Kanban: Organising your hobby

Call it a stupid New Year's idea but I wanted this year to be a bit more organised for my hobby, so I started a Kanban board. The idea comes from project management in business, you use different parts of the board to show bits of a project and what stage they're in in, at a glance you can see how far along you are with certain parts of a project.

Its a really simple but effective way of organising a project, so I wanted to show a few ways this can be used to make your hobby work a little bit more organised. Or if you want to procrastinate while still convincing yourself that you're being productive.

For this I've used Kanban Flow, a free to use website that offers a subscription for more advanced tools, but everything you'd need as a hobbyist is available to the free accounts, sign up here: Kanban Flow

Firstly, I have set up an overall hobby goals board for 2015, which I've put various projects on with overarching details about each part of the project:

Here, I've got the over all view, each task is a hobby goal, with some details of the sub tasks to complete each, across my boards, different types of task have different colours, Green here represents Terrain, Blue are army projects and Yellow are individual units or models. I have different coloumns for how far along they are and one for "On Hold" for when something, like a missed delivery ot something, is stopping me progressing right now.

I aslo set up boards for those army tasks if they're big ones:

Here is my list for the Legions of Chaos army that the Warriors of Chaos task evolved in to (must update the name of that task), These are all individual units and this time, instead of subtasks, i have coloumns, as in this fine detail view, its better at representing the progress made so far.

This is just a little glance at a tool you might find useful or interesting, let me know if you liked it.

Year in games so far...

As well as painting and not updating this log, I have been trying to play a lot more games, aiming for at least one game of something played every week, on average I've hit that with ease so far this year and I've really enjoyed it.

I've played 40K with my Orks a few times, a lot more with Space Marines and even once with those mysterious and aloof Eldar in a Kill Team night, standard 40k, Escalation, Zone Mortallis, Necromunda.

I've played about 5 matches of Dread Ball, which is great fun, played with both the Corporation and Orx teams, I think Orx are for me, brutal and smashy with not much skill seems to work for me.

Played a few games of X-Wing which is a really tight and fun little game with really simple rules that can lead to some great gameplay.

I've only played a few games of Drop zone Commander, which is another excellent game, really interesting game ideas with different types of unit being very different so you really need a combined arms approach and a lot of working together to get results.

Really getting excited about the new edition of 40k though, from the things that have been shown so far it looks a lot more flexible and needs more generalmanship than just a good list, hopefully.

Massive Image Dump

One of about 30 Zombies I did, mix of Mantic and GW Zombies and Ghouls, on techy bases for Necromunda and stuff

Finally painted a Ghaz

A very cool little Pirate from Hasslefree I painted up as a Rogue Trader

Deadzone Scenery assembled

Deadzone Maruaders assembled, they're still in this state

Another look at Deadzone Scenery, thats a 4 foot by 2 foot table

Zombie after I added blood effects, stings were done with Uhu glue, looks cool but not suitable for play pieces as it breaks easily

Me and some top men at Warhammer world.

Painted Deadzone Terrain using the Salt Weathering technique

Playing some Dropzone Commander with Pete

Dropzone in Progress

My as of yet unpainted Zone Mortallis

This is my first ever painted model, about 20 years old now.

I started making a little city board

More on the city

And its almost done, still need to mount it on wood and clean up the edges

Asterion defending his ruins, he gets a 4+ cover save

Started on some Necromunda Goliaths

Leader is finished

Really love his Chainsaw Hat

Goliath Heavy Bolter

Mechanicus thing, can't remember its name right now, did 3 of these

A Tech Priest conversion using the GW Wraith and Zinge bitz

Dire Avenger for my Kill Team Squad

Mega Armoured Nobs from Kromlech

Sniper Scout Sergeant from Anvil

Minotraurs FW Dreadnought, quickie paint job

Not mine, these are Kev's Deathwing

First Dark Throne Game against IG

First time I've had a fully painted army!

Advancing on the IG, cowering in their metal boxes

Terminators Deep Strike and the game starts to go my way

The Captain mops up a lot of IG Vets, taking plasma shots in his stride

He later Slams his Thunderhamer into a Spirit Seer in the second game where I wiped out a ghost army with Wave Serpents

Last game against the Grey Knights, thanks to a slip up by my opponent, I get the side with easy access to the Relic, grabbing that puts me in charge

While my Terminators take on his Paladins and eventually overcome, the Captain battles with Inquisitor Coteaz and emerges triumphant, his warlord trait giving him bonus victory points for this kill, securing me the touranment. 

Awesome Chaos Helmet flash I got at the Dark Throne event

Dark Throne poster print, looks awesome

Refbot, calling out my fouls in Dread Ball for months now. 

Finally, finished last night are my Corporation Dread Ball Team, which I don't like using because Orx are better at smacking people.