Happy New Year!

It's 2025.

As far as my 12-year-old self is concerned, we are now living in the future. He anticipated it being either a glorious digital utopia or a smoking, post-apocalyptic wasteland. But if history has taught us anything, it's that the impetus required for extraordinary change is always greater than we expect.

And the subject of extraordinary change is very apt for a post on New Year's Day, when even the most cynical of us is inclined to take stock of the last 365 days and anticipate the next solar rotation in philosophical mood.

For Precinct Omega, 2024 has been a mixed year.

I managed to release Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark and it remains a steady seller and well-regarded product in the niche market of miniatures-agnostic 6mm scifi battle games. Given that miniatures are, invariably, the attention-grabbers of our industry (a subject for a longer article/video essay, I suspect), it's satisfying to see people citing Midnight Dark alongisde games like Battletech Alpha Strike and Dropzone Commander for people looking for mech-based tabletop action.

However, my plans to release more content for that game and for the other Horizon Wars games have failed to bear much fruit. The fact is that I keep looking back to my productivity before and during the pandemic years and thinking that I should be matching that, forgetting that I was only sporadically employed in those times and, even when I was, it was usually on a part-time or consulting basis that left a lot of room to fill up the surplus with game design time. Whereas, for the last 18 months, although my "real-life" employment has been through some interesting transitions, it has been consistently full-time and extremely demanding.

(For those of you not aware, I work for the NHS and, for the last six months, I've specifically been in a senior role focused on driving economic efficiency which, as you can imagine, is a pretty high-profile piece of work. Also, yes, it is actually working.)

So the time I've had to work on Precinct Omega stuff has been limited and, although things have progressed, nothing is at a level that I can reasonably share any beta content with my patrons, which has been frustrating. However, I have been keeping a record of content that I do want to finish and share and, knowing how I work, this does tend to build up over time until I drop a load of things in close succession before then going quiet again.

For the last several months, I've had to focus on the hobby side of things and that will probably be true for at least January and February. Thankfully, I think I now either have in-hand or have ordered everything I need for Operation Kurgan's photography. Lots of terrain. Loads of new minis. And about 75% of it is finished, so I will soon get started with photography.

Once that's done, I can get back to formatting and finishing the book.

That's my 2025 objective. I have other plans, hopes and objectives, but they are all far more conditional and I have to be honest about what can be done whilst also doing the day job and being there for my family and not letting the ADHD get the better of me.

Thank you so much, all of you who have been here to help keep this show on the road and hold me to account. Without you, nothing would ever have got done. Whether you are a paying Patron or on a free membership, your participation and presence matters to me.