The Backlog

So I let really unacceptable ten days go without posting.  And today I do not have a "real" post either.

I have been letting the photo transfer process part of this bog me down.  Namely, I cannot get pictures from my phone to here as easily as I would like to.  It is a very trivial problem, and yet it persists.

I wanted to take some time today to discuss a very common hobby problem.  Namely:  the backlog.  I do not have any novel solutions to it, I think the ones that exist are fairly obvious, and yet I still get caught in it.  And so do many fellow hobbyists.

For those of you who are not hobbyists, or who do not play tabletop games, the backlog is when you buy more kits than you have time to paint.  For me, I find that I do this when a new release comes out that really excites me.  Even if I do not bake hobby time for that piece into my schedule.  It is, frankly, a waste of money and an inefficient use of time.  But I do it anyway.  Mostly because when I buy that new thing I always intend on making it my priority, then some future things comes along.

I started my tabletop wargaming hobby in early 2001 (I think it was 2001 anyway) with a single booster pack of Mage Knight figures.  Mage Knight, if you recall, was a click-base fantasy wargame (although, really more of a skirmish game) produce by the now Topps-consumed Wizkids.

Mage Knight figures came pre-painted, so I never had a "backlog."  Now, the quality of their paint jobs was just.... garbage.  But I was young and I did not really appreciate that.  They looked cool to me.  Some of them from that era still do, although that might just be nostalgia talking.

You could re-paint Mage knight figures.  I repainted some.  But anything you did not paint was not, by definition, unfinished.

I was introduced to Warhammer 40,000 by a friend in the fall of 2001.  He had just gotten into Blood Angels, and was easily able to interest me in playing.  I have always liked owning physical toys and representations of characters.

I wanted to play a very high-tech army, which in that era of 40k was not really a thing yet.  So I settled on Eldar, because although their theme was more "ancient," they at least had a polished look to them.  I bought a Phoenix Lord Fuegan (which is the same model today, except in "finecast" instead of metal) and primed him black.

I never progressed any further in painting Fuegan, because the next month the Tau came out.  And Tau were very much the army I was looking for.  High tech, optimistic and lots of battlesuits.  So I suppose then you could say that Fuegan was the beginning of my backlog.  But at least he was only one model.

During my teenage years I proceeded to collect four armies: Tau, Necrons, Space Marines and Bretonnians.  I had enough models for each of those forces, in theory, to field at least a basic army.

In practice, I only really painted enough Tau and Necrons to play.  And halfway through painting my Tau I switched paint schemes because I discovered that my initial black and yellow scheme was just too hard to do with my limited skills.  (Obviously, if you have read my other posts, you know by know that I have happily conquered black and yellow with my Legio Fureans Titans).

The Necrons got painted because the basic Necron scheme, especially in those days, was just unbelievably easy to paint.

Everything else I just... did not get around to before I quit playing late in high school to focus on attempting to date and applying to colleges.  So, while I think a lot of that backlog still exists in my parents' basement... I do not really count it as being a standing part of my current backlog.

That started when I re-entered the hobby in 2013 when I bought a Tau Riptide and Tau Commander the day of their release.  I mean, to be fair, those are both painted now.  Somehow I hammered out that commander in just under two months from start of build to finish while also working on the Riptide and relearning how to paint miniatures.

The Riptide took longer.  Much longer.  I would not finish it until March of 2017.  In the intervening years I worked on it and other projects.


Over that time my passions for different projects have waxed and waned.  I have some shining examples of completed work.  Apex Chelae (Acastus Knight Porphyrion) chief among them.  A healthy chunk of my Tau army is finished and my wife's (but you know... let's be honest... my) Adeptus Mechanicus Army is at a fieldable, if not finished state.

I am bound to complete the Warbringer Titan Romach Shel Raam.  Actually, I think this blog is a good piece of accountability for that.  And the same goes for my Titanicus Legios.

But for everything I am making progress on there is something that I built and never primed, or primed and never painted, or painted but never completed to a table ready state.  And when I buy something, that is never the intention.  But shiny objects capture my eye.

I think right now my solution is to be Titan focused this year.  To finish my Titans of all scales at the exclusion of nearly everything else.  (Although I would not mind closing out my extant Imperial Knight projects).

Hopefully one day everything will be painted, as it deserves to be.