Well, when I say everything, what I really mean is that a huge declutter has happened and I am now left with a much (much!) more tightly focused collection.
The following post looks at the re-focusing of hobby time and space and though based on my own experience, this post might equally be about you!
It is just an opinion piece and a ramble, if that interests you, then please use the ‘read more’ tab.
Some of this was suggestively signalled in the blog's Christmas Gazette and I wasn't going to do this post, considering it to be a bit of a self indulgent 'announcement to the world' type of thing and instead just letting things run and seeing what falls out of it all, but a fellow blogger thought that it might give interest and perhaps with New Year resolutions still ringing in our ears, there might be enough gamers thinking about down-sizing, that this post might be worthwhile after all.
We are all in different places with our hobby, with different interests and different priorities. There are boardgamers who have collections of 400 - 600 games and are happy with that. There are others that are seriously looking at down-sizing their collections for a host of reasons.
There are figure gamers who are content with doing one period in one scale and their collection is focused and manageable, while others have over collected, with shelves bulging and ‘very important things’ spilling over onto floor space and inhabiting every other spare bit of surface, in stacks that tumble with annoying regularity (me).
Well somewhere amongst all of that sits each of us. I have just gone through a major re-organisation, something that has needed doing for too long and of course, there is only one way to get something done and that is to stop pondering and just doing it!
So I did …. Eventually, and having done it, there has been a huge sense of liberation from clearing-out and of course some cash has been added to the bank.
For my part, the boardgame collection has for years, typically sat in the region of 50 - 75 games, covering a wide range of topics. The number has been steadily maintained as I have always generally traded games away when making new purchases. This was a matter of necessity in my younger years, when times were harder, but has become a natural behaviour that has just stayed with me - probably a good thing as it turns out.
The figure side of things by contrast has over recent years, run a ridiculous path of growth. The combination of being interested in several periods and then collecting in several scales, becomes a problem of over collecting, all the more recognisable as house storage space runs out and the less riskier things (not subject to damp or cold) start to consume garage space (I am lucky enough to have one).
I suppose this very much depends upon what type of character you are, but for me, this sort of thing just leads to inertia and procrastination. I knew in my heart-of-hearts that the collection had to be pared back - but what should go? and what should I be working on and painting next?
‘I know, lets paint ACW’, but then which ones? 12mm metals, 13.5mm Warlord Games, 15mm metals or 28mm plastics? They were all there, all partly done, all winking seductively at me!
It was hard to motivate myself to get into a proper painting regime as the concern was that I would always be painting the wrong thing, perhaps painting the thing that I actually needed to sell instead and so in the end less actually gets painted, too much thinking and not enough doing, if that makes sense.
Now I know this all sounds like first world woes and of course it is exactly that, but mindset is what mindset is. Anyway, late last year, I decided to have a root and branch clear out. The starting point was to decide what should stay, rather than what should go - that in turn revealed what should then go - EVERYTHING that was not on the keep list.
Having done that, the plan was to sell aggressively, that is, sell twice a week and offer things at a low enough price that it will ensure interest.
That means that typically things go too cheaply compared to worth, but on the flip side, what it really means is that things do go and when dealing with such volume, even when selling cheap, revenue can build surprisingly quickly .
My goals for what to keep were;
Boardgames - I want two core collections. Firstly a group of games that will service my face-to-face sessions, which are relatively short, say 2 to 2½ hours. This needs a collection of games or scenarios that will play properly to conclusion in that time, no more getting halfway through a game and then discussing how things might have panned out, if only we had another hour or two.
Secondly are a group of games that meet my personal interest, that might be bigger, deeper and take longer to play than the first group. I will game these solo and have some capability to leave the bigger games set up for a day or two. Wherever possible, I will give favour to those games that are part of a series or have short rules, so that the rules only need to be learned once and from that, all the games in the series can be played without getting tied up with constant rule referencing.
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| fast play, with just 5 pages of rules ensures a midweek game. |
Quite a few single game titles went, but of significance, a big part of the collection had been five WWII tactical boardgame systems, each having a good number of modules and each being quite meaty in terms of rules, so much, that sometimes I would get confused between sets when playing. Anyway one system was kept and the other four series were sold. At a stroke 25 hefty boxes were removed from the gaming shelf - Winner!
Figures - the Captain Sensible part of me recognises that I would benefit from the smaller scales for my dining room table battles. The Captain Emotional part of me likes the bigger scales to paint, handle and owning them just for their own enjoyment. One had to be chosen and I accept that I may not have made the right or even a good choice, but I decided that Captain Emotional was the better chap, not always the cleverest, but certainly a fun chum!
So the plan is to have a number of pairings of small armies, that I will refer to as Pocket Armies and go to a single scale for all terrain. The armies will all be 28mm except for WWII tactical, which will be 1/72 (20mm).
That agreed, the single scale of terrain will be 1/72, also conveniently close to the model railway scale of HO/OO, which has a ton of terrain accessories. This scale looks exactly right for 1/72 WWII tactical as soldiers fit proportionally against doors and windows, while for the 28mm games, dropping a scale actually works quite well in reducing building footprint for the benefit of the smaller table and makes buildings look better when scaled against units that are pretending to be battalions and regiments.
The army pairings will initially be Wars of the Roses, American Civil War and East Front mid war WWII. Once they are up and running, Napoleonics (1809 French / Austrian) and 1066 (Norman / Anglo-Saxon) are already waiting in the wings. At some future point, it would be nice to see English Civil War and American War of Independence join the Pocket Armies - this of course is all no mean feat! the painting alone (not my favourite pastime, but it is the only way to get to a game) is significant, but this is a sight-seeing journey, not a race.
Having decided all of that, then everything (no, really EVERYTHING and there was a lot) not listed above, was slated for sale and a few days ago, I packaged up the last two e-bay bundles and ‘that was that’ as they say.
The consequences have been immediately significant. With all of that stuff gone, I have created both physical and mental space. Shelves are reorganised and can now breathe and I am freed of distraction and can just concentrate on the things that I will be taking forwards.
In the past three weeks I have played the Hougoumont boardgame twice and the Antietam boardgame twice as midweek games. The first has 5 pages of rules and the latter 4 pages. ‘Knowing’ the games made it easier to get them to the table, in time slots that I might have not otherwise have given over to a game.
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| Playability Vs Complexity |
As for the painting of figures, I have made January an ACW month to jack that Pocket Army project back up and this has seen an 18 man infantry regiment cross the painting table, together with an artillery piece and 12 dismounted cavalry. An extra four pieces of snake fencing have been made up from bamboo skewers and I have been working on my own rules.
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| 1/72 StuG III's |
This new opportunity to dedicate painting attention to ‘keeper projects’ will soon move the various Pocket Army collections forward enough that the next generation of new scenarios for the dining table can be created that will have more unit resources to draw upon than previous games.
I see six units as giving a Neil Thomas teaser type game, eight or nine units as giving one his small battle scenarios as exampled by his Leibnitz scenario in his 'Napoleonic Wargaming' book and twelve units to give the sort of small battle type game that I think will fit my wargaming time and space situation.
While not wishing to mention the vulgar aspect of money, It should be said that the monies raised from all of the sales will likely keep my wargaming spend neutral for at least the next 18 - 24 months, although the simple truth is that I don’t really need much more than I have now and it may do me good to remind myself of that in future to keep the collection concise and functional.
I am rather transported back in time to some 45 years ago, when, as a younger version of myself with goodly knees, a pain free back and sharp eyes, to put on a simple game was enough of a pleasure in itself and that what I owned seemed more important than what I didn’t have, while at the same time enjoying the inspiration that fell from the pages of Grant and Featherstone’s writing with their teaser / small battle style scenarios … simple pleasures that like sirens, call.
I suppose this might raise the question of how this blog will look over the next 24 months?
The main themes will still be there, with ‘gaming in small spaces’ being predominant and a mix of boardgame and figure game content continuing to hang from that theme.
For boardgames, favourites will make more regular return appearances and game series subjects will be more prevalent, whereas in the past, newly released titles have tended to dominate most entries, which although are helpful to people making buying choices, does add a whiff of consumerism to the blog that I would like to dampen down.
For figures, there will be an emphasis on getting the Pocket Armies to the table, by creating scenarios that suit relatively small forces and household table sizes. As time goes on, the size and scope of these battles will slowly grow to reflect the fact that the Pocket Armies are growing from their ‘built from scratch’ beginnings. This might actually be a more consistent and interesting degree of content for those that follow the blog regularly.
Whilst the blog will hopefully reduce it’s consumer style footprint, it is obvious that for the Pocket Armies projects to grow from scratch, some description of how that happens will need to be covered and to that end, my website called COMMANDERS will morph a little to give greater detail to the development of the figure and boardgame projects and cover things like builds, painting, rules of preference and topics that can be dealt with by way of a couple of paragraphs, rather than the article based style of the blog.
I have made a three year financial commitment to Commanders site by signing up to a hosting deal, so there is time for that place to find its own feet and identity.
Anyway I am going off on a tangent, the whole point of this post is to example my own situation to encourage others who may be inclined to look at down-sizing, streamlining or re-directing their hobby, to do something real in 2022 that helps get that going.
Having been someone who has just stared at this problem for several years, I feel that in the end, one just simply has to throw themselves at the task with some gusto in the belief that an end point will be reached and be worthwhile. I do feel like I have had a hobby refresh.
Thanks for sticking with this opinion piece, which might sound nonsense to some. I am grateful to all who follow the ramblings here and of course to those who take the time to comment. Even my regular blog spammer has been giving me more attention recently than I deserve, though he / she did give themselves Christmas off, which I thought was a bit of a hoot! :-)
Hopefully those that currently follow will be happy to continue doing so and perhaps the mating of the 28's onto a standard sized table might grab some new attention. Regardless, we are in a good hobby with much to celebrate. Cheers Norm.
Resource Section.
My sister webspace COMMANDERS is being re-configured to showcase various figure and boardgame systems that I am enjoying and give a flavour of where current ongoing projects are up to. Link.
