I’ve got many projects that require my attention, and in trying to finish them all I won’t finish any of them. To keep a constant and noticeable progress, I’ve decided to focus in a couple of things each month. Introducing: the Monthly Hobby Challenge!
As one of this years resolutions of mine is to stop playing with unpainted miniatures, I’ll start with a challenge focused on that objective.
This March marks the start of laGuarida‘s second season of Blood Bowl. Last season I played with half-painted Orcs, this time I’ll go with humans.
My first goal for the February Challenge is to paint the 12 Human Players from the new Blood Bowl boxed game. And if I’m being realistic, that should be my only goal. 12 miniatures in a month is more than my average last year.
But…
I’m introducing a couple of bonus goals (which most likely will end up being part of next month’s challenge).
My first bonus goal is to paint a Malifaux Outcast Master. Probably Parker Barrows. I bought it on Black Friday, and I’d like to have his boxset fully painted before its regular release.
My second bonus goal is to paint a Hordes Trollblood light warbeast. I’ve joined a Warmachine/Hordes campaign at the club, where we start with 0 points and each territory we control gives us an extra 5 points. Which I find is a really good method for beginners like me to gradually learn the game, and allow us to slowly paint our forces.
And with this challenge, I’ll introduce a new feature to the blog: Achievements. Currently I’ve got a lot of Hobby Projects open, and just one finished. That doesn’t look good, and demotivates me a little.
My plan with the achievements is to gamify a little my hobby, and also break it into smaller objectives.
I’ll have two kinds of Achievements:
First, the time based achievements. An example of this is the February Challenge, paint a set of miniatures in a certain amount of time. Another example would be finishing an army before a tournament. Time based achievements can fail if the goal is not met before the set time.
Second, milestone achievements. This will be the bulk of the achievements. It’s both a set of small objectives to work towards fully painted armies and big, noteworthy accomplishments with no time pressure.
I’m hoping the Monthly Challenges will be a fun way to keep a constant painting progress. If by the time I have to do my 2017 Second Quarter post I’m playing with only painted miniatures in the three games I’m focusing right now (Malifaux, Hordes and Blood Bowl), that’ll be a total win for me. What do you think about monthly challenges and achievements? Is there any way you gamify you hobby projects to make them less tedious?