Sunday 26 October 2014

Losing your Mojo

Hobby motivation is a funny old thing.  One minute you're skipping along happily with a ton of painting and modelling on the go. Next minute, you're Austin Powers.  


The well of inspiration appears to have dried up. Most of my time at the hobby station during the past 6 weeks consisted of getting drunk and smoking wistfully.  I've played one game of 40k and managed to paint one model.  I couldn't even bring myself to look at a Tyranid for the most part.  Maybe I'm having a mid life crisis. I tried to kick start my enthusiasm and get the muse salivating by doing something different but my attempts were all over the oche.

The first failure was my new Space Marine army.  I bought 10 marine and 5 terminator shoulder pads with the Red Scorpions logo when purchasing Imperial Armour 4: The Anphelion project.  The idea was to resurrect my old Grey Knights army and re-purpose them as the Forgeworld chapter, maybe even play a few campaign games from the book against the Nids.  The project got this far before being consigned, indefinitely to the 'hobby pending' bin.


I sought solace in video games, the old stand by. Playing Alien: Isolation obsessively on my PC, alone for several nights scared me half to death.  But there's only so much time you can spend hiding, breathless in a cupboard watching the Alien stomp around the room before it becomes banal and frustrating.  The grisly, chest-bursting death animation is exhilarating for the first couple of dozen experiences but you wish the creature would just f**k off, in the end.  Additionally, I appear to have blown my synapses somewhere along the line and twitch gaming is beyond me.  My days of clocking Robotron in a Zen like state of violent bliss are definitely over.


Maybe a break was needed from 40k.  I tried playing D&D with my son and decided to buy some fantasy figures to use in the games.  Dwarf Hammerers have always tickled my fancy so a few were built, along with a Vampire Counts Necromancer.  I didn't even finish them all.


My boss at work asked me to paint an Otherworld miniatures Shambling Mound several months ago.  It had been sitting, forlorn and undercoated for so long that the situation was becoming embarrassing.  I resolved to finish it and... nothing.  In the end, I had to force myself to sit down and spend 20 minutes per night on the model, counting the seconds before I could escape to bland TV shows and mundane evening activities.  Thankfully, I eventually got into a sort of groove and the finished product isn't awful.  I sincerely hope so, since it's owner will have power of veto over my pay rise and bonus next year.


Games Workshop's 'Armies on Parade' day loomed on the horizon.  I had absent mindedly signed up for it in August when the Green Weed scenery project was in full swing.  My preparation for the event amounted to doing absolutely nothing, but I've amassed a fearsome collection over the past 3 years and decided to hide the featureless display board under a veritable carpet of Nids.  My wife suggested the Mawloc as a centrepiece, surrounded by every singe gaunt I own in a sort of radial symmetry.  


It worked very well and I won the gold medal despite an alarmingly superior 'Chaos Mountain' display which was, fortuitously, placed at the opposite end of the room to my own.  I didn't even bribe anyone to get it.  Well, mostly. I did agree to model a green stuff 'lute' onto someone's Lizardman army musician (wtf?!) but I didn't outright tell him to vote for me. 


This win might have been the watershed moment I needed. I have rewarded myself with a Triarch Stalker which produced a vague inclination in my underbrain to convert a Necron version of The Crucifixion Scene.  What the hell, if it gets me modelling again with some sort of serious intent, then I'll do it.


8 comments:

  1. Congratulations on the win, I saw the boards on the GW FB page and your win was well deserved. I can sympathise with your lack of hobby mojo. Not 10 minutes ago I lamented to my wife that I needed a new army project to focus on instead of random miniatures which sit scattered about my painting tray.

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    1. You definitely need a new army. I only say that because I don't want to play your Iyanden list :P

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  2. Ha, ha, great story and another AoP winner, I got silver to add to last years gold, with pretty much zero extra effort than last year. Rightly so one of the other armies did get recognized for the effort they put in so I'm happy to come second.

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    1. Thanks! I was going to spray mine gold anyway if I came second or third. Hopefully no one would know... o_O

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  3. Great job on the win. That's a fantastic display. Does winning put you into another competitive bracket, or is it just a per store/area type?

    I wouldn't worry about hobby mismatching. It happens to us all. I found the best thing that invigorates me is stepping away from my own work, and seeing what others are up to. Going to a tournament not to play, but just to watch. Visit some stores, talk to chaps...go to a totally different modeling event (like a historical scale models thing). Even an art gallery or a walk through some old castles/ruins are good avenues for recharging the creative spark!

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    1. Nah, AoP is held at every GW store every year so there are a lot of medals knocking around. I'm still delighted to have won. I've entered before with the same army but this year I just put all my favourite models in and got a chance to show off my terrain.

      Not many castles in New Zealand I'm afraid but I did try to sneak onto a set of The Hobbit last year. I think it was the town of Dale but I didn't get very close and was chased off by security.

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  4. Congratulations for the win! :)

    I understand very well your "wargaming crisis", it happens to me quite a lot, especially when I have tons of models (usually gaunts, damn) to paint.

    But, you know, the hobby never dies...and new tyranid models are coming, by the way...

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    1. Ah! Stop! No! I am not getting caught up in the hype this time. I will paint my embarrassing backlog of Nids before even considering the new kit! Yeah right. I'll probably pick it up next week.

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