The beginning of the end

So, after nearly four and a half years (five months if we are going to be accurate), I'm thinking about getting out of the hobby.

Let me explain.

I absolutely love painting miniatures. It's good for me and for my mental health. However, I've recently been thinking about 'what's next' for all that I paint.

Unfortunately, I'm not much of a Wargamer due to my more introverted nature and with the attempts I've made to convince my kids to play with me crashing and burning, all that ends up is I've now got is a two 40k armies, a dozen Underworlds warbands and four Star Trek away teams which never get used (not to mention the smattering of random minis I've picked up either) and are taking up space in a house consisting of enough kids toys to resurrect Toys R' Us as well as my equally bloated comic book collection (but that's a story for another time and place).

As such, I'm thinking of getting out, although not that that means I'm done ... Yet.

My pile of shame/opportunity/Grey is still pretty excessive, with five warbands, two Space Marine units, a few AoS minis, some terrain and Richard Sharpe all in need of a paint job. All told (presuming each unit/character model takes me a month to complete), I think I've gotten a year to 18 months worth of painting left. Plenty to keep me busy.

In the meantime, however, while I truly contemplate whether to be done or not, I do have some plans I want to enact:

First up, rather obviously, is to clear my pile of grey. Like I said, painting is good for me and I'm not a big fan of selling unpainted minis (while that is probably easy). However, that does mean refraining from buying anymore, which I know will be difficult given 1. The dopamine hit you get from buying new things, 2. All the cool stuff which comes out and 3. The I have a GW voucher from my last job redundancy burning a hole in my pocket. Still, I'll try and power through.

Second, I want to, at least sell my Sisters of Battle army (and probably a few other units/models as well. I may go further and sell everything, but if I can at least sell one army and begin a decluttering process, then maybe the feeling that I've been enveloped by this hobby will diminish.

Next up, I want to create one of those IKEA frame displays which everyone seems to be doing on YouTube lately. The reason for this is that, while I do want to clean out my collection and possibly sell it all, there are a few minis I've painted which I'm particularly proud of. As such, I figured it would be nice to both consolidate them into a tidier form of storage as well turn them into a display.

Finally, I would also like to touch up my early painted space marines. This is because, units like my Infiltrators, Intercessors and Tactical Squad were some of the first units I picked up and, as a result, don't appear to match, consistency wise, with the newer parts of my Space Marines army. Therefore, to tack onto to the end of the pile of grey, I'd like to touch them up to bring them in line for whether I sell them as an army or continue to play with them (if I can figure out 11th's rules or get out of my own way, sociability wise).

So, there's my plan for the foreseeable future. A way to reach a conclusive end point in my opinion. Of course, when I get there it wouldn't be a guaranteed finish, because once I reach the end, maybe I'll feel the need to start over. But even if I don't, at least my collection is in an organised state as I box it all up and dump it in the attic (or sell it. Whichever works).

But, enough about the future, I'm gonna get back to the present and finish off Xandire's Truthseekers.



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