Stuck at Home; Keeping myself sane

I was sent home in late March from work due to the lockdown in the UK and was furloughed, so with nothing to do I decided to catch up on some miniature painting.

I normally managed to squeeze an evening in the week for painting and an afternoon during the weekend. This gives me a few good hours painting each week to slowly plough through the grey army or should I say armies.

I like most in the hobby probably have too much squirreled away in cupboards and boxes, we all kind know or at least we tell ourselves we know how much we have, but I suspect thinking we know and actually knowing are two different things.

I was aware I had quite a lot of miniatures, but I wasn’t really sure how much I had. The problem is that like most hobbyists they’re hidden away in boxes, out of sight out of mind. I didn’t really pay attention to how much I had until lockdown.

Now if you’re sat there thinking why lockdown, well that’s because my productivity in painting miniatures increased dramatically. I had the spare time to plough through a tone of miniatures between March 23^rd and July 31^st I managed to get roughly 180 miniatures painted, which also included some terrain built and painted. That’s generally a lot more than I’d probably paint in a year, I’d be happy to go through half that in a year.

I placed all the painted miniatures together for a photo shoot, and it dawned on me that even though I’d painted a colossus amount on miniatures I’d hardly put a dent into the grey army. That’s when I realized I had way too much stashed away in boxes.

This prompted me to actually get all my unpainted miniatures out and see how much I actually had. I took out all the wargaming miniatures, it was far too many. I was never going to get all those painted, and all the miniatures in the board games I had. I realized this was ridiculous situation, so I started going through what I had and making some hard decisions about what I should keep and which ones I should get rid of.

This also helped me to hone down which projects I wanted to continue and which ones I should stop. It also allowed to narrow down which systems, periods and games I wanted to actually play and paint minis for. There’s no point keeping stuff if you’re never likely to ever get around to painting or playing with it. They’re just gathering dust and taking up valuable real estate in my hobby room, so a cull was/is planned.

First, I looked at all the moderns I have, which consists of Chinese PLA, US Special Forces, some Russians and PMC’s. I backed the Empress Miniatures kickstarter to get the PLA, so I have quite a lot of them, but I don’t really need that many. I could probably get away with about 12 for most of the games I’ll be playing. So that was one chunk to sell, next I looked at all the metal miniatures I had, and a lot were random fantasy minis. I picked out the few choice ones I liked and will cull the rest, I don’t really play a lot of fantasy and most of the games I do play are ones like Frostgrave that don’t require a high model count.

The one area I haven’t culled yet are my 40K minis, now I don’t have a lot, the small amount of Space Marines I have are painted bar a couple. I also have a small amount of Tyranids that are painted apart from one brood lord. I do have a rather large collection of Eldar which are unpainted, but I’m not ready to cull any until I’ve tried the latest version of the rules. If I like the new rules, then I’ll keep what I have if not I’ll cull them down, so I have just enough to play Kill Team.

Likewise, I decided to cut down on my Age of Sigmar miniatures, I don’t play AoS so there’s no point in keeping them. I only play Warcry and occasionally Shadespire/Underworlds, which I have a few warbands for. I will paint these up, but I won’t be purchasing any more in the future. I’ll do the same with Blood Bowl, I have a couple of teams waiting to be painted so I’ll get those finished and I may buy one other team, along with the new rules when they’re released.

My Flames of War armies are nearly finished, the Germans are complete. I managed to get the Germans all painted during Lockdown, so I just have the US to finish. I’ve added some new units to the US which will need building and painting, but that project will be complete once that’s done.

Bolt Action is the sticking point, I have quite a lot that’s unpainted and some that also need building. I currently have enough infantry for the US army, likewise I have enough vehicles for my German force, and enough infantry for my SAS. I just need to pick up a tank for the Americans and a couple of attack jeeps for the Brits. My Chinese need more troops, but I’m not in any rush to get those yet, as I’ll try and finish the US infantry first.

Whilst going through this process I begun to realize that as hobbyist we probably have a problem with hoarding, yet don’t hoard any where else in our lives, well I don’t. I don’t buy randomly with other items, yet I do with hobby stuff. I’ll see a miniature and think ooo that looks nice and before I even thought about whether I need it or not I’ve bought the bloody thing. So, going forward I plan to be more conscious about what items I purchase for my hobby. This should be helped by narrowing down which games I plan to play, because if a miniature can’t be used in any of the games, I play then there’s no need to purchase it.

It’s been quite a cathartic experience going through all my hobby bits and bobs and really forcing myself to make decisions on which items I’ll actually paint and use. It was also great for forcing me to make decisions regarding which games and rules I’ll actually play, this should also help me to focus more on those games, rather than flitting from one thing to another and never really getting to grips with anything. I should also have going forward fewer if any half-finished projects, I’m hoping this will help me to actually finish some of the projects I’ve started.