Seleucus' Q1 Retrospective
Hello, everyone. We've reached the end of the first quarter of the year 2026, and as such let's have a look at what I've been doing and then reflect on how I'm feeling about it so I can maximize my fun for this year!
Painting
As we can see from the above chart at a glance that my number of painted models this year is well below 2023, when I painted 500 models in a year. That was just ridiculous, and as I was really getting back into the hobby and speed painting for army-scale games I think we can discount it as an outlier. Compared to more recent years we can see January was a little slow, but picked up nicely in February and March.
As I'm pretty well established in the local hobby community from both a 'I know whom to contact to get a game' and the 'I have enough painted models to get a game' perspectives, we can say that I'm in a sort of maintenance or slow grow mode. I painted 32 models over the first three months of this year, and though I'd always love that number to be higher, I am very comfortable with this pace.
However, the numbers only tell part of the story. From a qualitative perspective, I am both satisfied and dissatisfied. This slower pace is giving me plenty of time and room to explore new techniques, with a large focus on NMM, but I'm having trouble getting what I need done for new games. It's perfectly fine to slowly add to my Yu Jing force because I have so much already, but I have only finished two Malifaux models this year!
Moving into Q2 I'd really like to finish the entirety of my Monk keyword for Malifaux (14 models), and my starter box for Eldfall Chronicles (9 models). That would be more than two months production at my current pace, and I'm leery of making such a commitment with escalating work and family commitments, but you don't grow by staying comfortable.
Games Played
One of my goals this year was to play more games, and I'm absolutely doing it! That's gratifying to see, but I think I may have overcorrected a little bit, in that I feel like it's cutting into my painting time. A solve for that would be more focus, but that seems a little unrealistic.
Moving into Q2, I think I'd like to play 10 games over the quarter. Let's include a game of Malifaux and a game of Eldfall Chronicles in there to incentivize my painting. There are some potential hurdles due to the warming weather, and everyone wanting to be outside more after a long, cold winter.
Conclusion
Overall a good quarter of hobby, even if it felt a little stilted towards gaming and I painted less than I feel like I should. I'm definitely looking forward to the next few months and seeing if I can actually meet the goals I set for myself! Does anyone else keep detailed track of their progress? Do you find this helps or hurts you?
