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If you’ve been paying attention to The Wargame Explorer this month, you’ll have noticed that there’s been a drop off in posts. It hasn’t been because I haven’t had enough to write about, and it hasn’t been because I haven’t had enough to paint. I’ve just been in a rut. For a while it seemed like I’d lost my hobby motivation.

Did The Hobby Streak End?

When it comes to hobby motivation for me, it starts with the #hobbystreak. I’m currently on Day 556, but I’ve been kinda breaking the rules. I’ve still been hobbying every day, but I haven’t been posting every day. And it’s been because I haven’t been feeling the rhythm of miniature painting the way I usually do.

Part of this is because I haven’t had anything to really sink my teeth into. I painted the entire Horus Heresy Age of Darkness box (and loved it) and then I got my much-yearned-for Squats (and loved them). But then I decided to branch out and try a few different games. And for as much as I loved some aspects of them, they really drained me.

I really loved playing A Song of Ice and Fire, and I kinda loved painting the miniatures, but it was more like painting a board game than painting a miniatures game (I wrote about that here). And then I invested in Conquest: The Last Argument of Kings and while I loved painting the Household Knights, the rest of the models really fell flat (I wrote about that here). Trying to find my way out of this rut, I pulled a box off my shelf that I hadn’t picked up in a year–Victory at Sea: Battle for the Pacific–and it was yet another situation where I loved the gameplay but didn’t love the hobby aspect.

And I need the hobby aspect. I love playing the games, but for me the love of miniature wargaming comes primarily from the hobbying, not the playing. If I’m not having fun painting miniatures, then I’m just not having fun.

So I began to flail. I picked up a SECOND box of Squats, hoping to rekindle that love of painting, but I painted and stripped them twice, and even now they sit on my desk unfinished.

Have I lost the painting spirit?

What To Do When You Lose Hobby Motivation

I want my hobby motivation back. I NEED my hobby motivation back. So I turned back to something completely unexpected. Dioramas. People who have followed The Wargame Explorer for several years will know that this originally started as a YouTube channel not called The Wargame Explorer but called Robison Wells Hobby Terrain. And I made terrain and dioramas, and that was my passion. On this website I’ve posted two of those very large dioramas: two Bolt Action display boards, one for Normandy and one for North Africa.

Now I will be 100% the first person to say that my recent dioramas have not been original. I have been so enamored with Boylei Hobby Time (and wargame maker channels like his) that I took an idea he had–Weird Wild West–and stole it almost whole cloth. In his universe he creates Wild-West-with-technology-and-monsters, using Imex figures. I copied the concept, except that instead of getting the Lewis and Clark and Pioneer boxes, I got the Pilgrims and the Eastern Indians, and I created a world where the monsters were all sea monsters that attacked the Mayflower, and where the Eastern Indians had high technology. So, it’s different, but still HEAVILY influenced by Boylei.

But you know what? It has brought back my hobby motivation. In the past week I have built two and a half dioramas. Fortunately, I still have all my old hobby supplies from my terrain-building days–balsa wood and foam and plaster.

Getting Your Hobby Motivation From Another Hobbyist

Is it wrong that I’m stealing someone else’s idea to jumpstart my creativity? I don’t think so at all. For starters, I’ve never claimed, from the very start, that my dioramas have been anything other than fan art of Boylei Hobby Time. And I’ve linked to his channel over and over.

But I think that’s the thing that we need to remember. All miniature painting and model building will be trying to get inspired by the work of other miniature painters. I have picked up SO MANY kits because I’ve seen Sonic Sledgehammer build them (particularly Bolt Action and Napoleonics).

To take this in a completely different direction, there’s a musician that I love, Gregory Alan Isakov (a folk musician), and in his music video for Second Chances & Saint Valentine, he describes the song writing process as “I kinda walk around eating up poetry and then puking up a song.” And I think that philosophy is what art is made of. We absorb the work of other people, we internalize it, and we puke up art of our own.

So, in that sense, my Pilgrims and Sea Monsters miniatures aren’t wholly plagiarized, but they’re my own version of “eating poetry and puking out a song”. As they say, there’s nothing new under the sun. I’m still making creative choices in my dioramas, such as having the houses built out of boats (including one built from the prow of the Mayflower itself).

But Is This Really Wargaming?

No, it’s not playing a wargame, so in that sense it’s not. But it’s painting miniatures, and it’s thinking up scenarios in fantasy worlds, so in that sense it is.

Now, I have in my hobby budget that I am going to be buying a second Horus Heresy Age of Darkness set at the beginning of September because I absolutely loved that box, and because I’ve got a hankering for some Word Bearers. And I am counting down the days until I can get my hands on the sweet sweet Leagues of Votann, because you know that I’m going to be buying everything that comes out of them.

But for a while, I think that I’m going to be slightly less adventurous about branching out into different unknown-to-me games (like Conquest and A Song of Ice and Fire and Victory at Sea) because while I fully intend to cover as many games on this site as possible, I’m only one person, and I need to be making sure that I’m painting something that I love just as much as I’m painting something that I feel obligated to cover.

I realize that this flies in the face of a lot of common wisdom for getting out of a rut–that problem with hobby motivation. They say that if you’re in a rut you should try something else, and I’m saying that I tried several Something Elses and it overwhelmed me with the Something Elseness of it.

But I did try something else in working on dioramas. (And rest assured, I have three more sea monsters coming from Amazon, so there will be at least three more of these Pilgrims and Sea Monsters dioramas, probably more.)

What Advice Do I Have For Your Hobby Motivation?

1. Find Your Happy Place.

That may be Space Marines or it may be British 8th Army or it may be A Song of Ice and Fire. It doesn’t matter what it is. Find what you love, and take a dive into it. For me it was going two years back in time and having fun with a hot wire cutter and plaster of Paris. But find something you love, that you’re comfortable with, and embrace it, even if it’s not The New Hotness.

2. Try Something You Haven’t Done For a While and See If You Like It

For this I’m not talking about dioramas. I’m talking about diving back into A Song of Ice and Fire, a game that I actually got into about a year ago with the House Targaryan starter box. I loved it then, though I hadn’t played the game, but I liked the horses.

3. Know When To Call It Quits–But Only For a Little While

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I like to put stuff up for sale on eBay. This week, in a fit of frustration (and to fund my dioramas project), I culled my ever-growing miniature shelf and picked the models that I thought I could go without. I’m selling all my Adeptus Titanicus miniatures. I’m selling my Aeldari Corsairs Kill Team, and my Aeldari WraithGuard. I already sold my Household Knights and a selection of my Sylvaneth (not the ones I was especially proud of, though).

4. Recognize That to Every Thing There is a Season

I don’t need to be an amazing painter every day of the year, even though I do the hobby streak. Sometimes you’re doing master quality, and sometimes you’re batch painting Bolt Action with ample amounts of Agrax Earthshade to hide your crimes. It’s all okay.

Conclusion

So don’t be surprised to see more dioramas coming in the near future. My next one is going to try a new skill (deep pour resin) and we’ll see if it works or is garbage. And, in two weeks we’re going to be seeing a lot of Word Bearers. And, at some point, Leagues of Votann. And of course I plan to review other games throughout, but… maybe not three indie games all at the same time.