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

 

 

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". 

 

 

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. 

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!

 

 

 

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! 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

And as always, this is a list of all the totally subjective things I saw / read / experienced over the course of the year 2025, some might be highly unagreeable, some might be making some sense, but all are totally and utterly irrelevant to the people around!  But never the less, I hope it brings you a few minutes of reading enjoyment!

 

And so, without further ado, the best off overview in all it's annual categories...

 

Best Movie: well, let's kick off with something subjective, and that was for me War of the Rohirrim.  It flopped at the box office, it divided the fanbase, yet somehow I liked how it "slipped" into the lore without bending it to much.

 

Best Series: well, this one has been on the list since january (I always make a skeleton list, and if I experience something better replace the older entry) and that is Arcane season 2.  While not as legendary as the first season, it still remained a true epic!

 

Best Performance: a lot can be said about the Wheel of Time series, from accuracy to casting choices, but I loved Zoe Robins in it over the course of the three seasons.  Nynaeve just hit my buttons of getting "involved" in the series, compared to many other casting choices.

 

Best Book: Bedrieg Mij, a flemish casestudy book about the world of cuckolding and the journey of exploration the writer experienced in finding this all out.

 

Best Toy: Efteling Luville Meisje met de Zwavelstokjes.  It is by far the saddest fairy tale in the Efteling, but the christmas village set just captures that one moment of beautiful sadness, when the girl goes to her beloved grandma.

 

Best Anime: Buddy Daddies, a bit of an unexpected hit for me.  In a year with some topline anime titles, this one just slipped into my viewing list and I really, really enjoyed this one.

 

Best Game: okay, totally subjective pick on this one, and that is Spitewood, the new expansion to Underworlds.  I still don't like the current edition over the old one, but at least this one brought me AND the return of Elathain, AND the arrival of the Chaos Dwarfs into the game system.

 

Best Videogame: Innocence or Money.  Yes this is an adult game, one of those story choice driven ones, in which you can make the lead character a girl holier then the pope, or send her down the rabbit hole of pleasure and debauchery.

 

Best Wargame Figure: the Imperial Noble from classic Warhammer Quest.  I always loved his regal outlook, so it was only fitting to get myself a fresh one from Vinted to paint up as the general for my Escalation League.

 

Best Music: Ghost - Dance Macabre.  This group has been around for some years now, but I only really discovered their music in earnest this year, and haven't regretted it one moment.

 

Best Trade: during the Halle Underworlds tournament in the first half of the year, back then still at Mishra's, I found a box with old Star Trek Attack Wing tournament packs in his basement.  I asked what he wanted for them, and he sold me all 19 packs for 30 euro!

 

Best Convention or Event: the very first Mines of Alost tournament for Warhammer Underworlds.  It was a Rivals format and I had my game group pick my warband, and they "gave" me Garrek's Reavers, the good old Granddaddy Aggro himself.  I won the tournament with him...

 

But I would say this is a tie, because at Antwerp Tattoo Convention, I found a lovely lady artist from Macedonia who brought this lovely little piece of ink to my arm... 

 

Greatest Disappointment: the TSA The Old World Escalation League.  A combination of calendar issues on the one hand and not at all liking how the game has turned from a "wargame" to a "listgame" has turned me away from the system.  I might play that occassional event or so, but this game needs for my tastes serious fixing.  Maybe I'll do a little video on that in the future, don't know yet...

 

And there we have it, all the categories and winners of my past year 2025.  They will receive their non-existant awards never, but maybe there are one or two things in that list that tickle your fancy a bit and might want to make you going to watch or experience X or Y...

 

 

 

 

With the year only about a quarter to go, there are quite a few things I still want to get finished, be it for tournaments, for rounding out units, to start new games or get forces battle ready.  I guess that's the life of the hobby painter.

 

So, with that limited period to go, let's see what we still want to do this year, why, and if it's feasible.

 

First and foremost I want to round out the final straws of my tournament force for my Chaos Dwarfs, with whom I'll might take to the field of battle half of november and end of december, though this isn't certain yet.  It's not like I don't have enough models, but for some reason instead of using adapters, I decided to build some additional units and warmachines on the "Old World sized" bases.  Because you know, I can...

 

Now apart from that, I have two projects I want to get battleready for the table: my Earth Alliance for Babylon 5, or at least one of the three era's to 5 raid, to be able to get back into the game early 2026, and my Slaanesh themed Blood Bowl team to give me that option for the 2026 League and see which one in the end I'll be taking to compete once the new book hits.

 

So, those are the three mainline things I'm aiming for, but in between there are of course the new Age of Sigmar Chaos Dwarfs that have just been released.  I want to get my Spearhead up and running come februari, as well as the forces for the league I'll be running next year during the second and third quarter of the year.  And when Spitewood hits, that Blood of the Bull warband will be painted up as soon as possible as well.

 

In between, there are some minor side projects: the Dark Angels, of which I want to paint at least 1000 points by the time the new edition hits next summer to get a hang of the rules, and still add some Belgians and Idoneth to this year's goals, even though I won't be able to finish them to the set points values.  Add in left or right some Necromunda and some Titanicus, and we have a nice little pile of still to do...

 

 

 

So yeah, needless to say, after decades of Hopium and Copium, all other armies became void and moved to the trade pile what was unpainted, while the already painted stuff went to the "in case of needing them for a solo game" shelf.

 

To that end, exit the plans for the Easterlings, for the Rohirrim, expanding the Empire of Man and the Wood Elves, the Hedonites of Slaanesh and even the Idoneth Deepkin... and guess what will get a massive goal target next year, because as soon as they are released, all gloves are off on the shopping department!!!  I need 5000 points of them in my life, at least.  Other painting goals have been put on hold, as all is readied for the return of Hashut.  As you could see on the completed projects the past months, that involves working on a lot of other Chaos Dwarf models as well, the fires burn high in my internal forge!  But especially the Empire of Man is still doable, needing about 300 points to be finished, and Bolt Action might hit the tally, though it might not be a "legal" force yet then.  But I won't be so halfhazard of using them all as veterans to hit the mark, they will be Irregular and Regular troops as they would be in a finished 1250pts list.

 

Though I do plan to at least add some models to the above still once the possible tournament needed models are finished, which will be somewhere around the end of october I estimate.  Maybe, very maybe, I might still make the goals for the Belgians and The Empire of Man, as well as for the Underworlds warbands.  The wargame scenery shouldn't be to much of an issue normally, even going over the projected 5 pieces, but others I can already say won't materialize. 

 

Sadly, for the sake of the attended events counter, I won't be able to make it to the Bolt Action tournament, as family planning roared from out of the corner.  So to make sure I get my games in, I still have two Underworlds tournaments on the agenda, and hopefully bring some glory to Hashut in the process through the Blood Bowl league.  But we have completed the goal of having played 61 out of the wanted 50 games this year, and so far have attended 9 out of 10 events, leagues or tournaments, which will hit completion "by default" with the TSA Blood Bowl League when it finishes.

 

But enough of the wargames, how about the other stuff on the goals?  The movies, hitting 25, have joined the series counter, which is now at 26, as having been completed for this year (though that won't be stopping me from watching either), but unfortunatly both the manga, with 7 out of 30 aimed, and anime, with 25 out of 50, are trailing behind.  So far I only completed 7 anime from Noshi's list, so I'm definitly going to have to step that up.  It will take along the fact that the regular anime series will also get a serious boost that way, but I'm going to have to get stuck in heavy during this final quarter.  

 

There is already enough red failures on the list as a result of the first part of this post...

 

On the culinary front, the beer counter keeps going up steadily, beer subscriptions help a lot and I promised Noshi to work away the stock I have lying around before the end of the year.  For frituur's, I guess it's time to do a tour one of these weeks again and visit some places, but compared to pre-corona not many actually open anymore during lunch time, so that'll be some searching and googleing.  The belly doesn't mind, but the love for our national product does hehehe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

However, I will start on the backburner, as all the possible top ranking series I selected only start airing from week 2 onwards.  This means I can only start filtering them in using my swaps during weeks 2, 3 and 4 and this can cost some serious points.  Apart from that, I will also have to chose wisely which one to bring in, in the hopes of being able to score with the Ace for each of them while doing so...

 

These hopefully heavy hitters are as such Sakamoto Days part 2, the fourth season of The Rising of the Shield Hero and the second part of Dr Stone Science Future, especially that first one gives me a potential high scorer.

 

That also means I'll be starting out in week one with an eclectic mix of anime and genre's, of which I believe The Fragrant Flowers and Gachiakuta might be sleepers who will hopefully rise pretty high in the points.  I then selected The Summer Hikaru Died as well as the 4th season of Rent-a-Girlfriend to form the bulk, with Reincarnated as a Vending Machine getting a spot just because I thought the first season was hilarious!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But first of all, let's have a look at how my picked anime faired.  

 

 

I've Been Killing Slimes: 24th place, way lower then expected

My Hero Academia Vigilante: 4th place

Lazarus: 2nd place

The Beginning After the End: 26th place, this dropped off seriously after a strong start

Please Put Them On Takamine-san: 28th place

Yandere Dark Elf: 46th place, did everyone become holier then a saint?

Shiunji Family Children: 15th place

Summer Pockets: 17th place

 

All together, this resulted in a top 26% place, so still not totally terrible but a bit lower then I hoped for never the less. 

 

On a weekly basis, my League went like this for the current edition: 

Week 1: 38767 pts, 9994 th place

Week 2: 244950 pts, 3016 th place, succesfully aced Beginning After the End

Week 3: 508253 pts, 1583 th place, swapped Beginning for Summer Pockets, succesfully aced Vigilante

Week 4: 593362 pts, 2886 th place, swapped Takamine for Beginning,

Week 5: 759523 pts, 3334 th place, swapped Summer Pockets for Takamine

Week 6: 875333 pts, 4249 th place 

Week 7: 1075577 pts, 7222 th place, swapped Beginning for Shiunji

Week 8: 1206329 pts, 4833 th place, succesfully aced Shiunji

Week 9: 1444595 pts, 3912 th place, succesfully aced Takamine-san

Week 10: 1729721 pts, 3396 th place, Wild Card swap Summer Pockets for Takamine, succesfully aced Summer Pockets

Week 11: 1798030 pts, 3965th place

Week 12: 1954267 pts, 5246th place

Week 13: 2315712 pts, 6142th place

Unfortunatly, due to a family outing, I forgot to Ace in my first week, and have been on the chase as a result since then.  Now, my selection wasn't top notch either though it turned out, and slowly I started slipping down the table at slightly under 1000 spots per week.

 

Most of my anime didn't perform as well as hoped, only Lazarus and Vigilante ending in the top regions, so those weren't the best of gut feelings I guess.