What Could Have Been...

[Mr. White]

What's the biggest hobby project you finished that never actually saw table time? Was it an army? Two armies? Two armies and terrain?

Why didn't it ever happen?

Is there a possibility of bringing it back from the dead or did you eventually pour one out for the little lost homies?

[Hobgoblin]

Alien Squad Leader in 28mm: I had the armies planned out, I bought lots of 50mm square bases, and I put together and painted a few units for several armies. But then the lockdown-born project lost momentum, and I realised that I had plenty of 15mm stuff that would serve better.

I've since recycled quite a lot of the elements for sci-fi skirmish and Kings of War/Hobgoblin; for example, the cheap tank kits I bought remain on their 50 x 100 bases and now serve as 'mincers' in Kings of War after heavy kitbashing. And the 50 x 50 bases are being used up by 'monsters' of various stripes for Kings of War.

[Inkpaduta]

I bought tons of the figurehead WWI fleets and painted them all.
Never played them. I guess I never found rules that I liked.
Big waste of time and money there.

[ced1106]

A Kings of War orc army and some of their undead army. Did this to help promote another product, but, as I sent progress reports, they stopped responding.

Not entire a waste of time -- I revisited the skellies five years later, did more painting, and am using them to help draw attention to two other companies, Tiny Furniture (Harvest of War corpse miniatures) and Loke Battlemats.

[vodkafan]

I will have to FINISH a project first, and then not play with it, then I will let you know....

[jon_1066]

I will have to FINISH a project first, and then not play with it, then I will let you know....

Where's the upvote button?

I think I've only ever managed to produce one project with all scenery, figures, everything based, the lot.

[Elbows]

I'd say for me it was getting back into 40K.

In 2017 I started collecting miniatures to start playing 2nd edition 40K again.  I met a bunch of new gamers and GW launched the 8th edition of 40K, promising a "new" game, etc.  It was admittedly the first significant change since 3rd edition (which formed the framework for 7th edition).  3rd/4th edition had made me quit 40K, etc.

I ended up painting more than 6,500 points of both Eldar and Chaos Renegades, etc.  While I enjoyed my "armies"...I just hated the game.  My group tried over several years to 'fix' it, but finally gave up.  I recently sold all 13,000+ points of models on eBay and haven't looked back.  I was so enthusiastic about reaching that high school goal of having all the 40K stuff I wanted, painted to a nice standard, with several tables worth of terrain.  The game was just so absolutely dire that it finally killed 40K for me.

Painting big armies to a nice standard and building really cool tables...and...every single time, after 3-4 hours, I'd think "Wow, that was...not very fun.".  Every single game, even with good friends was just an absolute dud.  My whole group more or less came to the same realization and of the 7-8 of us, no one plays 40K anymore.  A couple guys dabble in Horus Heresy and I've kept a handful of Space Marines for some 2nd edition games, but...yeah.

I thought I'd regret selling off literally hundreds of painted 40K models...but the reality is they just funded a bunch of new hobby projects and games. 

[aircav]

WW1, I finished the Germans, used em twice I think (& have sold them) & never even started the Brits, don’t even know where they are Or what I did with em 
Oh well 

[dadlamassu]

A regular wargame opponent and I decided to wargame the Maximilian Adventure but with US cavalry and Apaches as well.  A bit like the Major Dundee film.

Then, just as I finished the figures for both armies that I'd bought, he got promoted at work and moved too far away to wargame. Since them the armies languish in a box. 

Anybody interrested?

[lethallee61]

My failing is that I hate playing a wargame with unpainted miniatures. So, I painted an entire North Africa themed Italian army for Flames of War before putting them on the table. Played my first game of Flames of War and thought “What a stupid game” and never used them again.

Almost did the same thing with Dystopian Wars - fortunately I played a game with a friend’s painted army first, before abandoning what I had already painted to that point.

[jon_1066]

My failing is that I hate playing a wargame with unpainted miniatures. So, I painted an entire North Africa themed Italian army for Flames of War before putting them on the table. Played my first game of Flames of War and thought “What a stupid game” and never used them again.

Almost did the same thing with Dystopian Wars - fortunately I played a game with a friend’s painted army first, before abandoning what I had already painted to that point.

Try O Group with your Italians.  Much better game with the same minis.

[Harry Faversham]

A regular wargame opponent and I decided to wargame the Maximilian Adventure but with US cavalry and Apaches as well.  A bit like the Major Dundee film.

Then, just as I finished the figures for both armies that I'd bought, he got promoted at work and moved too far away to wargame. Since them the armies languish in a box. 

Anybody interrested?

Pm sent, old bean.
 

[tikitang]

Oh, my favourite subject!

The most ambitious project I worked on (though I never got anywhere near finishing) was something I called...

AGE OF MORCAR

This started back in 2016, when Age of Sigmar had only been out for a year, and I planned to use the first edition of the rules, which were only four pages long. The concept was playing Age of Sigmar as written, but using plastic miniatures exclusively from Hero Quest, Battle Masters and other 90s era board games of that ilk.

Morcar is, as any UK-based Hero Quest player will know, the name of the villain from the story (in the American version he's called Zargon instead). I collected enough miniatures from the era to make small armies for several factions, which took quite some and money doing, but in the end I had several (mostly unpainted) armies which I was looking forward to engaging in epic battles.

But in 2017 I had a bit of crisis: my third child (my first and only daughter) was due to arrive in the world imminently, meaning I was going to lose our spare bedroom I was using as a 'games room', and I also fell out with a colleague at work who I had been playing wargames and board games with for about four years. I went through a bit of an emotional rollercoaster during that year and I just decided, on a whim, to ditch the entire project. However, I didn't throw it all in the bin as I usually do when this happens: because most of the miniatures were Citadel and had some resale value, I put all the miniatures on eBay and made a fair amount of money from them (though not nearly as much as was spent on them, no doubt).

[Mr. White]

Oh, my favourite subject!

The most ambitious project I worked on (though I never got anywhere near finishing) was something I called...

AGE OF MORCAR

This started back in 2016, when Age of Sigmar had only been out for a year, and I planned to use the first edition of the rules, which were only four pages long. The concept was playing Age of Sigmar as written, but using plastic miniatures exclusively from Hero Quest, Battle Masters and other 90s era board games of that ilk.

oh wow, that sounds like a great little project! I guess you could maybe kick it back off with the newly released version of the game, though I don't find the models as charming.

The upside to something like this, painting up models from an adventure game, is that after you painted up all the models you'd have both a fully painted dungeoncrawler but also models to play model agnostic games like Dragon Rampant or Rangers of Shadowdeep. Win-win.

[Easy E]

My failing is that I hate playing a wargame with unpainted miniatures. So, I painted an entire North Africa themed Italian army for Flames of War before putting them on the table. Played my first game of Flames of War and thought “What a stupid game” and never used them again.

The good thing about painting up WWI Italians for North Africa is that there are literally dozens (possible 100s) of other games you can use those in!

Battlegroup
O Group
Bolt Action (scaled differently)
Rommel
Chain of Command (scaled a bit differently)
Rapid Fire
Nuts!
Round of Fire
Blitzkreig Commander

and on and on and on.  That is off the top of my head, and I don't even game WWII!