. some other bingo cards floating around there, is it touches on a lot of different aspects of the hobby, not just model painting. Wound counters, conversion, terrain…good stuff. The general idea is that you can use a single figure, terrain piece, etc. to claim a square (so no buying an painting a monster in 48 hours that you don’t already play to snap up a bunch of boxes all at once…).

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not going to black out the card. There’s two terrain board cards on there, as well as a diorama piece, and those…really aren’t my bag. I like the concept behind them, but for me, at this stage in my life and housing situation, a fixed gaming board is just going to lose to a folding table and a neoprene mat. Others may disagree, and I think that’s awesome – proper terrain boards are still, I think, the best possible hobby play surface, but it’s just not going to happen. Not for awhile at least.

That all being said, how’d we do for January? Fair warning, this is going to be an image intensive post.

LVO panic is good for hobby progress. I’m something of a basing snob, so the free square was indeed free. How’d we claim the other ones?

Paint a Vehicle:

That’d be the Falcon I painted up for the LVO.

Paint a unit, and add scenic bases for all the models:

As mentioned, I’m something of a basing snob, so I’d argue pretty much every unit I paint meets this. For the moment, lets claim it with some Corsair-themed Dark Reapers.

Sculpt something on a model

This one is something I don’t do often, I confess I’m not fully confident in my greenstuff abilities. I’m going to claim it with my Sisters of Silence Oblivion Knight Centura kitbash based on Naeve Blacktalon, where I ended up sculpting some of her cloak to cover up where some obviously Stormcast-y insignias were removed. She’s been a work in progress for awhile, but I finished up her sculpting in January.

Paint a model and incorporate a technique you haven’t mastered

I’ve posted this figure before a bit, but this Farseer model really pushed some techniques I hadn’t done much, including masking irregular shapes, and working with subtle, light airbrush layers. It was nerve-wracking, I reprimed her once, so I’m claiming it.

Add a new unit to your army, and completely paint it before using it on the battlefield:

Technically the Dark Reapers wouldn’t have qualified for this – they saw the battlefield in a test game when they were still bare resin. This unit of Howling Banshees on the other hand…

And finally…

Convert a model (Can be as simple as a weapon swap or a re-pose):

Thankfully, this is another low bar for my army, as most of my stuff is pretty heavily kitbashed from a number of different sources. We’ll claim this square with a model to finish out my Dire Avengers (the guy on the left), who is a union of a Guardian torso, Dire Avenger legs, a Dire Avenger Exarch gun, the Corsair kit, and a punch-dagger from a Dark Eldar Wych (because why not?)

Like I said, January was a big month for me, thanks to “Shit, shit, the LVO is WHEN!?” as a motivating concept. Heading into the next month or so, will probably be looking at scenery, terrain and other accessories. But we’ll see…the flexibility of the bingo card, not having to commit, or lock me into a month-to-month cycle is definitely more amenable to the year of doing whatever the heck I want, painting wise.

Anyone want to join me?

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