Hi!
We're into June already and I thought I'd spend a bit of time rambling about my hobby choices for 2026 and on.
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| A lone adventurer in Stump |
Sadly my budget is being increasingly squeezed by the cost of living and the dreaded Real Life and one of the cuts I've had to make is my hobby budget. In years gone by, I'd have £25-£40 a month to pick up new figures and whatnot which led to an ever increasing number of projects I'd want to try out but thats now being spent on necessities and I was faced with the real prospect of having to just abandon any hobby stuff until things improved.
My hobby is really important to me though as its my way of relaxing and de-stressing from said Real Life shenanigans so I started rummaging round for ideas for wargaming on not only a micro budget but also with limited amounts of space as our spare room, my mancave is pretty packed with books (the perils of being a bibliophile and working in a bookshop for 20+ years!) so my gaming board is 3'x3' and I'm never going to be able to get anything bigger, let alone the gold standard of a 6'x4' board.
My ramblings initially brought me to the solo RPG option and I've played quite a few now and really enjoy them but its not quite wargaming so I migrated onto combining the two, as can be seen with my Inquisitor Fisher campaigns which combined small numbers of figures into a narrative driven campaign with a lot of RPG lite additions and its been great fun.
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| Stump Art Scribbles |
The increase of cost of living and a bad case of loss of gaming mojo last year saw even this outlet curtailed as I found myself completely de-motivated and everything I tried just seemed to go nowhere.
I'd considered moving scale for my figures but 15mm and even 6mm figures are ramping up price wise to a point I realised that I couldn't really justify.
Things were looking a bit grim until January this year when I decided to do something completely different and just make some tiny figures that would quickly tick a box for a project I'd wanted to do for years and I made my Star Mogul Farpoint Salvage crew over the course of a week between work, quickly followed by Bossman Salvage, their sworn rivals.
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| Farpoint Salvage |
For the first time in quite a while now, I felt the return of my hobby mojo, I was enjoying making, painting and creating entire narratives about these tiny, blocky guys and I realised that I'd found the answer to the malaise that had been effectively ruining my hobby for so long and answering the question of how do I keep the hobby that I've been immersed in for the last 30+ years going.
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| Bossman Salvage |
While the Tiny Troops aren't too detailed, they do have a certain charm to them and with miniatures being so expensive these days, they'll do the job!
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| Men at Arms |
Now I'd love to be able to collect and paint armies of old school figures, or pick up new games and whatnot but I just cannot afford to do so and my tiny figures have enough of a feel of wargaming miniatures to do the job.
I've used about £5 worth of materials and constructed and painted 108 figures in five months which is pretty good going covering fantasy and sci-fi. I've got the beginnings of entire armies that I never thought I'd get round to done for the fraction of the cost of doing it with actual miniatures.
While they may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I seem to have found real pleasure and a sense of achievement working on them and suspect I'm going to be making a lot more of them as time goes on. Handily I've now got my gaming board back up so I expect to be able to play some actual games in the not too distant future too.
I must admit that I've been seeing quite a few folks branching out into a more crafty hobby approach either making their own or kitbashing everything from pebbles to army soldiers and its been fascinating.
Hopefully I'll get chance to post some more pics of my next batch of stuff soon but in the meantime, All the best!
