Some people move on from their childhood fascinations. I never did. Fantasy role-playing, wargaming, creating mythical lands, and an incurable interest in history have been with me since I was about seven or eight—perhaps earlier. The only other lifelong constant is the band Rush, but that’s another story.
My first encounters with tabletop wargaming are burned into memory. Saturday afternoons, when we weren’t at the cricket club, were spent in the front room of one of my mother’s friends—a Jewish family who became a second home. While she chatted in the living room, my brother and I joined our friend David and his dad in dimmed light, invading or defending Normandy, pushing Monty and Rommel around North Africa, liberating Italy, or trying to break out of Stalingrad. The Sabbath in David’s house was not, as I later learned, a typical one.
Then Dungeons & Dragons arrived in Britain, and we began our journeys through stranger lands. Warhammer followed soon after—I still remember seeing it featured on Midlands Today when it launched, and we were instantly hooked. Those were epic times.
That passion has never left me. I’ve painted, collected, researched, imagined, and occasionally obsessed over it. I even worked at Games Workshop for a while—a true busman’s holiday if ever there was one.
So why am I giving up the miniatures?
The Practical Reasons
First, the body protests. Decades of coding without much thought for ergonomics left me with repetitive strain issues in my hands and arms. I can’t hold a brush for long without pain, and that’s that.
Second, space. My wife and I are decluttering and preparing to sell our four-storey house, trading down to something smaller for the years ahead. That means no room for Blücher or Wellington, for Caesar’s legions or the Crusading knights. The Legions of the 40K universe will have to find new battlefields. It all has to go.
Those are fair reasons, but there’s more to it than that.
The Philosophical Reasons
Even if my hands worked fine and the house had room, I think I’d still be heading this way. Because the modern miniature hobby—especially in 28 mm—is suffocating under its own cost and commercialism.
The Cost
I’m not arguing that things should be free. I spent enough years writing software to know that creative work deserves to be paid for. But the price of miniatures today bears little relation to their production cost. The era of hand-sculpted metal figures is long gone; most are now 3D-modeled on standard digital bases and injection-molded in plastic for pennies. Yet they’re sold for five or ten pounds each. It’s a life-cycle business model: get the kids while they’re enthusiastic, milk the moment before they drift off, and start again with the next wave.
The Commercial Machine
In the old days, you could collect an army, paint it, and play. Done. These days, that doesn’t satisfy shareholders. Everything is repackaged, re-imagined, and relaunched on a monthly cycle. You’re never “complete.” There’s always a new buff, a shinier upgrade, a limited edition. Glossy magazines parade professional paint jobs as the unattainable standard. The young hobbyist’s birthday money barely lasts a month. Even the grey-bearded veterans feel the pull to keep up—often beyond their means. It’s a treadmill disguised as a hobby.
Then there’s the social-media echo chamber, both official and influencer-driven, chanting the same gospel: you need this new thing to belong. It’s nonsense. And it’s exhausting.
Back to Basics
So I’ve stepped away. These days I game with hexes and counters, unit markers, or even pen and paper. You can hear the protest already: “But board wargames are expensive too!” True—£50 to £150 for a game isn’t cheap. But that’s it. One purchase, done. You can play Impetus or DBA with colour markers just as easily as with regiments of resin and pewter. The simulation remains the same. The spectacle is optional.
After fifty years in the hobby, I’ve got piles of unpainted metal and plastic worth thousands, a monument to enthusiasm and marketing alike. I suspect I’m not alone. Many hobby dens hide similar mountains of shame, built as the commercial juggernaut rolls ever onward.
My choice is to downsize—to focus on the strategic, imaginative, and narrative sides of gaming rather than the decorative. Plenty of people genuinely love the painting, and good for them; if it brings joy, carry on. For me, the joy now lives in the design, the play, and the worldbuilding.
The New Frontier
This stripped-back approach fits neatly with my Panimalay project, a world I’m building from the ground up: maps, histories, and conflicts ready to be played out with counters and imagination rather than miniatures and debt. It takes up less space, costs less, and feels more in tune with where life is heading. Besides, I’ve a railway to fit into the garage.
I’ll do a follow-up post soon on my counter strategy—and perhaps dig out that old video from my YouTube channel. There’s life in the old wargame yet, just in a leaner, saner form.
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