Sunday, December 17, 2017

Morale Failure

I've withdrawn from this year's Analog Hobbies Painting Challenge.  I'm feeling a bit demoralized regarding wargaming and miniature painting as a whole, and struggling right now to see it as being worth the time and money I'm putting into it.  The local wargaming "scene" especially, has me despairing a bit - seems like my options are either to buy, paint and play a game that doesn't particularly interest me, or play boring games of "our armies line up on opposite sides of the table and run at each other with no objective but complete annihilation" with people who either outright cheat or at the minimum conveniently ignore rules that would lessen their army's advantage.  I've met a couple good guys who wargame, but trying to work around schedules is like pulling teeth out of a chicken it seems. 

If there's one thing I learned from how little I enjoyed Age of Sigmar in the past year, it's that not wargaming at all is better than wargaming and hating it while you're doing so.  But then, it becomes very hard to look at the armies I've painted or am assembling for Dragon/Lion Rampant knowing that the local wargamers won't touch it because it's not 15mm WWII tank battles or supported by a chain of boutique retail stores catering to that game almost exclusively. 

So I've packed up my tools, my paints and the boxes of figures in various stages of assembly and prep, and put them in the closet for now.  There is, as they say, a season for all things, and right now doesn't seem to be my season for wargaming.  I'm sure the time will come again. 

5 comments:

  1. Sorry to hear you've pulled the plug on the AHPC but when your heart is not into hobby time it's definitely better to take a break. It's meant to be fun and a release from less pleasant aspects of life after all

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  2. A wise move. It's not a hobby if you don't enjoy it. read, watch TV and look around and inspiration will come again and when it does, the stuff will be in the boxes ready and waiting.

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  3. Do you have access to a minis convention? Out on the East coast, HMGS runs Cold Wars, Historicon, and Fall In! and these present a _vastly_ different minis experience than the standard FLGS pickup game scene.

    They are primarily scenario games, where you build a table, build some models, create a scenario, and then run the game for other people: sorta like DMing, but more tightly timeboxed and, you know, with toy soldiers.

    It's a format that I love, and I'm constantly thinking about scenarios I'd like to run.

    There are other ways.

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    1. That is very true. Going to a convention can be a huge boost to morale and motivation.

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    2. The HMGS cons are about a five-hour drive from where I live, so wholly doable, and I've been meaning to check them out for a few years now.

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