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Paint, Paint EVERYWHERE!

I’ve been having a bit of a drive over the last few weeks and trying to get some of my miniatures painted. To be honest there’s so much that I hava collected over the years that needs painting, I’ve gotten to the point of being overwhelmed.

So I have decided that I may be looking at the task wrong.

First, not everything in my collection needs to be painted. I should also not feel bad about it. Games are meant to be played and locking them away until you have spent the time painting them seems like a waste of that game.

Then there’s the question of should you paint the game anyway? What happens if you spend 40 hours painting the miniatures of a game you’ve never played and it turns out you don’t like it, is that time wasted?  This is why I’m happy that I’ve now played AvP as I can say it’s a game I’m not going to be interested in.

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So the first step is to play more games even though they could be painted and already I’ve chosen games that are not going to be painted. Dungeon Saga is a nice Dungeon crawl that has some fantastic looking miniatures but I’m not going to paint them.

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The reason is there’s a Dungeon Crawl that I love called HeroQuest and I would rather spend my time painting that game instead. Dungeon Saga plays perfectly well without being painted the same as HQ does, but because I’ve had HQ since I was a child it means more to me and I would rather spend the time taking that game to the next level.

Over the last two months I’ve painted all the miniatures from HQ and I’ve loved every minute of it.

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Finishing what you’ve started

There are a few miniatures that are in my collection that I’ve started painting but never finished. Dropzone Commander was one of these. I picked up the two player starter set cheap in a sale, started to paint one side, but never finished the box set. They sat for a year on my shelf half painted and looking rejected.

I took a few days and finally finished painting the box set and the feeling of achievement that I had was immense.

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These two games now look fantastic and I realised something else while I’ve been painting. You don’t need to worry so much about the details. You can pick up the Warhammer magazine and be taken aback by the painting skills of the artists have used on those miniatures, but don’t set yourself a bar that’s too high to reach. If you do when you start painting there will be nothing but frustration and then you will lose the motivation to keep going. Don’t try to strive for the paint jobs the professionals have done. Just work on getting better and take happiness in that fact. You’re not going to get it right first time that’s why they call it a hobby.

Games I want finish painting:

· Malifaux “The Dreamer” box set
· Dread Fleet
· Deadzone
· Dreadball

…and that’s just a start.

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