Valuating projects and systems

To not drown in a sea of lead, plastic and resin, it is important to have an overview and bring some structure into your own hobby. Why bother the work and not just being lead by impulsive and joy buys? Well, for one, everything you buy without a proper reason, is part of a budget that is missing on another place and takes up mental and physicla space, that could be used by something else. For that i reason, i thought about some kind a SWOT Analysis for my project, that might be useful for one or the other for their own projects.

What does that mean in detail? 4 Miniatures that cost 30 euros together, bought simply cause they were cheap, take up place for a bigger or more expensive miniature - or vice versa. For that reason you should be able to say no for and to yourself, but to be able to part from one or the other thing in your collection. That is one of the things, that i want to talk about. I'll valuate my projects by factors like emotion, probability, space and "do i really play that?".

Emotion. How important is that project to me? Here are first of all limited and special edition. But other things as well, for example your own Space Marine chapter, a themed army or another motivation, are favorite projects and are realised with lots of attention and enthusiasm. The long researched historical project, the sci-fi army with the time consuming and extravagant paintjob or the dwarf army, using miniatures of different manufacturers and based for several gaming systems. Mostly they are single miniatures, without any real connection to a bigger project or gaming system. In my case most of it are Games Workshop Miniatures from the 90s, old characters from the White Dwarfs of my childhood or not a few Blood Bowl or Necromunda miniatures. They have so much character, they basicly paint themself.
In some cases you disband an army or project and / or reduce it to the bones. For examples, i had 22.000 points of Warhammer Empire, stripped them down to the core, a couple of characters from 4 or 5 editions and call them the biggest Mordheim warband of the area. This decision set a lot of space and money free for other projects.

Probability. Yes, i know the themed Night Lords army complete with jump packs based upon the Sanguinus list from the Blood Angels codex sounds like a great idea, or the uprising of the finno-ugristic rebels against the mongol cheftain Chakka-Khan is fancy. But will i really complete this project? This is combined with a lot of different factors. Is the project long-lasting? Can i use the models for other projects, or are they even so rare that i can only choose from one or two companies that even deliver mediocre quality? Are the conversion costs or the added effort so high, that they balance out the factor emotion completely? Arena Rex for example looks great, i waited an eternity for proper Gladiators, but it is just to expensive.
Projects with miniatures that i really dig or a rule set that is played a lot, have high passive boni on the probability. Especially if the second is towards zero, you should think of selling the miniatures. They only take up space and you could use the money otherwise.

Space. Not everybody has their own warehouse or hobbyroom at hand. The One or the other might have a shelf or a couple of them, but space is still a topic - even if the miniatures are small, as you need all the other stuff as well, like terrain, paints, tools etc.
That is a bonus for the Skirmishers. Infinity, Hell Dorado, Mercs and so on can be combined on a single shelf, but with Dystopian Wars my prussian fill up a whole board by themself. And that is one of the arguments, it won't do any harm to hang on to this stuff and fits onto a post card or A5 sheet, that prolonges / extends the time before selling it.

Players or do i really play this? That is something easy for cheap games. Usually some games have a certain lack of players (if those are not the Warhammers, Freebooter, Warmachine, Saga, Infinity or Bolt Action). How do you master this problem? Well, with Skirmish you can just start a second, third or forth warband and fix it. Just lend the other player your army, after a couple of games, they want to have their own. With bigger systems that could be a bit expensive, or you have to really stand behind that idea (*cough* Bolt Action 😉 ).
Long story short, everything that stagnates without players in your boxes, shelfs and cases and won't change that status in the future, should be looked at with the emotion in mind and maybe give place for something new.

This post is to some extent timeless and buzzes around in my head for nearly 2 years. I'll evaluate my (open) projects in the next weeks and months with this 4 aspects and explain if they are a keeper or not.

Thanks a lot for reading, come by again soon and leave a comment or give me a like on Facebook if you like this blog!