The Never-Ending Hobby To-Do List

If you're like me, you have a huge pile of boxes, models and various other figures and terrain bits awaiting construction, painting and (hopefully) time on the gaming table. Kickstarter may or may not have affected the size of your pile. If you've been able to resist some of the games providing masses of models on KS in the past few years I commend you.

I keep a big wish list / to-do list related to my miniature hobby. It serves a few different purposes:

1. GOOD: Reminds me of what project(s) I'm working on and keeps me on track (sometimes).
2. GOOD: Give me ideas about stuff I could do next.
3. GOOD: Is a place to put things I need to buy or do for specific projects.
4. BAD: Reminds me how much stuff I have spent money on.
5. BAD: Makes it pretty apparent I'll never finish all this stuff, or play all of these games.

In May I started posting up monthly progress reports to keep myself motivated and serve as a reminder that building and priming models is progress too. As much as I love showing off photos of painted figures and games in progress, there is a lot of work that goes into getting a game ready to be played.

One of the challenges I face is finding opponents who want to play the game(s) I'm interested in. Due to the time and money investment required of most miniature games that is a tall order. So more often than not I will buy two or more factions for a particular game, in hopes that I can entice a friend into at least playing the game with me, if not starting on it as a hobby of their own.

Another challenge is the number of games. Through a combination of Kickstarter and my new-shiny-syndrome, it's difficult to focus. This is compounded by more and more skirmish games being released, as well as my love of board games. Buying, building and painting materials for a game isn't enough, you need to have time to play it. The more games you want to play, the less time you will have for any particular game.

Cost is a challenge for a lot of folks, myself included. At this point however, I own far more stuff than I can ever paint and play with. That leads me to the final challenge I want to address: FOCUS.

I need to focus. I have dozens if not hundreds of figures for games I used to play, or will never play. As hard as it is to admit, these things need to go. With that in mind I'll be clearing out some games and models so that I will be able to focus (even if in some small way) more on fewer games. My gaming spending will be largely restricted to the Batman Miniature Game for the foreseeable future. Funds that I apply to that will be garnered by thinning out my current backlog of stuff.

This doesn't mean I'll not continue working on and playing other games. It will mean that adding new games to my collection (ie: stuff I don't own already) is going to be clamped down on as best I can.

Wish me luck!