I once overheard the following at my friendly local game store:

If you do not have a collection of unpainted and unassembled miniatures in your closet equal to your weight, then you do not actually like miniatures.

It was a joke. A bad one, but a joke regardless.

And the joke applied to me.

When I was on travel in LA and desperately searching for any SAGA content at all, I stumbled across the Wisco Horndog's YouTube channel. It is a bit bro-dacious, but he is actually a skilled (if unorthodox) painter.

One of his channel's features is the 100% Painted Challenge. This instantly forced a very basic question in my own head:

What percentage of minis I purchased have I completed?

The answer? Not nearly enough...

When I did my initial cut of painted, and just looking at "war games", not board games like Zombicide or Imperial Assault, I was at 406 minis with 18.97% painted. If you estimate that I have spent $100/month on minis since I got into miniatures a more than a year ago, that's at least $1000 of unpainted toy soldiers. Probably more, but therapy hasn't helped me accept that yet.

This picture represents about 150 miniatures from 5 game lines... There's more scattered throughout the basement...

Disheartening.

I decided to come up with this rule, Old English-icized so that it has some kind of holy power:

Thou shalt not purchaseth a new miniature of a line that thou ownest until thou hast reached 50% painted.

Yeah... There's holes larger than a Kardashians recently puffed lips in it, but it is a starting point!

Most of the current wargaming miniatures I have painted.  I'm strategically not including board game minis, like Imperial Assault and Zombicide.  It would be too depressing... — Most of the current wargaming miniatures I have painted. I'm strategically not including board game minis, like Imperial Assault and Zombicide. It would be too depressing...

I would argue that having this kind of rule, and empirical data to check it against, is a good thing. It kept my wallet safe through the Black Friday.

The other impact it has had is that it helped me prioritize what I paint and what level I want to paint to. After generating the list, I assigned emotional weight to each of the miniature lines. Higher emotional weights were both high priority, and will be painted to a higher standard. Lower weights I can now accept at a lower quality just to help them get done.

So, if you are like me, and instantly rush out to buy any model you need (okay, want) regardless of the queue on your desk, then I would encourage you to take stock of your current miniature collection and form your own rule. Maybe, like others, you feel compelled to get your overall painted count up to some threshold. Perhaps you need some purchasing control.

Taking some time to inventory your collection so that you can make better decisions with your wallet and your time is a good thing!