Review: Space Dinosaur Miniatures 2020 and a Look Forward to 2021

While 2020 has been a wild year, what with the pandemic and wildfires and elections and all, but here on the Space Dinosaur Miniatures I've been having a great time. A large part of this has been the working from home, which has resulted in an explosion of hobby work. The blog has grown from 3 to 8 posts a year to breaking 50 posts in 2020. I've added a new army to the bunch, and several armies have grown a bit in size. So lets take a look back at 2020 to see what I got done, and then we'll look to 2021 and what I have in store for you dear reader. 

 

At the start of my current blogging streak back in April, I covered the rather large hobby backlog I had developed. The image below catalogued my hobby inventory, as well as their status of Not Started, WIP, and Complete. At the bottom were percentage of completion of each individual force. Now, at the end of 2020, the catalogue has gone from: 

To:

A lot more greens and yellows this time around, as I've painted almost 300 models this year. In the first image of this post are almost all of the models I painted this year, minus an Eidolon of Mathlann that I sold earlier. Now a look at each individual army and what they gained this year.

The Skaven gained a Warplock Engineer, 4 rat ogres, a packmaster, 5 skryre acolytes, and a warpfire thrower. A bit of a shame that the detolf doesn't have enough room for these guys. Due to the lack of space they sit in the closet, and as the old saying goes out of sight out of mind, and it shows. The Skaven are high on the list of armies that need a little more attention in 2021. 

Up next are some goblins. The Gloomspite Gitz got the Warhammer Underworlds Warband Zarbag's Gitz, plus an arachnocauldron endless spell. There's not much to this "army" in terms of my collection, and really they mostly serve as enemies in skirmish games more than anything. With Dungeons and Dragons set to have a larger presence in the next year, you'll see them pop up fairly often as low level enemies. All that's left for destruction is Mollog's Mob, another Underworlds warband. 

The Cities of Sigmar have a few different armies, split between two human armies and an elven one. Up first is Heldenmarch, which got a General, Battlemage, Cogsmith, a Helstorm rocket battery and its crew, 10 halbediers, and 10 handgunners. Plus one sneaky swordsmen who accidentally got mixed in with the Halbediers. There's a lot left to go for this army, with a ton of troops, cavalry, and special units and characters to go. 

The Amber Fiefdoms, or Har Huron in game, got 10 Lothern Sea Guard/Dreadspears, 5 Drakespawn Knights, an Archmage, and a Dreadlord on Black Dragon, who will get an article here in the near future. For an army that was facing the Ebay chopping block, it's made a major turnaround as the Archmage and dragon both were completed in the past month. 

Arequine/Bretonnia didn't get a lot this year, as my focus was on getting the more playable factions up to snuff. 5 Battle Pilgrims and 2 archer's stakes are all that they got, plus a Reaper Miniatures Apothecary. Once some of the other major factions start winding down expect to see them pop up more often on here. 

Speaking of major factions winding down, the Slaves to Darkness backlog took a major dent. This year I painted 6 Raptoryx from the Warcry starter set, 5 Chaos Chosen that I converted from Blood Warriors, 10 Chaos Warriors of the old variety, 5 Chaos Knights of the same, and a Chaos Lord on Karkadrak. All that I have left are 5 Chaos Knights and 10 Chaos Warriors from the new Start Collecting box, the Iron Golems and Untamed Beasts, and 6 furies. I expect to finish this army by the end of next year. 

The perennial favorites here on the Space Dinosaur Minis, the Seraphon received lots of love. In total: an Engine of the Gods, Oldblood on Carnosaur, Oldblood on Foot, an Astrolith Bearer, a Skink Starpriest, 3 Ripperdactlys and accompanying bloat toad, 2 salamanders and associated skink handlers, plus 20 skinks were completed. Not shown are the 20 Saurus warriors that got rebased from squares to rounds. There's still a lot more to go as well. 

Next we have Stormcast, who have crossed the milestone of having more painted models than not. I now have 1 Lord Arcanum on Gryphcharger, 3 Raptors and 3 Aetherwings, a Cellestar Ballista plus crew, a Knight Incantor, a Lord Arcanum on foot, a Lord Castellant, 5 Evocators, 9 Sequitors (still looking for one more to round out that unit), 5 Judicators converted/proxied from Castigators, and 5 Liberators armed with swords. I'm pleased with the progress I made on the army this year, and I think that they may near completion in the next one. 

Nighthaunt got a massive boost this year, and are now playable as a 1000 point fully painted army. I got 30 Chainrasps, 8 Glaivewraith Stalkers, 2 Dreadblade Harrows, 10 Bladegheists, 2 Chainghasts, a Guardian of Souls, and a Tomb Banshee finished. Plus they all got a basing facelift, shifting to a cooler, darker color to emphasize their ghostly nature. 

The Legions of Nagash took pride of place this year, with the my miniature of 2020 - Nagash. He had been sitting half finished for over a year, and this year I decided to grit my teeth and finish it, and boy was it worth it. Nagash got some friends to accompany him as well: a Vampire Lord, a Necromancer, 10 Direwolves converted from Chaos Hounds, and 20 Skeletons. Of course, Nagash can also be used in the Nighthaunt army. 

Armies weren't the only thing getting painted this year. I gave the Malign Sorcery box a run for its money, almost completing all the spells within: the Purple Sun, Malevolent Maelstrom, Emerald Lifeswarm, Soulsnare Shackles, Gravetide, Chronomatic Cogs, Burning Head, Gnashing Jaws, and Umbral Spell Portals. I even painted and magnetized the Balewind Vortex. The whole box will definitely be finished this time next year. 

And last but not least we have the terrain. I only got one major piece of terrain done, the forested hill, but I got a plethora of scatter terrain done. Expect to see a lot of this upcoming posts. 

That't all I got done in 2020! If you made it this far, thanks! Looking forward to next year, I can say a few things. First, if the shutdown starts to wind down, expect the level of output to drop accordingly. I got a lot more free time this year with not having to commute and all, and should that go away that means less time can be spent on the hobby. Secondly, expect the variety of posts to go up. I'll be covering more games in Throwback Postdays, have even more seasonal events like Spooktober, and debut some Dungeons and Dragons gameplay as well. But you can always expect lots of Age of Sigmar content.

Well that's a wrap for 2020, at least painting for now. I'll be taking a little bit of a break here to enjoy the holidays and maybe get some games in, but I hope you all have a great time celebrating in whichever way you can. There'll still be posts here though, so expect me to keep writing into the next year.

If you like what you've seen from my blog, let me know! Its a small blog right now but I want to inspire others in the same way as some of my favorite blogs do. If you can, tell me what you'd like to see more of in the future, or even new kinds of posts down in the comments, or message me, or reply to me on whatever form of social media I share this on. You get the gist. 

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! 

-The Space Dinosaur