Cronch's Road Through 2026, Part 1: Catching Up

Hello, lovely readers, and welcome back to my semi-regular journey through hobby, the Mortal Realms, and sometimes just life. After an elongated winter break I’m back to fire up the forges once more, so let’s get straight to it. We’ve got quite a few things to catch up on, so it’ll be a bit all over the place this time.

Life Catchup

Honestly, towards the end of last year I burned out pretty hard. Work is tough, I wasn’t managing my ADHD or general mental health very well, the world is hell, and I was busy all the time thanks to overcommitting. All of this meant living in a messy flat, and I have noticed in particular that a messy hobby room really limits my hobby motivation. Painting is one of the main ways I keep myself centred, so it’s a bit of a vicious circle. Anyway, it’s clean and tidy now after a big effort, and my hobby motivation is higher than it’s been in a long time! Outside of the hobby sphere I’ve been trying to take more time for exercise and focusing on myself, and make fewer commitments so that I can preserve my downtime.

You may remember that I lost my cat, Fili, quite unexpectedly in the middle of 2025. After a few months of a very quiet apartment, I had the opportunity to catsit Loki, who belongs to a friend of a friend, over the Christmas period. I won’t share a picture of him here seeing as he isn’t mine, but he is a very sweet, fluffy cat who was great comfort for chilly evenings of catching up on TV and feeling festive.

"Look at that subtle tabby colouring. The tasteful length of the tail. Oh my god, it even has a pink nose." Welcome, Gizmo! Credit: Rich Nutter

Catsitting Loki led me to realise that I’d really missed having a furry friend about the place, so just over a week ago (at the time of writing) I adopted Gizmo! He’s your classic rescue moggy, roughly estimated at 3-5 years old and very friendly. He’s very attention-seeking and loves to stand on keyboards. I’m really enjoying having him here!

Age of Sigmar

I’m 11 games in for the year already! 10 of those from events, and one learning game with my friend Martin vs his Tzeentch, which I won’t cover in detail. We’re running a little AoS league for the first half of the year at the local store, which is a great motivator for getting weeknight games in.

Mercia Madness IV

Another local two day GT run by my friend Dan at my local store. I won’t go into exhaustive detail, but I had 5 great games here, going 4-1 (losing to a Raptadon-heavy Seraphon list). This was enough to net me 2nd place, my best 2-day result yet! Really pleased to see my performance continually improving, and looking forward to the next one of these in a couple of months.

Everybody loves a trophy. Credit: Rich Nutter

Brotherhood

As is now a firm tradition, I joined up with my chums from Rollmodels to do the Brotherhood team tournament at Firestorm Games in Cardiff, running the same Sentinels of the Bleak Citadel Stormcast list that I’ve been using for a while. We had a great time, although I feel like we got a bit unlucky with the draw - the pairing was random within win/loss brackets for the teams, so despite underperforming we ended up paired against Team England in round 2 and Team Lit in round 4, both very capable teams full of great players. Which isn’t to say that our round 1 and 5 opponents didn’t give us a run for our money too! In round 3, the last round on Saturday, we unfortunately had a bye due to uneven team numbers. This was a bit of a shame as we had all travelled for 5 games, but we were also tired as heck so it was actually quite nice to have a drink and soak in the atmosphere a bit before heading off for an early dinner. We were each given a small voucher for the store as an apology for the bye too, which I thought was a nice way of the TO’s making it up to teams that were missing a game.

Personally, of the 4 games I played I went 3-1, so a 4-1 on paper I guess. I’m pretty happy with my performance here, winning my games vs both England and Lit. I think I might actually be alright at AoS, who knew. It was a great weekend, as usual, and I hope we’ll be back at Brotherhood again next year!

The Shame Pile

Towards the end of last year I was really starting to feel a bit conflicted about the amount of unpainted stuff languishing in my home, so for January I decided to not buy any models. And I succeeded! This is quite rare for me. In February so far I’ve relented somewhat, picking up a few things, but trying to buy mainly things that I know I want to paint soon. I don’t think it’s reasonable or necessarily healthy to go on an extended abstinence quest, as I am definitely a person that responds well to a little treat, but trying to be a bit more mindful and taking all of January to plan some purchases rather than impulse spending was definitely useful.

I’ve been taking the opportunity to clear some kits out from the pile of shame via Vinted and my local pals, and although I’m not a fan of the complicated “Hobby Golf Scores” you see going around, with bonus points for themes or full sets, I am now committed to at least tracking models purchased vs painted and sold, and trying to keep that number below 0 net. We’ll see if I succeed, it doesn’t really matter if not ultimately, but less clutter = a tidier mind = happier me.

Display Painting

I’ve really enjoyed going to painting competitions in the past, and count myself as fortunate to have come away from the Warhammer Fest Golden Demon with a Finalist pin. Even since then though the standard has skyrocketed, and I constantly feel a pressure to paint armies and get through the shame pile, so I’ve not really indulged this side of myself for quite a while. At the start of the year I noticed that there was a Sir Coates Painting Masters being held at Beachhead in Bournemouth, and most importantly it was all happening across one day which meant that I could do it with a single cheap overnight. I settled on a model quickly (Urkhan the Dark Warden, the Warhammer Day commemorative Chaos Lord) and got to subassembling and painting.

The main thing here is: I had a blast painting him! It’s really heartening to sit down and actually be able to render your ideas onto a model and have it come out looking more or less how you’d hoped. There were a few things I ended up rushing a bit, such as the cloak and the fur, but ultimately I was happy with what I produced. I got to practise my glazing on the armour, I painted probably the best head I’ve ever done, and got to try some new skills like gap-filling an already painted model after joining subassemblies.

Urkhan the Dark Warden. Credit: Rich Nutter

I turned up to Beachhead, got him entered into the cabinet (along with some Helsmiths stuff in the other categories) and browsed the show until results time. Unfortunately, this time round I wasn’t a winner. In the moment, I was pretty crushed to have not even made the finalist cut with anything - at the Painting Masters at UK Games Expo last year I had picked up a couple of finalist pins for some of my “tabletop” models, so whilst I could understand not making the cut with the Helsmiths I was disappointed that my display effort also hadn’t met the standard. No shade on the judging, or the other entries though - There were some brilliant and well-deserved finalists and winners, and ultimately some of my rushed areas let me down in comparison to them. A lesson to let a piece take the time it needs.

After a long drive home, I was grateful for a detailed debrief with a very talented friend! We’ve looked at some theory, and identified some target areas for improvement, and ultimately the job now is to keep practicing! I’ve got a few other shows booked in, so I’ll look forward to continuing to talk about fancy painting through the year.

Other Hobby

I did find time for a few other bits! Just before Mercia Madness I managed to finish off my reinforced block of Reclusians, meaning I could finally attend with a fully painted army.

Stormcast Eternals Reclusians. Credit: Rich Nutter

I’ve also been collecting a Konflikt 47 army, and finished off a character and some zombies for the Germans.

Konflikt 47 Totenkorps. Credit: Rich Nutter

Konflikt 47 Stahltruppen Officer. Credit: Rich Nutter

For a bit of fun, I picked up some MDF boxes and turned them into scenic baseplates to use with backdrop books. At the moment I’ve made three - one in a vaguely ‘Eavy Metal style generic basing, which matches my MESBG collections, a swamp which suits my Maggotkin and Stormcast armies, and a smaller one for Konflikt 47/Trench Crusade and the like. I think this one is my favourite, with liberal use of grime and Krautcover “Tale of Grimdark” bone-laced basing mix.

Swampy photo box. Credit: Rich Nutter

Grimdark photobox. Credit: Rich Nutter

Grimdark photo box results. Credit: Rich Nutter

Finally, I’ve been digging back into my Warmachine collection to get a bit more of it painted. I really love this game and the miniatures, and although chances of playing seem somewhat slim locally I do want to get a Gravediggers army finished this year. This model is Alexia, Queen of the Damned, a modern resculpt of an older mercenary character, and she was a fun evening of painting.

Alexia, Queen of the Damned. Credit: Rich Nutter

That’s it for this time! See you in a couple of weeks for more updates, thanks for reading.

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