How much stuff have you got to paint?

[Moralein]

Ok I was reading the 'If you're buying less' poll and most people on there seem to have a vast number of unpainted miniatures. It seems to be one of the reasons for not buying any more models. It got me wondering, just how much unpainted stuff is out there. I've been working through my backlog and hardly buying anything new and now have about 2/3 of my models painted. Having said that I'm very aware that I've got hundreds of unpainted models just waiting for me to start.

What's your ratio of painted:unpainted? How much stuff have you got to paint? I'm hoping that some of the answers will make me feel a bit better about my back log and hopefully inspire me to get on with it! I've still got stuff that I bought as a red shirt about 15 years ago!

Without going off topic and straying into pricing, it does make me a bit sad that I've got probably hundreds of pounds worth of stuff that's had no more attention since I bought it, than taking it out of the box.

[yabbadabba]

There is an old saying that wargamers live until they painted their last miniature. In which case I am going to watch our sun explode at an extremely intimate distance.

[Moralein]

I thought I was doing pretty well, I've just finished 600 dwarves (though it's taken me years). Then I unpacked everything else and realised just how much stuff was left!

[Tonny]

My ratio is 1 to 40 or so. The lowest number are the painted ones. I suffered a couple of years of buying all the new GW warhammer releases. Now it is only what I need.
Buying less for me is not because of GW prices, as I don't really care about that. It's the shame a feel when I look at my unpainted mini's and the gaze of my gf. This caused me to buy less and to paint more.

That's why a painting plog of me is incoming, so I hopefully get things done.

[Scaryscarymushroom]

I've painted quite a lot of my minis. Well over a hundred, out of maybe 400-500. I'd wager about 1/3 of my models are painted.

Here's the problem: I started painting several armies over 3 years ago. Today, I dislike the paint schemes for many of my completed models. So I intend to go back and dip lots of them in solvent and start over. :/

Doesn't stop me from buying minis from AoW, PP, Cipher studios or Wyrd though. I just decided that I have enough same-old same-old minis and I don't want to paint more Rank & File troopers. My approach is to make every model look as good as possible. That makes painting another termagant or another space marine a nightmare.

[toonboy78]

i have 10 paladins to finish off
then an inquisitor and about 7-8 henchmen
4 assassins
then i have inherited a bike army(including speeders) that needs painting in my chapters colours
finally i have a tactical squad from assault on MacCragge that needs painting up.
i have touch ups to a lot of stuff painted to "use", so they need finalising

[Caiphas Cain]

Well, I think I've got roughly 350 left to paint. I think I have about 150 painted.

[Satan]

I would prefer not to answer that, but someone clever could take a look at the list in my plog and apply their powers of deduction.

[Lord Cedric]

By a quick glance at my signature, you can get a rough gestimate how many models I have.. please note that these are old numbers from before the start of 2012, of which I have purchased around 700-1000 models since.

I use to have my Brets and Dwarfs as the only fully painted armies I own. I have since this year, began to collect the "new" models for Brets (they were the models from 4th and 5th editions) and I much prefer the newer ones by adding 3 battalion boxes + many unit boxes and clams. None of these are painted. Same situation with my Dwarfs - having 4th and 5th models and have since expanded and gone plastic with many. And once again, none of these are painted.

So.. how many models do I have unpainted? It's literally in the thousands... and now I am going to curl up in the corner and cry after that realization.... I don't hate painting. I am simply too much of a perfectionist when it comes to how I'd like for "me" to paint that it takes too blasted long and then I mope when I see 5 models done in only an hour. So I make myself feel better and buy more models. Hmm..... anyone else notice a cycle here? Yeah.. me too. Going back to the corner now....

- Lord Cedric

[Angelwing]

well all my armies are painted. I do have quite a few single mini's that I will get round to painting. Can't be more than fifty. Maybe..

[Little Joe]

I do not dare count but about 400 Orcs and Goblins, 350 Vampire Counts and 400 dwarfs for Warhammer Fantasy alone. They will get painted, this state is mostly due to stripping or exchanging for newer models. The armies are at a stage I do not need to buy any models, I could add but do not want to for now. Except for the dwarfs, who will receive a major Avatars of War injection.

With the skirmish games I collect (Relics, Arcworlde, Quar and Malifaux) I would say I am currently about 40 behind, but that is within reason.

EDIT: to put it into perspective: currently painted O&G: ~340 (counting bases) because I started all over again and hope to finish my backlog this decade. Cleaning and building is the problem...

EDIT2: I find army building a lot easier when I have everything I need and lots of bits to swap around, I quite like it this way.

[Artinam]

My Bretonnians cry themselves to sleep at night .

[Schmapdi]

I think the voting on the poll is a little skewed toward the short side. Perhaps it should be more along the lines of:
<100
100 - 300
300 - 500
500+

I know I have way too many :/ Like painful to think of it all since I haven't painted squat in a month.

I have: (These were all bought years ago)
A bunch of Night Goblins for my Night Goblin Army (~ 80 N. Goblins to paint)
A bunch of Dwarves for my Dwarf Army (~130) *Shakes fist angrily at Skull Pass*
A bunch of Lizardmen (~130 again) *Shakes fist angrily at myself*
Two sets of AoBR Orks (~50) - Though I intend to sell these I think.

The rest of my SDE set to paint (~30)
A bunch of Freebooter's Fate stuff (~15)

Oh, some more Ogres for my OK army (~10 - but haven't added any of the new stuff yet).

A handful of misc (~5) (Generally Reaper)

That's ~450 right there (Or an even 400ish if I do sell those Orks)

But wait I forgot! I'll have a good ~200 Mantic minis coming my way next year from the Kickstarter. *sigh*

I hate myself, and the OP for making me tally. Have I mentioned I haven't painted a damn thing in a month?

:/

[Darnok]

The poll options are a bit... less than lucky. A "normal" unpainted Skaven army will set you back 200 to 300 models, as would O&G or an Imperial Guard army for 40K.

I voted for the maximum. Not all of my models are unpainted, but a huge amount of them. I'd estimate 10% painted, another 30% WIP, and the rest built or in frames. Those 10% amount to a few playable forces...

[shelfunit.]

Approx 500-600 28mm models off the top of my head, with the potential for another 100-200 as I may have some in boxes back in England unpainted. Add to that around 80,000 - 100,000pts worth of NetEpic models that need to be painted and around 200-300 15mm models and a few dozen random board gaming minis and you have the beginings of my problem. Painted I have around 120 Dwarfs, 100 Empire, 80-100 skaven, 200ish Orcs and goblins, a sprinkling of Epic (24 painted stands, 13 vehicles), 3 bloodbowl teams and a couple of necromunda gangs a few boardgame bits and pieces. I think I have painted more of other peoples minis than my own though... I think I will not be that far away from Yabba at the end of days.

[Sean_OBrien]

Sort of a not so helpful set of choices.

I probably have around 30 or so complete armies painted, including a good half dozen 40K based armies. I have everything painted that I would ever need for gaming - and several additional shelves of miniatures which I will never use for gaming painted as well. However, I still have well over 1000 miniatures that I haven't even opened up - and likely won't have a chance to paint before I am old and grey (at this point it is likely several thousand...it is 8 or 9 storage boxes worth and I just can't be bothered with keeping track anymore). I probably have a couple hundred which have been opened up and are in the queue waiting their turn on the desk. Of course there are probably a dozen or two which are currently on the desk waiting to be finished (some of which have been there for a very long time). Then of course I have a couple boxes of miniatures which will be stripped and move back to the back of the line when I get around to them.

All and all, it is a bit like Crowley's version of Hell.

I still buy miniatures even though there are plenty of them in front of them on the list of things which need to be painted for a few different reasons. The chief of them is of course that so many great companies stop producing miniatures. The owners get bored, get into money problems, have real life problems or something else interrupts them. I have found myself searching eBay more than once for a miniature that I was planning on picking up "next week" - only to have the company stop before "next week" comes around. Supporting various small companies as well comes into play - but that is a lesser factor in things.

All of that doesn't even get into things like models and off scale figures. Those occupy probably as much space as well.

[ForgottenLore]

Good grief, I have no idea.

Ballpark guess, around 2000 GW or GWesqe miniatures (that's not counting D&D, heroclix and the like pre-painteds, or figs that are in board games like descent)

of those, maybe 200-250 are painted to an acceptable standard.

So, around 16% painted.

Hmmm. That actually isn't as bad as I thought it would be. I must be forgetting a shelf of unpainted stuff somewhere.

[paddyalexander]

I've been a wargamer & role player for the last 2o years. I own thousands of individual models (are we counting individual 10mm, 12mm & 15mm infantry models as single models here?) over dozens of different systems. While I play a particular army or game system I am motivated to paint models for that force. While not every model I own for each of these armies/forces are painted I am able to field many fully painted armies/forces in many of these games systems. If I am not playing a game system I rarely paint models for it.

For me I get the most amount of joy from the gaming side of the hobby, playing with painted models was never a priority for me. I can see the appeal of both sides fielding fully painted forces, I've actualy painted a large portion of a friends Cygnar army over the years towards this end; he despises painting models but enjoys other aspects of the hobby such as gaming and making terrain. He can now field several fully painted armies for that faction if he wishes.

My own interest in painting waxes and wanes. Up until recently I had painted maybe 5 or 6 models over a period of 5 months, where as in the last couple of weeks I have painted over a dozen, including a Colossal. I generaly paint to a tidy tabletop standard.

I have a sizable collection of painted models, an even larger collection of unpainted or even unopened. I have bare metal space marines & imperial guard minis from 2nd edition staring at me from one of my shelves that will proberbly never see a paintbrush and I am ok with that.

[Moralein]

I'm actually feeling much less of a failure now! It's great to read that there are people worse than me. The poll numbers were picked pretty much at randomn but I thought that anyone with over 250 unpainted models wasn't going to bother to count them! Personally I've got ten of the Ikea Detolf cabinets full of painted miniatures and four of unpainted. I haven't got a clue of the numbers, but 600 dwarves pretty much fills one cabinet! I only know that number because I spent an incredibly boring weekend basing them and needed to know how many bases to get out.

I live in dread of shiny new stuff, not just GW, but also companies like AoW (I had completed my O&G until I bought some AoW characters!). Sometimes it feels like I'm never going to get any closer to finishing

[violenceha]

I'm pretty sure if I sold off my unpainted stuff I could pay off my mortgage with the proceeds.