A plague rat from my giant pile of Reaper Bones. He's delightfully gross in appearance, and brings my grand and likely final total for the year to 97. This is a substantial increase from the previous year's 68, which was the worst year on record, but a far cry from my heyday from many years ago. I strongly suspect I'll never be that productive ever again.
There are a couple of things that contributed to the uptick in painting. First is having a friend who organized a bunch of wargaming Saturdays and got me painting up miniatures for that. Second was the release of the Battle for Vedros box set, which I painted in its entirety so that my son and I could play. Third was another friend of mine getting me into Kings of War, which got me painting up figures for both his army and mine. And then there are all those Reaper Bones...
I played a surprising number of games in 2016, at least for me. Even half a dozen is a lot with my normal schedule. That's why it is hard to imagine was 2017 will be like, since the organizer of most of those wargaming afternoons moved away this past Autumn. My son's interest in wargaming was fleeting as the allure of peers and video games drew him away.
That leaves most of the initiative on me. I feel like the Vedros set was a pretty good sweet spot for me: twenty of so figures that were similar enough to do some assembly-line work but different enough to keep me from getting bogged down. The other thing I need to discover is that mental place where I can focus and get back into painting again. It's too easy to just binge-watch TV instead of painting miniatures, but one is actually good for me. Less TV, more mental quiet. That's a good goal for 2017, even if I don't get 100 miniatures painted.