"Project Management"

"You make a Project Management blogpost which includes a list of projects you have / are working on / one day realistically intend to be working on. In the post you link back to the blog of the person that you got this idea from, like I have with Prufrock, and these instructions. That way we might get a chain effect of people discovering new blogs that they hadn't been following before. Or maybe just a bit of community bonding like the 'good old days'."

I saw the above on the Palouse Wargaming Journal and thought I'd give this a quick go... 

Actually the original idea was this:

Aaron, author of the fine wargaming blog, Here's No Great Matter, recently ruminated on the topic of when enough is enough when working down The Lead Pile (my term, not Aaron's).  Perhaps, I should name my unpainted lead behemoth in the basement something a bit more visual like "Godzilla?"  "Behemoth in the Basement" is not bad either.  Yeah, that would likely conjure up an image of the monster I face.

Back to Aaron and his thoughts on project management...

Aaron wonders out loud at what point he would be satisfied with his accrued painted armies.  When can one, with confidence and satisfaction, put down the paint brush and rest on one's laurels?  Aaron then proceeds to lay out an interesting and relatively long list of projects.  If finished, he would attain his desired, painting liberation.  Of course, a couple of additional Wish List projects are amended onto this list for good measure!  Aaron's prognosis is that he is about a third of the way to recovery to rid himself of this affliction.  Given his current state on the march towards nirvana, Aaron asks his readers where they fall along this (sometimes) forced march on the road to project completion.  Good question, Aaron! 

Well, I am on the almost there bit of the spectrum.  I wanted to be "pretty much done" by the time I was 40 (I'm 40 now) and I did more or less achieve this.  So this was the target:

1 - 6mm Napoleonics: British, French, Spanish, Russian, Austrian, Prussian and various allies.

2 - 6mm Ancients: Romans and Gauls/Britons

3 - 6mm Early Medieval: Saxons, Vikings and Normans

4 - 6mm Wars of the Roses: Lancastrians and Yorkists

5 - 6mm English Civil War: Royalists and Parliamentarians

6 - 6mm WW2: Germans and British

7 - 15mm WW2: Germans, British and US

8 - 28mm Fantasy: Variety

9 - 1/600 WW2 Aircraft: Germans and British 

10 - 28mm Space Hulk

11 - 28mm Napoleonics: French, British and Austrians (for skirmish)

And these have all been completed.  I have done one extra army in addition - 6mm Medieval Arabs.  I want to expand some of these armies a little: in particular I want some extra ECW troops - primarily horse, guns and Scots and eventually some more 1/600 aircraft; perhaps some more support troops for 15mm WW2; little bits and pieces for the 28mm fantasy stuff; maybe, out of pure nostalgia, some 28mm 40K things (but almost certainly not for 40K); possibly a few more 28mm Napoleonic skirmish troops. More importantly, I want to expand and improve the terrain for all these things.

As an acolyte of "Guru Dave" from the Meeples & Miniatures Podcast, I don't want to be constantly buying new stuff that I end up playing rarely or never: I want my toy soldiers to each get some campaigning done.  And I don't want big lead and plastic piles: I make a real effort to have no more unpainted things than I could paint up in their entirety if I took a week off work to do it.  I'll buy stuff when I am going to paint and play with it, not to stuff in my cupboard - I'll buy it when I need it.  And if the company unfortunately goes bust before I buy them...well, so what? I probably wouldn't even notice.

The main armies that might happen are 6mm colonial and WSS, maybe Russian WW2 too, with some 60s Cold War and Vietnam also an outside chance.  But I don't feel strongly enough about them to worry. As far as I am concerned, I have reached that nirvana state and anything I buy and paint now is because I fancy buying and painting it, not because I need it for a project.  The aim now is to play more games, partly to experiment with more rules - and eventually write more myself - but mostly to play and write more scenarios and campaigns.