Annual review of 2018, preview of 2019

Yet another year on the chaosbunker and with 2019, we're heading towards the 10th year of this blog and my 23rd year in the hobby. Chaosbunker continued with the bilingual content, offering the articles in both English and German. And similar to last year, this year was quite busy, again, both in wargaming and private life.

Following up on last year's wedding, I became a father of a daughter in late summer this year and took a couple of months parental leave. Thus taking the chance to set up a small spin-off blog, Little Big Adventures, covering some of the experiences in being a father (the blog is only available in German).

That time period staying at home and having a guest author becoming a regular author helped pushing the output on here quite a lot. Thanks to Daniel to the outstanding support and adding quite a lot of paint to the content here. Of the 140 articles we published this year, almost half were reviews - 68 to be precisely. Those were more reviews than articles in total last year. Earlier this year I set up the goal to reach 500 likes on facebook until the end of this year. We managed to grow organically quite beyond that set goal, a solid 600+ likes were achieved until December.

As travelling and visiting shows, conventions and other wargaming events is an important part of the hobby for me, I / we continued on that this year. The year started strong with our own Operation Sealion 2018, extending this year's trip to Salute and adding a day in Nottingham to it as well. Visiting Warhammer World once again, along with the new Warlord Games Store and Mantic Games.

But we haven't just been to the UK. Visits to the Warhammer Fest Europe (sort of Games Day returning to Germany), first time to the Rhein Main Multiversum and Duke of Bavaria were there as well. Unfortunately I wasn't able to schedule Crisis for me, and went to Spiel in Essen instead, but that wasn't a proper substitute and I won't go to that show again anytime soon. Crisis will be on my to-do list for 2019 again, and it looks as if I will finally make it to Tactica next year. So excited about that!

Similar to last year, around half the articles were reviews in 2018. Hitting the 150 mark on reviews available in English and the 200+ in German. Still solid coverage on the World War 2 / Bolt Action parts, but increase of fantasy and sci-fi compared to the other years. My favourites among this year's reviews were the Marder III plastic kit, Warhammer Underworlds Shadespire and the Killzone terrain kits for Kill Team, especially the Sector Mechanicus.

I won't try to top the 68 reviews next year. I'll still cover reviews, but I want to move to focus more on actual hobby content and getting project done. Some of the reviews are quite time consuming and I could probably get quite some things painted in the same time, so I'll re-evaluate the ratio. But thanks to Daniel, there were quite a lot more painted miniatures to see, beside my Ersatz-StuG, King Tiger and half-painted halflings.

So what to expect for the new year? Well, it will begin with some coverage of my cooking activities of the last few days, to tie in with my other kitchen mischief. Then we tried out Osprey's Black Ops in a small battle report. Modern Combat was picked up this year and will be continued in the coverage. I have Blood Red Skies and further aviation in preparation. The Inq28 series will be extended, and I'll try to participate in a personal P250 Oldhammer challenge with my oldest friend, but more on that early in January. I prepared some backdrops for the further coverage, and I plan to use them!

What is left to say? Well, with the turn of the year, new wishes and resolutions are ahead. And obviously, for any wargamer it is to actually do more within the hobby, like painting and gaming. That was already mentioned above. But what am I looking forward to in 2019?

• Agincourt Cavalry by Perry Miniatures (already pre-ordered)
• E-Series / more Paper-tanks in 1:56 (a little bird told me, I'll be lucky next year)
• Reducing the amount of unpainted miniatures in my collection, (either way, by painting or selling them)

I found my wishes from 2016, and I think a lot of them are still current.

• Less useless novelties
• Consolidation in the market and stronger participants
• More Interwar miniatures
• A more thoughtful use of crowdfunding
• Maybe modern combat (sculpted the Perrys or Paul Hicks?!)

I'd love to see more unity in the tabletop scene, especially in Germany. We lost two distributors this year with the closing of Fantasyladen and Fantasy Warehouse, making it more difficult to acquire specific ranges and kits. With the uncertainty of the Brexit and a majority of the products coming from the UK it is going to be interesting which consequences this will have for the hobby (and some of the shows) in Europe.

Well, that's it for 2018. Thank you very much for the broad, positive feedback we received this year. It really motivates to go the extra mile. We're looking forward to 2019, adding more hobby content to the mix and especially more painted miniatures from my side.