It’s Mini Monday, where I share customizing, scratch building, kitbashing, and miniature painting projects for your roleplaying and tabletop gaming. This week let’s look at hobby momentum and why it’s important for your hobby, and maybe life.

This weekend I banged out three new bits of scenery. What’s more, I was only home for half of the weekend, so I surprised myself with just how quickly it all came together. The magic ingredient was momentum.

What’s Hobby Momentum?

Hobby momentum is progress that rolls onwards, lends motivation, and helps you get bigger projects done. It builds up from working consistently and frequently at your hobby.

I’d been banging away on my scenery for over a year now, but in the week leading up to the last, I finally painted five of the buildings I’d been working on. I’ve also managed to complete a heap of other small projects, including making decals, custom Space Marine banners, a new Ork Weirdboy, painting some spiders, and finishing off the first of my Angels Encarmine heroes. Seeing these completed must have motivated me, because I got cracking on the three new terrain bits on Friday night. By Sunday all I needed to do was paint them.

It felt like the whole thing took little effort, and that’s all because of hobby momentum.

Life Without Forward Momentum

On the flip side, I recently finished a project that seemed to have stalled for ages. Things only progressed when I managed to break the project down into small enough pieces to get some momentum back.

The Terrain

All of these terrain projects incorporated older terrain projects that I’d not been very happy with, two or so years of collecting bits, and lots of browsing Pinterest. That certainly made these projects quicker, but the push came from hobby momentum. Having finished a bunch of terrain provided clearer inspiration for this build.

Barrel Pile

This model terrain consists of a styrofoam base, milk box lids, some wire wrapped around a small thread spindle, and some silica gel containers from medicine bottles. I made cardboard toppers for the green containers to hide the logo on them. I hot glued this onto the base and then added more sand and dirt with wood glue.

Water Tower and Barrel Dump

Another styrofoam base, onto which I hot glued more of the barrels I cast for my Grot Oiler. I built the tower from a toy army barrel, some thin dowel sticks, bits of plastic, and wire mesh.

I originally built the base as a hill for my Old Egyptian DBA army, which means it has sat in a box for twenty years or so. Turning it into a dump made so much sense and fits with the factory terrain I’ve built so far.

Broken Wall

This was one of the first bits of terrain I built for Warhammer 40,000. Like so many of my terrain projects from years ago, it was a single piece that didn’t match anything else on the table. I figured a little effort could update this and help it fit with the set.

I added rebar with bits of bent wire poked into the styrofoam, then added more gravel around the base. Done.

You’ll have to come back to see these painted up, which is a project for another Mini Monday.

RPG Blog Carnival @ Phoenix HQ

Why not check out the RPG Blog Carnival, which is happening here, at Rising Phoenix Games, this month. Our topic is “When the Bad Guys Win.”

You’ll find new articles on the topic in the comments, as they come in. If you’re a blogger, you can also submit articles of your own. Details on the page.