Random: How to Get Rid of a Pile of Potential

Sometimes, there are things I want to write about and topics to touch on that do not fit neatly into a category.  Spend anytime with Wargamers and you will soon find out one of the common problems that they face.  It is called a Pile of Shame.  All of the miniatures that they have purchased but have not managed to paint or projects that were abandoned half-way through the process.  This is one of the things that seems to unify all wargamers and a common topic of moaning and ribbing online.  

This situation is so common, that Wargamer folklore has sprung up around the topic.  It is said that a Wargamer can live forever as long as they never paint all their models!  If you paint them all, you are putting yourself at mortal peril!  It almost makes the Pile of Shame justifiable! 

First off, I do not really see anything inherently wrong with a Pile of Shame.  In fact, I prefer to call it a Pile of Potential.  As long as you are not endangering your families income stream, running out of space, or otherwise negatively impacting those around you then it is fine.  Your Pile of Potential helped feed some other people's kids and helped your money spread through the economy.  I prefer if miniatures get used though, so let's talk about how to get rid of that Pile of Potential and how to keep it gone. 

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

The best way to handle a Pile of Potential is to not accumulate one to begin with.  That means that you do not buy models until you have finished the ones you are working on. You do not start a new project until an old project is complete.  You do not buy models faster than you can paint or play with them.  

Of course, anyone who is a wargamer knows the danger of this route too.  Many of us have started a project only for the miniature line to be discontinues before we finished it, the Meta of a game we play to change, or the rules edition churn comes and invalidates what you have been doing.  Therefore, there is a large incentive to "buy it all" as soon as you can.  In fact, I myself tend to get all the models I need for a project in one big batch, enough for two sides at least.  Typically, that means you will have more models than you can paint at a time.   

If you do this, you will inevitably have a Pile of Potential at some point.  I typically have 1 project I am working on painting, and one in the hopper.  I never have a Pile of Potential that extends beyond a secondary project.  For example, I might be working on the two armies for the Battle of Kadesh, my back-up is the latest Heroquest Expansion, and that's it.  No other projects with miniatures sitting around.  This way, if I need a palette cleanser I have it, or if I finish a project I can immediately roll into the next without hesitation.  Once I roll into the back-up I can consider what my next project will be.  This gives me incentive to keep the painting machine rolling without creating an unmanageable Pile of Potential.   

Time for a Pound of Cure! 

Chance are if you are on this blog, it is too late for you.  The Prevention Phase of your Pile of Potential is over.  It is now time to manage it and work it down.  It is now time for a pound of cure.  

1. Prioritize your Pile

Before you do anything, you need to go in and prioritize your Pile of Potential into what you want to see on the tabletop next.  It can be helpful to schedule a game or tourney with the models to give you a hard deadline to finish or give you a shot of ambition.  However, I rarely do that.  It should be enough to see them completed because the models or project alone brings you pleasure.

If you look at models in you Pile of Potential and the thought of painting them, completing them, or displaying them does nothing for you then it is time to "dump" that project.  Move it on to someone else who will feel that way about them.  Why horde what you no longer want?  You can give them away, sell them, or just throw them out.  I am a fan of just giving them away to other gamers.  You might see them again someday across the tabletop! 

2. Lower your Standards

I look across the internet and see an ocean of coll, well-painted models.  One thing I notice is that most really high-quality painters do not paint armies, they paint miniatures.  They are lucky if at the end of the year they have 1-playable unit.  Do not aspire to them!  That way is a trap!  Instead, you need to focus on getting minis to the table.  

Consider the following:  

• In most games, they are going to be at arm's length away or greater.  That is three to six feet away from you.  Are you going to see subtle shading?  How about highlights?  Will you see how you carefully dotted the eyes?  

• Next, most armies act in units of troops.  How often do you look at the individual models in a unit?  Do you notice where the soldier's belt has a splotch of green on it where is should be brown?  How about if the spear colors slightly overlaps the hand?  Unless you have the eyes of an Eagle, you won't notice.  Therefore, most details on a model are irrelevant.  

• Consider your scale.  There is a different level of detail needed for a 54mm model vs a 6mm model.  One you can see the straps and hooks on at range, while the other is simply dots of color.  

• What do you see on the table?  In most games, you are looking at the back of your troop!  That is normally their backpack and pants!  You don't even get to see their faces in battle!

When I say, lower your standards; I mean paint to the level that makes a game piece playable.  This is typically base colors + a wash + a base of some type.  That is it.  You can spend more time on the front ranks, the standards, the officers if you wish but every moment spent on such things is less time painting other models in your army for effects that are not noticeable on the game board or even while on display waiting to fight.  

Is it your best painting?  No!  Does anyone know or care?  Also, No!  Paint to the level needed to play.  

This leads to a corollary.  Once a model is painted, it is painted.  Never revisit it and never paint it again.  If it has paint, it is all right.  The only time this is acceptable, is if you have nothing else to do, no Pile of Potential; and you really, really need to paint right now!  

Batch-Paint!  

If you are working through a Pile of Potential you will have to learn to batch paint.  Batch-painting is simply painting in an assembly line like fashion on multiple troops at once.  If you paint one miniature at a time, you will never get a project completed, not even for very low model count skirmish games.  It is not an efficient use of your painting time.  

If you are like me, you have a family, friends, career, and other hobbies you like to do.  You can not spend hours a week on painting models.  You have a window of opportunity.  Therefore, you have to make the most of whatever time you have to paint by painting the most models you can at once.  

batch Painting means you line up all the models you need for a unit.  10 is a popular number but sometimes units are larger depending on the wargame.  I have painted as many as 60 guys at once.  You get out all the paints you will need for skin-tones, and then you paint all the skin for the batch at once.  Then, you get out the paints for the shoes, and you paint all of the batches shoes.  Then you get the trouser colors and paint all their trousers.  Then their vests, then their jackets, etc. etc.  You work up until you paint all the buckles and buttons last.  You let them dry and then the next day you give them a wash.  

To finish you provide a simple and repeatable base.  Even a simple coat of paint will do.  Maybe paint the base and dip it in flock.  Then, paint the base rim brown or black.  Once a project is done, you can line them all up and spray them with a protective coat.  

Units that wear a uniform are great for this as they will all be using the same color at the same general place.  I.e. all their boots are black, their pants red, and their jackets blue, with a black hat.  However, this technique also works fine with non-uniformed troops. However, you paint ever third or fifth guy with the color and then repeat the process with the next color.               

The most important step of batch painting, is to set-up the finished models for a nice photo-shoot, snap great pictures, set them up for display or storage.  Then, go online and celebrate with your gaming group or fellow wargamers what you have accomplished.  This small celebration helps give you the momentum to get to the next unit.  

Overcoming the Hard Part

The hardest part of dealing with your Pile of Potential is dealing with your Pile of Potential.  That means, the hardest part of the process is getting yourself to paint.  The only way to do that is to paint.  

Unlike many of you, I do not leave my projects and painting supplies out on my desk.  I have them all stored away but accessible. Therefore, when it is time to paint it is a commitment of time and effort.  I accompany this with the ritual of preparing my workstation for the effort and this gets my brain committed to painting.  In addition, it also signals to the others in my household that I am committed to a project.  Unlike most, I do not watch movies, listen to books, or surf the internet when I am painting.  At most, I will turn on some music as background noise.

Since starting is the hardest part, I use the ritual to help get my mind into the painting space and secondly I avoid anything that will make starting harder.  That means, I determine what I am going to paint before I sit down.  I decide how I am going to paint it ahead of time or in the moment of painting.  Once something is painted, I never go back and change it.  Since I am typically batch painting, once the last model is painted, typically the first one is dry and ready to go for the next color.  Once you start you need to keep the momentum up and not stop painting, because once you do you will have a hard time starting again. 

If I am not sure what to do, I do not watch TV and I do not scroll online.  I perform my ritual and set-up to paint.  I do not wait for inspiration and I do not wait to see if I feel like painting.  If I ever am not sure what to do or sense that I am waiting around I pull out my paints.  This can be at anytime, late at night, during the day, on weekends.  I never want to paint but if I have a moment where I am unsure what to do next; that is when I strike.  The desire to paint is secondary to the act of painting itself.

If you want until you are inspired or want to paint, you will NEVER get your Pile of Potential done.      

Painters Anonymous

I have all ready shared a few of my tips and hacks to get rid of my Pile of Potential.  I have been relatively successful for most of my painting career.  However, there are times when even I can not do it alone.  I find something that really helps me is to make painting a social activity.  

Thankfully, I am part of the True Crit Gaming Guild.  The Guild is just as focused on painting and finishing models as it is on playing games.  There is a regular Painting Social where we all come together with projects, paints, brushes, and other tools.  We sit around tables, drink tea and coffee, chat and paint.  This helps getting over the hurdle of just starting to paint.  

In addition, I have learned a lot of great tips and tricks from others.  We celebrate each others 'wins and successes.  We cheer each other on.  We help each other get over procrastination.  We admire each others' work.  I am lucky to be able to sit around and engage with and paint with a lot of great painters.  

This is another great tool to uncap your own inner momentum to get and keep painting.  It is about you, but also helping the group.  If you are familiar with Maslowe's Hierarchy of Needs, you know that Group is more important than your own self-esteem.  Therefore, it can be really helpful to make your efforts to eliminate your Pile of Potential a group effort and not a solo show.  

Final Thoughts

The Pile of Potential is a perennial problem for wargamers.  It is a constant topic of conversation, discussion, and moaning.  However, a Pile of Potential is a choice.  It does not have to be.  I have shared my tips and tricks for dealing with a Pile of Potential which includes prioritizing, getting the output you need, make sure you start, and that you do not always have to go it alone.  Therefore, I would love to hear about how you have managed your Pile of Potential.  Once it is gone, it is much easier to keep in check. 

Until next time.....

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Or purchase all out games at the Blood and Spectacles Publishing Wargames Vault Page!                                  

Wargaming on a Budget: Making Walls for the Gameboard

Welcome back to Wargaming on a Budget.  Many years ago, I barely held onto the hobby of wargaming, because I was getting priced out of it.  All my money was going to being a young parent and homeowner.  No time or money for wargaming.  Plus, when I started wargaming Do-IT-Yourself was a huge part of the hobby.  There was not much pre-made terrain or supplies for wargaming, and instead you had to get creative, loot like crazy, and use your imagination!  In honor to this bygone era of wargaming, I like to show off some of the tips and tricks of yesteryear to help make wargaming an affordable hobby.  Plus, there is a certain pride one can take in terrain they built up themselves.  

Last, time you may recall that I built a Kill Team sized game board.  However, it is not enough to simply have a game board, you need to create fire lanes, corners to cover, and other nooks and crannies to make your games much more tactically challenging and fulfilling.  Today, I am going to show you an easy way to "fill-in" the board for compelling games.  

Before you begin, you will want a metal edged ruler, a razor cutter, pencil/pen, PVA or similar glue, masking tape, cereal card/card stock, sprue bits, and then the paints you will use.  Spray paint works great for this project. 

The first thing I decided to do was use some of my left-over cardboard and cut it into 6 inch tall and 8 inch long rectangular sections.  It is best to have a metal edged ruler, so that when you cut with your box cutter/razor blade you can use the metal edge as a guide.  In addition, you will want to run your razor blade over the cut a few times to get through the various layers of a corrugated box.  Cut on something you don't mind slicing up like another layer of boxes or a cutting mat.  Your blade WILL go through and cut whatever is underneath so do not cut on your kitchen table, counter top, or carpeted floor.  You will regret it.  

I cut-out 10 pieces, and you can make them various lengths and heights, but I made them all the same.  I made my walls 6 inches tall, but honestly 4 often does the job and makes it easier to get in and out of the board.     

Once you have the wall sections cut you will want to add a few doorways as openings in your long wall sections.  These make great little chokepoints and short cuts to move around the board.  Each wall section should have 0-2 or these.  For most 28mm miniatures, these doorways will be about 1-1/4 inch wide and about 1-3/4 inches tall.  It might make sense to put a model where you want the door to make sure the dimensions are big enough.  Then, you use the same method as cutting the card to cut-out the door way.  Once you cut out one, the scrap can be used as a guide for the rest.      

Next step is to use your masking tape to seal all the edges and corners of the cardboard.  This strengthens the cardboard, but also seals off any bad cuts and the unsightly corrugated edge.  When you paint the cardboard, it will help it look finished.  You do not have to be too precise in this step, just make sure all gaps are covered.  

Next, take two or three sections of walls, and simply paste them together using PVA glue at 90 degree angles.  I like to make T and H shaped sections, but U and L shapes also work well.  You will need to put the glue along the edge of the wall, and then simply hold them together for a few minutes while they dry.  Not much different than assembling models.  I hade two H shapes, and 2 L shapes when I was done gluing all 10 pieces together. 

A Reaper Cloud Giant and Axolotl mage for scale 

Congrats, you are now ready to do the time consuming part.  The first thing you do is take bits of cereal packet and cut three pieces for each side of the doorway.  You glue these on to create a door frame around each archway.  So you put one strip across the top, and one on each side of the door.  Then you do it again on the opposite side of the wall piece.  This helps the openings look like actual doorways. 

From there, you grab your bitz box, cut-up sprues, cereal packet, and assorted found items and go to town gluing them all over the surface of the wall sections with your PVA.  Some good bits are squares of cereal packet, cut up straws, bits of screen, and corner sprue pieces, string hanging out from under a bit of card, or long sections of sprue.  More angular shapes work better than organic shapes.  These additions will create the illusion of texture on the walls once they are painted.  This is the longest step of the process.  

Once you have suitably covered the wall sections with scrap, you will be ready to paint.  I recommend three layers.  The initial layer should be the lightest and a full covering.  This will be the base color.  Then, I recommend a darker color than the base coat, and I would use a distance spray as you do not want this coat to over-power your initial coat.  I also spend a bit of time using the darker color on the edges of the wall and any large blocked up shapes on the wall.  The final spray is another distance spray of black to add some texture, and maybe around any doorways to darken them up.  When this stage is done, the walls will look something like the below.....

Now comes the final step.  Go online and print up some posters and graffiti online.  Carefully cut these out and glue them around on your walls.  You can also use stencils and the like in order to paint numbers and letters on the wall to add that "pop" of detail.  It is also a good time to take some acrylic paints like bronze, brass, copper, black and oranges and drybrush along the edges of some of the edges.  You can also paint a few squares here and there.  All these details make your walls look "lived in" and more like a location worth fighting over instead of a blank space  

Once you have all of your sections done, you can easily set them out on your game board in different combinations to make narrow corridors, open bays, and wide edges.  You can use your L, T, U and H shaped wall sections to make a variety of interesting shapes and tactical situations.  For added fun, you can even put them on your board at an angle instead of flush or straight with the edges.  Also be sure to add the scatter terrain for the final look! 

Well, you can see the same basic shapes in the game board and the walls in order to make compelling and inexpensive game boards.  The same spray cans can be used for each stage, and the materials are all found materials, and simple household items.  This board cost less than a single blister of miniatures.    

  

Until next time! 

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Wargaming on a Budget- Making a Game Board

 Welcome back all. 

Many of you know that I had a long period of my life where wargaming was barely part of it.  I was locked out by cost!  This period led me to lean into something I call DIY (Do-It-Yourself) wargaming, or wargaming on a budget.  It is still a part of the hobby that I hold onto closely in my heart.  

A while ago, I had a short post about how to Wargame on a Budget to make a board look good.  I want to go back and revisit that idea.  Lately, I have been playing games of Games Workshop's Kill Team game with the True Crit Gaming Guild.  Thankfully, one of our members managed to get in good with the local GW Rep and get us some good resources to start, but we soon outgrew the couple of boards we got from them.  Therefore, we needed some more 30 x 22 inch boards for our Kill Team group!  

I decided to step in to create some terrain for myself, that I could share with the group on game day.  I actually started this process by using a 6x4 city terrain mat from Cigar Box Battles.  It looked great, but was much bigger than what we needed for a game of Kill Team.  I also used one of the group Project Social days to make a reasonable set of DIY "futuristic city terrain" out of found materials and printed accessories.  

Amazing what some cheap big box acrylic paint, styrofoam, printed images, and a good mat can do!

However, I wanted to try and build a quick and easy board for Kill Team that was modular and called back to the Gallowdark/Space Hulk boards.  However, I wanted to do it all with found materials only.  Today, we will take a look at the first major step in that project, we are going to make the 30 x 22 inch game board.  

The first challenge was that Kill Team used a 30 x 22 inch game board, when a standard sheet of Foam Board or similar display boards were 28 x 22.  I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I am almost 100% sure the size difference was not an accident.  Therefore, I had to hunt for an alternative base.  I managed to find it with a big box of corrugated cardboard. 

I traced out the size I wanted, and cut two pieces of 30x22.  Why two pieces and not just 1?  Well, corrugated cardboard will warp.  Therefore, to prevent warping, I cut out two pieces and glued them together with simple adhesive.  This was to just give the board some additional strength.   

Those of you old grognards out there will probably recall an old article G-Dub did called Cardboard City.  This was around the time of the first Cityfight Codex.  Well, that article had a great tip for using cardboard.  

To cover the unsightly edges, you needed to cover them with masking tape!  Brilliant.  That is the next step of our board! 

Once that is done, now comes the fun part!  Time to detail!  Go out and find a whole bunch of boxes from cereal, oatmeal, and various other products that use that thin cardboard.  You know the stuff!  

Cut this out into a variety of small squares and shapes you like.  Take regular adhesive and glue these all over the top of your board.  In addition, find any other fun little items that strike your fancy such as straws, tongue depressors, sand, sprue bits, bits of screen, whatever!  Go crazy!  Use these to detail the board by gluing them to the playing side of it.   You want to make it look like more than just a flat piece of cardboard.  However, you want to put enough on, but not too much.  You don't want it to get in the way of putting your terrain on top, just enough to give your piece of board some texture and favor when you paint it.  

Once all of that is done, you are ready to paint.  First step is to give it a simple undercoat of grey primer.  This can be any old primer since you are not trying to make a detailed piece.  No need to use the expensive stuff you use on miniatures here!  Give it enough coats so the colors from any original packing material does not show through the primer.  

Once it is primed, you can go about giving it some rough coverage.  The easiest way is to either use spray paint or some cheap big-box acrylics.  It works best if you use a color that is a bit darker than the original primer.  Then just slop it on messily and let it dry for a few hours or overnight.  Then, go back and highlight the texture pieces with a lighter color than you used as the primer, again just using cheap, large brushes and big-box retailer acrylics.  

Now that those two steps are done, you are ready to move onto some detail work.  Again, no need to do anything fancy here.  Just use cheap big-box brushes and acrylics to paint out some details to make the base board POP!  Some red here, some green there, a splash of metallic colors on some sprues, etc.  Enough to give your board some character, but not overshadow the terrain or the models you are going to put on top of it.  

Congratulations, you now have a 30x20 play board for your games.  It is just big enough where you can easily carry it around and store, with just enough detail to make it look good.  If all goes according to plan, this probably took a weekend or two.  Plus no one else has a game board like yours! 

Next time on Wargaming on a Budget, we will start to build some simple walls to put on the board for quick and effective terrain!  Keep the materials you used for this project, as you will be using them again for the next phase!         

Until then! 

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