Happy 2025, Spent Glory homies! Today we are going to talk about New Year’s Resolutions. Plenty of hobbyists across the Warhammer experience (and in many other systems and communities as well) have a loose tradition of making some New Year’s Resolutions for themselves, and it’s not uncommon to see dingbats like me making some publicly and then assessing whether I goofed or not at the end of the year. But it’s not just for the fabled ‘content creator’! You too can make a New Year’s Resolution or two, and I’m here to encourage you to do so.

GW has long paraded around the idea of ‘New Year, New Army’ which plays on the idea of ‘New Year, New You’ in which people commit to quit smoking, lose weight, or some other change in themselves. It’s a catchy enough concept and could possibly new the sales office a bunch of cash as people commit to a second (or fifteenth) 2,000 point army. Warhammer Underworlds doesn’t have that problem, which is awesome. That said, it has a different problem – a less obvious resolution to make

(Amusingly, after I drafted this article, GW dropped their ‘New Year, New Challenge’ article on Warhammer Community. They made me look like a dummy in that last paragraph, but I refuse to change. The good news is you apparently can declare your new challenge for a chance to win prizes, so pick something from this article and go HAM)

Let’s look at some general categories of New Year’s Resolutions one could try on for size. See if any of them spark your fancy and go ahead and try them out for 2025! Then we can celebrate together at the end of the year when we have achieved the heights of mediocrity like Grinkrak and his Looncourt.

Before I dive in too far, I wanted to link out to the concept of SMART goals for people who are unfamiliar with the concept but want to get serious about achieving these resolutions rather than abandoning them a couple weeks in. You goals should be specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, and time-bound. As an example, you could want to paint three warbands to a tabletop standard (three colors or more, no primer-only sections) this year, with at least one done by July. That’s a goal that you’ll know whether it’s been achieved or not, is reasonable to achieve, and theoretically is something you actually want to do.

Pick your own goal, by all means, but try to make it’ SMART’ or you’re more likely to fail. It’s pretty hard to know whether you’ve achieved a more nebulous goal like ‘get better at painting’, and you’ll not be able to tell what that means, how to actionably go about getting started, whether you’ve made progress, how fast you need to get moving, etc.

Gameplay Goals

Increase Your Play Frequency
One of the most fun goals you can have for a hobby like Underworlds is to do it more often. Consider how often you played in 2024, and within reason, think about playing more often in 2025. Maybe you want to commit to playing one game a week, or heading to a meetup in your local area once a month. If you’re the type of psychopath I am, you have a log of all the games you played and might want to beat your year’s total. Whatever works for you!

Increase Your Gameplay Complexity
If you’re been involved on the ‘lower end’ of Warhammer Underworlds, you might have fun upping the ‘level of difficulty’ this year for a new challenge. Try nemesis if you haven’t yet, or mix up your warband/deck choices. Maybe you’ve only played Strike so far, and you’d like to get ten games of Mastery in this year or something to feel like you’ve broadened your horizons somehow. Try a warband or three you haven’t played yet. Loads of options here if you’re looking to step your game up.

Try Attending an Event (Or a Bigger Event)
I recommend event attendance for basically anyone, even if you’re a committed casual. Warhammer Underworlds has a lovely community that is nothing like the social disaster you’re inviting upon yourself joining a 40K tournament, for example. It’s a fun experience that can be challenging for you and get you practice against some tougher or more varied opponents than you’re used to, but it also is a fantastic way to meet new friends and expand your circle. Join your local league, or head to your local store tourney! If you’ve been to a smaller tournament, maybe try out a Grand Clash this year. Here’s a link to what you can expect attending your first tournament.

Master a Given Warband
One thing you can do in 2025 is finally settle down and get hitched… to your favorite warband. Maybe you’ve played the field and had a scattering of games with several warbands, and you want to really put the work in on a single warband to ‘figure them out’ and unlock their full potential. You might want to commit to playing a special warband 20, 50, or more times this year. Once you feel like you’ve unlocked some hidden secret goodness that have, or at least got the practice in to make the right decisions most of the time, don’t miss out on the opportunity to share your success! Write a love letter so others can hear both your passion for the warband in general and get some insight into how you’ve managed to make the most of them.

Tournament Performance
If you have been to tournaments before and want to increase your ranking/show some improvement, it’s important to set a goal to make some jump from your prior performance. Maybe you want to win more games at a given event than you did last time. Maybe you want to win more matches than you lose. Maybe you want to make Top Cut at a bigger Grand Clash. Maybe you want to qualify for Worlds! Set something that’s reasonable but still counts as striving for you and go for it. You never know if you don’t try.

Hobby Goals

Painting Quota
A great choice for getting through your backlog, or just getting practice in to improve, plenty of people go for some form of panting quota. Maybe you want to spend some number of hours per week, or paint some number of models per month, paint one new warband a quarter, etc. This makes for an easy SMART goal since you can numerically tell if you’re on track and figure out what you need to make progress.

Try a Conversion
Don’t get it twisted – Warhammer Underworlds models are among the best sculpts on the market. Every figure has character-level detail and are cool just as they are. But maybe you want to try putting your own unique touch on some and making your warband stand out from the monopose copies everybody else has. A fun thing to work on that can lead to some unique results and also be as involved as you want it to be, conversions are a hobby goal that can give you some real ownership over your models and possibly win you a painting contest if that’s your thing. From anything as simple as a headswap or weapon change, to full re-posing or greenstuff sculpting, you can really lean into this goal and create something to be proud of, or at least have fun trying out.

Explore a New Painting Technique
If you’re anything like me, you figure something out painting-wise and you run with it. On one hand, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, but on the other Underworlds warbands are ideal for trying out new techniques. It’s so much easier to try out stippling, non metallic metal, object source lighting, wet blending, oil washes, transfer decals, or whatever else tickles your fancy when you only have to commit for 3-7 models. If you’ve been using the same paints and the same techniques up to now, try giving something new a try in 2025 and see what you can’t create!

Buy (and Use!) a New Tool
Much like the painting techniques we just talked about, you can also take advantage of the new year to try a new item like an airbrush, wet palette, texture paints, or whatever you haven’t played with yet. This is the excuse to splurge on weathering powders and static grass you’ve been waiting for.

Make a Diorama
If you’ve never done this before (I haven’t and I get that it’s kind of intimidating), it’s a worthwhile hobby goal. A diorama/display board can be a great way to take the presentation of your models to the next level. It also give you a chance to do something totally different with your arts and crafts – foam core, cardboard, and more can be used with hot glue and all kinds of other stuff you aren’t used to with mini painting. Even if it’s just stacking a couple model train or fish tank foliage bits on a footprint, you still can really set a scene or create a mood with your minis, and the photos will make you look like a real hobby hero.

Take a Hobby Class
You can get a long way by trial and error, reading articles, and watching YouTube videos. You can get there a lot faster by signing up for in-person instruction. These might take time, need you to travel, or cost money, sure, but if you’ve been looking to take your hobby to the next level you can do worse on the resolution front than to decide to sign up for a class. Most conventions have painting/sculpting/photography/etc courses taught by experienced hobbyists, and several game stores will offer something similar.

Enter a Painting Competition
Miniature painting competitions don’t have to be intimidating, and many have beginner categories or very minimal entry requirements. If you haven’t put in full effort on a paint job for a competitive entry, maybe this is the year you pull out all the stops and see just how well you can put together a model or a warband. If you’ve entered contests before, you could try to get a higher score than before, earn a commendation, or even win a category. Whether it’s the ‘best painted’ card from an organized play kit at your local store, the Cult of Paint, Kontrast, of Golden Daemon, there are tons of levels and options for you to explore and it can be rewarding to be able to look at something and say “I did my best and learned a lot’, possibly even taking home some hardware for the effort.

The Classic
If you’ve been in this hobby for a minute, you’ve surely run across the concept of ‘don’t buy new stuff ’til you paint what ya have’, or the more reasonable ‘only buy as many models as you paint in a given year’. For completeness’ sake I am including this goal, but only the criminally insane can pull it off. Abandon hope, ye who enter here.

Community Goals

Start a Local Gaming Group
If there isn’t a public gaming group near you (you can check this directory to see if anybody is nearby), this might be the year you become the leader of a brand new underworlds community. Odds are there are a handful of people in your town who have an Underworlds box or two but haven’t played many games, or a few scattered people who play with each other separately but haven’t come together as a boarder group. Maybe there are people who could be tempted to try out the game if somebody was willing to lead the effort to organize! I did this a few years ago and found it incredibly rewarding after I made it past the initial hurdles. Now I have IRL friends and get to play all the time. That could be you! Here’s an article describing how I did it and how you could make that happen in your area.

Try Running an Event
A local community grows best when things happen, and one of the most fun things to happen is an event – a tournament or a league, for example. It ups the stakes for a period of time, and can make for some great stories, bragging rights, and fun for everybody. The thing is, those events need somebody to organize and run them. That person could be you! It’s not nearly as hard as you might expect, and if you’re the one designing it you get the benefit of making it work exactly how you like. Here’s a link to an article on how to run/promote your own event if you want some pointers.

Hold a Paint Contest
This hobby isn’t all about rolling dice and winning games – there’s a lot to be said about the artistic endeavors that go alongside it, and your community could benefit from celebrating multiple aspects of the hobby. If you have some unsung painting heroes locally, or want to encourage people to try new things/paint their models/attempt a higher standard, try organizing or running a hobby contest of some variety. I did one last year and it was a lot of fun for everybody and produces some amazing results – I’m sure your group of friends could have a similar experience. Here’s a link to what we put together (and the results) which you can use as a model for yourself if you’d like.

Run a Hobby Class
If you feel like you’re already pretty good at this hobby thing and have something to offer others, consider teaching a class. Maybe you’re a wizard with an airbrush and want others to benefit from your skill. Maybe you just have a bunch of locals with unpainted minis and you want them to use your paint pots on a Wednesday night. Whatever level of engagement/commitment you can muster can still be a feather in your hobby cap for 2025. To make art is one thing, but to teach others is next level. Don’t be scared, you probably have something to offer!

Engagement Goals

Ok, maybe engagement isn’t the right name for this. But let me explain, because I set this goal for myself in a vague and less SMART way and then got serious about it and now I write these articles.

I wanted, back at the end of Harrowdeep, to ‘get more into the game’ – not just playing, but being a part of the community. this goes further than just playing with your local group or any of the goals I listed above in the Community section – this is taking it to the next level and having a broader reach and contributing to the worldwide scene.

Be More Active in the Forum/Media of Your Choice
You like Facebook? Start conversations and comment on people’s posts. Drive activity and discussion and get people buzzing about Underworlds on a Discord server. Comment on Youtube videos. Send questions to your favorite podcast’s email address so they might talk about your idea next episode. (Your favorite Podcast’s email is UnderworldsUnderground@gmail.com)

Start Contributing to Content
If there’s some media that you enjoy consuming, help make more of it. Write an article for this website – I’m open to loads of flavors of reader submitted articles. Shoot me an email with your idea at SpentGlory@gmail.com. Don’t be afraid to ask to write something for somebody else too! Battle Mallet takes stuff from people outside their group all the time. Ask to be a guest on a YouTube channel or podcast.

Launch a Content Source of Your Own

I don’t want to try and sell this as some kind of ‘pinnacle’ of yearly achievements, patting myself on the back for writing a website or being on a podcast or whatever. That said, if you have a goal to get more engaged, and help others get more engaged, this is a great way to do it and reach loads of people. A few thousand people read this page every month. Hundreds of people download each podcast episode. No matter how cool I am promoting a local tournament, I’m not going to impact as many people’s hobby by in-person interaction in at my FLGS (though there is something to be said about quality over quantity).

Let’s not get off track here, Dr Fish. Get it together.

What I’m trying to say is, if you have the bandwidth, the gumption, and the next big idea, please take my encouragement to start something. Make that YouTube Channel. Grab your buddies and start recording a podcast. Make your own Underworlds page, which you can do for free on WordPress or Blogger and presumably a dozen other places. Whether you want to do livestream games, battle reports, deck reviews, custom cards, narrative missions/twists, digital art, fan fiction, or anything else, the community would love to hear your voice/see your vision. We need more people making things! If you have any interest in this idea at all, let me know and I’ll do what I can to help get you off the ground and send people your way.

Fishmode’s Personal Resolutions

Y’all ready for this? It’s either completely uninteresting to you or the only reason you clicked on this article. Not sure which group of you I like better. I chose one goal from each category since I’m an overachiever.

Gameplay Goal: Play at least one game with every ‘in rotation’ warband for a variety of play experience. So far I have eleven of them down, but have only won games with five of them. – my stretch goal is to win at least one game with each warband I own. But those Farstriders… yeesh. Might be a big ask.

Hobby Goal: Try out Non-Metallic Metal (NMM) at least once this year. I’ve toyed with the idea for a few years and never end up biting the bullet because regular metallic paints work for me and I’m scared to screw it up. You never know if you don’t try, and you’ll never get good without practice! I have five unpainted warbands right now and who knows how many more will be released this year, so surely I can give it an attempt on at least one of them. Stretch goal is to try Object-Source Lighting (OSL), maybe even with NMM for some extra complexity and challenge.

Community Goal: Organize an Arena Mortis event for my local scene. We had been concocting plans for a custom Arena Mortis league/narrative series/tournament before the announcement of Embergard, and I would love to spend a Sunday jamming some arena mayhem. There’s a real chance this doesn’t end up happening since It’s not clear how much interest there will still be to play a first edition variant, and any new people who got in for second ed (we have 5 of them right now and presumably more coming) might feel left out. So if I have to scrap one of my goals I’m ok with this one getting dropped, so long as it’s because I’m avoiding forcing it on others rather than just laziness.

Engagement Goal: Record more Underworlds Underground podcast episodes this year than last. This one is easy for me, since Thomas does all the actual work of producing and editing the recordings, and all I have to do is contribute to some show notes and yap. We released 5 episodes in 2023, 6 episodes in 2024, and I bet we can break 7 for 2025. Who knows, maybe it will be 20. Maybe I should learn how to do audio editing.

Wrap

What are your resolutions for the new year? Let me know in the comments or by emailing SpentGlory@gmail.com and again – if you’re looking to launch your own content stream I would love to lend a hand in whatever capacity I can. Regardless of what you’re looking to achieve in 2025, I hope you get the chance to Spend some Glory!