Aha! A question to let my understimulated mind loose upon. Pounce, Meredith! (One should always have a pet name for their brain… well, the one kept in a jar around the house atleast).

I believe that there is the eternal fear of missing out which leads us to hunt the most recent shiny figures and thus drives the imaginations of concept designers/sculptors for our cash to fund their livelihoods.  From there we fall prey to the trap of great marketing in seeing box/website art that most of us wish we were capable of and few able to achieve. In our frustration we kick our halfway realized dreams aside when the reality of our ability doesn’t match. After a while we get the urge to go back again and then relent to just doing the hobby come what may and feel better in the accomplishment of the process. In general the meditation of creation should be our zen.

These lockdowns make us face these issues head on as we are in isolation to consider them and the Hoards of Shame. Massive purchases that lie around are just going to lie around unless we do something with them. On that note I’ll say more games with less need of many figures is great (perhaps mini agnostic systems are best). More figures for the collection as singular display items will help limit the clutter and give clear examples of what can be done with focused effort (your command/signature figures in bigger force games).

Reflection shouldn’t make anything boring as we come to appreciate genre (music and movies are always making and breaking themselves). All of it really is boring if you boil it down to manufactured conflict between two sides and then resolve with dice/cards. Which side is better? It doesn’t matter. One group of tiny fighting men with particular stat lines and sculpted motifs or a deck built with particular features functioned better than another in a semi random situation. No countries were won or lost. We’ll get up tomorrow and work so that we can play again. The hobby act of making things look cool that we can hold in our hand and show off really is what we all gather around for. We tend to do poorly in the beginning but we gain skill with experience so we display more competence. In this mini world we take every little victory in the long slog of hobby battle which really is a personal war against feeling incompetent/inept/insignificant in a much bigger world. We’re all in it together as gaming nerds and the unspoken bond of understanding the fact is why this site even exists. This is zen, and might be both uncomfortable and comforting.

I’d say both.

Buy armies that appeal to irrespective of the game, especially if you get as much (if not more) pleasure out of the painting.

Personally, I got bored painting units especially if they have a uniform. Rabble, pirates, savage tribes… these often have more variety and it becomes more fun to paint them because it’s more like painting characters… or so it is with me.

I recently bought Folklore the Affliction board game… with standees… no painting required…

And I’ve finished off my Eldritch Horror collection which also uses standees… although I could use the already painted Mansions of Madness minis I have if I feel the need.

I did have a Daughters of Khaine weakness lately… Shadow and Pain, Warcry Catacombs plus Kraeth’s Shadowpact. I still haven’t played Soul Wars, but now I can look forward to passing Sigmars fantasy marines to a friend at some point and killing them all with a bunch of psycho women 🙂

I just hope I got enough flesh paint to cover them all…