Getting Inspired to do the Hobby (Part III of III)

In this final segment on my experiences with how to get inspired to complete mounds of hobby progress; I wanted to discuss the method that has helped me out the most over the last few years specifically: The Hobby Progress Challenge!

Sure having that horde army may seem like a great idea. Until you realize you have paint them all...

The illustrious hobby progress challenge has been around on a variety of websites and online communities since I'm assuming the dawn of the internet. However, I'm going to highlight a couple of challenges that I have participated in over the past few years and how they have spurned me on to complete additional units for my armies. I will also discuss several local players and highlight their continuing hobby progress with these different challenges. 

What is a Hobby Progress Challenge (HPC) and why does it motivate people?

At its' heart a  HPC is a contest of sorts, which pits various forum members (if it run online) against each other to complete a set number of units or models in a prescribed period of time. The exact numbers and specifics can vary greatly from challenge however. Generally what I have found is that members have an X amount of time (usually a month) to complete X number of units or models to get a forum award (badge or signature) or a possible prize. 

For some folks the badge or potential prize helps to motivate them throughout the year, however I found for the overwhelming majority of folks out there the primary drive is knowing that you have positive support (via comments and suggestions) from other community members as you complete your projects. Too often I hear comments about big forum sites, stating that they are negative with comments, or you never hear any feedback from others. Being involved in a HPC essential mitigates that issue from the get-go, creating a positive bubble in any group.   

Being part of a larger community is sometimes a good thing for hobby progress!

My Experiences with the HPC:

I have participated in only two HPC with two different forums over the past several years. One on the FreeBootaz forums run through 40k Radio and Battlefoam, and the other run by the Independent Characters. The Freebootaz challenge focuses on completing a unit a month, regardless of the original condition of the model and fulfilling a series of focused challenges for additional prizes (community donated to individual winners). The IC's HPC focuses on completing an army list (1850pts) with different rewards and points going to completing fluff and terrain for the army. Each month you have to post a picture of the unpainted model and the month that it is going in for the challenge; then a finish picture in order to get credit. I have participated in the IC's challenge four times now (completing the challenge in the first two years....failing in the third and trying my best so far in the fourth!). 

Why I joined the HPC:

I initially joined the HPC to help motivate myself to complete more of my Grey Knights, especially the units that I had somehow managed to collect but knew I was not really going to field all to often. Through reading positive comments and getting a fair bit of positive feedback I was able to get my armies done two years in a row. Cutting through my mountain of models was great, but getting feedback and discussion surrounding my hobby was great and has led me taking new chances and new strategies with my Imperial armies. 

These are metal models excavated from Fort Ticonderoga in the Adirondacks. These models are about three hundred years old. I can only assume they were completed in a HPC of yester-year in Colonial 'Merica. 

Experiences with the HPC:

The HPC forced me to organize my collection into smaller monthly segments. I had to initially figure out from the start what units I could reasonably finish in a single month, and which ones I would need a vacation or a long weekend to complete. Once I organized my thinking into smaller segments, completing the models was not as daunting or as difficult of a prospect. However, getting the units done towards the end of the challenge was tough and involved some serious time commitment to get them finished off. Ultimately though the year long HPC's were a marathon of painting, as opposed to the sprint race I have found myself in while getting ready for a tournament. Planning months where all I painted was a single independent character became more important so I could spend my free time doing something other than hobbying. 

Like taking time to read a good book. 

When I failed in the HPC is was entirely my fault as any free time that I had to hobby completely dried up over several months and I was never able to get back into the groove of things. I found that once I fell out of painting for the HPC I did not have a lot of forward drive to paint new units and all forward progress on my guard stopped. 

This year so far, I have been able to keep pace with things. For the first month of February I have to complete a single Tech Priest, which I have nearly finished off. I'll be updating this blog with some finished pictures this week (as pictures are indeed due by the end of the month!). For the following month I'm working on my Reaver-Titan, which will be a project of a much different caliber. I have been trying to figure out different monthly commitments and projects to tackle over the following few months that will help me to make a bigger dent in my backlog of Guard units. 

Local Member's Experiences with Hobby Progress Challenges:

JamesI- A local Blood Angels player and moderator on the Bolter and Chainsword joined the Freebootaz challenge to paint a unit every month last year. He made a lot of progress over the year and completed the challenge. While he added a lot of new units to his BA army over the course of the year, he took the opportunity to paint some additional Chaos units for his growing Chaos Space Marine army. By having the challenge to motivate him, he was able to complete several models he otherwise would not have bothered with at the time. 

Jholtmusic- A local Blood Ravens player started with the IC's HPC last year. He used the challenge to help motivate him to complete a large number of Blood Ravens units throughout the year, and by the end of the challenge he had a sizable force. As he painted through his army he continuously pushed himself and learned some new techniques and improved his abilities greatly. His army is looking better every single day and he now has a good force to pick and choose individual units from for local tournaments and events. He is currently working on a new challenge this year, starting out big with a Knight-Titan. He will be painting a large Legion of a Damned force using Grey Knights for the rules. This is going to be a great looking force and will look great with existing armies. 

Fitting Imperial Propaganda for the HPC. 

I hope that discussion on the HPC helps to convince folks out there to join up with any HPC that is offered on a forum that you frequent. I would highly suggest joining the IC's HPC this year as it is being run by Loopy, a local gamer in the Capital Region. There are some amazing projects being shown every single day on the boards and I know that they will only get better as the year continues. 

As always thank you for your time,

-Skip

Getting inspired to do the hobby (Part II of III)

In the last segment concerning how to be inspired with the hobby, I discussed the benefits of creating a collection list and forming goals surrounding that list to aid in completing hobby projects. While this is a great idea, nothing really gets gamers (we are often prone to procrastination) moving to complete hobby like a looming deadline.

So once you have that list of models to complete, either for a competitive list; or simply because that's the models you wanted to paint this month, what further motivation is there actually get them completed?

Step II.

Tournaments & Deadlines

While creating a list is a great first step towards making progress with the hobby, most players credit tournaments with forcing them to finish their armies at a timely pace. Many unfortunately tend to wait to the last possible minute, dashing paint onto models and throwing a series washes onto various parts of the model to cover up hastily made mistakes. 

Deadlines work in much the same way, being a stop date for an approaching event that you want to participate in, or playing in a narrative campaign that requires painted models, etc..etc... 

I know that I have been prone to feverishly throwing modeling flock and glue onto a display board as I was about to board a train bound for Adepticon/ pulling an all-nighter the day before Duel Con to put some finishing touches on the models...but I digress. 

Generally players want to have painted models for a tournament, and will spend a lot of time and effort to make sure their forces are presented exceedingly well. But all of this time and effort spent making plastic model look presentable for an event begs the question: Why? 

Some may argue: That unpainted models typically roll just as well as painted models- without the hours spent on improving their general appearance. Hell, that Assault of Black Reach marine whom has been missing his bolter for two years is a great stand in for that Ork Boy too! 

If you are a general gamer/ tend to not be as competitive like myself (at the moment, I'm sure that I'll become a rabid WAAC player at some point- you know for the Emperor) you'll have your army painted (and at least modeled appropriately) as a point of pride. Not to mention help make the games more fun as Warhammer is really a visual game at its' heart. Games can be fun against someone with an unpainted army filled with proxies....but more often than not...they are not fun and are lessons in frustration (although the strong exception is always there for a person whom is actually making progress through their army).

Please don't use proxies...they make Ultramarines sad...

However if you are a competitive player, you are painting for one thing...and one thing only....POINTS, GLORIOUS POINTS! 

Most tournaments will have a painting rubric associated with their event, and many players will paint and modify their armies to directly match this. This will enable them to maximize their soft scores at a tournament, helping them to achieve the top overall slot; or best painted if they should do poorly in their games. 

But this is where the prep-work of building a list and creating goals is essential to the process of actually getting the work completed. Without a clear heading, you'll paint units you don't need/ wrong war-gear. Or to the wrong set standard for the event/ tournament. 

Once the list/ heading is set and locked in; you can go down your hobby list, painting unit by unit and piece by piece until everything is completed. This is a more methodical approach to the hobby, but it can yield results better than tacking a project without a clear goal in mind. 

Personal Example- When I first started out with the hobby, I did not believe that I would do well with the battle points (case in point- I was playing 3rd edition Demon Hunters in 5th Edition 40k). Accordingly, I decided that if I was going to go down in a flaming wreck each game, I would do so- looking good. I looked up the tournament painting rules, created a hobby list and promptly waited to the last possible minute to get it done (the night before!).  

In my first tournament I scored middle of the pack (thank you soft scores!), and had secured Best Painted. Immediately after the tournament I started to re-work my entire army to be in NMM; looking at the painting score sheet for Da Boyz GT- which was the next tournament I had planned to attend (never got there though... :( ) 

Local Examples from some of the folks from the Albany Exterminatus Gaming Group concerning prepping their forces for the upcoming March 8th Tournament:

A Space Wolves Player: 

A local Space Wolves player has been play testing several different lists at the store for the last month and a half. He started up with the game over the summer, around the same time the campaign box came out. He has already amassed a large Space Wolves army, but he is concentrating on the competitive side of the hobby over trying to finish off his collection at the moment. 

His current hobby goal is not to win best painted, but instead to make all of his models "table top" quality so he can score a good chunk of the points at the event. With this clear goal in mind he was ready to start making his list. 

He recently came up with a final list and has decided to stick with it. The first thing he did was to create a list of what hobby projects he had to complete and what he still needed to buy. He found the following:

I. Needed to finish off some smaller details on his overall force

II. Needed to buy a box of Centurions and get them painted for the tournament

III. Needed to buy a Drop Pod and get it painted for the tournament (told you it was competitive!)

IV. Needed to scratch build and paint several Rapier Weapon Batteries for the tournament 

Once he had the list written down, he figured out what he wanted to buy, which project to tackle first, and created a time table to get this all accomplished in. 

With two weeks to go, he still has to finish up the weapon batteries and drop pod- but has been more or less on task with his progress thus far. 

A Eldar Player:

A local Eldar player has been play testing a tough as nails 1500 point list over the last few months at the store and has his final list down now. The vast majority of his models are painted to an extremely high quality, with conversions, OOP collected models and extreme detail added to almost every model in the force. The entire thing is an army to behold and once its' finished, it'll be capable of winning a top spot for painting at any major event. 

Similarly to the Space Wolf player, he wants the army to look presentable to help increase the overall enjoyment of the games at the event. 

Furthermore, he is going for all of the painting points he can reasonably score to help him take the overall slot if he fails to win the overall tournament. He is accomplishing this by again first creating a full list of what he wants to accomplish for the army and is working towards finishing that goal in a timely order.  

March 8th Tournament Painting Rules: 

With these two examples focusing on a local tournament, I wanted to share the painting requirements for the event. It is based on technical skill, level of completion and basing. However, there are a couple of caveats. The best painted award can go to the individual with the best painted single model/ unit in their force. Furthermore, an individual cannot win this award twice in a row. 

These caveats were designed to keep one person from constantly "stealing the show" with their army and provide additional motivation towards those that are just starting with the hobby/ starting up a new force, or are looking to improve their painting abilities. 

That does it for Part II of this discussion concerning hobby motivation. With Part III I'm going to discuss competitions and hobby progress challenges that are now available on several different forums. I'm going to focus on how these can help to push you towards completing big projects over the course of a year. 

Thank you for your time, 

-Skip

Getting inspired to do the hobby (Part I of III)

Staring at a wall of unpainted miniatures that could rival the store shelves in a small friendly local game store can be a daunting if not sobering experience for any one in the GW hobby. Three years ago whilst I was still in the midst of Graduate School I was a cross roads with the Warhammer hobby. I was about to attend Adepticon for the first time and I was constantly reminded of the veritable mountain of unpainted Grey Knight models. Every single time I looked at the heap of models I would get discouraged and bow out of any additional hobby progress for the evening. This was despite me desperately wanting to have an army ready for the convention to play friendly games with.

Having models sitting unpainted on sprues or in boxes laying around the house is never a good thing and can greatly lead to burn out of the hobby as a whole.

So why am I writing about this now? I want to share different ways that I have been inspired to do hobby in the past in the hope that it helps someone else that finds themselves in a similar situation- starting to burn out.

Step I.

 Create a List & Establish Goals

From my experience, one of the biggest contributors to hobby burn out is a lack of direction. If you have a pile of miniatures to paint and zero direction it is easy to give up and opt out of making any headway. Many long-time players have a sizable collection of unpainted models and unfinished projects languishing in boxes and bins. Sitting down and creating a list of what you want to start and what is currently in different stages of progress is a huge step towards completing your eventual goals.

List Creation- This is where you figure out what exactly you want to paint or accomplish for your hobby. This could be completing a set army in a finite period of time for a tournament, or creating a showpiece model for a growing collection. What ever it is, write it down along with all of your hobby commitments and future goals.

Writing out a list may seem arbitrary at first, but having something on paper will help you to figure out priorities and better organize your hobby time as a whole. Paper and pencil work out great for this, but you can also use a variety of computer programs such as Microsoft Excel to create your list.

A few local players have started to use KabanFlow to help them better organize their hobby lists as well (https://kanbanflow.com/). This is a neat free to use program that allows you to slide finished projects, started/ in progress projects and not-yet started projects around a multi-column system.

Establish Goals- Once you have a list of models that you want to complete, it is generally a good idea to put some thought into the end game or what you want to have accomplished at the end. Generally with this stage you have to quantify and order your hobby list, prioritizing different projects by importance, ease of completion, etc...

When you are establishing your goals it is also a great idea to also create rewards for achieving those goals. This could be working on a different project, or buying more models, etc...etc...etc... Giving yourself an additional motivation to get through your now listed project is a great idea and can help you to achieve more and keep the momentum going.

I will be posting additional steps for improving hobby inspiration in the coming days/ week as well as some examples from local players within the Albany Exterminatus community. These examples will showcase the different ways that folks are pushing themselves to accomplish different projects within the Warhammer 40,000 hobby.