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Having played 40K for over a decade, I've probably started more armies that I've actually played. Or even started the same army multiple times (Necrons 4x for me).
My most recent project was to start a Deathwatch army based on an Alpha legion successor chapter ("officially" an UM successor for those who ask)
I got 1500+ pts assembled and ready for paint, including 500pts of DawnEagle Captain and then....stalled

Between not getting the time to get a single game in, yet plenty of time to paint and work on OTHER projects like terrain and some more of my Eldar that I got inspired to work on, it doesn't look promising for my DW.
So after some contemplation, I've decided to abandon the project. And no, keeping it in the case for later is not an option. I'd rather make some $$ on my conversion work and allow someone else to enjoy the models than let them sit and collect proverbial dust. I also don't need the temptation to play something other than my Eldar when I do get to play.

So tell me about your projects that you've had to abandon.

-

So far none.
But basically, I only have one 40K project: Nurgle

Death Guard, Nurgle Renegades, Daemons - the three armies together make for enough diversity that it never gets boring. Using loads of 3rd party models helps as well. I'd probably never finish my Daemons if I had to buy 6 boxes of plaguebearers. But with all kinds of alternatives it keeps me interested. The rules also allow me to play all of my armies together, which helps as well as I can bring everything I paint to the table immediately.

So, I guess I'm not really adding something to the topic aside from small tips as to how prevent what Galef describes.

Tau. I've always wanted to try and create a tau army that people actually have fun playing against: Close range, mobile, with a mix of suits, infantry and vehicles.

Currently I've got one devilfish, 10 breachers, 5 fire warriors, 1 riptide, a fireblade, an ethereal and 10 pathfinders, and 3 of the pathfinders are unpainted.

Just haven't gotten round to finishing them. I feel I was kind of directionless in what I wanted to actually do with them: The only solid idea I had was a Viorla scheme (the white+red one) but with a bunch of units having projected camoflage on them relating to the bases they were put on. So I had my fire warrior strike team in a black and orange lava tau scheme and I had them modeled like they were in a glowing crater, and I had my Breachers in a green jungle scheme on most of their armor but with bits of white poking out where the soldier isn't fully in the projector field. The Riptide I had in more of a traditional viorla scheme but super heavily weathered, with writing and art on it. My driving concept was a 4th-sphere expansion team that gets separated and is barely surviving in the warp, more attached to the weapons and machines that keep them alive than the actual ideology/nation that sent them out in the first place. I heard a story of a soviet unit in WW2 that had access to one of the big heavy KV-tanks that were the first ones that could really challenge the german Panzers head-on without weight of numbers backing them up, and that's kind of what the Riptide was meant to be. An old faithful rustbucket that's finicky and tough to maintain and the fire warriors joke about, but when a horde of daemons is closing in on a fleeing team of pathfinders and the hear the familiar cadence of the heavy burst cannon that only has four functional barrels left but it still works, they remember why the veterans always refer to the suit itself like it was a senior officer.

Maybe I'll come back to them at some point, narratively they do really interest me but I have a hard time getting inspired by the individual models and the paint scheme I've gone for isn't super coherent.

Back in the days of the witch hunter dex, the army had access to gear that drove stories; I was building a rhino for a witch hunter.

It was equipped with psi bolts, a psi tracker, a psyocculum and excrutiators. The upper doors were hinged so that they could be opened during the battle; inside there was a spare penitent engine pilot that could be raised up above the level of the open doors. I custom built an adepta sororitas hospitaller/ interogatrix to torture the psychic prisoner and demoralize his/her army.

The project was abandonned when gw killed the wargear, but my interogatrix still serves as a secondary hospitaller in my current army [It's a dialogus with a servo arm as one limb and a piece of fabius biles chirurgeon as the second limb).

My exorcist has two LED lights- one illuminating the servitor and one illuminating the organist. Those still need switches and battery clips to function, but the tanks isn't yet painted.

Two of my three penitent engines also have LED's to backlight the pilots. In this case, the models are painted, but the electronics are unfinished.

I was planning on building a night fight table that incorporated LED's in the scenery, but we moved away from my gaming group before I got the chance. I have friends that play where I live now, but nothing like what we had in Alberta. The last game I played with that crew had 8 players controlling 12k points per side [including an eldar titan]. The table was L shaped- a 6 x 4 foot table up against a 10 x 4.

Truly the stuff of legend. The perceptory of St Katherine's Aegis will rise once more, but I know not whether we will ever see battles like that again.

Ynarri at the beginning of 8th edition. I had a whole army almost painted...and then the rules changed and I can't make the army I wanted to anymore. Cool

Remember kids. Always wait 6 months after an army has been released to make purchases so GW doesn't do a complete 180 on the army and make half of it obsolete.

 Brutus_Apex wrote:
Ynarri at the beginning of 8th edition. I had a whole army almost painted...and then the rules changed and I can't make the army I wanted to anymore. Cool

Remember kids. Always wait 6 months after an army has been released to make purchases so GW doesn't do a complete 180 on the army and make half of it obsolete.

Because a 6 month waiting period has stopped GW from completely changing how armies work and invalidating people's lists?

Because of the chapter approved being consistently updated every 6 months.

It doesn't mean it won't change after that, but most major changes to the army are usually done in the first chapter approved...

I never got close to any new projects. I keep two my two primary armies. I occasionally have considered some small add-on forces, but since I open the box, paint the models, and then continue on --- I've only ever been 4-5 miniatures into before I change my mind. I eBay the minis for a small profit and move on.

I don't jump armies. Because I do narrative I'm often considering small detachments for scenario purposes (working on scheming for a Rogue Trader's private army, etc.). But having been in the hobby for so long, I've seen too many devastating abandoned projects and now don't even stray anywhere near that junk.

I used to be a 2 army guy for the variety. But with family taking priority and rules being updated to quickly to keep up, I find it's better to just have a 1 primary army with just some side painting projects.

I should have kept to that philosophy instead of starting DW. Just paint a few minis for the shelf instead of a whole army

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Sadly, currently my main army. I can not financially support 40k as of the moment. That along with a few other reasons, my T'au have been put on the shelf until later notice while I move on to other, more affordable wargames. Hopefully when I come back Aux have released, then I can scoop all of them up.

Death Guard, Orks & Genestealer Cults. All factions I like and want to play - bought them, built them and started painting & gaming with them but they just didn't 'click'. I wasn't enjoying them.

 Galef wrote:
I used to be a 2 army guy for the variety. But with family taking priority and rules being updated to quickly to keep up, I find it's better to just have a 1 primary army with just some side painting projects.

I should have kept to that philosophy instead of starting DW. Just paint a few minis for the shelf instead of a whole army

-

I'm sure when I have kids I will enact a Great Cull of all the factions I don't put a lot of love and effort into, but this is pretty much how I play at this point, and it's also why armies with ally access are so much more likely for me to get into.

What I needed to get my deathwatch playable was 3 troop units and 2 HQs (also helped that I had Deathwatch Overkill and Space Hulk kicking around so basically...one box of troops and I was in business.) When i look at my Tau, I see the need for more HQs, transports, more troop units...just to break the 1000 point, single battalion barrier.

Several stalled, but none I would define as abandoned - that I can think of.

Biggest one (literally) is my Thunderhawk model. It was originally going to be a dropship for Mechwarriorark Age, but after that game sorta died off, I reimagined it for 40K. It needs some more greebling before painting, but it’s so big it’s not feasible for the game table or size of game I play.

Second project is an Admech transport. It stalled because I didn’t have game stats for use. Now, with the announcement of the official transport, I’m not sure whether to scrap the project or use it as an alternate build.

I've got a few projects that I've yet to finish. And some of those could be considered close to completion I guess.

Yet to finnish:
Take my Orks for example. I've been collecting/building/painting an Ork army since about 2006. I probably own about 5k pts worth of Orky stuff (not counting an Armourcast Great Gargant). My orks are nowhere near a priority project. Thus after 13 years I could probably only put about 500pts on the table atm. And it would not be a very good 500pts either.

Close to completion:
My Ad-Mech that I started back around Christmas. I've got a few more things to assemble/paint & then they're ready to hit the table. I'd estimated they'd be ready around April, but March/April turned out to be really busy months.... So sometime in June.


But I've never had to abandon a project.

Inquisitorial warbands.

I playtested lists involving full-sized retinues of inquisitorial psykers back when they had the "Care Bare Stare" psychic power (increased in power and decreased in AP the more psykers you had). S10 AP1 pie plates galore. It was an AMAZING list.

I got a bunch of ratkin to convert up some "mutant psyker hordes," and assembled and painted like 80 of them, plus storm shield bodyguards and a couple "mutant inquisitors" to walk them around the battlefield.

The day after I primed them, the new Inquisition codex dropped and changed their psychic power, making the list obsolete.

I laughed. I cried. I sold the minis and bought some scatterbikes.

Painting... seriously I have a ton of it to do. I am far better at building the models than painting them.

I wanted to start a Mordian AM army with around 10 vehicles and 100 guys, and after a replay of a favorite video game, wanted them all in Prussian Blue. I wanted a horde army that I could play aggressively but still use some tactics.

I painted up the tanks fine, but the Cadians with the 3rd party heads weren't what I had hoped. I just didn't like them and couldn't imagine painting up 100 of them.

So Kill Team comes out and I paint up a Pathfinder box in the Prussian Blue and love them. So I made a "horde" army of those instead.

I've abandoned that idea but will still use those vehicles eventually. Maybe they'll be Tallarn with a small Scion battalion, or maybe I'll get an inspiration for the infantry. We'll see.

I sold my Vostroyans after GW axed them. I couldn't stand ebay prices. I only started them in 8th too. Alas, it was a short lived project.

I've also sold a battle company of marines because they were boring.

I grew tired of my Tyranids and sold them.

I've sold two Grey Knight armies because they didn't perform on tabletop (yes yes, I'm that guy. I regret these almost as much as selling my Vostroyans)

I can't just focus on one army at a time. I want to have variety in my collection. Things right now are looking pretty good and I have lots of new stuff to play with. Just need to get painting.

My Leviathan has been a bit of a symbol of shame. i had started it a few years ago so we could make up rules for it for an Apoc game (I even made stained glass windows for it) but I never got to the final assembly because my mental state had been deteriorating for quite some time (Im trans). However now that I'm about 3 weeks from being full time I plan on finishing this albatross as a veritable symbol of my ascension! We are going to showcase it along with all of the local titans in our big yearly Apoc game. I think ill end up running it as a Reaver but switch out one of its arm weapons for Transport capacity and some sort of LD buff aura.

On top of that I have a toooooon of partially unpainted armies that I bought as part of some poorly planned retail therapy. So many guardsman....so little time...hello contrast paint!

Well, a project never started has been to repaint my infantry grey and grey [instead of green and brown]. The idea of repainting 100 infantry just doesn't sound like enough fun.

There's also always sisters floating around in various stages of assembly/painting, a custodian bike without it's rider, a few unassembled skitarii, a half-built Armiger, some SoS that are all done except for having the sand of their bases painted, etc. In addition, there's Flames of War 1/100 tanks and guns floating around, I don't play FoW but I like collecting historical tanks and artillery, and my projects with respect to that tend to get sidelined by shiny new 40k stuff.


My current objectives are to finish my Shadowspear Space Wolves before I move onto anything else. So far, I've got 4 Infiltrators and 2 Suppressors still to go; hopefully I'll finish them this week.
After that, I've got 5 SoS, 1 partially done Custodes Biker, and 1 unstarted Custodes biker to do, and I'm going to try to get through them in the following 2 weeks.
Then I have an Exorcist, an Immolator, and a bunch of Sisters with assorted weapons that are on the bench to be painted, which I will hopefully finish before the end of summer.

Fielding my own army lol.

I've been in and out of the 40k universe numerous times over the years, mostly because I've had friends who played and things like that. So if they're really itching to play they'll give me a few units and we'll play a round with dumbed down rules. My problem is I never feel like investing the money to start an entire army at one time, so instead I buy like a unit at a time. The problem there has always been the idea of walking into a store and being like "okay here's the money I'm going to spend to get a list going so I'll have to buy yet another couple boxes of cultists or some vanilla foot soldiers". Instead I would always go "yeah I could buy those things but this defiler that in no way helps me out looks way cooler" so I buy that instead.

Then some unfortunate accidents tend to befall my random collections of stuff. Example: at one point I worked in a cubicle, and it was sparse when I got there, so I brought in a few big guys to crawl around my computer and kind of spice the place up. Then one weekend the building was condemned because apparently it was "on the verge of collapsing". This was a military base from the early to mid 1900s so the buildings were generally in terrible condition anyways. So due to this incident I lost a few bigger dudes and took it as a sign to stop collecting for a while.

Another small handful of dudes was lost in a small fire.

Then the friends I have that play will move away or I'll go on a deployment or something and suddenly lose interest and forget about it for a while before suddenly going oh wait, 40 k exists! Which is followed by eye rolls and sighs from my wife.

I have high hopes that this will be the time I finish an army and play at least one 500 point game, but history leads me to not be surprised if I don't.

I was two models way from finishing my Corsairs. I was making an orbital assault army so it was all Falcons dropping troops down with air support and all that was left was a pair of Phoenix Bombers.
Sadly 8th came out and my army stopped existing in any meaningful way. Corsair Prince that I made from an Archon and Autarch? Removed. Reavers in Falcons? Couldn't even be made with a different army. Voidstorm assassins? Also gone.

So now I have a whole bunch of models with no purpose outside making me want to start Dark Eldar.

I have a few...

First was Tyranids. I played them a lot in early 3rd (rulebook rules) and a bit in late 3rd after the Codex released. I had a mishmash of new and old models that didn't look great on the table, and after a number of transportation mishaps the vast majority of them were so broken I lost the will to repair them. I've since given everything except my classic 2nd/3rd ed models to a friend who is an excellent modeller and painter and he's going to add them to his own Tyranid force.

Then was Dark Eldar. I played them in 3rd and 4th edition and had realised by the end of 4th I'd need to buy another 4 Raiders to make my army work, plus a Ravager. I couldn't bare the thought of spending more money on those flimsy ugly things and dropped the army altogether.

After that was Black Templars. It was a joint project with a friend of mine and he dropped out of the hobby before I finished my half. Once I had it done it was a hodgepodge of units that couldn't really stand on their own. I sold them to another friend who had a large Blood Angels force and he repainted them red.

Then Necrons. I had planned on doing a full Decurion with all the units/options. I liked the structure of it, but I wasn't happy with my colour scheme and lost motivation. I also needed to buy a LOT of new kits and was not in a financial position to do so, so I sold the lot to focus on my Chaos force (which I already had models for).

Next was Word Bearers - another joint project with a friend in 6th edition. I was going to field the Space Marine component and he would field all the Daemons. He left the hobby and I continued on with my Chaos but my passion for Word Bearers diminished.

I had a Dark Eldar Venom Spam list back in 5th of 9 Venoms, 3 Ravagers, Haywire Wyches and Blasterborn, you know the one. Anyway it was all assembled, almost all the infantry was painted, and I had an awesome vision for how I'd do the vehicles. Dark Eldar played the speed and range dictation game back then, so I was going to paint them in Dazzle Camo, which I think really suited them conceptually and I'd never seen anyone do for anything mini wise before. I ordered a ton of masking strips, bought my first airbrush, and it would have been quite fun to sit down and do all things considered. However, I wanted to finish my Tyranids and that became a bit of an obsession. The next DE dex came around and completely robbed them of their identity and I lost all motivation to finish them. A few years after I figured I was never going to get to it, and sold the army.

I almost regret it to be honest. DE got a great dex this edition.

I'm two Tactical Squads away from finishing my battle company, but I started a Tyranid army around the beginning of 8th and progress on marines has been slooow.

That herohammer Ynnari list with Yncarne, two death jesters, maugan ra, and a wych cult. RIP Ynnari

Completely abandoned:

Space Wolves: Got a bunch cheap through various sources. Was in the process of painting them (probably badly as it was my first paint job) and decided I didn't want them anymore. Too few games and was a newbie shredding more experienced players armies.

Aborted:

Thousand Sons: I initially liked the Thousand Sons lore, so I decided to get a bunch of 30k Marine models to use as 30k and 40k Thousand Sons, as well as any other Marine army. The red I chose became pink. Tried fixing it with red ink, but soon realized the texture was awful. Stripped it all, and will be doing most of them now as Ultrasmurfs, though I came up with another scheme I'm using for actual 40k Thousand Sons models.

Orks: Someone at my FLGS sold dozens of the old plastic Orks. Bought most of the unpainted ones, and found some Gretchen online. I don't want a full Ork army at the moment, so I've stowed them away for now.

I've not truly abandoned anything yet, but the Nid horde army I bought is still in its boxes, and has been put in the loft for now. I may get them out when the contrast paints come along.

I've put lot of armies on the back burner though as I seem to get 500-1000 points of an army painted then move onto the next.

Currently I have halted progress on:

Deathguard (mainly the marines, I really don't like painting them)
Imperial Knights
Necrons
Ad Mech
Astra Militarum

Working on Deathwatch and Primaris Imperial Fists actively at the moment. I do sometimes put a bit more paint on some Nurgle Daemons as well.

Last year I bought around 3k of World Eaters/Khorne with the idea of building a themed hand to hand rush list.
Played a few games with them as proxies and realised they were very one dimensional and pretty boring so they are currently languishing in various places around my room.
Must get off my butt and ebay them soon.....

I bought some Orks to add to my AoBR orks and I managed to paint up a squad of boyz fairly recently after buying them 6ish years ago along with some gretchin that I never finished and some Lootas. I may still go back to them but I may get rid of them as I'm likely to never play a game with them any time soon.

I started a Black Templars force which I got to just over 1000 points, again to add to my AoBR set and they got their codex squatted. I had the upgrade kit, FW storm shields for some terminators I was going to buy and I got a finecrap terminator chaplain for the army.That was enough demotivation to stall the project as my army was just vanilla marines and I didn't want that.
This project may gain some traction again as I'm tempted to strip the models I've painted and make a new BT army with all the bits I have.

My Eldar are my dominant army though, and any hobbying goes towards them!