Dealing with OOOH Shiney! syndrome in 5 simple steps

[RSDean]

Here is the realization that really changed tracks for me.  Imagine my twenty periods all painted and game ready.  Now think how often will I really play with each collection?  If I gamed three times a week (not likely - though not impossible) that gives roughly 150 games a year.  More likely it will be twice a month and then only maybe.  That is only 24 games a year.  That is once a year per collection - with some favorites getting extra outings.  Now give myself 15 years of gaming like that, that means 16 of 20 collections get used only 15 times…
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Remember, for most of us, our gaming pals want to put their collections on the table, too.  That cuts into our own collections table top time.
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To return to the OP, I am trying to get myself geared to getting enough of each collection with at least enough painted to play a game.  That is a sound idea.  Now, can I make the transition and stick to it?

I could theoretically count this; I have logs of games played by to 2001 or 2002.  My goal has always been to get an average of a game a week, and I can tell you, since I’ve been keeping records, that I think I reached that one year.  Most years are 30-40 games, which is still pretty good as far as I am concerned. Looking at my projects list, I have 27 things listed right now, of which 18 can support some sort of game. 

If I’m responsible for about half the games that get played each year (since I have two gaming sons, am a member of a club, and am going to American conventions where participation games are the usual thing), that’s probably…hmm…40/2 x 20, or ~400 games in the past twenty years.  So, I should have a few projects, at least, that have seen the table 20 times.  I do know that I have a few outliers in there. I’ve got a 6mm Spanish Civil War project in a box that hasn’t been on the table since 2005. 

I’m now tempted to pull out the stack of notebooks and really see what the answer is, but I am guessing that there are probably four or five projects that see the bulk of the play, and the rest are somewhat neglected.

Given that my father is still puttering with his hobbies at 91 (and he’s 30 years older than me), I like to hope that I might have 30 years left. 

If I rolled all that together, I feel like the rational choice would be to have no more than one new start at a time, and concentrate on the top 5.  Some of the bottom five could be sold off. 

I’m not quite that rational yet, but now that we’re back to gaming live regularly, I have been finding it easier to work on the things that I’m playing, which reduces the impulse to start something completely new.  (During the height of the pandemic, I’m afraid, shopping was entertainment … )

[ced1106]

> we see something interesting in a movie or on the web and bang! there you have a new project.

I find it interesting that I absolutely positively never ever ever (: started a project this way. Not that my interest (buying spree!) is any better, since it's almost always driven by hype. (: Lasting Tales and, before the pandemic, Gloomhaven, were my last big projects and this is how they went:

0. Buy boardgames miniatures in bulk to fill whatever genres I'm missing. Yep, this is the expensive part. Hello, CMON and Reaper.
1. Find a miniatures ruleset that I actually like. Ruleset will typically be in a genre I'm interested in and have mini's for.
2. Proxy, if necessary, any miniatures I need for the game.
3. Play until I need to paint some miniatures for the next scenario or encounter.
4. Paint!
5. Repeat until campaign is over!

I guess technically I don't have unfinished projects, because these boardgame miniatures don't require assembly. I do have a ton of boardgames I haven't played yet...!

[RSDean]

I think the reality is that very few people's collections (at least historical miniatures focused) rarely get to 15 total outings - and much rarer to get to 30 total outings over the life of the collection with its 'perpetrator'.

Which leads me to ask, how many of you have a collection of historical figures that has seen a game table 20 times?  Thirty times?  Forty times?  Fifty times?

By far, my busiest collection over the last thirty-six highly active years might have seen 60 or 70 outings but probably closer to 40. 

So, I asserted that I had the data in my logs.  I finally added it up to see.  I started logging miniatures games played in January 1999, so I’m just short of 24 years of records at this point.  I have 805 games logged, an average of about 33.5 per year.  Data regarding collections time on the table is a little fuzzier, since it’s hard to tell whether my figures from a project shared wth a friend showed up on the table back in 2002 or whatever.  However, my top collection, 40mm 18th century has been out ~74 times, trailing down to two collections tied for 4th (historical) place at ~21.  That’s less than once per year for those, so I’d say your estimates seem reasonable.  The moral, such as it is, is that I should probably concentrate on the top 5, since they form the bulk of the gaming over the years.