Now, with 2019 out of the way I can finally talk about what I’ve been up to recently. It’s been a lot and the world around hasn’t been boring about it either. I imagine everyone is like this now, but if I had known what a year 2020 would become…
Ok, so the year for me started out extremely optimistic. Even though I was still a bit shell shocked from the whole divorce ordeal, I was really happy with my new home:
So I decided: New Year, New Army! The Pile was going to have to wait again. I needed something fresh to get excited about and a new way to play the game. I settled on Slaanesh Daemons at the local warhammer store birthday and got the slaanesh half of Wrath and Rapture.
The store manager told me he was going to organise a growth league and that, starting february, I could use the army to play an Age of Sigmar game each month. I was very hyped and all set to build and paint a quick new army.
I was so productive, that I pretty much finished the whole thing (aside from a Soulgrinder I still had to purchase) on the 12th of March. It was the exact weekend before the lockdown happened.
After the lockdown everything started to become a bit unreal. Life began drastically changing. I had to cancel my trip to warhammer world as well as my music festival tickets. I also had to keep working a lot seeing as I work in the pharmaceutical industry. Everything around the covid pandemic still feels unreal to me and even as I’m typing this I’m still afraid of the massive impact I feel this event is going to have on my future. Like a lot of people, I try to cope by concentrating on the things that are still possible, but I’m also kind of bracing for the worst. Making sure I’ve got my life together seems even more important now in 2020 than it did last year.
Hobbywise I decided to dive back into the Pile. I had a lot of heresy stuff as well as random small projects left to complete, so the images below are a good timeline of what I painted from the start of the lockdown until the current date.
Daemon Prince I bought to support my local store during the crisis. 
Also needed some chariots in my army. 
Almost 2000pts of Slaanesh. 
One cannot simply paint 1 eternal warrior. This was a cool unit to paint. 
The Fellowship of the Ring was made to order back in the summer of 2019. Finished it now in 2020. 
Two porphyrions for titanicus. 
Soulgrinder when GW started shipping again. Slaanesh army is finally complete! 
5 Custodians from the Pile. 
Aleya from the BL release to go with my Sisters of Silence 
Random Primaris marine I was supposed to enter in a painting comp before corona. 
RG praetor from the Pile. 
RG bikes from the Pile. 
Blackshield Jetbike from the Pile. 
Veteran squad. Last RG I’ll be doing for a long time. Had a lot of fun with these.
Now, as the world is starting to walk the long and winding road to normality, I have even played a couple of games again (at 1,5m distance):
First post-lockdown game against Stephan’s titanicus. 
During lockdown, my brother Niels started a Seraphon army. 
Dirk finished his mechanicum during the lockdown. 
Another titanicus game against Michael. 
I even used my Daemons in a game of Heresy against Naut. 
Niels already finished 2k of Seraphon at this point. 
Also played another Heresy game against Naut to test out my custodes unit: They died fairly quickly from destroyers and a praetor-led command squad.
Now, finally, this weblog has arrived at the current day. The last thing I’ve finished from the Pile were the shattered legion vets and with them, the only things left there are Skaven, Word Bearers and the marines from Indomitus. Three projects, AoS, Heresy and 40k that I’ve decided I’m going to take my sweet time to complete. With the pandemic still controlling our daily lives I want to consolidate everything a bit and that includes my hobbies. Organising the stuff I have and fully enjoying the projects I’m working on. Hopefully from now on I’ll be able to post something new around once a month. Whether that’s Skaven, Word Bearers or 40k will be up to the mood I’m in.
This final thought also brings me back to what I was getting at the start of all these recaps: wargaming and painting miniatures is a great way to glue your life back together when it breaks. It’s fun, creative, social, rewarding of your diligence, able to match your pace and always has something new to find out about. I feel that as long as I manage to stick with it, it’ll help to carry me through whatever these roaring twenties have yet to throw at us.
Thanks for reading!
Daan of War 