I try to do every army a little bit different, otherwise it gets boring. My Undead are mainly contrast painted, my Orcs are all Lord of the Rings models, my Abyssals are obviously red/lava themed, the Empire of Dust all Mantic on single bases/movement trays so I can use them in Warhammer 6th, The Trident realms in wild colours….. the list goes on. I massively admire people whose love and dedication of a race stretch to doing 10-15,000 point armies. It looks amazing! My Forces of Nature are probably near to 5,000pts but that’s because they provide a core of multiple units that I can use in a variety of armies so I just seem to be making the army bigger by happy accident.
I found early on in wargaming that doing an entire army, while incredibly satisfying can get pretty boring. It’s a huge amount of painting and sooner or later it just becomes a chore. I don’t do boring. Hobbies are there to take you away from the real world, not become another job.
My method of dealing with hobby burnout is by doing a huge amount of projects at once. So long as you have an army to play with then you can relax and do what you want. I had a building session the other night and realised I had models from seven different armies in my tray. I’m not a fan of calling them ‘projects’ as is sounds far too organised and like work.
I’m fully aware that I’m privileged in that I’ve been doing the hobby for 30 years and have amassed a huge amount of bits along the way.
But having lots of different ‘projects’ (BLEARGH! Work!) can have the opposite effect in that you end up with so many that it you become swamped with no way of ever finishing them all. Thats where tournaments come in for me. I surge into action to get an army done because I finally want to get it finished in order to use it on the tabletop.
This is a great method until a world wide pandemic sweeps in and there are no more tournaments. Who knew? And while the rest of the country sat at home pumping out army after army I found myself still at work, with extra work covering the people who were on furlough and doing shopping etc for those people who couldn’t leave the house.
Then one day the Central London Kings of War guys announced on Facebook that they were doing an army building competition for fun, with the King of Herts guys doing a regular painting competition alongside it. So I sprang into action! My blog writing suffered a little but that’s also a hobby and something I do for fun.
I had the Vanguard Kickstarter and the Shadows of the North box sets so had the core of a Northern alliance army and had been collecting extra half elf bezerkers here and there because they’re one of my favourites and in all those 30 years I had never done my own snow themed army.
As I’m writing this, my time is up! I have a few bits left to finish and take photos to enter them in the competitions. I may win something, I may not. Its not my best work but it was fun and I’m very happy with it overall and looking forward to using it in my first post-apocalypse tournament at the end of September for the Shroud of the Reaper!
The army list is pretty much what you see, however I didn’t have enough points for the giant so need to paint an ice blade instead. So less waffle, more pictures!
And now another online gaming community have decided to do an army building thing for fun. They chose 9th Age, and while reading the rules I cringed at how bad the rules are written (I doubt I’ll actually get together and play with them), I joined in anyway as it will give me a chance to do my Empire of Dust. After all, I’m bored of snow and winter is coming. I work outside so putting my imagination into a nice sunny desert will take me away from from work and real life….. I may even watch the Mummy movies for inspiration. I find Rachel Weisz incredibly inspiring.
Anyway, enough waffle, more pictures and I’ll let you know how they perform in a few weeks!
Get older. Don't grow up. 