One Year Ago Today: A Look Back

For the life of me, I can't remember exactly what got me digging through my old archives to see what I was up to a year ago.  I'm pretty sure it was the realization that I had started yet another army without having gotten 2000 points of the previous one done.  I think a recent list from Stelek that got me thinking about my iron warriors may have been involved as well.  Anyway, I came across this post from September 15th - of last year.  This was back in the days of Iron Warriors and also back when significantly fewer people knew or gave a shit about Laubersheimer Industries. 

History is important

As I move into year 4 of Laubersheimer Industries, a pretty neat thing has occurred to me - I actually have a written record of what I was doing and thinking in the past.  It's actually pretty cool to be able to go back and check facts on my own life.  What's even cooler is that I can go back and compare myself across different points in time.  So I think I'll go ahead and see what present Lauby has to say about past Lauby.

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Besides the fact that work was crazy last year at this time too and besides the fact that what I thought was the flu may have actually been mono, I found that, apparently, I like to start new armies in the fall*. I even went back as far as 2 years ago and saw that the Iron warriors got going two Octobers ago.  Looks like the start of the school year might have something to do with that.

It also turns out that I still stand by my thoughts on keeping a hobby fun.  In a rare act of listening to myself, I even managed to implement the idea a number of times.  At at least two discrete points over the last year, I found myself exceedingly bored with what I was doing.  I put down the things that were beginning to feel like they were sucking the life out of me through my eyes and took some time to distract myself.  It turns out that it totally works!  I even agree with myself on the stuff I wrote about diminishing returns.  Though it turns out that complicated color schemes and techniques weren't the biggest part of my problem with army apathy back then.  Or now. 

Having dragged myself through my Eldar over the last year, I can safely say that complicated paint schemes aren't the issue for me.  Its the repetition.  Hands down.  Digging around some more posts and even relying on my actual memory, I was able to pin point the exact moment the wheels started to fall off - it was the moment I had nothing left to finish but models that were to be painted black and bone.  The first few Falcons?  No problem.  All the aspect warriors?  No problem.  Then the reality of what needed to still be done set in.  9 more vehicles and 20 more troopers.  Al in the same color scheme.  Problem.  Ouch.  Things were all good and well when I still had blue and orange guys to work on and even for a while when the Falcon was still a new experience.  Then...  BAM!  Repetition based boredom.

That's what hurts me.  Nay, kills me.  For whatever reason, I have a hard time with repeating the same color scheme over and over again.  Which is an absolute bitch.  One, because fully painted and cohereant armies are fucking sweet and, two, because I have no idea how to sidestep the issue as a whole.    For whatever reason, the part of my brain that needs to experiment and noodle around with stuff tends to win out.  I either drop a project entirely, or I end up slowing my self down as I attempt to satisfy all of my conflicting desires.** 

Which is why I think the Daemon army could work better for me. One of the big draws, aesthetically, was that the Daemon fluff places the appearance of the individual daemons all over the place in terms of color and shape.  Unlike space marines, people tend to expect a bit of heterogeneity across the army.  I can keep switching the colors up and it will still look like an army.  Comparing that plan to my Eldar, it's pretty clear that I am at my best when I can dick around with colors and just plain explore.  The daemons are going to be great for this.  So much so, that I won't even have to keep painting notes for anything but the bases - I fully plan on switching color schemes every 5-6 models. If that doesn't keep me interested, then I don't know what will.

I guess we'll see in a year...

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*This sentence brought to you by Auretious Taak.
** For example, that Baal Predator I did for the BoLS contest - one month of solid work.