my silence and my situation; ramblings of a mad man

[Colonel Voss]

Well, I am certainly sorry about the two relationships that went sour. I guess that is always tough, but things like that happen from time to time (especially when there are culture and language barriers), so I guess you just have to quickly make that all water under the bridge and move on.

Unfortunately my friend is a Yankee, no language barrier beyond city slicker New Yorker and country bumkin Montanan.

Take care to balance your health with all the things in your life. That probably should be priority number one. A walk up Sakura-yama in your town is a perfect way to restore your love of life, I think. I also hope painting mixed with some listening gives you some time to relax and meditate.

Good point on balance. Sadly this town is horrible for walking.

(That level of course is very different for each person.) I'd be willing to talk about trades or purchases for FOW, WHFB, and 40k stuff.

One of my biggest FoW problems would be getting minis so a WFB or 40K for FoW is definitely doable.

And as for games, I've already PM'd you about setting up a FOW date, so reply if you are interested.

Didn't get it, will PM you here soon.

[Colonel Voss]

First off, get rid of all the odds and ends which dont amount to valid armies. I mean orks, wood elves, empire, zards, dwarves and gobbos. In the future you may want to do those armies, but right now you dont have the time or resources and they just represent another problem for you. Get rid of them.
Keep 1 army for each system so at least you have some variety, but take a look at what you have got and see how much work it will take to get done and if it is a viable army as it stands or if it needs some bits and pieces.
Try to trade for stuff you need to finsh an army off if you can.

Sound advice. The biggest problem is that the finished off collecting armies might not be the right choices to keep (I'll touch on later).

On the painting side of things, try to vary what you do. Paint a unit for 40k one day and spend all day on a warmachine caster the next. Dont feel like you have to paint, but try to see it as a relaxing experience. When I paint, I feel like I am in a little world of my own which contains only myself, my brush and my models. （Much to my wifes annoyance.）

A good idea. Will have to see what I end up with in the end.

[me_in_japan]

This is just a quick reaction-post, but you said "Have to see what armies I end up with in the end before I can truly commit to improving anything"

No commitment necessary, dude. Paint what you like, when you like. Stop halfway if you get bored. I've only just recently brought this philosophy on board myself, but it puts the relaxation back into painting, it really does.

Btw, I wonder of you might find parts of this thread useful.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/forums/sho ... dbye-CMON-(

It's a chap on CMoN who is not doing so good psychologically. Although his situation is greatly different to yours (he's bipolar, for starters) some of the advice people have been offering might be worth pondering. Don't feel obliged to read all of the OPs comments. A quick scan should give you a pretty clear picture of how he's doing (not very well, sadly).

[ashmie]

I agree with the other advice folks have given you here. Especially the one about having faith. Beware the darkness and keep the faith (whatever your faith is). If you have an event over Winter break I would also make the journey to attend. As someone who has been a full on madman since he was a teenager I empathize and can only say the lows are always worth the highs. And as the 90s indie band Blur once so rightly put it This is a Low, but it won't hurt you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otzdBww47XQ kick ass guitar solo at the end too. Beautiful melancholy.
Or even better as Churchill once said about the Blitz "If you are going through hell it's best just to keep going".

edited: I've taken a fair bit away from original post as I realised you wanted advice about minis as a main.
I reckon keep what you like and get rid of what you don't like. How about keeping one army for each system you play?

[Colonel Voss]

I'll come back to the new posts. I want to get this out tonight just to get some thoughts pouring in on what to do with the armies.

When I first started to collect again, I didn't know there was a gaming community. I bought some lizzies (chosen because of a WD article on the different gods, love a good theme) and some guard and just built up as I liked. Then I met Baddy and Prim and had my first apoc game. That set off an arms race with my guard. Also the new lizardman book came out and realizing I was going to be playing these armies, I realized that lizzies weren't for me. High elves it was, then a switch to WoC after finding out the rules and that the army I had built was crap and struggling to fix the glaring errors. Also tried eldar but found my painting skill sorely lacking. Did Minotaurs for the Badab War which is now finished and tried my hand at other armies throughout fantasy and 40k thanks to my outriding. Sold off a few a while back. Also after seeing the first Nagoyahammer, wanted to improve my painting, so got my demons, wood elves and bretts. Also was looking at fun so skaven and grey knights.

FoW, originally wanted italians but was told that late war was the primary here so went with fallschirmjager.

For warmachine, I went Khador for various reasons and as Sept proved, I really got into painting my boys. Then I got sick of the color red. Can you blame with red IG, red on my minotaurs and now red khador? Also there is some interest in WM here so if I have two armies, I could do some demos so I added scryah.

So problems with my armies is several fold. Some are not ready, some were collected for the wrong reason, some are painting challenges beyond my level that I am capable of, and some are more or less whimsical. So completely choosing which ones to keep is hard. If I am left to my own thoughts, I'll keep running circles and not come to a decision. I'll go through some of my thoughts

40k

Minotaurs/30k Word Bearer merger maybe 3,000+ pnts: this is a get rid of. MiJ, you said you wanted sternguard, I got ten for ya!
Imperial Guard 5,000+: ughhhh red. I'm an infantry treadhead and a big fan of the guard but the color and repetativeness of 5,000 points of guard to paint.
Demons of Chaos approx 2,000 twas fun last nagoyahammer. haven't touched them since. quality isn't where I want it to be though
Grey Knights approx 2,000, another quality, good fun with a fully loaded set of choices sort of like the old 2nd ed. Chaos book, though I am far from it.
Orks starter box units; sorry no orks for me, get rid of

Fantasy

High Elves unknown pnts; get rid of except the dragon prince, like the model but no way am I going to rebuild this for a third time.
Warriors of Chaos 2,500; me thinks get rid of. yes it is fully formed hard as nails list but one dimensional, flip flop time
Dark Elves 1500+; love 'em and hate 'em. half the models like witch elves and corsairs are awesome but the other half like hydras and executioners are horrible
Wood Elves battalion plus mage; same as above, the elf models are smashing, but the forest spirit models are terrible, also very small point count
Empire battalion plus 2 mages and some other stuff; get rid of, nuff said
Lizardmen old battalion; get rid of nuff said
Skaven approx 2,000; funny army always worth a good read and playing will be fun me thinks, but a horde of rats to paint, oh boy.
Brettonians approx 1,500: my quality building army idea. each model unique. only two painted so far and thanks to a young assistant, I have to remove the paint on most of the rest that are assembled.
Dwarfs battalion plus black fire pass; I love the dwarfs but I've built and army before, probably would just end up rebuilding
goblins black fire pass; get rid of

Warmachine
Khador 35 pnts; red red red RED! I'm out of red and I really really don't want to paint anymore. that said all but the mechanics and the Supreme Kommadant are painted
Retribution of Scryah (xmas present coming soon) 25 pnts; don't have yet, not worried about them and not many thoughts right now on what I don't have.

FoW
Fallschirmjager approx 2,000 pnts; good army no regrets buying, but another well beyond my painting skill army. between the size and the detail for their smocks, I really need to practice on something easier in their size. also I'm more of an early war/mid war fan so something focused there would be wonderful for me.

Alright, so thoughts on what I should keep or do?

[kojibear]

I think you should keep the two warmachine armies, as they are small, manageable and two gives you the option of mixing things up.

Maybe you can use this strategy for warhammer fantasy and the other games too, pick two armies and let that be it. Sell or give away the rest. There are many in our club who will probably want to grab some off you. That will be a good chance to get out of the house and spend some time with us, your mates

[me_in_japan]

Not a helpful post this time - gomen. I just saw a nicely done (but simple) use of GK models as regular space marines (death company, actually) and I find myself with a hankering for GKs, converting into chaos marines (bwahahaha) for the use of. I appreciate that you may want to make the GK one of your hold-on-to armies, in which case no worries, but if they end up on the "purge" list, then consider my little ears perked up in interest. That and the sternguard, and any fancy pants character type models could well be shiftable in my direction. As I mentioned, a complete list, while a beyotch to compile, will a) let you see clearly exactly what you have, and b) make it easier to shift, as people will be able to decided what they do/dont want.

I'm not fishing for minis here, just posting quickly and without much thought.

[job]

I think it is best to have just between 1-3/4 armies per game. If you were building a collection over the term of decades I think it would be fine that you have more then that, but I think you couldn't really manage to paint and maintain so many army's otherwise.

40k: I think you should go with GKs, DoC and, of course, keep IG; get rid of the Orks (this is the worst army to start if you are behind in your painting and your collection too big)

WHFB: too many armies here I think: I think you should keep your WoC army, because it is nearly all done. You probably want one army you can always look as your "complete army"; otherwise I think if you don't have interest in finishing HE, WE, Dwarves and Lizardmen, I think you should get rid of them.

Warmachine: I think you are on the right track here. Keep it all.

FOW: I think Fallshirmjager are a good choice. 15mm is easy to paint up to table-top quality. Also the Fallshirmjager are now in EW, so it should be pretty easy to turn the force to EW. If you want Italians, spend some time with some history reading to start making up your mind on what really will interest you as a force.

[Colonel Voss]

Or even better as Churchill once said about the Blitz "If you are going through hell it's best just to keep going".

Good quote here, I'll keep this in the back of my mind. Also as for the hurling, I haven't done that in 7 years, really don't want to do it ever again. Interesting test though.

MiJ: still not sure what to do with the GKs, as I said they'd be a fun army once I had all the options, but that is a long ways away from where I am now. So you may get your wish.

Job: WoC are organized and assembled, but not painted by far. None of my fantasy is painted much. 40k stuff is more painted (DoC nearly completely painted) For FoW, should probably have added that you are right, fallschirmjager are early war now. So that gives me an infantry force for all three, but the treadhead in me wants tanks too. A liechte panzer company is to drool over or something else mobile. Wanted Italian infantry but already have an infantry so not so important now. As for painting, I am afraid that fallschirmjager use one of those fancy camo schemes that are just beyond my ability to paint right now. I tried, looked like total crap and got the nail polish remover treatment ASAP. I need practice on something easier before I try to tackle them.

[job]

Job: WoC are organized and assembled, but not painted by far. None of my fantasy is painted much. 40k stuff is more painted (DoC nearly completely painted) For FoW, should probably have added that you are right, fallschirmjager are early war now. So that gives me an infantry force for all three, but the treadhead in me wants tanks too. A liechte panzer company is to drool over or something else mobile. Wanted Italian infantry but already have an infantry so not so important now. As for painting, I am afraid that fallschirmjager use one of those fancy camo schemes that are just beyond my ability to paint right now. I tried, looked like total crap and got the nail polish remover treatment ASAP. I need practice on something easier before I try to tackle them.

Yeah camo on infantry can be time consuming. I recommend starting with the artillery. Depending if it is a regular Herr unit, the crew would be just German field grey and the guns pretty straight forward. Also the Stugs are bigger and the paint schemes near infinite.