Thankyou very much for the nice words everyone! Don't have much progress to update you guys on yet, but I'll answer some questions:
I'm sorry to hear about your pending hobby retirement, I'm sure it's the best thing for your own circumstances and I hope you enjoy the last project!
Will you be keeping your finished army as a memento or will it be a complete detox of plastic crack and rulebooks?
Good question! I will be clearing out a bunch of my stuff atleast (either selling it off or giving it away). Not sure what I'll do with my Minotaurs, it's possible they might be left in storage with a friend or relative for the future, though I think my dream for them would be if one of my friends that I'm tightest with from the 40k community took care of them 
As somebody who has quit wargaming at least twice, it's always good to take breaks if it doesn't entertain you anymore. I spent most of my 20s and early 30s with the Warhammer stuff boxed away, then randomly got the urge to come back. Then I shelved it again for a few years when I lost interest in 40K, and when I came back again, I work mostly on Historicals skirmish games, board games, and the 40K Boxed Games I have (Space Hulk, Blackstone Fortress, DW:O, etc). Stuff that tickles my modeling and painting fancy.
But, if this really is your last project, hopefully it's a good one.
Thankyou for the encouragement!
Dangerous time to quit given the rumors of a new 30k box coming out but then, as you say - going out with a bang!
Personally, I've never really quit but I have had some very extended breaks where things have been in storage/the loft etc and I just havent been interested. Randomly, it was terrain that hooked me back in the last time. I found it's almost therapeutic to make and paint sector mechanicus walkways.
Anyway,.... Nice DA's and I'm looking forward to seeing what you do. Good luck to you with getting out (queue the music "....Welcome to the Hotel California, such a lovely place...")
Yeah honestly the idea of curating a collection of terrain has in recent memory been more of a draw than it used to be. Thankyou very much! I'm glad the 30k community will be getting some new stuff
As someone who is just now getting into this hobby, can i ask why you are getting out? If it is purely personal then i understand your silence, but if theres some reason that might be a warning for me to not make my first purchase, would you mind sharing that information please?
I think it's a very complex thing. First up, wargaming and miniatures don't really appeal to me like they used to. I think its to do with interests changing (as they do with everyone over time), but for me personally wargaming can also represent the worst part of my psyche, the part that gets attached to material goods, and its kind of almost like I can get very zoned out and lose some of my personality when engaging with wargaming (something I have to be careful with), which is worse when you consider that 95% of the time I don't like it when I do it so it's over nothing.
I think this segues into the next point about consumerism. It is very easy to fall into the pit of just throwing away money at wargaming. Its easy to see something impulsively and kind of just deciding "I want" and buying, which like, is something that happens to all of us no matter what the product, but I think with wargaming that happens a lot to the best of us. We see something we don't really want, but GW and other miniatures manufacturers are good salespeople, and so you think you want it. My next statement is very controversial, but: Games Workshop is ridiculously overpriced. People have been arguing over this for many many years, but the price keeps going up at a ridiculous rate, even for kits that have less in them than older kits. Atleast that's the case here in Australia. Compare to other miniatures manufacturers and you'll see. Primaris Characters that cost AUD $50 or $60 or whatnot are a perfect example. 10 years ago, I don't even think an entire Tactical Squad of 10 (which, mind you, each model had more options) cost that much. Also, compare to manufacturers like Warlord Games, where you get much better value. And when you get caught up in the hype or passion or whatever it is, its easy to not realise how much you are getting overcharged. I'll be the first to admit that this project is utlising overpriced goods, but whatever. Point is, I'm not saying don't buy, but I think the best advice I can give is to think about each purchase carefully, and make sure its what you really want, and always consider what else you could get for that money instead. This advice could go for any good or service, but I think ESPECIALLY with Wargaming, and ESPECIALLY with Games Workshop on top of that, keep that in mind.
Next up is the setting. Warhammer 40,000 is a very bleak, awful universe. It's that way by design. But I think as I've gotten older, I've realised it can be very gratuitous and that just because its part of this very extreme over the top setting, doesn't mean its always tastefully/artfully/appropriately done. Like 40k has the most horrific topics imaginable, which I wouldn't be able to repeat on this forum even if I wanted to, and I feel like it kind of desensitises you, which I don't always think is necessarily a good thing. I believe we as humans should be horrified at terrible and cruel things, so I think it's important to make sure that diving into the universe doesn't have that effect of desensitizing you. But then wargaming in general is depicting one of the most horrific ways imaginable, war, in an idealised, clean escapist way that you enjoy, and I think as I've gotten older I've just become more turned off by that in general, because I think its important that we as people still naturally recognise that horror for what it is.
Also, I think 40k in particular can be taken the wrong way, even with the direction the official lore goes in. Like I think originally it was more of a satire or like making fun of things in an over the top ridiculous way, and over time that gets lost more and more as the perception changes to a setting which should be taken seriously. Like the Imperium I think gets misinterpreted as being the good guys (I guess because they're human protagonists?). Space Marines are murderous fascist xenophobes, ideas of heresy represent the ultimate dictatorship where there are no personal freedoms, but the problem is that it can be easy to see these interesting characters and think they're good guys and I think sometimes people might have their beliefs and ideology affected by that. I think because of the depiction of this, people who seriously already have those bad beliefs and ideologies flock to things like 40k (whether it is intended to be a satire of that or not originally, it becomes what it was mocking).
Point is, you gotta be careful with this stuff. Most people who play are perfectly fine human beings who recognise the horror for what it is, and wouldn't try to justify it. Just make sure you stay as one of them. But for me personally wargaming in general is best described as being draining on my soul if that makes any sense, so this last project is kind of to recapture some of the excitement it brought me when I was younger, and to then be cleanly done for good after that.
However, despite all the negative things, I want to say that Bolter and Chainsword is, in general, a really awesome community. I read the forums here for years and years before I ever made an account, and I think the folks here are just people passionate about creatively exploring this setting through forging really cool collections and narrative (and having fun with the game too), so I think you will generally feel very welcomed here. Can't stress enough how awesome Bolter and Chainsword is, and it is probably one of the main reasons I've even come back to finish this off in a clean but exciting manner.
Anyway, those are just my personal reasons, but just so long as you remember yourself and know how to look at the material for what it is and not get caught up in it, and just are careful with what you buy, you should be all good! And you'll always have the nice community here to help you.
Sorry for the really long tangent essay, promise I'll try and keep everything much more fun from now on
EDIT: Also, forgot to say about elitism. I'll give you an example: I saw a youtube video a number of months back where a guy was talking about "is it ok to use 40k models in 30k" and he pulled up a picture of an Iron Warriors Land Raider, which, although the 40k model, was being used in someone's 30k army. Now, ignoring for a moment that that model of Land Raider was actually used back then so was canonically correct still, this dude just was hating on this model that someone else had painted that he found a picture of and stating that as a 30k player you have a right to get angry over such things and feel insulted. Now, if he doesn't want to have that model in his army, that's fine. But he doesn't have the right to go around dragging other people down because what they do with their own army that they have paid for themselves and is none of his business doesn't line up 100% with canon. Anyway, the point is, sometimes there is the rare person who has that kind of attitude, which isn't ok, and I think I also want to get away from that kind of.
Also, Games Workshop doesn't like third party parts, which I completely understand, but knowing you can't take your army into a GW store if its not the official model with no third party bits does tend to put me off a bit, but that doesn't really affect me since I haven't played in years, so I digress. Point is, do what you want, and don't let anyone deter you from doing what you want with your army (though you might be able to play in stores). But yeah, I think what I mean to say with this edit is that there can be a lot of toxicity, so it's nice to get away from that
Edited by Calibanite Knight Angel, 21 June 2021 - 02:18 PM.
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). I don't have my existing models with me as I write this post, so here is a sneak peak of the first members of my new Tactical Squad (my 4th Minotaurs Tactical Squad).
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