So I’ve been finding it hard to find a topic for my next article… especially as I was working a draft last week on the topic of being a good opponent and then Fabien released this ripper of a video on Season of War and it was my birthday and I’ve been real busy with work and and and…. Really, I’m just giving out excuses for skipping a week.

I’ve also been in a hobby slump since hitting a bit of a wall with my competitive play with KO. I was working on my Ironclad and more thunderers and I was excited about expanding the army out but I just sort of hit a wall… now I have an almost finished Ironclad just staring at me from the corner of my desk. Here she is in all her unfinished terrible photo glory.

I got a bit excited about starting up a new Gargants army… but I may have bitten off more than I can chew with scratch build megas and heavily converted babies. I have been having fun when I do get them out to work on them but the hurdle is a little too high for me to get to it often enough.

I was also working on some Necromunda conversions and then I broke two of the models in hard to repair places and that was a major bummer… but I’ll get back to them soon (I hope) and maybe that’ll be another article for you.

So where am I going with this? I wanted to share about a frustrating situation and not just stuff I’m excited about 😊 I’m going to go through some of my ideas to get my hobby mojo back. This isn’t the first time I’ve had one of these slumps and I’ve always come back one way or another.

Where has my mojo gone?

So as I worked through ways to get it back, I realised I had better reflect on why I’d lost it in the first place. My hobby output dropped significantly after I started a new job towards the end of last year which has definitely impacted the time and energy that I have (the job is going great though so that part is good). This also coincided with a tournament where I didn’t feel like I had that much fun for myself in the games with KO. And last but not least, I was getting a bit sick of painting KO after doing that intensely for 6 months. So where is it? I dunno but it’s definitely going to need a bit of encouragement to come back.

Ideas to get back my Mojo

Work less

that’s probably not going to work but I am doing a fair bit of overtime at the moment so reeling that back in I think can definitely help me get some more energy to hobby more again.

Set goals

I want to be careful with this one as I think the pressure of pumping out KO after KO last year ended up driving me away from painting for a while.

Do something different

This is what I was trying but jumping onto my Gargant project… which I’ve done a bit of and I’ve still got plenty of ideas but it hasn’t quite got me back into things.

More hobby with the kids

Both my kids do love it when we make time for hobby and their both keen to build and paint their own models now or to help me with my gargants. I don’t get much done in those times but it is fun!

More hobby with friends

I’ve been thinking about some hobby catchups with friends. It’s one of those things I reckon sounds really great but I’ve never really gotten around to (except for online painting seshes with a couple of friends from time to time).

Hobby points system

One of my hobby friends, Dirk (that’s your second shout-out now mate), brought up the idea to have a local hobby competition where painting, playing, and writing up battle reports nets you points and we can compare our outputs. I’ve got a couple of friends who I’ll never catch but it’ll make getting things finished more satisfying so I’m pretty excited about that change.

Just get out and play some games

For the same reason (time and energy), I’m not getting in as many casual games as I’d like. I have still got a few tournaments lined up including one this Saturday. Even if it means throwing some grey models on the table just to see if that’s a unit I want to field, then maybe I’ll get inspired to paint them up. Ah, that also gives me an idea for another reason to get back to it.

Paint for a goal other than painting

Ok, I couldn’t think of a good name for this but one of the reasons I often go wild and paint every second night for a few weeks is getting an army ready for a tournament or even just clearing some boxes out of my hobby pile. This one is probably one of my biggest hobby drivers and explains why none of my terrain is painted!

Have you got other ideas?

Let me know here in the comments or on the Discord!

Will I get my mojo back? Only time will tell but as I write this, I hope that I do make some more progress with by gargants in the next weeks and can report back how that’s going in the next weeks and months!