While it may already be a little late for the third part of my look back at 2013, bear with me while, having already pointed out my favourite releases as well as the most amazing models and hobbyists of 2013, I wrap this up and tell you about a couple of my personal hobby moments in 2013:
Looking at the bare numbers, 2013 may not have been my most productive year: I only painted around 45 models (compared to 2012′s 90) and converted around 72, further adding to my backlog of unpainted stuff. That said, I feel that at least the first half of 2013 was fairly productive, and some of the 45 models I managed to get finished were complex and/or huge enough to count for several regular models, in any case. At the same time, it’s true that during the second half of the year, hobby time became more sparse as RL issues took over, but I think that every hobbyist is familiar with this: It just happens, from time to time.
Nevertheless, looking back on the stuff I managed to finish, I am reasonably pleased with myself. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Khorne’s Eternal Hunt
Ah, yes, my World Eaters. The one hobby project it always comes back to: Above, you can see the World Eaters’ 4th assault company, more or less as it looks right now: While I only managed to add some 15 models to the collection, the army does look slightly more impressive than its 2012 incarnation. I also tackled some pretty interesting projects, among them a squad of custom Chaos Spawn, some traitorous Space Wolves and my converted Heldrake, the Hellrazor.
And I tried to come up with some additional characters for my army, trying to build suitably World Eater-esque versions of the Dark Apostle and Warpsmith, respectively:
As a matter of fact, my heavily converted Warpsmith, Huntmaster Deracin, is clearly one of the 2013 models I am most proud of:
Assembling this guy from a huge pile of plastic bitz was just as fiddly as it was ultimately rewarding!
By sheer coincidence, one of Deracin’s own engine of destruction is the other World Eaters model I am most proud of: the Wargrinder:
Inspired by Chris Harman’s excellent kitbashed Decimator Daemon Engine, the Wargrinder was quite a bit of work, and also basically the first time I tackled a walker conversion of this scope. To be honest, I am immensely pleased with the result, and the model makes for a pretty cool centre piece of my World Eaters! Although some people really didn’t like the head… 
Anyway, check out these posts, in case you’re interested to learn more about this big boy.
A Legion of one…
And while we’re on the subject of models I am really proud of, let’s not forget my favourite AdMech monstrosity:
The creature called Legion is one of my most involved conversions so far, and arguably one of the projects that really made me step outside my comfort zone. The model and the history surrounding it also double as one of my personal crowning hobby moments of awesome in 2013: PDH was cool enough to involve me into an international hobby project featuring lots and lots of supremely talented artists producing excellent models for a very special game of…well, Necromunda, I suppose, if you wanted to be technical about it, set aboard the mysterious Arrke. The models were to be given to none other than John Blanche afterwards, and the moment when JB himself sent me a picture of Legion going about his business on the banks of the underground rivers of the Arrke will remain a moment that’ll be hard to surpass!
Fun fact: While I did myself to make Legion (essentially a devolved amalgamation of several Tech Priests and explorators of the Adeptus Mechanicus) as grotesque and disturbing as possible, the more recent AdMech releases by Forgeworld are even more disturbing. Seems I was overtaken. Oh well, I still love this guy!
In fact, I really loved the whole project, and waxing poetical about it comes naturally to me. Instead of indulging my urges, however, let me just point those of you who want to read the whole story here.
The wonderful world of INQ28…
…is still going strong, and has been for the whole of 2013! While my own output of INQ28 characters may have been a bit lacking, I did at least manage to build a fairly important NPC for last year’s Inqvitational, one Inquisitor Zuul: a radical Xanthian and enemy to Inquisitor Tybalt:
Zuul was built to resemble a particular piece of artwork, which was a novel and interesting challenge. And sending him off to the Inqvitational on his own meant I was once again in the delicious position of receiving pictures of my model doing its thing during a game:
Zuul is now a permanent part of PDH’s collection, and while his prospects may look bleak (being pursued by a fanatic puritan will do that to you), I am looking forward to finding out whether the old rascal still has some surprises up his sleeve…
Learn more about Zuul’s creation and fate here.
In any case, the INQ28 scene with its many talented members remains one of the most inspiring influences in my personal hobby life: From Commissar Molotov’s and PDH’s work on the Inqvitational and Jeff Vader’s constant stream of awesome new minis to the fruitful exchange of background ideas with DexterKong, INQ28 simply rocks — even in those cases where I don’t have anything to show for it…
Da Boyz
Another thing I am quite proud of is how I managed to build and paint a complete Orc Team for Blood Bowl in a pretty short amount of time (and mostly from leftovers, no less) — the Orkheim Ultraz:
Working on those guys was a wonderful change of pace, and an opportunity to build some rather humorous models for once! And the brilliant recipe for painting Orc skin I discovered on A Gentleman’s Ones really made the painting side of things a lot of fun as well!
If you want to learn more about the Ultraz’ antics, take a look here.
The rest…
Of course, there were even more great hobby moments in 2013: Being immortalised as a member of the Night Lords 15th company by Brother Heinrich for example:
Or AgnostosTheos building 30k versions of two of my World Eaters characters:
Click here for the whole story.
When it comes to the blogging side of things, WordPress was nice enough to compile a report on 2013 for me, so in case you’re interested, take a look:
Click here to see the complete report.
All in all, it has certainly been an eventful hobby year! And with the blogosphere currently abuzz with all kinds of crazy news and developments, it doesn’t look like that will change anytime soon. So here’s hoping that I’ll be able to keep up and keep going. There’s certainly enough on my plate — now if I only had more time…
In any case, thanks for taking an interest in this blog and my ongoing hobby projects during the last year! Here’s to a new year of hobby-related craziness — in fact, I’ll be seeing you next week with some actual new content! Promise!
Until then, as always, thansk for looking and stay tuned for more!
Filed under: 40k, Chaos, Conversions, Inq28, Pointless ramblings, World Eaters Tagged: 2013, 40k, award, awards, chaos, chaos space marines, conversion, eternal hunt awards, INQ28, inquisitor, khorne, khorne's eternal hunt, release, world eaters
