'To Paint or not to paint, that is the question'. Two Shelves of Gaming - Episode 10.

Greetings folks! I thought it was high time I recorded another podcast and the inspiration for this episode is a holistic assessment of my miniatures collection - the ones I've painted, the ones I hope to paint and the ones - gulp - I may never paint. But first the backstory - last weekend marked a milestone in my wargaming activities; I actually finished painting all my Pendraken 10mm miniatures (yay!). I ordered them just before the first lockdown of 2020 and promptly set about undercoating and using my newly purchased Citadel Contrast Paints on them. However, after I'd painted up a few units I kind of ran out of steam and flitted across to solo wargaming Frostgrave. Fast forward to earlier this year and I decided to have another painting drive which bore much fruit until I ran out of steam. Again. The saga finally ended last week when I finished off the remaining cavalry units. So altogether they took well over a year and a half to paint (eek...) While I'm proud of the way they look and the effort I put into them, its the sheer fact I've finished a relatively major painting project that's giving me some elation. But, it got me thinking, I've got loads of unpainted minis - many of which have remained unpainted for years, decades in some cases - am I ever going to get around to painting them?  Wargaming is like many other hobbies, the sum of many small purchases can get out of hand and morph into hoarding. We may not realise this and furthermore many wargaming forums have a kind of smirking acceptance that having an unwieldy lead pile is a natural facet and by-product of practicing the hobby.  Like many wargamers I'm kind of torn between the Scylla and Charybdis of genuinely wanting to paint everything I have, but on the other hand feeling a pressing need to sell some things that I reckon I just wont ever get around two. These tidal forces are forever in turmoil. It's not just me. I was recently listening to the excellent Across the Pond Wargamers Podcast and a couple of times on the episodes, guests and hosts have mentioned they may never ever around to painting everything they have.  To compound matters, over the past few years I've been stripping the paint off some of the first minis I ever painted. Citadel and Grenadier figures I got way back in the mid-late 80s. That got me thinking too; I last painted these over 30 years ago, am I going to forget about some of them again for another 30 years? It's thinking like this that makes me ponder minis, paint, the universe and mortality - I kid thee not.  There's more to wargaming than dice, minis and rules.....