What I won in 2025

 Well, we are going to have a change this year, as I'm stopping down on the crane games.

The costs of import are getting to high, so I'm only focussing mostly still on You Tube / Instagram etc give aways for wargame contests and we'll see where we get.

 

 

Kicking off the year, I won the Underworlds tournament back in january, Mines of Alost.  This resulted in a 25 euro voucher, whom I converted into the Chaos Dwarf Blood Bowl card pack.

 

And also some goodies like the acryll charge tokens and special (edition 1) cards, as well as the Glass trophy.

During the 39th Artisan Contest on Chaos Dwarf Online, I was the lucky winner of the random entrants draw, which gave me this lovely monster for the collection.

 

 

Playing in the third Underworlds tournament organised by the Halle community, we got some lovely 3D printed stagger tokens, while ending in second place got me a nice little certificate and a book on Beer and Cheese.  Because we are Belgians after all...

 

 

The next event was the Mines of Alost II tournament in june, and here I took home a back to back victory for this event, this time a Nemesis format.  We got a sprue of models for participating, some lovely promotional material and as the winner I took home some sleeves, the trophy and the alternate art playboard, as well as a limited edition model as price support! 

 

At the Benelux Clash III two weeks later the results where less impressive, but none the less I brought back another set of alternate art cards for the game as well as some tokens, always handy. 

 

In september, the third edition of Mines of Alost came along, and winning it again, scoring a perfect hattrick, I got some dice in a colour I didn't yet have.  Added to that, we got the cardbinder from Warhammer Crusade and a Space Marine sprue for participating. 

 

End of october, it was an Underworlds event taking place in the local Warhammer store, which I won.  We all received the alternate art cards, and the win also yielded me thr trophy and also some sleeves and the limited art Hidden Aid which I still didn't have. 

 

The Artisan Contest XL over at Chaos Dwarfs Online saw me end third, yet gain the silver price over the second place finisher, who was an organiser.  To that end, I scored this awesome unit of 3D printed Bull Centaurs from Highland Miniatures. 

 

The final Underworlds event of the year, Wagtails at Halle, yielded a token sheet for Warcry, a 15% coupon with the sponsor and a 3 D printed model for ending 3rd, as well as an awesome T-shirt as the community had voted me without me knowing as "Best Underworlds Player in Belgium 2025". 

Total value for the year: 225.00 euro

Lord Ipsqueeck's Adventures: Bobbejaanland Wintert

 Hello everyone, here I am again with a tale of frosty adventures!

 

Because past saturday, we went to the special Bobbejaanland Wintert openings, the first year the park does a special opening period during the winter time.

 

And also the first time daddy was flashing his Diamond Pass around like a real dandy *sigh*.  Yeah dad, I know you have a yearpass, you told me, a million times...

 

It was a nice wintery day (nothing nice about cold I say though),  as it hovered around the 3 degrees all day and all the small ponds where even frozen over.  The large lake wasn't though... otherwise I would have returned there and then and let those old peeps shivver their teeth out!

 

As we arrived around midday, daddy decided it was first time for coffee!  Or fries, as I don't drink coffee yet.

 

Not every attraction was open in the park to start with as a section has been closed for renovations, and some opened later due to the weather.  But El Paso Special, that legendary interactive western dark ride shooter was open, and I love myself some fun dark rides!  So of we went for a trip through the wild west!

 

 Daddy had read that if it was your birthday, you would get a special treatment.  So after waiting in line for 20 minutes, she got this cool button, look at how happy she is with it!  (Word from dad here: we found out later that if you show your ID on the actual birthday, like Noshi's was, you are allowed free entrance.  Something we need to remember for next year).

 

But then in the afternoon the best attraction opened, the boat ride, so I went in immediatly... twice in a row, as the lovely lady allowed me to sit for an additional tour!

 

The Winter Parade passed by, and it had some very lovely figures.  We even saw it pass by twice as we took the lake pontoon to the other side and saw it again.  The fun thing is some even recognised me later in the park due to my Mickey Mouse hat!  So fun, and I shared a lot of high fives and fingertip connections.

 

The "Dromers van Droodal" was a great storytelling moment, and they even performed magic with lighted up fingers, certainly a show I followed really attentively! 

 

In Santa's Village, I did some special missions with the elves, like calling the reindeers, spreading christmas magic and go on the picture with Selfie the Elf, though dad really insisted he joined me for some reason.

 

And then I got to meet none other then Santa Claus himself!

 

It was then time for the big spectacle of the day, as the christmas tree will be lighted in the park.  In the Santa Fe village, a huge tree stands at the center, and the Lord of Light himself comes to illuminate it for everyone to enjoy! 

 

The park was decorated with over 500 smaller christmas trees as well, and a very lovely gangway full of lights and minor touches all round to make it look wintery.   The fact it wasn't to busy at all made it extra cosy, and a fun afternoon out, we spend about 6 hours there and did a few attractions, but mostly enjoyed the shows and parade which where specific to this event.

 

And daddy grabbed a pin as always, this time going for the El Paso Special one as I love the ride so much.

 

So that was the trip this year to Bobbejaanland Wintert.  Will we be going back next year?  Dady and mommy will for certain, I'm personally still considering the fact if it is that cold that I want to come outside, as I really don't like these temperatures... I'm a beach boy okay! 

 

 

 

 

The 2026 Goals: The Year of Underworlds

 After yesterday's overview of what we managed to complete on a goal level for 2025, it's time to have a look at the new year, and a new set of targets for the hobby.

 

 

And the coming year, I labelled as the Year of Underworlds, as I set myself a singular, hardcore goal for this year: grab a Golden Ticket and go to the World Championships

 

The reason is that it just is something I really want to do, as I'm not to shabby a player in this game system and I want to qualify before the game ever comes to an end.  It's not like I'll ever get the chance to do it with another gamesystem after all...

 

To that end, I'm going to turn all my attention to levelling up my game even more, visiting as many events nationally and internationally as feasible (aka, within driving distance), and get all my remaining warbands finally painted up.

 

And complete the "Horthgorn Challenge" of actually winning an Underworlds Tournament with the loveable, crossbow wielding Ogor hunter... 

On the painting level as such, that means I will need to complete still 7 warbands at the moment, mind you I don't own all the warbands over all editions, just the ones I found fun to buy.  No Skaven in sight for example, as the ratmen really do absolutely nothing for...

 

Another thing left over from the first edition, is finally get the White Dwarf painted up which could also be used back then in the game.

 

Now, this means of course I need to get out and play games of my beloved game system, and I set myself a very hefty goal of getting 50 games of Warhammer Underworlds in this year, as well as participate in 10 events over the course of the year for that end. 

 

And of those at least 10 events, I want to take the crown in 3 of them! Because after all, one must be ambitious...

 

I also want to close off the year retaining my number 1 spot in the Warhammer Underworlds ranking on T3, and nibble more to that ultimate goal, becoming number 1 in the website's Hall of Fame ranking, where I'm currently holding second place after Valery Mottet, who benefitted from the Covid period to rake up a stunning 1421 days on the top spot, me now trailing with 413 days ever since I took the first place beginning of january 2025.  So I have to retain it for just under the coming 3 years (!!!) to overtake him.  Seems do-able lol...

 

Now, not everything will be Underworlds of course, because I have two "big" projects lined up this year.  The first is an Escalation League at the club, and if you score the maximum you can end up with 2500 points total.  As I will be joining (as a Reserve Player, being the organiser, so it's not sure I'll play every round) with my Idoneth Deepkin, I want them to hit 2500 points (finally after all those years).

 

The second one is the revival of space ship games at the club, and I'm organising together with Andy a War Fleet (the free agnostic rules from One Page Rules) gameday in the spring.  But also A Call to Arms will be played, and to that end I have two spaceship related goals: paint my Earth Alliance Dawn of the Third Age fleet to 5 Raid (the middle one of the three EA era fleets), and paint 50 spaceships for whatever system and range this year. 

 

Two smaller goals are cleaning up some other projects for the excellent Middle-earth game, with on the one hand painting the remaining 13 members of Thorin's Company, only about 6 years now since I painted Thorin himself and only two others since then.  And get the Lothlorien force to 500 points for using them in Fog on the Ekeren-Downs II in october, a goal carried over from last year. 

 

And that is it basically... nothing more, nothing less that I want to achieve in 2026... 

So, those are the singular but hefty goals for the painting part of the hobby activities, but of course there is some more things that I want to set goals for, and that is the annual viewing and reading targets.

 

For the viewing part, I'm aiming at goals similar to last years, with 20 movies to watch as well as 20 series, as that is a nice limit I have found myself to obtain the past years.  On the anime level, I'm not putting a special challenge in this year, just going to try and reduce the backlog severly.  To that end, I once again am aiming for completing 50 anime series.

 

Now, reading has been on a low level the past two years, and I'm setting my goals as such.  For the rulebooks / books goal, I'm aiming at 10 books, while I'm settling on only 10 manga this year though.  On the culinary level though, the goals remained the same, with 50 beers to be discovered and 10 frituurs to be explored.

 

But the final goal is a bit of a "family hobby": themeparks, zoo's, indoor playparks... the things we love to do with Thorin, and as I'm an avid Coaster Cloud user, I want to visit 10 "check in's" of these this year.  And to add some more collecting to my themepark love, and especially of The Efteling, I want to complete the "'t Smidje" collection of pins.  So far, there have been 8 series of 4 each for them and the 9th just being released for this year, and are not as easy to find, but it is a fine goal.  I currently own 10 out of 36 of them, so let the hunt begin!

 

So that's the set of goals for this year, varied and uberly ambitious, so let's go where we get this year!

The 2025 Goals: the results - How did we do this year

 Okay, short anwer: not to good.

 

The longer answer is more nuanced though, as always a shift in priorities and real life mixing in making it so that I painted over 200 figures for example, yet barely completed any painting goals.

 

What do you mean, unfocussed?  

 

Let's have a look as such at all the goals this year, and where I stranded in the end, beginning with all those glorious painting failures as such! 

 

And yes, the line "sold off the models" can be inserted left and right, but that doesn't matter to much for this oversight.  The first failure as such is the Idoneth Deepkin, whom I wanted to get to 2000 points.  I stranded at 1270 points but the return of Elathain in Underworlds resparked my love for them, so they will be included tomorrow again for the 2026 goals and get some good loving, as I'll enter them in the TSA League and tournaments next year.  The Hedonites of Slaanesh also stranded far short of the target of 2000, ending at 790 points only, but they will be on the backburner for a long time now, with the Helsmiths of course in the line now as well.  What I did succeed in though, was painting up 5 warbands for Underworlds, ticking off indeed at 5 painted, as well as (just barely) finish 5 scenery pieces, the last ones completed just late december with the Spearhead terrain set!

 

There where also some projects that ended up being stillborn in the year, like the Wood Elves for Old World.  They stranded at 210 points of the 2000 points mark, for no other reason then that I just don't like the game.  The same as such is the result for the Empire, whom went to 1637 points before forced to drop out of the Escalation League, short of the 2000 points mark and sold of the models in the meantime.  If I ever play a game of that system again, I have my Chaos Dwarfs after all to do so with. Other stillborn projects, whom I never even touched with a brush over the whole year, where the MESBG Rohan, Combat Patrol Aeldari and Kill Team Voidscarred, and I doubt those will ever see the light of day, the sci-fi models sold to start the Dark Angels *sometime*.  I haven't painted anything for Moonstone either, but I haven't given up on that one yet.

 

The Lothlorien force for MESBG ended at 99 points out of 750, and will return as well tomorrow, albeit at a lower goal, to cater for the Fog on the Ekeren-downs tournament I'm running again in 2026 and be my force there to play.  Which can't be said for the Bolt Action Belgians, as I wasn't able to get to the event I wanted to play them in and if I do the game, it'll be my beloved Italians anyways someday, so they ended at 121 points out of 500 aimed points.

 

Now, with the paint numbers checked, and not many successes, I did however get to my gaming goals, even with the new job I got in january preventing frequent wednesday night Underworlds gaming.  I managed in the end to play 81 games of the aimed for 50, a lot of those being from multiple games at tournaments, but still got about 2 game nights at the club TSA in as well on average.  And talking those events, I wanted to join 10 of those this year, and ended at 13, so that's not to shabby at all either! 

 

And that is the miniature gaming part of the goals, always the biggest part of hobby goals, rounded out for the year, so let's have a look at all the other things I aimed for this year.  Again a mixed cookie bag, with some huge successes and epic failures...

 

I set myself the goal this year to see all the anime that Noshi had already seen, but I hadn't.  While I started strong with the anime watching this year, because night shifts, around may thay started to shift as I began watching other things while assembling wargame miniatures during work, and usually put on some battlereports and such as a background "radio".  This resulted in only 13 out of 40 having been scratched of the list unfortunatly.  A large insurgence though on anime series from october onwards again, mostly with newer series I needed to catch up on, did however just got me near to the goal of 50 watched series, ending at exactly 50 in the end by finishing that last needed one, the most recent Gundam series, just two weeks ago.  At least that was some good backlog reduction!

 

On the movie and series front, both set at 20 for the year, I went well over goal, with 32 movies seen as well as 33 series finished, so that has been a very, very good result.  The reading front however was more of a mixed result, failing hopelessly in the manga department of reading 30, finishing only a measly 8 this year.  On the books and rulebooks front though, I got to 11 out of the planned 5, though most are rulebooks that have been studied I admit. 

 

As always, we round out the oversight with the "culinary" department, and I had set a goal as always of 50 new beers, which was obtained even without visiting any beer festivals this year, clocking off at 97 new discoveries.  The frituur's where set at 10 places, and just by the skin of my teeth I ended at 9 visited, guess that is okay even if I didn't quite make my goal.

 

So there we have it, all the goals of the past year and a tat to many reds on there.  Never the less, for next year I have some very, VERY ambitious ones lined up as well, so check back tomorrow for the whole lot of those!