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I transitioned to other games after I was done getting what I wanted for 40k. Now I'm approaching the same "done" phase with Warmachine. I'll still play the two games, but I'm getting more and more interested in historicals and putting on events at local conventions as participation games where anyone can belly up to the table and play. Doing two a year and providing both sides, the rules and all the terrain means I always have a new project to work on.

What does "done collecting" mean ?

You can never be "done", it just isn't possible!

If you don't want do do any more 40k though I would suggest looking into historicals, FoW is a good starting point if you like WW2, but if not you could just find a period you're interested in and try and locate some models, it shouldn't be that hard. Whatever period you choose I'd recommend 15mm stuff; like FoW, because it's quite a nice scale to work in, and a nice change from GW's odd heroic scale. I've got some FoW Germans and an English Hundred Years War army in 15mm, and I enjoy painting them moreso than I did 40k.

Well, I was pretty much done a long time ago. I surveyed my collection and decided to upgrade my oldest models by stripping and repainting them with the techniques I had picked up since I started. After a while that turned into small expansions again, and more and more ideas and into just joining the paint/build army treadmill in full again.

I'm slowly starting to reach the same point with being "done" with collecting but now I'm looking at other systems and trying those out (again).

I guess one is never really done now I think about it

You put on your duster, take up your shotgun and head out on the long walk - taking the law of wargaming to those who have none.

Seriously, I doubt your ever done collecting. Go back, strip some older figures & paint them to a better standard, convert them, do dioramas, move on to other systems, go for more 'collector' style figs.....done, no, your never done.

I say this from experience - I cried off from buying more stuff, got rid of most of what I had & vowed that was the end. I bought more stuff, and even now, looking through Wargames mags, Warseer, Dakka, etc I still see stuff and think 'Mmm I like that'.

 Jayce_The_Ace wrote:
You put on your duster, take up your shotgun and head out on the long walk - taking the law of wargaming to those who have none.

Seriously, I doubt your ever done collecting. Go back, strip some older figures & paint them to a better standard, convert them, do dioramas, move on to other systems, go for more 'collector' style figs.....done, no, your never done.

I say this from experience - I cried off from buying more stuff, got rid of most of what I had & vowed that was the end. I bought more stuff, and even now, looking through Wargames mags, Warseer, Dakka, etc I still see stuff and think 'Mmm I like that'.

This. I got fed up with 40k after jumping back in a year or so back. Started tabletop RPG games with some friends, mentioned I was jacking in 40k and putting my armies in the loft....ended up starting Warmachine with said same group of friends and now having a blast.

My Long Walk away from the h-h-h-hobby led me to a much nicer place. There is life after 40k. I am now much more open to other games systems. Reaper minis for our D&D sessions. Warmahordes. Paper RPG's like Traveller, Savage Worlds etc. Paint stripping older models and reworking them. Currently pondering starting with Infinity.

So, I was done collecting. Now I am playing more games, buying less models, and taking time to really try and improve my painting and modelling skills with the smaller numbers of models I am working on. And it is chuffin' awesome.

You start building things that aren't available, like an Ordinatus Golgotha.

You explore other games.

You take a break.

You rotate your oldest army out, and rebuild it when the new codex comes out.

You swear that you're going to create a local game group that matches YOUR playstyle.

You rent an office and turn it into a swank clubhouse.

That's when it is time to hone your talents with painting and modelling, choosing unique stuff you like, not based on a system or army, but purely for the appeal of the model alone.

I think this is pretty accurate, for me at least. I think with only a single model, I might take the time the model deserves to paint it.

You finally realize that you have wasted your life.

So, you turn to historicals for comfort.

 Easy E wrote:
You finally realize that you have wasted your life.

So, you turn to historicals for comfort.

Turn to? lol

 warboss wrote:
So... to get to the point finally... what is hobby life like after you're done collecting the single biggest part of your hobby "career"? I'll be at that stage for the first time in regards to 40k sometime next week and I'm curious if anyone else out there has satiated their 40k appetite as well. Mind you, I'm not talking about people who have gotten fed up with GW policies/prices/rules/whatever but rather have put down the fork and pushed away the last plate at the GW buffet.

Now, you get to just hang out with friends and play the game. No more unpainted figures hanging over your head. Nobody giving you the stink-eye for having an unpainted model on the table. All that time spent painting can now be used for some other activity. Maybe take up a sport or something.

You can now dedicate your hobby time to the social and competitive aspects; just go out and play and be happy about it.

As far as GW?

I've already been in this boat for about three or so years now. Feth them.


I have moved on to other games, and my wallet is all the more happy for it, as well as my collections.

Bolt Action. Salvage Mogul, Helldorado, Fanticide, Carnevale, Superfigs, Pulp City, etc, etc, etc....

My only regret is that I gave a metric gak ton of my old school D and D minis away. There was a time when RT and 2d edition took a greater part of my time. As the game has devolved with the ongoing greedfest, I've just given them more and more space until I've had to help them pack the bags...

I'm falling back on other systems that are better.

Still have my skirmish stuff, but GW has definatly taken a back seat.

What you do is sell your excess gear that you know your not going to get to, and sparingly part with the rest when you want to fund a new endeavor, your going to be shocked at how easily one army funds a whole system.

I only bought minatures to play games with.

So every time I finished my army /force for a game I finished collecting.
So my answer is enjoy playing the game !

But I am more of a 'gamer' than a 'collector'.

 warboss wrote:
The terrain idea is interesting as I've always wanted to have a home table set ready to go but the closest I've gotten is nebulous planning of a purchase of the cardstock Dropzone buildings.

This is probably the best course of action. You've got many thousands of painted miniatures, but no terrain or tables. Based on your painting history it sounds like you're the kind of dedicated hobbyist who could put the work in to build some truely epic terrain. Get to it!

 warboss wrote:

Have you found your interest in playing dropped when you stopped purchasing/modelling? I'm curious if there is an out of sight/out of mind effect in the hobby in that having something on the to-do-list for a game makes you think about it more and therefore play it more often as well.

Personally, I found the opposite. My interest modeling has become much more dependent on what I'm playing. I dabbled in and out of 40k, but my most productive hobbying times for that game were when I was playing reasonably regularly. For the last few years I've been madly preparing forces for the games my club plays. Mostly "Generic" fantasy, post apoc and sci-fi games. I've still collected a few things, but as I've only played about 3 games of 40k in as many years, it's been a long time since I last worked on a 40k miniature.

Perhaps it's time to emphasize a new kind of play. If you're a tourney guy, try and setup a campaign. If you're a narrative campaign guy dive into the tourney scene.

If you paint your last miniature your willy falls off, or your ovaries shrivel up if you are a girl.

 warboss wrote:

Shepherd23 wrote:
I stopped collecting GW about 4 years ago. I hit up Malifaux and then stopped that as well. Still have Malifaux and still play occasionally, but haven't bought anything in awhile.

Now most of my time is spent designing terrain for my company, rustforge.com (NOT in any way, shape or form affiliated with Resin Forge. Those people are idiots and I have an Llc license!)

So thats what I have done since collecting stopped.

Have you found your interest in playing dropped when you stopped purchasing/modelling? I'm curious if there is an out of sight/out of mind effect in the hobby in that having something on the to-do-list for a game makes you think about it more and therefore play it more often as well.

My purchasing continued for a bit even after I lost interest. I just got stuff with the hopes that a shiny new toy would bring back the magic. It did not. For whatever reason, I just stopped. I really couldn't explain what it was specifically. I think a lot of it had to do with GW (not a price rant). GW games seem increasingly unbalanced to me (at the time, things may have changed), I am not a codex of the month guy. I liked my orks and my guard. After over a decade of not being able to compete with either, I got plunged into having a winning army and suddenly I am called beardy because I play them. So GW lost me with their failure to write rules that work for everyone.

Malifaux became a casualty of that TBH. My disdain for GW and GW supporters tainted my hobby overall. I started to nit pick at every little thing in Malifaux, so I just put it aside. Now that everything is going plastic with them, I may go back to looking around though (Malifaux, not GW. They still suck).

I hope that wasn't to convoluted and that it helped you find out what you are looking for.

Done with collecting? S-stop to collect? I smell heresy...

When you paint your last mini, your pud falls off, so you've got to keep buying new things.

I've stopped collecting one army or the other, or declared one "finished", but that's just an excuse to start a new one shortly after.

I was talking to my dad, and he just dug up some Zouaves he bought on his honeymooon over 30 years ago. It just so happens his group is doing Civil War stuff right now, so he's got a use for them. I guess collecting enough minis that you can rediscover them decades later is another good strategy.

Trainspotting?


Bird Watching?


Curling?


Competitive Mustache Growing.

 warboss wrote:
Mind you, I'm not talking about people who have gotten fed up with GW policies/prices/rules/whatever but rather have put down the fork and pushed away the last plate at the GW buffet.

At first, I was one of those who were fed up with policy/price/rules, etc. but after a while, I really didn't miss the GW stuff. I mean, I still have quite a lot to paint, but I have started trawling various miniature sites for the next eye catching model for use in DnD or another game system. I think that honestly, painting and modelling were such a large part of my life that I'll never stop doing that, however I have basically left the buffet, and have gone on to sample other restaurants (so to speak).

In a way, having only one fig needed to "complete" my collection has actually energized me quite a bit over the past weekend. I've finally updated my blog, cleaned out my hobby corner of the basement (and filled one and a half large yard sized 40 gallon garbage bags!), come up with a way to make X-wing foam asteroids for free using only what I found in my hobby cleanout, added tons of stuff to my sale post in the Swap Shop, and even gotten everything ready to work on my sadly invalidated Heavy Gear force. I might just leave that last Son of Sanguinus figure undone for a while!

I was done with the GW HHHobby as part of my Hobby about 5 years ago. Branched out and traded off various armies to pick up other systems...FoW, PPress, Infinity...always with the idea that I could most likely turn -one- of my 40K or fanatsy armies into two playables of another system. That way if someone wanted to test the waters or just play something different, I always had something to use.

I had everything boiled down to 1 40K army and two Fantasy armies. I was staring at those IG, trying to decide to sell or not, knowing I was never going to bother to play it again. GW costs, finecast, current rules sets of both games...all had completely turned me off. I just had more fun playing "something else".

So, as I am staring at those boxes, pondering a final clean break, my seven year old comes rambling up with all my old codicies. All the old ones from 3rd and 4th. He's got it in his brain he wants chaos and bombards me with about a 1000 questions of why things are the way they are, and who is this "guy" and why would you bother with a "rhino" if you had landraiders.

He had all of that exact same wide-eyed gleam of excitement I remembered having way back in the day. There was none of the jaded "things were better two eds ago". or "man they really nerfed this too hard." Just joy at seeing the pictures cause they looked cool.

So, I dusted off some older magic cards that had some semblance of worth, I went into the shop and got as much Chaos as I could. I walked out with more product that one day than I have ever purchased at one time in my entire hobby career, both in volume and cost.

And we build and plan and hobby. We are mindful of the rules, but damnit, if things look cool, they are manytimes built over things that play well.

TL;DR: You never give it up. You just go dormant until the next generation reminds you why you started in the first place.

You stash all your stuff away. Figures, tools, paints, brushes, books, everything. And you start all over.

The first thing I did was stash stuff away... but in the sense of cleaning out my hobby area. I filled up one and a half 40 gallon garbage bags worth of old blister packs, foam, boxes, and freebies!

Here's my advice, and you probably are already doing it...

You teach. You help that new guy get into the hobby. You teach them how to play, how to paint, and most importantly... how to enjoy the hobby.

You give back. You organize events. You build terrain for your local shop or tourney.

You may as well ask what it was like before the First expansion. You NEVER stop collecting.

I honestly didn't know there was a stopping point to collecting.

Have a baby... that is if your willy hasn't fallen off due to finishing your collection.
Then get said baby addicted to plastic crack.

I heard you either become a Brony or (shudder) a Belieber.
Hence i shall never stop.

For me, being "done" means finally assembling everything and beginning the slow process of painting or repainting. Well, that and starting other games and repeating the cycle down the line.