Plans for 2012

With two kids now and a wife who works most weekends, I find I have less and less time to paint, and almost no time to game.  The lack of battle reports up on my site is testament to that.

But even so, I have ambitions for the year to come, and many painting/modelling projects running in parallel. Some of them are doable within 2012, while others are ongoing projects that will likely span years.  Making plans like this will hopefully keep me focused, and prevent me from going off the deep end and buying randomly.

So here are my plans for 2012.  I hesitate to call them goals, since I know that many of these will remain works in progress.

Warhammer 40,000

• Brazen Claws.  I'm really close to finishing these guys now.  This one is going to happen.  Once I finally finish these guys, I'll be able to move forward and work on other things, like...
• Blood Angels.  This is still in the planning stages, but my ambition is to field the Blood Angels 8th Company.  I figure that since the Blood Angels are the "assault" chapter, I might as well go all out and field 100+ jump packed marines.  So far I've only a tiny fraction of that number, and only six of them are painted.  So this one will take a while.
• Raven Guard.  This force I intend to keep pretty small, and I'll mainly be building it in parallel with the Blood Angels.  Every time I get an Assault Squad, the Raven Guard will get any and all Mark 6 equipment, and the rest goes to the Blood Angels.  My intention is to make a small strike force consisting of a few assault squads and a few tactical squads in drop pods.
• Imperial Guard.  For a while I've been itching to get back into my Imperial Guard.  I've been listening for rumors about plastic stormtroopers, but so far that's all they seem to be--rumors.  So until those come out, I'll have to wait.  But that doesn't mean I have nothing to work on--I have many ideas for scratchbuilt vehicles and a bunch of tanks that still need to be painted.
• Orks.  My Ork army will be built around my Ork Land Battleship, which has been spending the past several months hiding in a closet.  I haven't forgotten about it, and I have plans for it, but other priorities have taken center stage.  I hope to get back to it soon.  I have a bunch of orks who will be needed to man this behemoth, and once the Brazen Claws are done I plan to work on some of them.
• Tau.  These guys are all planned out, and when the Tau get a new codex this year, I'm sure I'm going to want to add to my army.  But for now I still have plenty of miniatures to paint--they're just stuck behind all the other projects above.

At this point I need to stay away from starting any new armies.  I had some plans a long time ago for an Eldar Army and a Word Bearers army.  But those are going to have to wait.

Warhammer Fantasy
I have two armies in Fantasy that I'm interested in right now, Vampire Counts and Wood Elves.  Both armies are still in the very early stages with only a few miniatures painted. (one Wood Elf Hero, and a unit of Skeleton Warriors)  I'm sure that these will progress very slowly, mainly as I just paint a few miniatures here and there for variety's sake.

The Lord of the Rings
I still have a ton of these miniatures hanging around, and I'll get to them someday.  I don't have any major plans for them right now, so if I do anything, it might just be a few miniatures here and there to help stave off boredom.  When The Hobbit movie comes out at the end of the year, I'm sure I may want to buy some more stuff...so maybe this will wait until 2013.

Dreadfleet
Yeah, I have it.  Will I paint it?  Someday.  I'm sure this will go the way of Space Hulk, which took me two years to paint after I bought it.

Flames of War
*Gasp* A non-GW game!  This has been piquing my interest for a while now, and I might cave at some point during the year.  But not just yet.  I want the Plastic Soldiers Company to keep adding to their range!  In the meantime I'm trying to resist picking up the rulebook.  I want to check it out, but I know that if I do, I won't be able to stop myself from getting some miniatures!