2021 hobby goals: progress so far

In January, I have posted my hobby goals for this year. Here's a small update on how it is going so far. The original January post can be found here.

When it comes to assembling miniatures, everything is going great and I am confident that not only I'll manage to achive my goal, but beat it completely and finish this year with no unassembled miniatures. Since January, I have built: 

• Start Collecting: Slaves to Darkness set (16 miniatures)
• 20 Kairic Acolytes
• Ogroid Myrmidon
• Custom Tzeentch hero (built by converting one of the Varanguard models) 
• Khagra's Ravegers WHU warband
  
• Unit of Kurnoth Hunters (3 models)
  
• Unit of Tree-Revenants (5 models)
  
• Converted Branchwraith out of the Branchwych model
• Abaddon the Despoiler 
• Unit of Havocs (5 models)
  
• Hellbrute
• Unit of Allarus Custodians (3 models)
  
• 2 units of Custodian Wardens (10 models total)
  
• All miniatures for the "Cursed City" board game (around 60 miniatures in total)

In my post back in January, I was not considering building Custeds models - however, as you can see, I have built a lot of them, so the only remaining Custodes unit at this moment is Vertus Praetors. I am still waiting on my Tzeentch stuff to arrive (the order got misplaced and has been lost in the Warp since February, but hopefully I will get it somewhere in June). At first, building that many models seemed a bit initimidating, but I spent 20-30 minutes almost every day to build a few smaller models or continue assembling a larger one. I did this usually during my break at work, or early in the morning, while the rest of the family were sleeping. As you can see, A LOT can be done in multiple small sessions.

When it comes to painting, there's a lot less progress here, because the recent job change and the day-to-day dynamic leaves me exhausted (and I tend to prioritize free time on excercise and reading). However, there is still progress and it's likely that I will hit my goals for this year. Since january, I have worked on the following models:

• I've finished one Varanguard model and I'm very close to finishing the first unit (out of the two). For some reason, while I like these models a lot, I struggle a lot when it comes to painting them
• I've finished unit of 3 Allarus Custodians! This wasn't among my goals for this year, but since I really love Custodes models and they are so easy to paint, I managed to paint this unit quickly.
• Kurnoth Huters are progressing nicely and I think I have nailed the new colour scheme.

I expect that I will struggle a lot less when I finish this first unit of Varanguard, because I've been working on them for a while and I now just want to have them finished. But in the same time, I don't want to do a half-assed job, but maintain the consistent quality (similar to my other minis). It seems that I have picked up a colour scheme that I really do not enjoy painting that much - this is a clear sign that I have to choose something else for the scond unit. Allarus paintjob was nice and easy, and I enjoyed it a lot (and it helped out to paint some WH40K minis, because I am working on Age of Sigmar models most of the time). 

So far, I am really satisfied with how everything is going. I played only one game of WH40K and a few Kill Team games so far, but I hope that will also improve during the rest of the year.