Developing your hobby:

There is a lot of talk on the net and in the gaming community in general as to player types, army types/tiers, meta game and so forth but where does this all fit in within your identity and evolution as a hobbyist?


The Hobby can be broken down into two major categories:
-The creative aspect which I mean to include painting, customizing/conversions and general model building.
-The tactical aspect which I mean to include tactical acumen/generalmanship and army selection/list building.

Many players tend to focus on one of these two major aspects of the hobby to the exclusion to all else while others tend to meander somewhere between them. There is nothing wrong with this since that "focal" point for them is what they probably like or enjoy best about the hobby. The emphasis and pursuit of one particular facet that makes up wargaming in general, however, causes the majority of the strife within the community.

Now, I'm not trying to write another article on player types and so forth but more along the lines of what we can do to grow in our hobby and advance the community. So while some people are limited in their capacity to grow as hobbyists by their personality traits/lack of maturity, those that are not so limited should endeavorer to push the envelop.

Renaissance men:

Renaissance man has more talent in his mustache than you can ever hope to attain!

So with all of that talk, I would suggest that we strive to be a renaissance man, of sorts. This doesn't mean you have to be the best general, painter and converter evar but that you should be constantly trying to improve your abilities and understanding in these areas.

So I challenge everyone to examine where their biases/weaknesses are in the hobby and to strive and change them for the better. You don't have to think that aspects of the hobby that you generally don't enjoy are better than what you favor but you should strive to accept them as equal and maybe try dabbling in them a bit. After all, I didn't really appreciate theater until I took a theater appreciation class in college. Ironic, but unless you give something a shot, you probably won't appreciate or understand the complexities of that something.

Branch out:

So what are some things you can do as gamers to improve your hobby? For some of us this means trying to convert models more than you normally would, learning how to make and play more tactical army lists or even simply painting a model/army. Also, the internet has such a wide array of resources available, from gaming blogs to hobby blogs and tutorials so rather than focus on your niche in the hobby, try reading a blog or article or forum that doesn't focus on one aspect of the hobby.

For me, I am currently working on my converting and greenstuff skills by converting some Fantasy High Elf Dragon Prince models into Eldar Fire Dragons and adding random Fire Dragon bits to my army to spice things up as well as getting an army fully painted.