With the first month of the new year passed, I’ve been taking stock of my projects. And boy do I have a bunch! Some of these have not been touched for many years. It is probably close to ten years since I played FoW for example, and they will likely stay that way unless sudden inspiration hits me. For now, I just keep them around, not worth the effort to sell right now, and I might regain interest in the future. I’m following my own interpretation of the Marie Kondo method – does it give me joy? If it does, then I keep it around even if I don’t use it for many years, if not, I sell it. I have certainly burnt myself selling off my 90s empire army before because I didn’t play any fantasy games then – which just ended up with me having to re-buy everything a few years later at higher prices.
I have been bitten hard by the middlehammer bug, so that is the main source of additions to the backlog the last few years, getting me a sisters of battle force (hit me up if you are in the market for metal sisters), and several reinforced platoons of various IG regiments within the last 6 months. Pretty much all the 40k and fantasy armies are middlehammer heavy, with such beauties as the original tyranid ant-warriors and screamer killers 😀
The other really big addition is the city fight board, which is something that will likely see a lot of work going on through the year. I am aiming to get about a 4’x4′ playable board during the next few months, and a 6’x4′ is the goal to finish during the year. Luckily, I have finished a lot of the most tedious work, like cutting up the realm of battle board and mounting everything on MDF, so it is mostly construction of buildings, detailing the builds and painting up next.
Now for the list; green are projects I would like to finish this year, orange for projects I will likely work on, and red for those I will likely not touch. It looks like this might be the year of chaos. The Night Lord warband was finished during January, and the Norscan horde is closing in on completion. It is only missing fistfull of monsters and monstrous infantry after I knocked out 5 troops of night raiders in January. I only wish that monsters were better in KoW so I could get motivation to smash out my giants and trolls.
Big projects (hundreds of unfinished minis or similar effort)
40k – 122nd Cadian Regiment
40k – Vogen city board
40k – Tyranid swarm
Fantasy – Empire Army of Ostermark and allies
Fantasy – Skaven Clan Skryre horde
Fantasy – Dwarf army
FoW – Mid/Late war germans
Medium projects (20-100 remaining)
Fantasy – Norscan hordes
Fantasy – Kislev Rota
Fantasy – Karl Franz’ 1st Armoured Engineer regiment
Fantasy – RPG monsters and heroes
Fantasy – Mordheim Marienburg warband
40k – Ecclessiarchy battlegroup
40k – Vogen renegades
40k – Imperial agents (inquisition, high command)
Post apoc – Fallout heroes and villains
Team yankee – Soviet VDV battalion
Fantasy – The Peoples Crusade (Empire fanatics)
Fantasy – The Golden Army (Dogs of war Tileans)
Fantasy – Tomb kings
Fantasy / 40k – Might Empires campaign map
40k – Vostroyan platoon
40k – Steel legion company
40k – Krieg platoon
40k – Tallarn platoon
FoW – Midwar Americans
FoW – Midwar Italians
Small projects (Less than 20 minis remaining)
40k – Night Lords warband – DONE 2022
40k – Armoured company
40k – Imperial Fists strike force
Walking dead – Survivors and walkers
40k – Tau army
40k – Warhound titan
40k – 54mm Inquisitor warband
Completed projects
40k – Vogen PDF – DONE 2021
Fantasy – Khador army – DONE 2021
Post Apoc – Fallout terrain – DONE 2019
mandollies.com 
For me this is a very timely and thought provoking piece, I’ve been considering this exact issue a lot lately myself. In recent times I’ve been struggling with seeing my backlog of unfinished models as a single mountain rather than as a series of projects. Your idea of breaking it down not just into projects but into “small”, “medium” and “large” is very useful – there’s a lot of helpful food for thought in seeing how other people tackle things.
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I had the same issue. It helped a lot to organise the collection in see-through boxes instead of cardboard boxes, so I have better control over what I have. Grouping it by project helps keeping me motivated through the slog that it can sometimes be, and makes it rewarding to take some bites out of different projects when the mood strikes.
A change the last year is that I am happy to do small projects. Previously I always did army sized projects, but now I think smaller projects like a platoon of the metal IG regiments is enough to scratch the itch. Guess it is mainly a change from “gaming” mindset to “collecting / narrative” mindset. For KoW, which is my only active tournament game, I still do armies.
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