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I have been in the wargaming hobby for (I think) 35 years now. I got into it when I was nine and somehow got my hands on a copy of Wargames Illustrated, and I never looked back. 

Well, that’s not true at all. Over the course of those 35 years I have looked back plenty, and today I want to look back at some of my experiences and see what I wish I had known, what I wish I had done, and what I wish for the future. 

So here are my wargaming hobby regrets, in no particular order.

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #1: 

Getting Rid of My Early Models

I have been fortunate that after some digging in the bowels of a (very very dirty) basement of my parents’ house, I have found the first models that I ever wargamed with: little green army men, slathered with the small amount of Testor’s Enamel paint that I used to paint model airplanes. So I’m glad I have those.

And, even better, my wife discovered a box of my very first box of Harlequins which I must have bought in the seventh or either grade and which look, if I can be so bold, not have bad for a painter who didn’t have any idea how to paint models, let alone the detailed costumes of Harlequins. Best yet, she even found my last surviving model of the Squats, this trike. 

I don’t know what happened to so many of my early models. This was long before eBay was a thing, so I wasn’t selling them. Odds are good that they just got put into boxes, and then we moved, and then we moved again, and then we moved again, and they just evaporated. 

Everything that I owned before about 2003, other than those Harlequins, that Squat trike, and those little green army men, are lost and I don’t know what happened to them. My entire Squat army–gone. My next Imperial Guard army–gone. My next Chaos Space Marine army–gone. I just don’t know what happened to them. They got put in boxes, yet knowing how way leads on to way…

Which leads me to my next regret:

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #2:

Selling Too Much Stuff on eBay

I have written here before about how I am not precious with my models. I paint a lot of models, but then I sell a lot of models, and there’s not a lot that I hold onto very tightly. As a matter of fact, after the recent fundraiser auction I held where we raised money for Ukraine I have very little of my collection left.

Now, to be sure, I don’t regret giving up models for that auction. It was for Save the Children, and I’d gladly do the same thing again. But there are a lot of times when I will sell some models just to get enough money to buy the next set of models, and I can never enjoy things. I mean, I enjoy the painting, but that’s it. 

I miss that entire Blood Angels army I had, about 4000 points worth of Warhammer 40k goodness that I sold for about $400. In fact, I miss ALL my Space Marine armies, because I have a really bad habit of going all in on Space Marines (I love to paint Space Marines) and then selling the lot. Over and over. And I regret it.

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #3:

Being Over Eager to Get the New Hotness

I will 100% cop to the fact that I buy into hype. If there’s a big new box of something or other coming out, I get really excited, and I find ways that I can buy it. (This is one reason that I sell so many models, so I can get the latest boxed set.) 

Off the top of my head this has been the case with Indomitus, Cursed City, Dominion, The Horus Heresy Age of Darkness, Warcry Red Harvest, Kill Team 2.0, and I’m sure there are others. And don’t get me wrong–I don’t necessarily regret getting any individual game of any of those. But I do regret that I am so easily hyped up by them.

Discourse Miniatures, who I like quite a bit even though I don’t agree with everything she says, makes one really good point: Games Workshop marketing hype (and all marketing hype for that matter, because I felt exactly the same thing when Warlord Games put out their $750 Waterloo set) is particularly hard on the neurodivergent–and I’m neurodivergent. I am a compulsive spender. I have, clinically diagnosed, OCD. So it’s really easy to get swallowed up in mania, and that’s one of my biggest regrets.

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #4: 

Being Too Slow To Get Into Non-Games Workshop Games

It seems weird that the thing that got me into miniature wargaming–that Wargames Illustrated magazine with a ruleset for playing a Vietnam scenario–didn’t translate into me getting into historical wargaming for decades. I was a Warhammer 40,000 Universe Man for 30 years and I didn’t really understand what other tabletop games I was missing out on. 

Although I had started to dabble a bit, it wasn’t until the COVID lockdown, when I was no longer going to a store or a friend’s house to play the games, that I dove deep into the hobby and discovered Bolt Action, Team Yankee and Flames of War. And I love them. 

Since then I have gotten into SO MANY good games, including Victory at Sea, A Song of Ice and Fire, Armada, Infinity, Malifaux, Marvel Crisis Protocol, and more. There are so many miniatures games that I have been missing out on for so long that’s the reason I named this site “The Wargame Explorer”: it seems like I’m constantly learning new things about this hobby and discovering just how vast it really is. 

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #5:

Being Reluctant to Join the Hobby Community

Now, here’s where this is a regret, but it’s also a critique. I had been in the miniature wargaming hobby community a bit (I mean, more than just my Friendly Local Game Store) and I’d been a member of several Facebook groups. 

And guys, they were just gross. And I’m not even talking about the misogyny and the racism–I found that I could recognize those bad groups and get out of them quickly–but I’m talking about the newbie who posts a picture of a model and people will TRASH THE HELL OUT OF IT. There is so much gatekeeping in this hobby and it drives me bananas.

Because I don’t think that gatekeeping is a real part of any game system. There’s no reason for it to exist. And yet it does. And again, I’m not talking about the “keep women out of wargames” crowd, because we all KNOW those people suck. I’m talking about the hobby veterans who see a new blade of grass growing up through the crack in the sidewalk and they smash their boot down on it and grind it to dust. 

This problem–gatekeeping of all kinds–should be the miniature wargaming regret that we all carry with us, and, I would say, it should be the Games Workshop regret we all bear. Because for whatever reason, although there are rivet counters in the historical wargaming community, it seems like the worst gatekeepers are the Guardians of All Creatures, Races, Vehicles and Locations of Warhammer. And it’s gross.

I have found, in my lone experience, that the best miniature wargaming communities are either on Twitter (where you can very easily mute or block people who you don’t want to deal with), or on Discord servers. I think you’ll find that if there’s someone who is down-to-earth and not dramatic on YouTube, then their Patreon Discord is going to be pretty welcoming. Just a few I’d recommend: Dana Howl, 52 Miniatures, and Sonic Sledgehammer. 

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #6:

Not Realizing that the Hobby is Bigger than Just Wargaming

It took me a long time to realize that there was more to wargaming than just to start playing Warhammer 40k and read White Dwarf. There were board games that were loads of fun. There are miniature terrain projects that are loads of fun. There’s painting that’s loads of fun. As soon as I realized that I wasn’t limited to what came out of the boxes–that I could create my own vehicles, locations, weapons, and characters–then wargaming started getting fun. 

I have spent a lot of time trying to pursue fun and inexpensive basing ideas. I’ve made dioramas. I’ve made Armies on Parade tables. Whether it’s recreating the trenches of World War One in a mini-diorama, or building a 1/35 scale Stalingrad scene, it’s all been fun, and it’s all a part of wargaming. It just doesn’t involve rolling dice. And that’s okay. 

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #7

Not Adopting New Skills and Tools

There are so many interesting tools out there that I put off using for so long because I just never understood how big of a game changer they would be. One of them is the wet palette, which levels up your painting in a day. It’s really revolutionary. Another that I’ve just discovered are the Artis Opus drybrushes. I’ve seen them around and being talked about forever and I never dove in and–WOW–they are good. 

I finally got a 3D printer (but a filament printer, not a resin printer because I have no room in my small house I can dedicate to toxic smells). Still, I love it and I have churned out so much terrain on this thing. Another terrain tool I’ve added to my arsenal (just this month!) is deep pour resin. I used to think UV resin was cool, but deep pour resin is so satisfying. 

One thing I haven’t upgraded to (yet) is an airbrush, and again it’s a ventilation issue. I don’t have a good place to put a hood and vent. I’m working on that, though.

Miniature Wargaming Hobby Regret #8

Comparing Myself to the Professionals

Being in the online wargaming community, it can be easy to think that everyone is Sam Lenz or a Vince Venturella. You see the photos that these great artists post on their Instagram and you imagine that must be how EVERYONE is painting… except you.

One thing that got me out of this funk was to go to my local hobby store and see that, for the most part, most gamers were playing with gray plastic.

We shouldn’t be comparing ourselves to the best in the industry, the people who are vying for Golden Demon. We should hold ourselves to whatever standard we are comfortable with and accept that as fine. We don’t all need a Slayer Sword.