"The Unfinished Armies Problem" Topic

On a scale of 0 (none) to 10 (endemic), how much of a problem do you have with armies you start to collect but never finish a deployable tabletop force?

0 – my problem is I keep building and painting long after I have everything I need.

VCarter for the win!

0 – I play skirmish games. A fieldable force is pretty easy. Like VCarter, I keep going by expanding what I can field with a force. Unlike VCarter, I don't see this as a problem.

I tend to think my interests will come back to this period again--sometime. So, I press on buying the figures and equipment, but never actually paint it, or very little of it.

For instance, I painted up two ancient Greek armies to fight each other. Then, I started buying a Persian army to fight them, but only painted a few units. Still, it seemed like a good plan to buy figures for a Carthaginian army, so my Greeks could campaign in Sicily, even though none of them have been painted. So, maybe two and a quarter armies painted out of four purchased.

And, yes, I do the VCarter thing, too.

Maybe it's time to sell off all those Ral Partha Carthaginians . . . or not.

Grelber

Who says it's a problem?

Unpainted armies are piles of future fun and opportunity.

0

All my armies are fonished but I add to them cuz I like painting.

10 And then I buy more

I'm with etotheipi.

0, but there's always one more unit I just have to have …

+ 1,000,000 Bobgnar

(1,000,000 representing the number of unpainted minis…

I feel you on this. I don't have a problem, but thank you for asking.

0

I have various unfinished projects going back years.
Some were bought and never started. Some were started but I lost interest. Some were started but the group I was with lost interest. Some were started and I still had interest but something else interested me even more (ooh, shiny). Many were started, I finished enough to use on the table but I still had various things which I might use one day.

There are very few armies I have where I have painted absolutely everything I bought.

The army I'm using today was finished yesterday has a few figures I bought this year, some I bought two years ago, a load I bought ten or more years ago and some I bought and painted 35 years ago. There are still various things I could paint, but it has reached the usable stage.

0, but add to them over the years

I have several unfinished armies but I don't get upset about it or consider it a problem.

Maybe 0.5 these days. When I retired, a lot of such projects fed the flea markets.

In my own defense, every time I got caught like that, it was because some manufacturer promised the necessary forces later. Eventually I learned never to believe them. DO NOT buy the first casting until you know where you can buy two viable armies.

0
Expectation
Usually the project is moved forward by other players saying "Are you ready?"
If there are lots of games planned then things get done.

I'll say a 2 though I don't really see it as a problem. Most projects I have have enough figures to play a game with but some are not at the scale of game I would like.

There are two or three armies that need to be finished painting and two or three that have met the planned amount but somehow I bought another three to four units for.

No such thing as a finished army.

+1 Jim !

I know I've got armies/forces about 75% done to all still in the box/bags …

0 – I don't recall ever having that problem. As others have mentioned, just the opposite. I keep building way past what is needed for anything I will do.

1 – I think that I'm finished… But then I find some forces I just have to add to them -- to round them out, of course.

"I don't have a problem. I can quite any time I want. I just choose not to… At this time."

Cheers!

+1 Swampster.

I just recently finished some 50- year old figures for a medieval army; the army still isn't complete but there is hope.

Like the others …

been there, got the sweatshirt, used it was the car etc. etc.

Where is the problem ?

If you have a problem with it then don't do it !!!

It's only a problem if you go to meetings and talk about it.

8, product of a hyperactive brain.

9

Never finishing a playable force is a fairly high bar. I haven't gotten anything I've definitely given up on yet, but certainly projects have been known to drag. I finally got the 15C Germans to full DBMM size this summer, about a decade after starting on them.