"How do you keep the interest going ?" Topic

I am hoping I can keep this for the long haul . So I am just wondering how some of you guys with large collections that have been built up over the years keep the interest going without straying onto other projects or periods.

I can't the best I hope for is keeping to the three or four major periods I like the most.

Most people stray on to other projects and periods. Sometimes you need a break in order to keep the interest going.

Yes what 79th said. I stray into other periods and always come back to what got me started and that keeps it fresh.

I have waxed and waned. I eventually ended up with armies I would not have figured and had widely varying armies in more than one scale along the way. Just have fun!

Play with my toys. Nothing gets me more motivated than a game – so start small, or play unpainted, but start playing. Then you will want to do some more units, and so it rolls on

Personally I like to start vicious arguments over trivia with strangers on the internet.

Wargaming politics are the most vicious because the stakes are so small.

A collection not too big..6000 and growing.
with large goals…changing from 1:30 to 1:20 and adding DoW, Wurttemberg, Bavarian, Westphalia, Italian….
And a slooooow painter with little time for it.
Then as Marc at work says "Nothing gets me motivated than a game".

MG

Always switch between a few periods, get troops unto tables and keep looking for books.

I switch between periods regularly, and sometimes do a lot more on the rules/scenario design front than on painting and playing. This keeps stuff fresh and interesting.

I do tend to eventually circle back to my first gaming interests, WWII and scifi.

Frankly, I keep my interest up by never settling on one period or conflict. I don't understand how people can play, say, only Napoleonics, or FOW or their Roman armies for a whole year, or even a whole month. I play nothing twice in a row, so it all stays fresh. I will, for example, play a naval WWI battle one day, a Bolt Action game a week later and then a sci if space battle the next with some board games in between. Then I'll get back round to the games I enjoyed the most, but never for more than a session before moving on again.

I'm all over the map, but never get bored as a result. If you think that prevents me from having a deeper knowledge of each game subject, I would argue against that, as I consume books and articles on my favorite subjects in between the games.

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life!

If I ever get bored, it will likely be because my heart stopped beating.

Tgerritsen +1.
Too many cool things to play and learn :)

Straying is part of the deal.

My interests are like islands that I hop to and from as my interests require.

I'm careful about what "island" I actually convert to hobby form though, but have also allowed myself a half dozen options that satisfy something that the others don't. Example – still like to read about the Crusades but I will probably not game it. That was true of the English Civil War until Blue Moon last year released a wonderful range for it.

Keep enough options on the table to escape to if your current one isn't grabbing you.

Read on that subject only. No other books.

Tom

I used to be ALL over the place with my interests when I was younger, but I find that as I get older that I have tended to "settle" on certain periods. Franco Prussian War and the Crusades/Byzantine Empire era now take almost all my attention. Although I still have large ACW armies as well.

It's one of the benefits of playing in a permanent club environment where tables can be left set up: you can always take a break and play another period in another club room, or (as we do in our own room) cycle through 15mm Napoleonic, WWI air warfare, 15mm WWII, Napoleonic naval, WWII naval, ACW naval and a range of board games for one night 'filler' games.

Regards
Allan Mountford
Secretary – Stoke Wargames Group
link

Playing in games. I find I am most motived to paint figs is after I have played a really good game. Also reading up on the period or seeing a movie can be a great motivator.

Change rules. Change armies. Change the scale of the battle. (No, not the scale of the castings. That defeats the purpose. But cutting through Germany with the Black Legion of Vengeance is not the same thing as fighting Borodino.)

Lots of reading. Pick a campaign and set of battles to run as an event. Buy and paint miniatures for the event. Panic in the weeks ahead of the event and try to get the figures done. Finish painting the night before. Have a great game.

Rinse and repeat.

Workied for me (1809 and 1815). Especailly the 1815 as I ran a multi table affair on the Anniverary

Chop and change, make sure you get variety. Never paint two similar units without doing something different in between.

Accept that you will get bored occasionally and there's no prizes for keeping going with the thing that is currently driving you mad. It's a HOBBY.

I did stick with Napoleonics for 40 years, but did broaden it from my original Waterloo set up to the Peninsula, including many of the variety of troops who fought there (eg Portuguese, Loyal Lusitanean Legion, Spanish, Swiss, Polish, Garde de Paris, Chasseurs Britanniques, Joseph Napoleon's Army etc). I do have plans to expand to cover the 1809 Austrian Campaign and Walmoden's 1813 campaign in Northern Germany, and have boxes of suitable figures, but have not started painting them yet.

In the last four years I have been creating a Jacobite Rebellion set-up. I have always been interested in that conflict, but it was only recently that 1:72 plastic figures (RedBox and Strelets) became available to model it.

You can see many of these figures on my website: rodwargaming.wordpress.com

I am planning to start painting my massive plastic mountain of Roman era figures later this year.

I do read in all of these eras, and that invariably tempts me to model wargame figures for other periods than Napoleonics.

Rod

It seems to me that there is little excuse for getting bored with Napoleonics. After all, broadly speaking, you have a period of war lasting more than 20 years which involved virtually every nation in Europe and battles from Russia to Portugal, Italy to Finland, plus colonial conflict in South Africa, the Caribbean, Argentina, Egypt, and Canada. Having said that, however, I do have other gaming interests, including naval gaming (my first love).

Well at the moment while the love of Napoloenic period is there, I am suffering a lack of painting spirit. I am sure it will come back but I am doing fantasy mapping for a Harnworld RPG at the moment to keep my creative juices flowing.

Since I started gaming over 40 years ago, I only strayed once, and that was still in the Napoleonic arena with the War of 1812. I had a nice collection of Foundry figures, but they went out to OZ about 12 or more years ago. I catucally trimmed down from about 3000 figures to around 1500 focused on the Peninsula only since my parting with the War of 1812 collection. Myopic maybe? Seems others spread themselves out over periods, scales, ranges etc, but with limitied time, I stuck to one era, and that is just the Peninsular war

Doing this for quite a while, and like many others I am sure, never had a problem keeping my interest going. My problem is keeping my interest in check. Life's responsibilities keeps getting in the way. I have managed to confine myself to only two periods though, both in the same scale, (temptation to stray to others is great, however). I do find the photos of games and figures posted here on TMP to be inspiring. John Miller

Napoleonics was and are my primary Period, starting back circa 1968, but I added ECW armies ion the mid 1970's, some Ancient armies in the late 1970's, and Renaissance armies in the early 1980's. I've pretty much stuck to those periods since, then, albeit adding new armies and units, and all in the same scale.

Napoleonics covers a great many nations and battles, including less gamed ones like 1805, 1809 and 1813 in Italy, the Russo-Swedish War, the wars between Russia and the Ottomans, India, the wear of 1812, etc!

Thanks guys its been an interesting read.My largest collection is W W 2 in 20mm.However I felt that I needed a change and therefore chose Waterloo as this was one of the first Airfix sets that was bought when I was younger.

Watch the 1970 Waterloo film on the first of every month :-)

Straying into other periods is exactly how I keep my interest up….

Why would the interest decline?

The question sounds like 'how do you keep motivated to exercise or stay on a diet?" Ugh.

If you have to think of ways to motivate you, to keep your interest, you are working far to hard at something that shouldn't be work.

Interest in something that is never a straight path, but zigs and zags as new sparklies catch one's attention. That is how folks find themselves deep in a subject after several years which they originally thought they'd take a peek at one weekend. If you aren't interested anymore, that means something [someone] else has captured your attention….

I actually do keep myself fit after losing 6 stone ! That's enough motivation for me :)

I think this forum is helping to keep the interest going . There are some forums that you may get a couple of posts per week but this one is very active. The problem in the past is that I have so many unfinished projects and sometimes I think to myself if I spent all that time just on one or two projects I may have something near finished. Only my WW2 I would say is near "finished" . Things that have helped with my WW2 are plenty of films,books,rules documentries,active forums,new models, anniversary celebrations etc. Many of these the Napoleonic period also has so I am hopeful of keeping it going .

I heard a report that changing or having different Hobbies keeps back the symptoms of Alzheimers .Keep that in mind
Within a year and half of starting I have conjured up using Sharpes Practice with the fight escalating to Black Powder on the maps of some old hex based ( 1980's ) board game .
Also got my eyes wandering over to the Test Of Honour box sets