"Lead Mountain: Badge or Burden?" Topic

For years, "Lead Mountain" has almost been a badge of honour in the hobby. Mountains of unpainted figures – metal or plastic- , enough to last several lifetimes and the inevitable jokes about not letting your spouse discover how many boxes are hidden away.

But is it actually a good thing?

I have always seemed to have gone in the opposite direction. I currently & typically only have a handful of figures on the painting table and nothing sitting unpainted in storage. I'm waiting on a few boxes of Dark Alliance figures to arrive but, apart from that, there's no backlog.

I've found I much prefer it this way. I don't feel any psychological pressure to "catch up". When I finish a unit, I'm done. Then I can decide what genuinely interests me next rather than feeling guilty about another hundred figures waiting in the cupboard.

Am I the odd one out?

Do you enjoy having a substantial Lead Mountain?
Does it motivate you or weigh on your mind?
Have you ever deliberately reduced your backlog?
Or do you believe a proper wargamer should always own more figures than they could ever paint?

I'm curious whether attitudes have changed over the years.

Neither. It's just reality. 🤷

After the great whole house purge & inventory process that was 2020 (I was unemployed and bored), I was quite happy with the size of the unpainted mountain and our decreased level of family clutter.

I have recently increased the mountain as I moved into 15mm & 10mm armies I want to paint and game. Active projects don't weigh on my mind at all.

So… what the OFM said – neither.

Lead Mountain…… I have an entire range of dull gray mountains.

In general I don't think on it. Always have something weird to paint. Currently working on B&P terrain and my FOW 20mm 1941 Dutch East Indies collection. Last month I nearly finished my FOW 20mm 1941-3 Greek collection covering the campaign in Greece and Crete plus a few units for Free Greeks in NA.

I tend to plan what need, buy it and paint it. I don't have tons of stuff hanging around. I'm at The stage of just filling though, I've sold far more stuff in the last five years than I've bought.

I do have various boardgames I've bought and never played though.

I find it a bit of psychological burden; a reminder of my lack of discipline and chronic tendency to overestimate how quickly I'll get stuff done.

That said, parts of it exist for good reasons: it makes sense to buy whole armies at a time, to save on shipping and to ward against figures going out of production, even if I know I'm not going to paint all of it anytime soon.

I've sold off or given away some stuff that I've concluded I'll never get around to.