So Very Tired...

  Evening folks, Abe here.

  So I know it's been a little while since I posted and there is a very simple explanation for my absence from the blog; laziness.

Sloth, both my favourite creature and favourite deadly sin

   But seriously folks I'm actually going to be talking about a very serious subject and a blight upon the gaming community as a whole. I talk, of course, about hobby fatigue.

  Hobby fatigue is a curious affliction and will on a long enough time line will affect even the most rabid of hobby enthusiasts and here are a few tips for staving off this horrendous condition:

1 Keeping up Apperances:
  We've all been their before you turn up at your favourite gaming table open your carry case  only for your models to fall out in a thousand seperate pieces.  

It's alright, I can fix this.

  You sigh and reach for a bottle of glue, or maybe you don't, maybe you forgot your glue or just don't want to fix it their and then and so you play on with a broken model and a little more of your soul dies with each move.
  The next week a new model has broken, at home one gets dropped. Long story short paint will chip regardless of how much varnish you put on. It's at this time it's important to remember that maintaining your models are important. If you don't eventually every model in your army will bear damage, and not the cool paint effect kind, it is far better to do little bits of repair often rather than losing days or even weeks to the rabbit hole of maintainance.


2 Try Something New
  If, like me and many other gamers at Section 8, you have large armies it can get dull painting the same colour scheme over and over again and it is at this point it could be time to branch out.
  We are currently in a golden era of gaming with more games, and more importantly more smaller games than ever before.

To name but a few.

  If you are finding it difficult to motivate yourself to finishing off your army pick up one of the smaller gaming systems and painting some of those models. I had completely lost any enthusiasm for painting my new Emperors Children army until I had finished my goblin team for Bloodbowl and just like that my painting mojo came flowing back.

3 Take Time off
  If you still find that you don't feel particularly motivated to paint after all this why not take some time off. Dust off an old RPG pick up a board game, anything that will take your mind off of painting for a little while.

4 Palate Cleansers  
  Finally, why not try painting a single model. Pick a model, any model that you've always wanted to paint. Find something, challenging, beautiful, something that stand outs. It doesn't matter if you collect that army or even play that gaming system. Finding something different will help and pushing your skills in a new direction never hurts.

Beauty personified.

Hope that helps people. Till next time.

Hobby Management part 2- Smaugs Hoard

So, what about the stuff you don't or can't get rid of? What about those models that scream "BUT BOSS, THERE MIGHT BE A NEW EDITION IN FIVE YEARS, USE ME!!!! USE ME!!!!!"

The horror, the horror Well it's all about the storage isn't it? I always think there are a few watershed moments in a life as a hobbyist, one of these is storing your figures correctly. It stops chipping as often, you don't need a tube of superglue everywhere you go for those inevitable breakages (after all most figures are plastic now) and you can store more stuff if you store efficiently. NUMBER ONE- Hobby cases,  look after your stuff, protect your figures, respect your work. Most of us put a fair amount of time into what we do. In fact I was once part of a brief look at how long we spent painting vs gaming in a group of GW staff (I was young and needed the money...). Turns out that regardless of whether someone saw themselves as a painter or a gamer, everyone spent more time painting, other than one guy, who realistically did neither! You need a good case (or cases), there are many brands; GW, KR, Figures in Comfort... I could go on. I go for KR, they're cheap, easily accessible to me and I can store them easily, but more on that in a bit. I tend to try and use 1-2 cases per army, this is fine for infantry and tanks, scales have increased in size over time and some oversized models are harder to store, boxes and your own custom packing seem to be the way forward to me, you can never plan for universally shaped larger models.

You can always go with the odd makeup case- JB is a fan


NUMBER TWO- Display cabinets show off your best work, store those awkwardly shaped figures, guilt trip yourself into painting undercoated models. Display cases are good, I used mine to show stuff off, from epic single models like Primarchs, to whole armies. Ikea was my choice for this, I paid about £150 per cabinet. They also do CD racks with glass shelves which you can mount on the wall. Obviously other retailers are available, but I like my cabinets.

NUMBER THREE- I have loads of cases! What do I do with them? Eventually you get here..."What are all there cases?" "Why are they here on the floor?" "Why has the cat got a lasgun coming out of its mouth?" I've heard the lot, again plan ahead, have a safe space, somewhere a case fits well, ideally a few fit well, maybe a level of organisation, maybe....Ikea again. So, turns out Ikea do some low level units which store exactly 2 KR cases (or GW) on a shelf. So I have two of these, all full of cases, with all the cases labelled for organisation and to satisfy any level of OCD I'm feeling that day. Again any retailer is find, but be thorough in your choice here, you may need a fair amount of storage over the years and it will need to be durable.

Mine looks like this but it's on it's side

Hobby Management part 1- killing your darlings

So, a tough article to write, the subject this time, the natural hoarding tendencies of the collector and ways to manage it. I think it’s fair to say that most of us are “collectors”, it’s called plastic crack for a reason and we’ve all bought a model that’s never been assembled/painted/seen again.

How much is too much?

A few years ago when I moved in with my now fiancée, I was forced to rationalise my collection, it felt tough at the time, but a watershed moment like this is useful in the long term. We just didn’t have the space and it made me realise how much of my stuff was just boxed and sitting on shelves. There were “dead games” that weren’t in production anymore, unassmbled figures, old armies in severe need of repair, paints that had turned, you name it and I have at least one of it. 

I turned to eBay, a few of my friends had some success and I was a decent enough painter, so after a few difficult sales I got better at it and it’s rare that I don’t make some form of profit, so I came up with my golden rules for managing my collection through sales, without further ado:

1. Paint all your stuff if you can, painted models sell better if you have some talent.

2. Store your figures well, there’s nothing more frustrating that having to repair or repaint figures just to sell them.

3. Take good pics, I’ll do an article on the little I’ve learnt on this at some point.

4. Sell the right stuff at the right time. GW price rises help, sell stuff when an army is re-released.

5. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to kill your darlings. Selling or getting rid of armies is sometimes necessary. Realising the signs is important, if you’re not using them, feel you could’ve done a better job or are just keeping them for nostalgia purposes, then maybe it’s time...

But how can you make it feel better? You put a lot of effort into that army, in a perfect world you’d keep them all right?

But should you catch ‘em all? 

Well my rules are that I photograph everything I sell and keep images for prosperity. I have pics of all my old armies, even though some are now in the Philippines, Germany, Australia, USA, Yemen and more. I’m pretty proud of that, my figures are more travelled than I am! The other thing I do if I can is sell to a friend, that way I can actually see someone enjoying the army, it doesn’t happen often though as most of my friend are holistic hobbyists and Base and paint their own stuff.

My recently sold Kaptain Flashgit Badruk, a nice figure to paint

So, don’t be afraid to slay your darlings. After all, plastic crack isn’t free and I know where my proceeds go! Next time I’ll talk about storing it all.

Last but not least if you want to expand your collection and really like my stuff, check out my auctions:

https://ebay.co.uk/usr/stoned_rose