Reinforcements, assembly and keeping motivated

Reinforcements have arrived in the form of Plaguebearer command, a new model Fiend and a handful of Furies. Painting hasn't started yet unless you count priming some Bloodletters, but Fridays are a half-day at work so I'll get started then.
Assembly has been going well, with 10 Daemonettes and 20 Horrors together (camera battery is charging atm, so we'll see about photos.

In research of my theme, I've been looking up ways to make snow bases. Most sites I've seen have just gone with "paint the base white where you want snow, then put glue on it and dip in modelling snow." Easy enough, but I've seen some involving making a snow paste with snow and glue then putting that where you want it which will give me much better control of the texture and depth of the snow. That one all the way.

Now to the meat of the post: keeping motivated. I've got a slightly overwhelming task in assembling and painting everything I bought; even though I'm going strong now, I have a history of seeing something shiny and getting distracted. As proof, Warhammer stopped me learning the guitar :)

There are a lot of ways to keep motivated, the most important of which is making it fun. I've got it easy since I have a group that has battles every few weeks. We have a few drinks, play a game or two and generally have a good time.

Second is having something to show for your effort. I've been historically an avid gamer on PC, 360 and PS3, along with a few others over the years. Once a game is finished you have nothing but the memories and a disc that slowly decreases in value over time. I spent a large part of the 7 months between finishing uni and starting work playing these games and the shine came off a bit (although I still enjoy games, it wasn't very fulfilling towards the end). Warhammer is different because you have a game that is a shared experience which is different every time. Not only that, but your army is effectively a practical piece of art which may actually increase in value as new editions and models come out. Speaking of something to show, camera has charged (hooray!)

#3 is peer pressure. Hence the blog. There is an amazing amount of power in knowing that people are expecting you to update (whether it's your friends or some random strangers you'll never meet). I want to be able to show at least once a week that I'm still making progress and I want people to be anticipating that. Can't let you down, right?

The fourth thing that is keeping me going is that I've spent a riduculous amount of money (no I'm not telling you how much) on these things and I'm damn sure that it's not going to be wasted. I spent 50c per hour of entertainment on Skyrim and I really want to see how close I can get to that with Warhammer.

Finally (and this is the slightly novel one) we have achievements. One thing I learned from the 360 is that achievements will keep me going even when all fun has left the game. I did not want to collect all the flags in Assassin's Creed, pick flowers in Fable 3 or play Forza 4 at all, but I did because it made the little number next to my name get a bit bigger (ok, so I got maybe 1/4 of the way through Forza before I stopped, but the point stands).
I wrote up a list of achievements for myself (some easy, like paint 1, 5, 10, etc. models and some hard like annihilate an enemy with a Lord landing the final blow) and assigned points to them. Since my disillusionment with normal achievements, I've also set myself some rewards along the way (some small like chocolate or a bottle of wine and some larger like buying a Storms of Magic Cockatrice. Even higher than that come some projects that I put off due to expense and complexity like making a metal companion cube or a keyblade). Once I reach those goals I will at least feel like I've earned the right to spend the money, but not before.

I might put up my cheevo list sometime if people ask for it, but it's much more fun to come up with them yourself. Next time will probably be battle reports from the weekend, looking forward to it!

Yeah I said don't stop, don't stop talking to me
Stop, don't stop, don't stop giving me things
          -Foster the People