Garfy’s 2025 Hobby Resolution and Recap of 2024

Celebrating the last 12 month’s of hobby output is an annual tradition here at Tale of Painters. Painting and photographing models is my creative outlet and this post collates a whole year of my artistic expression and hard work into a single place. I’m going to take a look back through the year and share how many of my 2024 hobby resolutions I succeeded in completing, I’ll also share my 2025 hobby resolutions and as a bonus, I round up all 18 paint recipes cards I made this year at the end of the post.

Last year I wrote this small list for my hobby resolutions:

• Paint a Tomb Kings army #newyearnewarmy
• Play a 1500pt Legions Imperialis game (I have to paint 500pts)
• Complete my Disciples of Tzeentch by painting a Lord of Change

So how did I do? Well, I did paint quite a few units of Tomb Kings, I’d say it qualifies. I did play Legions Imperialis but it wasn’t 1500pts, it was much smaller, so probably a fail. As you can see from the picture above, I did not paint my Lord of the Change, so another fail.

January

I painted a large amount of models in January, but they were simple skeletons so it was just mass batch painting. I probably spent more time scraping mouldlines then I did actually painting.

February

The Tombkings carried over into February with another two regiments painted. I was quite excited with the Flesh-eater Courts releases so I eagerly painted three new heroes to add to my army. My Legions Imperialis collection grew with the addition of a pair of Warhound titans.

March

I was lucky enough to receive Ushoran to paint from Games Workshop and I loved painting this mad King, what a centre-piece! My Iron Warriors grew substantially with a whole host of units that I painted during March.

April

April was a mixed bag, I returned to Tomb Kings and painted some classic Liche Priests, Flesh-eater Courts were expanded by me painting a small warband, I finished off a few infantry stands for Legions Imperialis and I started painting Darkoath Savagers to add to my Slaves to Darkness.

May

May is always a busy month for me, so I didn’t get much painting done. Two additional models were painted for my Slaves to Darkness army, a Thunderhawk Gunship joined my Iron Warriors and after half of my Stormcast army was relegated to Legends, I embraced the Stormcast changes and painted a test model in a new scheme.

June

June saw me come to a crossroads. Do I continue with Slaves to Darkness, or do I jump straight into the Skaventide launch boxset and paint more Stormcast? As you can see from above, the Stormcast won, with just Abraxia being added to my Slaves to Darkness.

July

July took a really strange turn when Games Workshop approached me to produce one of my diorama photographs for the Warhammer Community website. With the help of Dunk we produced an epic looking ruined hive infest with Genestealers. I managed to finish off some Stormcast from the Skaventide set as well. It was a busy month!

August

During August I was sent some more Legions Imperialis and the Blood Angel army set. My Iron Warriors are easy and fast to paint so it was a no-brainer, it brings my Iron Warriors army to 3500pts! August was the start of something big for me, I had this thirst that could not be quenched unless I painted red models. My first ever model I ever painted way back in 1994 was a Blood Angel and now in my fourth hobby decade it was time to paint my 4th Blood Angel army, starting with Lemartes and Astorath.

September

I had recently been to Griff Con and I found the Spartan Tanks for sale, these have been out of stock for a while so it was good to acquire these and get them painted. Speaking of out of stock, most of the Tomb King range has been out of stock for quite a while and as soon as the Bone Giant was in stock I ordered it. I painted one back in the early 2000s, so this was a complete nostalgic trip for me. I’m just waiting on the Tomb Scorpion to come back in stock now. More Stormcast was painted bringing me closer to completing the Stormcast half of the Skaventide set. I painted 5 Death Company with jump packs to use in my first game of 10th edition against Dunk. I managed to scrape together about 1250pts of painted models. The game went great and I managed a win.

October

I doubled down on the Blood Angels this month painting the Incredible Death Company Dreadnought, Sanguinary Guard and Sanguinary Priest that GW sent me. I also picked up issue 1 of the Combat Patrol Magazine just so I could kit bash the Terminator Captain with the Blood Angel Terminator parts from the upgrade sprue.

November

I was getting serious this month, I had a 1500pt game booked in with Dunk and I needed to paint more to hit the points limit, the Stormraven is 280pts and would help me move Terminators across the battlefield. It took me 3 weeks to paint and that shows in my output for November. The game against Dunk was brutal but a load of fun. His army is entirely mechanised and I planned a huge deep strike assault hitting him all at once on turn two and I just bounced off his armour. I spent the rest of the game slowly picking off most of his tanks whilst he racked up the victory points. It made me realise I need some units for Objective Control. I had some half finished Reclusians on my desk, so I used the final week of November to get them done and complete the Stormcast half of the Skeventide set.

December

I took a break from Blood Angels to paint the new Nurgle Warband, Grandfather’s Gardeners, at the start of the month. I remember my Plague Bearers being easy and fast to paint, but these were totally different, they’re absolutely littered with details. It’s really cool warband though, you’re basically getting a Herald model, a champion, a standard bearer, regular Plague Bearer and a mini drone which makes a nice Familiar. The Blood Angel break didn’t last long and as I mentioned in November, I needed bodies so I painted up some Blood Angel scouts from a Killteam set that GW sent me ages ago and I painted 5 Assault Intercessors with jump packs from the Army Set they sent me earlier in the year. That’s 15 bodies added to my Blood Angels army in a single month.

2025 Resolution

In the 13 years of doing these recap and resolution posts I can’t think of a single time where I kept a hobby resolution and completed it and there’s a reason! I don’t know what Games Workshop’s release schedule is and there is always something new and exciting models that are released and it always scuppers my plans, so I’m going to keep my resolutions free and loose.

• Finish my 2000pt Blood Angel and play a game of 40k with it
• Paint a new Legions Imperialis army
• Paint a Legions Imperialis gaming board.

This post marks my 13th annual recap post. Find my previous resolutions for 2023 here, 2022 here, 2021 here, 2020 here, 2019 here, 2018 here, 2017 here, 2016 here, from 2015 here, from 2014 here, from 2013 here and from 2012 here.

Bonus Recap and Resolution

During 2024 I documented all my paint schemes with these handy recipes cards. I made 18 of them! They’ve always been free, I don’t ask anything for them, no Patreon, no Kofi nothing. I feel strongly about sharing the knowledge and enabling people to be able to paint their models so another bonus resolution for 2025 will be make more recipe cards and continue to share them for everyone to benefit from.

Happy New Year everyone and here’s to 2025 and a new #WarhammerChallenge.