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It seems like a rite of passage: every wargaming content creator has to show off their pile of shame. I’ve done it. Many others have done it. (Mine clocked in at over 900 unpainted models. I’ve gotten that number down quite a bit, but only because I gifted a lot to my son, and sold some others.)

So how do you get in good habits to paint all of the miniatures that you buy? This seems especially pressing to me right now as The Horus Heresy is going to come out in three weeks and I’m going to suddenly have a ton more plastic to paint. How do I tackle The Horus Heresy and not let half the box end up on the shelf, unassembled and unpainted.

#1. Go Small and Show Up

This has become my new hobby habits motto in the last year. I’ve always heard “Go big or go home” and it’s always been, well, too big. It’s hard to go big, and when you try to go big you very often burn out and end up going nowhere.

So instead, I say “Go small and show up.” Take things in small pieces, but make sure that you get all of those small pieces done. This means that it may be too much to say you’re going to batch paint five Space Marines on a Sunday, but if you commit to painting one Space Marine on a Sunday–and then actually do it, reliably, consistently, you’re going to actually get stuff done.

Personally, I have hobby goals that are a little more aggressive than one model a week. I like to paint everyday, and I don’t want to spend overly long on any individual miniatures. So I make it a point to “go small” by picking a model or two, and then “show up” by painting every morning before I go to work. Weekends I paint more, but for now, even if I just do a single marine in the one and a half to two hours I paint before starting the day job (and admittedly sometimes I paint longer) then that’s still a squad of five Space Marines done in a single work week. Not bad at all, and that leaves me the weekend to try something bigger.

#2. Don’t Try to Do Everything at Once

So, I made a bad purchase. I know it’s a bad purchase and it hasn’t even shown up yet. I am really frigging excited for The Horus Heresy, so I’ve been spending a lot of time looking around at Games Workshop stuff to learn more and more about The Horus Heresy. I’ve written about choosing the right legion to paint, and I’ve written about getting the right Horus Heresy color scheme, and I’ve even written about a trend I see in the wargaming community about gatekeeping for the Horus Heresy. Suffice it to say: I’ve been steeped in The Horus Heresy.

So I ordered my Horus Heresy Core Box, and I ordered the missile launchers and heavy bolters upgrade kit, and I purchased the Liber Hereticus (Death to the False Emperor!). And then…

Well, see, I was so deep into the Horus Heresy that I impulsively bought a new Horus Heresy game. I bought Adeptus Titanicus. And it’s going to arrive on Tuesday, before all the Horus Heresy stuff arrives on Saturday, and well, I have bitten off more than I can chew.

I’m absolutely going to want to crack open the Adeptus Titanicus as soon as it arrives, but by Saturday, Titanicus is going back into the bookshelf with the Pile of Shame and I am going to focus on getting my World Eaters done. And the result is that I am going to have a LOT of Heresy content, and a lot of miniatures, and there’s a good chance that I will get burned out before I get done. So: don’t be like me. Don’t try to do everything at once. One project at a time, maybe two small projects. Call it good.

#3. Follow Tutorials, But Realize They’re Experts

Every morning when I wake up at 4:30 or earlier (this is not me saying this is the way that you should paint your miniatures, but there’s a guy in the neighborhood who is a registered nurse who has recently had a stroke and can’t drive, and a few days a week I get up at 3:55am and drive him to work at his clinic. Then I stop at the 24-hour burrito place at 4:45am, and then I come home and get to painting.)

Anyway, the point is that I get home, turn on YouTube, and watch miniature painting channel after painting channel where some expert painter will show me the best way to get excruciatingly good models. And mine look so pale in comparison.

The thing I have to remember is this: the people in these YouTube painting tutorials have their hundreds of thousands of followers because they’re REALLY GOOD. Like, better than you, probably, and they make it look so easy.

So I look at these channels as inspiration and motivation, and I go into it with the knowledge that I’m going to pick up a few tips and tricks, but I’m not going to watch Miniac or Ninjon or Cult of Paint and suddenly be as good as they are. That’s something that I just accept and come to terms with.

Don’t let it get you down. Don’t worry that the units you paint won’t be as good as the unit they paint, and that the battle they show off isn’t as good as the small battle you play on the dining room tables. Follow they’re advice, but acknowledge that they’re the best of the best. If Squidmar wasn’t a cut above he wouldn’t have 300,000 followers.

#4. Seek Inspiration

This is all about hobby motivation. One of the most enjoyable things you can do to form good miniature wargaming habits is to browse Instagram and Reddit (and, to a lesser extent, Twitter) and see what some of these great (and some newbie) players are churning out. There’s nothing wrong with including Games Workshop in here, or any other of the miniature wargaming companies.

When I am worn out after work I don’t have a lot of motivation to paint, but I can scroll my phone, see a new model, figure out why what they’re doing is so good, and try to replicate it–or parts of it. For a while I saved all this to Pinterest, which is a fine website, but not my jam. Now I just have a file on my phone of inspirational pictures that I revisit time and again.

#5. Set A Single Goal

Another of the 9 simple steps to forming good miniature wargaming habits is to set a single goal for yourself. It can be anything. It could be something large in the future like “This convention is coming up in four months and I am totally going to have a fully-painted Stormcast Eternals army ready for it.” It could be something small like “I am going to learn to wet blend.” The point is that you set a clear goal with a clear destination and then you work tirelessly to make sure that you’re getting to that goal.

#6. Set Time Aside

I’ve said that I paint in the wee small hours of the morning. This works for me but it may not work for you. You may be a night owl and do your best painting after everyone else has gone to bed. You might paint on your lunch break (I do this often too). The point is that you need to pick a time that you’re going to paint, and PUT IT ON THE CALENDAR. If other plans come up, say “Sorry, I’m busy.” That should be your sacred time, the time that you reserve for just working on your miniature hobby.

#7. Use an Accountability Partner

I learned about accountability partners through writing, back when I was churning out novels. I had a friend and fellow writer and every morning she would text me her list of tasks for the day and I’d text her mine, and we… actually got stuff done because we knew that at the end of the day we would need to be held to account.

You don’t have to do it that way. Your accountability partner could be the player you see a couple times a week at the games store. Tell them what you plan to paint before you see them next and have them tell you.

Yes, this is peer pressure, but it’s self-inflicted.

#8. Give Yourself a Deadline

Deadlines are great, and in miniature wargaming some of the best that you can are upcoming tournaments and painting competitions. Or you can just set a goal for having a squad done by next Saturday’s game, a combat patrol for the FLGS game night, or a whole army before your next birthday. The goals don’t need to be huge. They just need to be goals that are achievable, but will make you stretch.

#9. Try the Hobby Streak

I’ve written extensively about the hobby streak, and I try to post my results here once a week (I’ve dropped the ball the last two on this site, but I still have been posting to social media). The gist of the hobby streak is that you work on the miniature wargaming hobby, some part of it, for 30 minutes a day, every day, and you post the results on social media. Sometimes you’re posting finished products. Sometimes you’re posting base coated miniatures, and sometimes it’s all you can do to post assembled and unprimed minis.

I can’t tell you how much the Hobby Streak has helped me. I’m currently on Day 476. I’m by no means an amazing painter, but I’m better than I was 100 or 200 or 300 days ago.

Bonus Productivity Hacks:

Elisi: This is a free app (although I pay the $20-odd dollars for the full version) and it is hands down my favorite habits/to-do-list/journal/tracker calendar I’ve ever used. Totally worth it, especially if you have a poor memory like I do.

Wet Palette: There is nothing that helps me continue painting day-to-day like having all of my still-mixed colors on a palette, fresh and ready to use. You can buy one from Amazon (which is a great wet palette from what I hear, though I haven’t personally used it). I personally splurged and got the Redgrass Games small palette. EDIT: It’s on Amazon too!

Desk Organization: I would die without these nail polish racks as paint holders, and I make sure that I follow Adam Savage’s “first order of retrievability” rule, which states that you should never have to move one tool to get another. You can get mini-painting organizers like this, or you can just have a neatly organized desk with everything in reach, either on the desktop or in the drawers at your sides. Things that are never out of reach are: superglue and kicker, brush cleaner, Tamiya Extra Thin Cement, a cutting mat and Xacto knife, the aforementioned wet palette, and a mug full of brushes (you can read about my essential brushes here). 

Conclusion

So those are my 9 simple steps to forming good miniature wargaming habits. Have any of your own? Leave them in the comments below!