In roughly a week, I’ll have been a part of the Wamp community for a whole year, so I thought I’d take a break from my usual blog posts about Crowdfunding and wander around some analysis of my first year here.
Firstly, I joined up because Sparks asked me to join the Portal team to write Crowdfunding articles, which started with issue 33 (that makes 4 articles and counting). I’ve written a few more articles than magazines (Issue 36 is actually 3 articles stuck together I believe) and they’ll keep coming as long as Adam asks for them. In that time there has also been 4 blog posts on the subject of Crowdfunding a miniatures based project, with a fair few more lined up to be written in the future.

With regard to forum interaction, I’ve just passed 1200 posts, which averages just over 100 a month, which means I’ve been spouting rather a lot of nonsense, occasionally something on topic and very occasionally a finished model or two.

Now to the models. First up, I joined Wamp when I was slowly re-entering the hobby after 3 years at University where I barely did anything after the first term of first year. I only really started looking through things again after starting to write about Crowdfunding, particularly the Beyond the Gates of Antares project for my dissertation but since then I’ve backed 10 successful projects – 3 before I joined and 7 since, with the three I backed before all being received and photo’d here on Wamp (Loka from Mantic, Empire of the Dead – Requiem from West Wind Productions and the Games and Gears double headed brushes). I’ve also received one of the 7 I backed since I joined – 2 Stencilis stencils. Hopefully ArcWorlde will be with me soon as I’m looking forward to it a lot.

When I joined Wamp, I had a very narrow selection of models. Other than a half dozen from Hasslefree, Hansa from Warlord and DSC and then the Viktorias metal box from Wyrd, everything was GW. You guys here have helped me open my eyes (and wallet) to expand my horizons to include over a dozen different companies, and that’s before the crowdfunding stuff! I’ve probably spent far too much in the past year, but on the flip side, I also spent three years only buying occasionally so I’m sure it all balances out in the end (I hope!)

Now to the reason everyone is supposed to be here for – painting. I’ve painted more in the last year than in the last 4 combined. While I haven’t tracked everything since I joined up, I’m up to 13 since the start of January which is my most consistent performance for a while. I’ve found that I’ve also been entering more comps. Between this forum and others I hit 3 or 4 one after the other around the turn of the year, and now have plans for the Red Box Games ’14 Comp as well. I do have a long way to go with regard to painting, in terms of both quantity and quality but little things like starting to do more with my basing than just painted sand (such as using resin bases) and learning how to chip vehicles, thus leading to enjoying painting a tank for the first time, make me feel that there has been some improvement, and that is something to build upon.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my time here so far. It’s a wonderful community to be a part of full of talented, helpful people and I’m looking forward to spending even more time here.

Onwards to the next year!