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I got back into the hobby about 4 months ago and decided on Space Marines, mainly as I wanted to do a 30k force at the same time to share tanks. Since then I've gone from Imperial Fists to Salamanders to Iron Hands, each time buying chapter specific stuff I've then ended up ebaying. I also dabbled in Ad-Mech before selling it off. Now I find myself once again changing my mind and am considering going for either Iron Warriors or Ad-Mech/ Legio Cybernetica.

Anyone else find they can't stay focussed on one army for long enough to actually build or play with it? On the other side of the coin, how do you stay focused on the army you pick if you don't do this?

What helps me fucus is trying not to buy too much, and actually taking my time to enjoy painting the stuff to a high level. Like I did when I started this hobby and didn't have the money to drawn myself in too much plastic. The trick just might be to build your own force so interesting that you can resist all the nice new releases of GW .; )

Also you selling stuff is good, it prevents you from getting swamped or hoarding large piles of unpainted miniatures like most of us do.

Still have my Dark Angels after 21 years - though I've bought and sold Tyranids and Dwarfs and bought, sold and rebought Eldar in that period.

I get emotionally invested in what I've painted, so I find painting stuff is the best way to commit to it.

Another possibility might be doing your own Chapter instead of one of the pre-built GW ones. You won't be eBaying as much and you might feel more of an investment in the characters and backstory you wrote yourself.

To me the most important thing was to choose an army that pleases me aesthetically. A lot of time has to be spent assembling and painting. It sure helps when you like what you are doing.

I have the trouble. I just can't focus on one army or even gaming system and I never get nothing done.

It is very very hard for me to focus on a project.

If anybody looks at my p&m blog, they know what I'm talking about

The only army that has kept my love and attention for multiple years are my Dark Eldar, but even then, the colour scheme is on its third iteration (although the characters/lore has stayed the same)

Space Wolves are a close second, I find that after their home planet, and then the entire great company I played all were destroyed, I have lost a lot of encouragement and excitement to play them and paint them.

I do this to an extent. Every time gw sells some box that's got crazy savings I want it really bad. It's ended up with me having chaos space marines, codex space marines, eldar, dark eldar, harlequins, skitarii, imperial knights orks, tyranids, and tau.

I've even got a 2 sigmar armies, and 3 infinity armies that I have never played with. The deals where good and the models are cool.

Playing wise 7th edition has made me a very happy camper as I can actually take all this stuff and build armies out of it. Under the old FOC only my eldar are big enough to play above 1200 points.

I really enjoy the painting side of the game more than the playing, and purchasing this way guarantees I'm always getting a chance to paint new exciting stuff. Play wise I have a lot of stuff that has never seen a table. The reason I have so much eldar stuff is because I got crazy good deals on 2 people getting rid of there collections. One was almost entirely unpainted, and the other was painted in a scheme I found really inspiring and wanted to try to copy.

This is a hobby that can take a lot of drive. My other friends who do it with me do not paint nearly as much as I do and buy way more. They buy stuff because the rules look good and they want to play it, but the rules being good does not give them enough drive that when they get home from work they want to start painting. So if you really want to stick with something you need to find something you like enough that you actually will put the time into it.

How much of your stuff do you end up painting, and to what standard? When you say you did Fists and Salamanders and Iron Hands, do you mean you bought the stuff for those armies and sold it soon after, or you actually assembled and painted them? Do you play many games, or are you just working on making the models right now?

Before you go all in buying stuff for an army, make sure you know you like it. Possibly playtest it with proxies, and think about what sort of fluff you like if that's important to you. Why do exactly do you keep changing between armies? Don't like the look of them, or change your mind about rules, or find a new favorite in the fluff? Do you see new stuff and just feel the need to buy it because it's cool too? How much stuff are you willing to buy for 40k, can you afford to own a bunch of armies?

For me, I don't like to spend a ton of money on the hobby (in relation to my income). For my dark angels, I told myself that I'd only buy a kit once I had assembled and painted the previous kit that I bought. Once you've painted a squad, if you took your time with it, you feel a lot more attached than if it's just half-effort paint splotching or just gray plastic. This is especially helpful if it is something that you think looks cool, so pick an army and color scheme that you really like. For marines, you can always do a custom scheme and say it's a successor of whatever chapter.

I play mono-nurgle CSM and Daemons. Even though I sometimes have the desire to impulsebuy other armies (sisters and Orks mainly), so far I haven't done it, simply because when I look at what I have left on the painting table I can restrain myself.
I must admit there are also some other lotr projects where I bought the minis but haven't done anything with them yet, but that's because I have so many Lotr minis and my existing armies are that large that whenever I have a game I can take what I want without the need to finish something. With 40K that's different due to many unpainted minis.

 kingbobbito wrote:
How much of your stuff do you end up painting, and to what standard? When you say you did Fists and Salamanders and Iron Hands, do you mean you bought the stuff for those armies and sold it soon after, or you actually assembled and painted them? Do you play many games, or are you just working on making the models right now?

I've pretty much just been building a collection at the minute. So far I haven't managed to paint or build anything. I bought a load of the IF upgrade sets from GW, then a load of Salamanders FW pads and stuff and finally a pile of the GW IH upgrade kits. I currently have one of every marine character model (including all the metals) about 30 unbuilt/ boxed vehicles and 2 battle companies worth of unbuilt marines along with about 200 legion marines on sprue and a bunch of FW stuff to go with it all. Then I have an Ad-mech war convocation sat in boxes also unbuilt.

I don't want a custom chapter as I want to use my Achilles/ Spartan in both 30k and 40k so they need to be painted the same scheme.

Sounds like you just buy whatever looks cool and now have a massive and very daunting pile of bare plastic - not a criticism it's very common in wargaming. Unsurprising then that you aren't really attached to much of it and will think nothing of onselling to fund the new hotness.

I think that's probably part of it. I have all these cool ideas but despair when I look at all the stuff lying around. It's just so hard to ignore a bargain.

I think over the last 20 years I've had every army at least once and the most I ever managed was assembling a 1500pt Deathwing force when DV came out, building about four Russes for an armoured company about the same time, and painting some metal aspect warriors back in the 90's. I can probably count the number of games I've played since 2nd edition on one hand.

Woah dude you have a lot of models to build up and paint wow. But yeah id go through the fluff and chose who you like the most or even nominate chapters to a dice and roll it and whatever number you hope it lands on while its still spinning around choose them.

No, I have a wife

If I were to go splurging on armies my house would get drowned in shoes.

I had this problem a lot when I first got into the hobby but eventually settled on chaos everything as it allowed the most creative freedom and could be changed up with little effort to essentially be a different army! Gotta trim down what I have and sell off some of the start ups I have laying around from those days to help support my true passions, chaos!!!! I am going to be working on a new army that I am currently working on though but it's a big project that I'm sure will last for years to come and be well worth the efforts! Sooo gotta sell all that other stuff I have first before putting any more money or effort into this new one! For now I'll just keep adding to chaos as I can and nurglifying my old deathwing and chaos space marines stuff for my commitment to my Death Guard army!

I did, until the Skitarii was released. Now it's easy.

 Purifier wrote:
I did, until the Skitarii was released. Now it's easy.

I am so close to going all in for the Omnissiah, but the splintered release of cult and skitarii holds me back. Cawl is such an amazing model though and I love the Taghmata models from FW. But having to run a war con to get a unified force is also annoying.

I want Iron Warriors so I can paint hazard stripes on everything but the lack of chaos drop pods annoys me and I don't want to spam obliterators.

I want to build Iron Hands because I want IWND on my landraiders because I want them not to be a lacklustre point sink but even then raiders and dreadnoughts are seen as sub-par choices, and thats what I wanted to run.

So hard to choose, maybe I should just get Tau.

Loopstah wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
I did, until the Skitarii was released. Now it's easy.

I am so close to going all in for the Omnissiah, but the splintered release of cult and skitarii holds me back. Cawl is such an amazing model though and I love the Taghmata models from FW. But having to run a war con to get a unified force is also annoying.

I want Iron Warriors so I can paint hazard stripes on everything but the lack of chaos drop pods annoys me and I don't want to spam obliterators.

I want to build Iron Hands because I want IWND on my landraiders because I want them not to be a lacklustre point sink but even then raiders and dreadnoughts are seen as sub-par choices, and thats what I wanted to run.

So hard to choose, maybe I should just get Tau.

Haha, Tau, the answer that isn't one.

I just built Cawl yesterday. The man has 49 parts, stands about 4 meters tall if you compare him to other human-sized models and I love him more the more I see the details of the model. There's a flying servoskull holding on to one of his tendrils on his back, and it manages to be *cute.* Didn't notice that little sh!t until I built him. He's also holding a key chain very daintily in a tiny belly-hand.

I found him too busy at first, but he really grows on you.

I want more armies, I really do but between my Wolves and Nids I'd never get fun games with another army.

Every few days. I barely start with anything because I see what other people are playing and don't want to be a face among the crowd or I just impulse buy something and then later decide wait I really don't like this.

Also the fact that I'm trying to strike a balance between competitive but not so competitive that people don't want to play against me since the GW where I play is pretty laid-back and people have strong lists but not overpowering ones.

kingbobbito wrote:How much of your stuff do you end up painting, and to what standard? When you say you did Fists and Salamanders and Iron Hands, do you mean you bought the stuff for those armies and sold it soon after, or you actually assembled and painted them? Do you play many games, or are you just working on making the models right now?

Before you go all in buying stuff for an army, make sure you know you like it. Possibly playtest it with proxies, and think about what sort of fluff you like if that's important to you. Why do exactly do you keep changing between armies? Don't like the look of them, or change your mind about rules, or find a new favorite in the fluff? Do you see new stuff and just feel the need to buy it because it's cool too? How much stuff are you willing to buy for 40k, can you afford to own a bunch of armies?

For me, I don't like to spend a ton of money on the hobby (in relation to my income). For my dark angels, I told myself that I'd only buy a kit once I had assembled and painted the previous kit that I bought. Once you've painted a squad, if you took your time with it, you feel a lot more attached than if it's just half-effort paint splotching or just gray plastic. This is especially helpful if it is something that you think looks cool, so pick an army and color scheme that you really like. For marines, you can always do a custom scheme and say it's a successor of whatever chapter.

Oh why have I not seen this before I have started 20 years ago?

The cool thing about playing a traitor legion like Death Guard or Thousand Sons, is that you can keep expanding, especially with all the Tzeentch and Nurgle daemon stuff. And chaos renegades.

So even though I have two armies, I really have like 4-5. And there are so many options with them, I have not gotten bored of them yet.

I still haven't even used half of what is available to me.

But yes, I also want to get into orks, Dark Eldar, and Sisters of Battle ( I used to play them in 4th edition). And Grey Knights and Genestealer cults...

Yeah, In the year that I have been back into Wargaming, I have started or purchased stuff to start the following armies...

1. Dark angels
2. Imperial Guard
3. Tau
4. Grey Knights
5. Necrons
6. Skitarri/Cult Mechanicus
7. Imperial Knights
8. Chaos Daemons / CSM
9. Tyranids (These are for my wife, but she really doesn't care)

Also have started an AOS army or 2.

I really need to sell some of this stuff. But we all know how that goes. I might have a problem.... please send help.

for space marines pain them a custom chapter and then just swap codexes as you feel like trying new things

I've had this problem myself with my csm
In the end I'm just thinking about going black legion was while the chapter tactics aren't amazing they aren't that restrictive either