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Vulcan wrote:At risk of pissing a bunch of people off... THIS IS JUST A HOBBY! GET OVER IT!

The OP has no reason to feel ashamed. He has a job and a life outside wargaming. That's more than a lot of people can claim right now (he's ahead of approximately 30 million Americans in the 'has a job' department alone). Sure, that there are a lot of people out of work is not the fault of the people actually out of work (I blame corporate greed for that), but to bash someone who has a full time job for not having the time to paint little plastic soldiers is to loose track of the whole point of the game: TO HAVE FUN!

I understand that it looks better, that it is more fun, to pit your fully-painted army against someone else's fully-painted army. BUT, it is still fun to play, even if the hordes across the table are still grey. And bashing him for having a job and a life just makes you sound like TFG, who is no fun to play at all.

Blah, blah, blah, yes we realize that it's just a hobby, it's all about having fun, some folks have jobs and lives, etc. Don't get your panties in a bunch, no one is pissed off at you, and I don't think we're bashing the OP for having a job.

However I do take issue with the last statement. There are a fair number of folks (like myself) for whom a game of grey hordes is of little or no fun. Maybe it's fun for you, but quite clearly your opinion is not that of everyone else.

I, like most folks, am in it to have fun. I get about one gaming night every two weeks. I'm certain the OP and many others who might show up with a grey horde are fine fellows with much to recommend them. However, I'm going to do my darndest to make sure that with my limited time, I'm playing a game I will enjoy: with painted figs, against painted figs and on well-made terrain. My standards for gaming are not better than the OP, just different and I feel neither the desire to bash or be a-bashed because of it.

I think any reasonable person would only give you trouble if you never make any progress with your painting. If you paint as much as you have time to and show steady (even if it's very slow) progress you are fine in my book. Anyone you game with regularly surely knows your life situation and how much time you have to commit to toy soldiers. If they can't be understanding of your situation, or at least back off when they are obviously upsetting you then I would find new opponents. Not having time to paint and refusing to paint are two different things.

Okay, first off, Thank you! You've put forward something that I run into all the time, myself.

To all those folks out there going "You can always find 15-20 minutes to paint", well, yes you can. But that doesn't help much when it takes you 15-20 minutes to basecoat a single model, and not everyone is satisfied with dipping or a single coat of paint. That happens with some people. Deal.

OP? Don't bother being too polite. They're insulting you by saying those things, so go right ahead and call them jobless bums. Who knows, maybe it'll motivate them to find work.

Ok, once an army is built, it simply doesn't take that long to get a base color on it. Army paint + foundations + decent brushes + wash/dip = decent looking army in a few hours. There are always ways to make time.

If you simply paint slowly/poorly, that's different, but than virtually no amount of time would help. I mean, I don't claim that I just ran out of time in high school to sleep with the homecoming queen. I just couldn't get it done.

That all said, here's what's going on: you're gaming with people whose lives, outside of gaming, aren't going much of anywhere. I'm in a similar situation: at my FLGS I'm one of two regulars with a full time job, and the only one with an upwardly mobile career. I've also been on the flipside: completely unemployed and looking to gain some dignity thorugh the hobby.

My advice would be three pronged:
1) make an effort to at least spruce up the army. Showing virtually any progress will shut people up.
2) Come up with witty (but not overly cruel) response taunts
3) decide if these guys are just in bad places, or if they're genuinely bastards.

Eilif wrote:

malfred wrote:

Eilif wrote:
Also, they may be jerks, but I'd love to have a FLGS where the local standard is to play with painted army. The amount of grey at my FLGS sickens me. If you have a FLGS where the standard is for painted armies, you're actually quite lucky.

Maybe if there had been much more grey, the place would still be open come October

I keed, I keed.

I'm one of the fully painted players there, Eilif. It just so happens that I hang out with people who are unwilling or unable to paint. If they don't enjoy that part of things, I'm not going to berate them for that. It's different for me. I can't imagine painting so many figures if I didn't enjoy it.

Are you unusually preceptive, or are you referring to Black Sun Games in Chicago which is unfortunately closing in September? I used to game at BSUN until I started a group playing indie miniatures games at Chicagoland Games. Black Sun games seemed to have alot of painted armies, whereas Chicagoland Games has grey and silver hordes. Unfortunately Chicagoland was closer to one of our main players and has much better access to public transit.

As to your friends, that's fine if you're cool with that gaming evironment. Despite my only-tabletop-quality paintjobs and my preference for conversion to painting, I'm still a "spectacle of painted armies" kind of guy. A table of grey and silver has absoutely no appeal to me. Hence my club only fields painted minis and when folks come to play without painted minis, we lend them painted figs.

Of course the comparison isn't entirely far. We play a few different of skirmish games of 12-35 figs a side, so while over a year one of us may paint as many figs as someone working on a WFB army, we don't have to force ourselves to paint hordes of nearly-identical miniatures.

Tim, this is Felix. I'm talking about BSG. I didn't realize you were doing
skirmish gaming at Chicagoland.

I try to understand that people come by this hobby from different
directions. Some of the skirmish games that you love are really just
rulesets designed to make use of figures you've already painted, so
I imagine that a great deal of the population who gravitates to those
games bring stuff that is painted. However, some gamers are of
video game type, and so they play to use a particular ruleset and
don't necessarily enjoy or have the skill in or find the importance in
the hobby.

Why do we have this topic every few months. It is really simple. Everyone mind their own business and stop being so judgmental.

If you want to paint your army and play only against painted armies that is great - go do that - but shut up whining about others who don't do that and keep your opinions to yourself.

If you don't paint your army because you don't have time or don't want to then don't your perogative. You may get to play someone who has a painted army or you may not. Either way stop whining if others don't understand your predicament or want to play and keep your opinions to yourself.

This hobby would be so much better if people didn't set themselves up as arbitors of what makes a good hobbyist v's a bad hobbyist. This hobby is large enough to encompass us all. Just keep your opinions of others to yourself and stop pretending that your opinions actually count for anything in this world.

At the end of the day no matter who you are, how great your painted army looks, how great your skill is on the table or how great you knowledge of the background is, to approx 99.99% of the population you are still some silly gakker that plays with toys with no life, personality and have suspect hygenie habits. So arguing about who is the best hobbyist or who has the best approach to the hobby is really nonsensical.

D1 athlete, honors student, employed (on campus), and not a social pariah. I feel your pain - I sometimes feel as I have not zero, but rather negative hours which I can spend on painting. In reality, it's a hobby and only as big a deal as you want it to be. Of course I would prefer to play a painted army. I personally wouldn't field anything unpainted myself. That being said, if your stuff is unpainted I will live. I will also feel much better about it knowing that you are at least making an effort. As for people who give you flak about it, just explain your situation. If they still act snotty, just be the bigger man and take it in stride (then crush them mercilessly on the battlefield).

malfred wrote:Tim, this is Felix. I'm talking about BSG. I didn't realize you were doing
skirmish gaming at Chicagoland.

I try to understand that people come by this hobby from different
directions. Some of the skirmish games that you love are really just
rulesets designed to make use of figures you've already painted, so
I imagine that a great deal of the population who gravitates to those
games bring stuff that is painted. However, some gamers are of
video game type, and so they play to use a particular ruleset and
don't necessarily enjoy or have the skill in or find the importance in
the hobby.

Hey Felix,
I'm Karl, I think we may have met before, Tim is one of the guys in our group. We've been skirmishing bi-weekly at BSG for about a year now. (check the link in my sig)

I agree with much of what you said. It's a large generalization on my part, but I agree that much the gamer generation does seem to approach wargaming more like magic cards or a console than a model-based-hobby. But of course that's why there are different gaming groups.

I don't think it's the particular games persay (Skirmish vs mass battle, Generic vs pre-defined setting, etc), as when I was playing mostly 40k, I amost exclusively played against painted armies as well. Also, though we do play games that let you use whatever figs you want, the point isn't to just use the figs you have, it's to find new and interesting uses for the many, many figures out there whether or not they're tied to a particular rulest. Thus, we're constantly painting up new forces and likely painting figures nearly as fast and often as someone painting for 40k. It's just that we all enjoy the specatcle of painted armies and hanging out more than the competetive play side of the hobby. As I mentioned before, we do want to be inclusive, so we always have extra warbands to share with those who haven't got painted figures.

The only point of contention seems to come up when folks like myself say that they aren't particularly interested in playing against folks who don't have painted armies. Putting oneself in the shoes of someone for whom unpainted armies evoke the same feeling as paper tokens or off-the-wall proxies do for most gamers might make it easier to see why I'll probably give a game to a grey horde, but will not be seeking that person out for a rematch.

It's appropriate that the thread is called "clocking hobby hours" because there are only so many hours that most of us have to spend on the hobby. Best to do it with folks who have the same hobby goals as you do.

OP, I stand by you on this one. I'm starting up 2 businesses (one with my dad, and then my dream job) whilst working 9-5 elsewhere. Add in planning for a wedding next March around day to day living and spare time is a huge luxury for me. Thank god I don't have kids!

I don't agree with those that say it's easy to find a spare 10 minutes to paint. The minutes may be there, but what the hell can you achieve in 10 minutes? Bugger all on my part, I need to have an entire afternoon free to get the motivation to break out the brushes, and those afternoons are few and far in between.

Like I say, it's not that I don't have a spare half hour here and there, but as I get frustrated at my measly painting skills there are other more relaxing ways that I'd choose to fill those half hours.

Here's a point on my part: I Bought Kabalite Warriors on new years eve. They're not finished yet. Lol! Yes, I'm a hobby butterfly but still.

Getting closer to the points that you made and away from the tangent I was heading off on, I don't see why people can't be polite to each other - we're all in this shizzle for the same thing, where's the love?! I can't believe people have said "your army looks like crap" to you, shame on them, the fethers.

Just minutes ago I voted a poll here at Dakka about how many of the points in my sig are actually painted. It's about 70%. That never stopped me from playing my full 4k points of O&G nor did I ever say to anyone "hey, that's not a Brettonian Trebuchet, that's just a base!" So what? We game and having fun about it. Sure I'd love to have all my points painted, but I also have a full job and have a personal life (well, a little more extra time after a recent break-up maybe) . I paint when I'm in a mood to do so, and I play whenever I feel like it. So far I am lucky in that no one has ever told me anything about my unpainted minis, and why should they? We play and have fun. Eventually, everything will be painted.
May you all have good battles and fun.

Ps, respect to you for taking the time to think about these other folks backgrounds, and not just "knee-jerking" a response back at them.

Sign of a good person. Kitch102 approves

liam0404 wrote:Ok, I've stated in previous posts that I work a lot of hours, and that I don't have much free time. What little free time I have, I usually spend either gaming or painting. This would normally be fine, as it's all I can manage. However, in my FLGS there seems to be an increasing number of people who are either:

A) Students

I'm a student and have barely painted in months. My Dogs of War were the last things I really spent time on and that was over six months ago. :(

I don't think the OP is having a go at all students, just making a connection that the people that have a go at him fall in to those categories is all.

I'm surprised students can afford GW.

Howard A Treesong wrote:I'm surprised students can afford GW.

Loan = Tuition + Books + Living Expenses

Living Expenses = Living Expenses + Warhammer

That loop I just created? It's the exponential rising cost of wargaming.