TheChirurgeon's Road Through 2026, Part 1: Planning a New Year

Hello, Dear Reader! Welcome to my ongoing blog of competitive and hobby progress. If you’re new here, this is a more or less weekly blog in which I talk about my hobby progress and competitive play, from practice games to events. It’s as close as Goonhammer gets to a personal blog, and each week I’ll be talking about the games I’ve played and the projects I’m working on - or at least as much as I’m able, more on that in a bit. This is the sixth year of the ongoing series, and if you want a good recap of the last five years, I’d recommend checking out last week’s post, the final Road Through of 2025.

Goals for 2026

Last time around I looked back on 2025. Through 2024 and 2025 I hit more or less all of my major goals, winning Best Painted at the 2024 Grand Narrative, winning my first RTTs and GT, and scoring a ticket to the 2025 World Championships. Heading into 2025 I find myself in the odd position of trying to figure out where I go from here - the top of the competitive mountain was never my goal, nor is it something I can realistically achieve while having a family and a full-time job.

But at the same time, last year was far from the end of the road. I’m already planning my next events for the new year and working on armies. I may have hit my long-term goals last year but this particular road is long and any battles are mostly imagined and against myself.

If I learned anything from my time lifting weights, it’s that you can’t make real progress without setting goals. Even if you don’t meet them, you need to know which direction you’re going if you want to get anywhere. So I’m once again setting some goals for 2026. Here’s what I’m planning on this year:

Goal 1: Attend Ten Events

I ended up going to 12 last year, and that felt like a solid amount given how many were pretty local. I think the maximum number of weekend/out of town events I’d want to do in a year is six. Going away for the weekend has become easier as my son has aged; weekends as a solo parent have become remarkably easy as he’s been able to self-entertain, play with friends, and generally get his own snacks. But it’s still a considerable cost to take on every other month and my wife understandably does not love when I’m away for an entire weekend. It’s a lot of travel and it’s exhausting and also it kind of kills our my drive/ability to go away on vacation when I’m traveling that much.

And of course as I write this, I already have my next two events lined up - I’m attending the Las Vegas Open Teams Tournament next weekend, and then I’ll be immediately getting back on a plane the following week to fly to Palm Springs for the Games Workshop US Open event there. So by the time February rolls around I’ll already have two of these knocked out.

Off the top of my head, the rest of 2026 will likely include GW events in Dallas and Tacoma, at least two or three local Houston GTs, the Ottawa Teams event, and WCW, which gives me nine events before I start adding in RTTs. That's already more of a packed schedule than I was anticipating!

Goal 2: Another Golden Ticket

I don’t know if I’m going back to the World Championships - more on that in a bit - but I definitely want to have the opportunity to go. Winning a Golden Ticket also means doing well at a GT-sized event, and in some ways is easier - you can often score a ticket by finishing Best Overall or being in the top four of an event where the players ahead of you already have tickets or can’t go. Winning GTs is hard and while I am certainly going to be aiming to do that, I think shooting for a ticket is an easier, just as lofty goal.

As for attending the World Championships well, it’ll depend on when and where they’re held. I mentioned this last year but while I had a good time at the WCW, my family had a much better time when I attended the Grand Narrative, and I think I’d prefer to that this year if they’ll once again be held at the same time in the same place. As cool as the WCW is, the Grand Narrative is just a more fun experience for my wife and son and that matters a lot more to me when it comes to Warhammer-related stuff.

If I do end up attending the WCW, My goal will be to finish 4-4 or better this year. Or win Best Painted. One of those two. Ideally both.

Goal 3: Best Painted at a Big Event

I want to snag Best Painted at a big event this year. It can be a GT and doing this will largely just depend on me bringing an army that can win on Best Painted. That’s a bit of a tall order, in part because that doesn’t always align with my plan of “winning games” - see last year, when I ended up on Death Guard most of the year. My Death Guard are painted well, but they’re far from my best army and they don’t tend to win Best Painted at bigger events.

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

Goal 4: Finish my Emperor’s Children

I started working on my Emperor’s Children last year when the book released but never finished them. There’s a lot of work I have to do here but I’m pretty confident that once I’ve finished they army they’ll be my best painted by a considerable margin. I just have to actually finish them, and to be honest, painting them takes a lot longer than painting my Night Lords somehow. But I’ll get there!

Goal 5: Run the Nightmare Hunt

On that note, I have more work to do with my Night Lords! I’ve been working on Plague Marines and Noise Marines for the army, and at some point we’re going to get new Raptors when the Murderwing Kill Team drops, and I’m sure I’m going to need to paint those. So while I thought I was done with the army last year, it turns out I actually have some work to do with them. I’m not at all sad about it, and I’m looking forward to running a Nightmare Hunt army at least once this year.

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

Goal 6: Red Corsairs

That new Huron Blackheart model looks amazing, and the reveals so far look dope. I’m going to be painting them anyways, so this is likely going to mean painting a Red Corsairs army this year, albeit a smaller one than previous years. I’ve already got fifteen of these guys painted, so I’m looking forward to doing more and adding vehicles and the like. Not sure how hard I’ll go, but I’ll do enough to field an army at least.

Contemplating the official scheme as he decides which colors he wants to use.

Goal 7: One Real Game with the Boy

Finally I want to get in one real game of Warhammer 40k with my son. Not a fake rules game where we gloss over stuff, but a real game with the actual full rules. We may go light on some things but I think he’s getting to the point where I can work him up to a real game and I’m going to try to do that this year. At the very worse I’d like to get in a few games with my son - after a lot of hobby progress in late 2024 and early 2025 we didn’t do much this year, playing a lot of HeroQuest instead. I’d like to change that in 2026.

Goal 8: 50 Articles

Last year I committed to 52 articles and delivered. That was a lot and while I think I can do that again this year I’m going to say 50 is my goal and then give myself room to come up short or overshoot. I can always split big events into multiple articles if I need but generally I enjoyed having a weekly column to keep up with - it gave me some great motivation to try and get in a game every week.

Goal 9: 100 Games

On that note, for my final goal I will once again be aiming to play 100 games in 2026. That’ll put me on par with 2025, in which I ended up playing about 105 games total. That’s an average of two games per week and I think if I hit that number I’ll also be able to stay on top of things enough competitively to accomplish my competitive play goals. Events will help with this a ton as well - if I attend ten events, that’ll be a minimum of 30 games and likely to be more like half of the games I need to play during the year. So these are pretty intertwined.

Games

Well, I played some games. I can't talk about them yet. Just know that here at Goonhammer we commit to testing the cool new stuff before we review it. Otherwise, my week was pretty quiet. Christmas in the Jones household is more about Lego than Warhammer these days, but maybe if I accomplish my goal of getting my son into 40k more that will change next year. We'll see. He doesn't know this yet but I ordered one of those Space Marine helmets last year when they were announced, thinking he'd get it for his birthday, then it turned out to not be shipping until January. So that'll be a fun surprise when it arrives. Look for him to be running around in that thing at this year's Grand Narrative, hopefully.

Hobby Progress

Credit: Robert "TheChirurgeon" Jones

I have hobby progress to report! I’m currently working on some stuff I won’t be able to talk about for another few weeks, but I can show off the most recent secret stuff I did - I’ve been working with the new Cataphractii models from Horus Heresy, making them into some more modern Iron Warriors terminators. I don’t care for the tiny little power fists on the new Cataphractii but the new models are cool otherwise, so I’m swapping out their fists for big Chaosy fists I have laying around from the old 2005 plastic Chaos Terminators.

I’m also working on Poxwalkers - I’ll talk more about this next week but I’m bringing Death Guard to the LVO Teams event and in order to run my Vectorium list there I need 30 Poxwalkers, which means painting five more. So they’re currently on my painting desk. I haven’t really started on them yet but they paint up fast so I don’t expect to struggle with them. I’ll likely get them painted early next week.

Next Week: LVOTT Prep

2025 was probably my best year for 40k and while I’m not likely to top it again I’m certainly going to attempt to hit those same highs. I had a great time playing competitively, traveling, and working on the hobby and I met a lot of great people along the way. I really enjoyed writing this column and want to keep my streak up for as long as I’m able in 2026.

So whether you’re a new reader just finding this column for the first time or an old reader coming back, join me on my journey. If there’s something you want me to talk more about, let me know. And if you see me at an event, come say hello - I love talking to people I meet at events. Or if you're just one the patrons on the Goonhammer Discord - one of the best people in this hobby, bar none - you know how to holler at me.

It's good to be back! I'll see you next week.

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