Where is your biggest “waste” with this hobby?

[Kaede45]

I think we can all agree that this hobby is both expensive & time consuming, to a point where detractors could easily argue that it is a “waste” of said resources. I’m sure a lot of us would love to disagree, but can’t really argue either & some of us probably agree, but don’t care & have just come to terms with that notion. Regardless of whether we call it a waste of time & money or just time consuming & expensive, we can all agree that a lot of those two resources go into this hobby. Here, however, I’d like to discuss where each of us individually admit might be where we spend the most of these resources in this hobby, whether we’re proud of those parts or not.

 

For me, possibly the biggest offender of wasted time is in lore building. Most of you probably know that I’ve been trying to create a Christian faction in 40K & trying to justify its existence as plausible. What you might not know is just how deep I’ve gone into such an endeavor. I’ve spent months learning the lore of 40K & making minor tweaks, building a history, naming characters & giving them roles, trying to set up locations & coming up with ideas of how to make them strong enough to survive in such a hostile universe without making them too powerful as to make them completely unbelievable. I started a blog on here to try & catalog my thoughts, but I eventually just made a world on World Anvil to better categorize everything & even though that has helped to organize my thoughts, during my research I often find myself pursuing various threads until I’ve gone so far from what I was trying to do, I end up in a different story altogether. It’s fun, but it takes a lot of time away from actually assembling & painting my minis!

As for money, apart from buying characters & squads that are often unrelated to the faction I settled on (Grey Knights), I also like to purchase customized bits to give my army a more unique look. This leads to me buying bits that I think I’m going to use, but ultimately end up being unused, or buying bits for minis that are for squads that are unrelated to my chosen faction. This of course only adds to the pile of incomplete projects I have…

 

Anyway, those are what I consider my biggest “wastes” in the hobby. All-in-all, I’m still having fun & I enjoy everything, but these are just my personal gripes with my own habits. I’d love to hear what others would say is their biggest “wastes” in the hobby. It doesn’t have to be anything major, more just areas where you think “I spend way too much here, when I could spend it there.”

[gaurdian31]

My biggest waste was all the spending on armies I know I am never going to play. I was close to done with the hobby at the end of 9th and only got into 10th because of my friends wanting to still play with newer models/rules. I am glad I stayed in but I am no longer buying every single codex and rule book (crusade and chapter approved) as I can no longer justify the waste to myself. The lore has been basically the same except for new units in most of the books, same with the art and I am not playing all of the armies so I don't see a point in getting them all any longer. 

[kabaakaba]

My biggest waste is selling my previous army then I ragequited from hobby. I'd sold like 4k IG army. Should just put it in boxes but...

[W.A.Rorie]

My biggest waste.....Paint.  Citadel goes bad cause of their pots, Switch them to dropper bottles and then flow improver makes it glossy, Buy different paints to try. 

 

 

[Karhedron]

Buying a Spartan and SW upgrade parts for it for 40K only for all the HH stuff to get punted to Legends at the start of 10th. 

[Khulu]

My biggest waste is probably figuring out what I'm doing with an army. I usually get overly invested and then fine tune my project until I finally settle on a finished concept after multiple failures. So I wind up with a bunch of crap built and/or painted not how I end up wanting it because my idea has changed so much.

Edited 17 hours ago by Khulu

[Brother Tyler]

I have this huge grey pile of shame...

[gaurdian31]

14 minutes ago, Brother Tyler said:

I have this huge grey pile of shame...

Pile of potential! 

[kabaakaba]

Never understand how you builds your The Towers of potential

[Brother Tyler]

23 minutes ago, kabaakaba said:

Never understand how you builds your The Towers of potential

 

[Marshal Rohr]

Kitbashing. I just bought an entire kit just to use the bodies. 

Edited 10 hours ago by Marshal Rohr

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I'm with @Marshal Rohr on this one - I've bought more than 100 fantasy chaos warriors to only use their capes on my various capening conversions - other than some banners, shields and a couple of heads and melee weapons, I haven't (and don't intend to) use any of the rest of the kits.

 

From a personal standpoint, I think its worth it, but it does mean I have a lot of plastic I'm unlikely to ever use.

[Grotsmasha]

Buying "a good deal" on models to repaint / touche up and resell, then NEVER looking at them again.

[MoriyaSchism]

Buying the limited edition of the Raven Guard codex supplement and then opening it only to find the White Scars logo on inner part of the cover on both sides.

[LameBeard]

I don’t wanna call it a waste, because I love you people, but if I spent as much time painting as I do on this forum, I think my pile of shame would be a lot smaller and my number of functional armies greater than zero …

[Lord_Ikka]

Bought a Lucius-Pattern Warhound Titan from a recaster that was going out of business. Unfortunately, the two halves of the torso have some massive warps on the top sections due to the sections being thin, making it pretty much impossible to fix without a lot of time/hobby skills that I don't have/want to invest in. So it's been sitting in a box in my basement for five years, waiting for me to figure out something to do with it. At least the weapons are ok, so if I ever get a good Warhound I can use them...

[sbarnby71]

Buying the Shadowspear box-set to get the captain/lieutenant dude and I still have not even got round to making him.

Buying entire squad boxes of chaos marines (well, 2 boxes, if I'm honest) just to use a helmet or backpack to use for basing my SWs.

 

I do buy a lot of bits from eBay to deal with this "I just need one bit", but when I can't find it or think hey that dude is price gouging, I then stupidly buy a full box to get the part (and spend more money and end up with more plastic).

[firestorm40k]

I think, in the past, it's selling off armies/projects that I'd painted. In the case of my very first few armies, my painting skills we, putting it kindly, 'developing'  so I think parting with those to fund the next army investment can sort of be part of your development in the hobby. Though, having said that, I had a couple of the classic metal Greater Daemon minis from the late 90's that I let go for far too low a price at the time..! 

 

What I mean is stuff that I've already invested time and effort into, and maybe might not have finished but might have been able to eventually. Sometimes when I've needed to sell stuff, it's been a financial necessity (bills to pay, cars to repair, etc.). There are a couple of unfinished projects I've sold because of hobby burnout - wanting to do something, but not having the time to do it justice. About 12-15 years ago I built a Chaos Traitor Guard army, all converted, but realised I just wasn't going to have time to paint it to the standard I wanted. 

 

Since then, my rule is, if I've finished painting a project (i.e. a full army, or a Kill Team), I won't sell it. I can put them in a display cabinet and enjoy them that way, even if they're deprecated rules/games wise. 

 

Of course, I still sell off things that I realise I'm not going to get round to build and paint, but fortunately this hobby is one where things hold their value if their new in box or on sprue. 

 

But I won't sell things I've built and painted any longer - it's not just a potential financial loss, but it's all the time, effort and dedication that's been put in to the project that you can't get back. 

[CL_Mission]

"This paint looks neat, I'll definitely use it more than once and won't just add it to my big box of unused paints." 

 

Something else you might see as a bit of a waste is the various larger vehicles I've bought over the years. I love the idea of big tanks and such and want to include them in my armies but I suck at painting them, something about the large flat surfaces shuts my brain down. I could paint infantry for days but give me a Land Raider and I'll have a little cry. The Spartan was a big selling point for me when the Age of Darkness box came out but I've barely touched it along with a couple of other Land Raiders, a Reuplsor and an Executioner, a Sicaran and maybe more lying on sprue in various boxes. I'd love to see the Glaive brought to plastic and would probably buy one but who knows if it would get painted before I die. Somehow don't have this issue with knights.

Edited 4 hours ago by CL_Mission

[Wormwoods]

All those matches against Tsons in 9th and then sitting down for an hour or so while the other players in my gaming group enjoy their next 4 turns of play. 

 

Good riddance to the psychic phase. 

[Bouargh]

Getting 18k pts of SM of old (a.k.a. firstborn) painted and mostly obsolete now.

Getting 6 WFB armies (the Old World now) started, and none finished (although 2 are playabel even if not fully painted).

 

 

[darkhorse0607]

3 hours ago, CL_Mission said:

"This paint looks neat, I'll definitely use it more than once and won't just add it to my big box of unused paints." 

 

Something else you might see as a bit of a waste is the various larger vehicles I've bought over the years. I love the idea of big tanks and such and want to include them in my armies but I suck at painting them, something about the large flat surfaces shuts my brain down. I could paint infantry for days but give me a Land Raider and I'll have a little cry. The Spartan was a big selling point for me when the Age of Darkness box came out but I've barely touched it along with a couple of other Land Raiders, a Reuplsor and an Executioner, a Sicaran and maybe more lying on sprue in various boxes. I'd love to see the Glaive brought to plastic and would probably buy one but who knows if it would get painted before I die. Somehow don't have this issue with knights.

 

100% this. I love the look of vehicles and dreads. But I cannot stand the process of getting them finished

 

Building process that takes forever? Hate it

 

Painting is better but still feels tedious

 

And then I get amnesia for the process and have a sicaran, armigers and a redemptor in various stages of building (sicaran still in the box) because I want to like them but cannot stand the build stuff

 

I'll paint infantry all day though, zero issues with that.

[Tawnis]

16 hours ago, Karhedron said:

Buying a Spartan and SW upgrade parts for it for 40K only for all the HH stuff to get punted to Legends at the start of 10th. 

I considered listing the Falchion I bought around the same time, but we fortunately have a few local leagues and tournaments that allow Legends, so I still manage to put it on the table every now and again.