HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY!!!!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE ART OF CAESURA!

My my my, look at that, my little blog is turning six today!

Six years old, lordy lordy lordy! It feels like just yesterday (or at most only a few months ago) that we were celebrating the blog's fifth birthday, but as we shall see, a lot has happened in the past year! Another strange year in the bizzaroverse in which we now live. 

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Now, what's the best way to get a party started? Why, with an infographic of course!

Depending on your device, it might be easier for you to see if you click on these cut-up images below.

Let's take a little look-see at those hobby goals, shall we?

Number 1) Tick. I somehow managed to keep on blogging through all of life's craziness. The Caesura has been living up to its name, and has been a nice distraction from some of this year's downers - namely the continuation of the global pandemic. 

Number 2) SOOOOOO close to tick. I really thought I would get this one. As we'll see in a moment, I was really focused on Reichbusters for the whole first half of the year and thought the glory of completing the core box would surely be mine. Then when I shifted gears to Blackstone Fortress, I made it within a hair's breadth of completing the box. As I currently write, I only have 3 models left, and I've started 2 of them and those two (Rein and Raus) kind of count as one hero in the game so I sort of only have 2 models left! TWO left out of FORTY FOUR!!! MAN ALIVE!!! And I tried, I really did. But the past few weeks have been exceptionally busy, with starting a new job and doing a bunch of work on the house. 

Anyway...

Number 3) Tick. Now, this is an interesting one. When I made the goal, I thought that maybe I would submit the Preyton to 28 Mag. Or that maybe I would try to re-submit to White Dwarf, but I did neither of those things. Instead, the publication that earns this tick is one from my professional life, which I shall elaborate on in the next section...

But before we move on, let's look at my goals for this year. And this year I'm going all out and adding 25% more goals! 

Number 1) Keep on keeping on.

Number 2) I mentioned that I've been doing a lot of work around the house recently, some of that has been directed at this goal, but there is still much to be done. Now that we own our own house, I really want to make an awesome space in it.

Number 3) I am developing a dad-bod. Nuff said.

Number 4) In the first year of The Art of Caesura, I included a few posts about my guitars. I love my guitars, and want to give them more of the time they deserve. 

I mentioned in the post for my own birthday recently, that I wanted to bring a bit more of myself to the blog. Let's have a look at some of the things that happened outside the blog in 2021. 

Most massively was the birth of our second child, Freya. She is now 5 months old and is just as magical as her big sister Saoirse, who turned two this year. 

While my wife was in the labour ward, we finally received the keys to our house (after all the mortgage procedures which took up much of the first half of the year). After renting for the past decade, it feels amazing to be able to make a place our own. 

In lieu of showing you where I live, I'll show you me getting there...

I alluded to this in discussing my completion of my third goal from last year above, but after almost exactly a year of backing and forthing with editors and peer reviewers, my wife and I had one of our research studies published in the most prestigious medical journal in Ireland. The Irish Medical Journal. If you suffer from insomnia, you can check our paper out here - it'll knock you right out!

And finally, at the time of writing (mere days before you read this) I have just completed my second day in a brand new job. So far so good...

After painting models from 15 different product ranges last year, this year I focused in on only Reichbusters and Blackstone Fortress. And while I didn't complete either of them, I really enjoyed chugging away at the miniatures from both of these games. 

I mean, what can I say - you guys are the best. Special shoutouts to Zerbads and Moz and Foz for being especially lush. 

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Let's move on to one of my favourite bits of these birthday blog posts: my top 5 models from the past year. 

Fave "Five"

6) Brad

Of all the Reichbuster "goodies" that I painted this year, Brad is the most quintessential, kind of Vietnam-era American soldier that we've seen in all the movies. I really loved painting this model; he came together super quickly and has some nice volumes in the folds of his clothes and even the bit of skin he's showing. 

5) Nazi Engineers

Each year one model ends up on this list that I don't think anyone else would have picked except me. This year, it's this guy! I didn't pick him just to antagonize people, but rather because I truly love this model. It was one of the ones that when the kickstarter campaign was ongoing and this guy was revealed, I think I laughed out loud and said "YES!". He just kind of sums up Reichbusters perfectly - the tongue-in-cheek, B-action movie and yet slightly ominous character of this guy won me over. 

4) X-101

As I said in my post about this guy, I LOVE the idea of servitors. In the same way that the model above perfectly encapsulated the theme and tone of Reichbusters, servitors do the same for the Imperium in 40k for me. They are humans who who have been lobotomized to only perform typically one rudimentary task that our present day AI robots could easily accomplish. And this is 38 000 years in the future! In a universe where lives are cheap, and delusional adherence to "the will of The Emperor" is everything, these guys are the poster boys!

3) UR-025

Now, following on from our discussion of AI alternatives in the 41st millennium, this guy is a maverick - the only Man of Iron - the only existent Imperial AI that we have a model of in Warhammer 40k and he's one of my wife's player characters in our Blackstone Fortress campaign. This guy is kind of a big deal. 

I had a joyous time busting out my weathering pencils on this guy. He's a fun mix of metallics, weathered ceramic and vibrancy. 

2) Janus Draik

I don't really know what more there is to be said about Janus than what I've expounded on his post and my Facebook post about him. I guess all that remains to be said is that if he is number TWO on this list than number one must be someone quite special indeed!

1) Marshal Grymm

And now...for the grand reveal of my top miniature of 2021... it's Marshal Grymm the first of my Black Templar reboot. He represents so much of what got me into the hobby in the first place that I lavished a whole month into painting him and am currently teasing out his painting process in a multi-part extravaganza! He is certainly the model that I have put the most time and effort into in recent history and I have enjoyed every millisecond of it. As the (third to) last mini that I finished in 2021 he kind of marks the pinnacle of my painting ability to date. And dammit, I'm proud of that!

Now that I've listed my top models of 2021, what about you? Did I miss your fave? Let us know in the comments below. 

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BUT! I am just one of the people, so what the hell do I know! If we want to get an accurate aggregate of which was objectively my best post of 2021, let us now turn to The People's Choice Award.

The People's Choice Award

Always an outlier, (in my mind - I'm still reeling from the 2018 review when the post about the tokens from Necromunda was the most popular post; in the year I painted most of Silver Tower, including this guy for God sakes - have you no taste!? Deep inhalation...serenity now...okay. I'm good. No really, I'm good.) the People's Choice Award goes the post that generated the most traffic to the blog this year.

This year the People's Choice Award goes to a post that really showed off the true mastery of my miniature painting talents: 

RADLANDS!!

lol lol lol...sob. I mean, it's an awesome game, but my dudes...I painted Janus Bloody Draik this year!

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Sweet Jeez! Is that the time!? We better pick up the pace or I'll be keeping you here all night!

Well let's round out this happy gathering the same way we end every birthday post for the blog: with a big birthday present for the blog, the biggest model of the year. 

Holy-zesty-cheese-chips-Batman, what is that thing!? Find out next week...

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Aaaaaand that brings us to the end of another epic birthday party for The Art of Caesura! Raise a glass to (probably) one of the few hobby blogs that has been posting solidly every single week for the past 6 years!

With that, I just want to end by thanking you all so much for coming, and for being a part of The Art of Caesura. As always, I'll see you next Friday on The Art of Caesura!