"Is It Good To Finish An Army?" Topic

I missed the poll suggestion, and as a result the answer I need isn't there. You can make a decent case that "an army is never finished" but there is a serious difference between "I have two finished units and the rest are mostly primed" and "there are still things I'd like to add, but the army is table -ready."

"Table-ready" is always good.

There's at least three levels of "finished":

* Table-ready
* Finished all I intended for it
* Finished all I got for it and I can't get more because the figures are OOP and I've emptied eBay of them

The first two are good. The last is a royal pain if it happens before the first two, but fine if it coincides with the 2nd.

As for enjoying the journey, well, I do enjoy the journey, but it's not like finishing an army or five would leave me without stuff to paint. 'Tis better to paint and have a bunch of table-ready armies than to paint and not have any table-ready forces, and as long as you put any value at all on playing that should hold true no matter how much you enjoy painting.

I think Robert and TLC have nailed the distinction. "Table-ready" is the key milestone for me. An army may never be truly finished—there's always another unit, personality figure or baggage wagon that would be nice to add—but once it can fight a battle, that's a victory in itself.

Of course, finishing a Finnish army is always good. Finishing any other army is merely satisfactory.

Table-ready is finished (and good); additional chrome is nearly always possible to add (and good).

I don't know that I have ever really truly "finished" an army.

There has always been something more to do. Detail painting, highlights and shadows, basing, The odd unit, command or support figure, etc.

Table ready I have achieved though.

ochoin +1

Ochoin raises an interesting point. Would Gustavus Adophus's Laplanders be an antique Finnish if you built all of them? Or only if you used OOP figures?

But yes, overall I find it's helpful to sit down at the start of the process and ask "what exactly do I need to produce a table-ready army with at least one opponent? And is it all available?"

ochoin +1

Since I play mostly DBA or LR/DR I do finish armies most of the time.

I don't think that I've ever "finished an army". 🤷
That doesn't mean that I haven't gotten a lot of games in.

"In tonight's entertainment, the part of the 16th Light Dragoons will be played by the 17th. The New Jersey Brigade will be represented by Maryland and Delaware.
Break clean in the clinches! And fight!"

I'd say it's good to have a goal as to what size your army will be and reaching that goal is a good thing. Sometimes however the goal changes.

DBA for example you get the 12 basic elements, finished. That's a good thing. Then as you start playing more you build on the options to give yourself more variety. More goodness.

I started building a Confederate army for the ACW. The project went dormant for several years. I then got a deal on some figures and later found a place to buy more for a reasonable price. I decided to buy all I needed to have both Union and Confederate armies. I painted everything. It was good. I realize now that the Confederates have three more units than the Union and I haven't any Zouaves. The Armies are finished but if I stumble across some Zouaves I will buy them and when they are painted that will be a good thing too.

As surprising as it may be, sometimes I've planned for the armies I want to build for a period/rules, and work to that plan. Sometimes it works (ACW, 15mm C10th Byzantines, 6mm 7th ARMD DIV WWII and NMTBH), sometimes it doesn't. A couple of months ago I finished the last NMTBH contingent I wanted to build- and felt good and relieved. I may add to it later (highly unlikely), but the aim was maintained, the objective reached and mission completed.

If I could only say the same about the infinitely-expanding 18mm SYW collections……

As per Robert and Ochoin, it is great to get an army finished to the point where it is table ready

As to actually finishing, probably never happen – while I do have some pretty big SYW armies – for the French, 18 infantry regiments – they will never be complete (for reference, the French had an actual army with 121 infantry regiments plus sundry others)

I'll tell you when I finish one….