Farewell to rank-and-file

Okay, I tried, I really did.  But the AHPC was my last lifeline, and it didn`t help.

I just can`t seem to paint up ranks upon ranks of uniformed models anymore.

The reasons if I see back on it, is on the one hand, time.  With RL, even though on hold atm due to Corona, is pretty busy, it just isn`t rewarding to do one colour on 20+ models in a session, preferring to get some decent progress on a skirmish model or so instead.

Then of course, there is baby Thorin, who needs attention as well, and this means tournaments and such are out of the order the coming months and even years, I`ll be glad if I make it to clubnight now and then.  So that sank the motivation of the "why should I do it" to paint up a few thousand points of a force.

And hence I planned to motivate myself during the past AHPC, and prepped for example a unit of 20 Chaos Dwarf warriors... I stranded with an entry of 5 done, the other 15 now not being touched since I uploaded the entry in january...  I can paint LotR, due to their rather differing colour schemes throughout a force fairly easily, but real fantasy, or even the colour hotch potch of the T'au I was painting, just doesn`t get done.

Another factor in this is more of the "opposing factor".  I am not talking the uber competitive mentalitly, as that is normal during a League, but the huge amount of unpainted plastic, resin and lead I faced during last years league... and I only played 5 games in it out of potentially 27.  This is so demotivating, you put in heaps of effort, and then face just "the best units, not bothering on painting them, but I blast you away now" kind of game.  And yes, I can fulminate over that.  Not over potentially losing the game, but over losing it to such things.

A third factor is the packing up that such an army requires.  I often got pressed for time, and rushed just "an army" into my carry case.  I broke on that part when I had to proxy my characters as I had forgotten to pack those up for a game last year, and felt bad over it for the whole game.

But perhaps the most defining factor that I came to terms with more and more... I`m getting to old for the competitive playing of always the same format.  I organised the league myself last year... and turned sick of it due to it myself.  I felt like I had created a monster.  Now, truth to be told, my clubgroup never has really been into the narrative side of gaming, but let that be the one thing that ever since 2001 kept me attracted and "into" Lord of the Rings, the fact it features heavily on unbalanced scenario play with alternate win conditions.  To me, this has become more and more a challenge of the gray matter to pull out a win, and it is just so much more fun to play that way then the constant rulemongering (heck, what do you want with a gazillion rulebooks, is it not 40k I ask tee... ?) about obscure rule 247 or so.

So yes, it has become that time to move on.  The DnD campaign you saw passing info about in the last week is just something I wanted to do for a long time, but apart from it I will be moving on to narrative gaming, even if I have to provide the models for both sides (which, for LOTR, I easily can), going to play only games that either "evolve" your forces (Battle Companies, Frostgrave, those sort of things) or don`t require a gazillion models anymore to play (Underworlds for example).

And the rest?  That will be tossed out at the next Bring and Buy at Crisis or at the club...