Pick the Army You’ll Actually Enjoy
We had one of those very relatable hobby chats recently: looking at yet another cool army, wondering if maybe this one would be the perfect fit, and quietly ignoring the pile of unfinished models already waiting on the desk.
It started with a search for barbarian vibes, a glance at the Fyreslayers, and the immediate conclusion that they might be a bit too small and too slow for that particular itch. Then came the classic Age of Sigmar comparison game: if something in AoS feels suspiciously close to 40k, then maybe it isn’t that strange after all.
From there, the conversation turned into something much more useful than faction shopping: a reminder of how easy it is to lose momentum when we keep browsing armies instead of enjoying the one we already have.
The trap: endless faction browsing
We all know this feeling.
One evening we’re checking out a unit “just for inspiration”. Then we’re looking at a spearhead box. Then we’re reading rules. Then we’re watching battle reports. Then suddenly we’re mentally starting a second army while the first one is still half on sprue.
That was basically the heart of the discussion: sometimes we simply don’t have the hobby capacity for another faction. Not money, not shelf space — just mental bandwidth. Building, painting, learning rules, planning lists, remembering synergies… all of that takes energy.
And if we split that energy too early, we often end up with two armies that feel unfinished instead of one that feels loved.
The best advice from the chat: enjoy your army
Dubry summed it up perfectly with a piece of advice he once gave himself:
“Enjoy your army.”
Honestly, that’s one of the healthiest hobby tips we can give.
Constantly looking over the fence at other factions and wondering whether they’d be better can quietly drain the fun out of the hobby. Because the truth is simple:
- every army has something amazing,
- every army has something annoying,
- and no faction is going to magically fix the fact that we still need time to learn the game.
That last point was also phrased in a much more direct way in the chat, and yes — it’s true. Any army will feel bad if we don’t yet know how to play it. So if we’re going to spend dozens of hours assembling, painting, and learning something, it might as well be an army we genuinely like.
One faction or many?
Michał argued for focusing on one faction and developing it properly. That’s a very solid approach, especially if we want to:
- actually finish models,
- build up game knowledge,
- understand how the army works on the table,
- and avoid hobby paralysis.
At the same time, Dubry also had the more chaotic-good answer:
Nothing is required, everything is possible!
And that’s also true.
There’s no universal rule here. Some people thrive by going all-in on one army for years. Others stay motivated by jumping between projects. The trick is not to follow someone else’s “correct” way of hobbying, but to notice what gives us energy instead of draining it.
A good reason to buy side projects
There was also one very sensible exception in the conversation: buying a small side project just to practice painting. Michał mentioned picking up some Sylvaneth for exactly that reason.
We really like that approach.
A small, low-pressure painting project can be great when:
- we want to test new techniques,
- we need a break from our main color scheme,
- or we just want to paint something cool without committing to a full army.
That’s very different from accidentally starting a whole second faction because we got distracted by one cool sculpt at 11 PM.
Our takeaway
If we had to boil the whole conversation down to one hobby tip, it would be this:
Choose the army you like enough to stay with
Not the army that is theoretically strongest. Not the army that looked best in one battle report. Not the army that seems perfect until the next reveal comes out.
Choose the one that makes you want to build the next model, paint the next unit, and put it on the table even after a bad game.
Because in the long run, enjoyment beats hype.
And if another faction still keeps whispering to us from the webstore? That’s fine too. We can admire it, save a few pictures, maybe even paint a test model one day.
But we don’t have to chase every cool idea at once.
Sometimes the best hobby move is just to look at the army we already own and say: yes, this one is mine, and I’m going to enjoy it.