"A few thoughts on "The Pledge"" Topic

As 2022 ended and I tallied up the miniatures I bought and painted I took time to review the results of The Pledge over the past few years.

I wrote a blog post which goes a little deeper into it but here's a chart to show the results.

While I haven't reduced the lead pile by much My head has been kept above the water.

link

That's a lot of stuff painted Dan

I cheated by counting basing too ;-)

Do you still have the link for the 2005 invention of The Pledge? It'd be interesting to see where it all started.

I've been tracking the number of figures bought and painted for many years.
Once, back in the late 80's or early 90's, I did count the unpainted figures. It was terribly depressing. I still have the file on my computer somewhere but haven't looked at it in years.
One thing I have added to my record keeping over the years is number of figures sold. Initially, it just never occurred to me I would ever buy something I didn't need or that my ideas would change. I've sold very few painted figures, so they usually don't get counted as sold.
From time to time, I total things up to see how many figures I've bought over the years and how many I've sold. This at least gives me a rough idea how many unpainted figures are hidden in corners, being ignored.
I've found in the past ten years or so the figures I paint outnumber the ones I purchase. Sadly, though, I find painted don't outnumber purchased by that much. I don't think I've had a major triumph like your 179 figures in 2021.

Grelber

Timbo W
TMP link

That's some nice progress. The only way I've ever gotten this much painted was by paying someone else to do it.

- Ix

I've never done The Pledge, but looking back at the last decade, I realize now that a shift in my behavior caused a similar steady rate of progress. In 2012 (after a couple big flea market purchases) I made a list of all my projects and grew alarmed at how sprawling and long it was. I decided to start consolidating, discarding projects I'll never complete, finishing projects I want to complete, and reducing the number of scales. Since then, there have been quite a few flea market sales and more than one buying spree (to "finish" a collection). I can't keep a figure count (and it's not even relevant to my style of gaming), but I do keep detailed inventory spreadsheets for each collection of airplanes/ships/tanks, and a running list of projects. I try to get at least one languishing project onto the table for the first time each year, and that's worked pretty well:

2013: 15mm AWI (rebasing a big painted collection, buying and painting all the artillery and some limbers)
2014: Check Your 6 (telescoping airplane stands, 1/300 Korean War jets)
2015: 1/3000 RJW naval (I bought the ships painted, but I had to make all the markers, rosters, special rulers, etc.)
2016: Jutland "Run to the South" battlecruiser duel (I had the BCs already; I needed lots of 1/2400 CLs and DDs)
2017: Guadalcanal planes (1/300 G4M Betties, 1/200 Wildcats, Zeroes, Dauntlesses, Avengers)
2018: Mers el Kebir combined air/sea scenario (1/200 Swordfish, Fulmars, Hawk 75s; a few 1/2400 DDs and CLs to complete the naval game OOB)
2019: 1/200 French planes and scenarios for Casablanca 1942; 1/144 P-47 razorbacks and P-51Bs for the CY6 Over the Reich campaign
2020: no games, but I did get a lot of planes, ships, and naval gaming markers done
2021: Mid-WWII European theater air duels (1/144 FW-190s, Typhoons, Spitfires, P-47Ds, P-51Ds), the "Get Yamamoto" scenario (1/144 A6M3 Zeroes, G4M Betties, P-38Gs); more AWI rebasing to enable some really big games (Brandywine, Monmouth, Germantown)
2022: Pacific War aircraft carrier air battles (36x 1/200 IJN carrier bombers, a dozen 1/1250 ships, wrote a whole rules module for CY6);
2023 so far: Si Vis Pacem playtests (markers only)

For 2023 I have too many projects under way already:

• Solomon Islands naval battles (3 dozen 1/2400 ships)
  
• new 1/144 tank collection (mostly pre-painted tanks, but some need paint, and I need a lot of terrain, and rules)
  
• get a start on the 1/144 infantry, artillery, and planes for combined arms gaming with the 1/144 tanks
  
• get new 15mm Jacobite Rebellion collection on the table in Oct/Nov. I have the Jacobites, but I have about 650 redcoats I'm sending out to be painted. I'm already late getting the order together, so… <fingers crossed>
  
• 15mm AWI cavalry. About 50 figures, but again, sent out for painting by someone else.

In 2000, I started playing 15mm ACW, and I vowed never to paint a single ACW figure; I had to break that vow to get limbers, casualties, and dismounted cavalry, but for the most part that's worked out. I've treated all the other horse & musket periods the same way (AWI, FPW, Maximilian Mexicans, Jacobite Rebellion, etc.). For the last 20 years I've been painting only machines, horses, wagons, and buildings, and almost never human figures. I love painting ships and planes and tanks and guns, and horses make me pretty happy too, but I tend to get tense and curse a lot while painting soldiers. Perhaps ironically, I have enthusiastic plans to paint the 1/144 Victrix infantry myself, so maybe I've just been waiting for figures that inspired me enough…? <shrug> Dunno. Wish me luck.

I still have languishing projects all over the place, and more than one of them was acquired since I started consolidating. Every time I think I will never need another new one, another new one comes along that I find irresistable.

- Ix

I'm not in the hobby to play Accurate Adventures in Accounting (which Traveller has been called), so I don't keep track. Also, the major cost of miniatures is space, not the purchase price, and that's neither increasing nor decreasing substantially, regardless of whether they're painted or not.

Thanks Dan, interesting to see it all started as buy one only when you've painted 2.

the major cost of miniatures is space, not the purchase price, and that's neither increasing nor decreasing substantially, regardless of whether they're painted or not.

While I agree with the first part of that I don't think the second is true. Six painted Perry AWI figures on a 40mm x 60mm base takes up almost as much space as three unpainted boxes. With the exception of tanks and planes I think this holds true for most all wargame miniatures.

The last time I cleaned up my Wargames room I noticed two things. First there were a lot more painted figures than I thought and second I'm running out of space to keep them :-)

Agreed – painted miniatures take up a lot more space. Bare miniatures can be rubbing together in boxes and bags, but painted miniatures need space, cushions, and hard walls, not to mention clear organization.

None of my miniatures collections are "finished" until they are packed securely into travel-ready cases. Creating and managing storage is probably about 1/3 of my hobby time. Many of my projects over the years have been "storage system for X collection", and it's just depressing when a brilliant storage idea turns out to be inadequate and a new one has to be invented.

- Ix

Another benefit of 3d printing. STL files only take up space on your hard drive or not even that if you use a cloud storage service. Having said that you have to be very disciplined and not print figures until you are ready to paint them!