Miniatures - What Comes Next? 11/24/2009

So I am at a bit of a crossroads. What to do next? There is a fantastic blog out there by James Roach that has been an eye opener for me, insofar as his approach seems to be the antithesis of mine. His approach on projects seems to be to decide what to do next and then go at it full bore until complete. Judging from his blog recaps, some of these projects are a year and a half or more in the execution.

My projects, on the other hand, tend to involve jumping into something new with relatively little forethought, getting partway done, and then becoming enamored of some new thing. Ooooh, shiny.......

To recap my current projects/periods that I would not consider complete (in order of relative completeness). I will try to distinguish between unpainted figs I have already bought and those cases where I don't even own the figs yet.

• Vikings are a smallish army that are fundamentally done but have 40 or so stock figures that I should finish just to be complete. If I were feeling ambitious, I should probably add 2 or 3 bags more figures for bulk in order to be able to do a larger game than I can now.
• Normans are a fairly large army, but do have a few units left to paint (less than a hundred figures). I think I may do the 60 remaining spearmen as Crusaders rather then regular Normans.
• Mongols. I have only one bag of auxiliary spearmen in stock left to paint, but I really need some more quantity for these guys, especially of heavy cavalry (non-horse archers).
• Wars of the Roses. I have a good sized collection, but also have a few hundred unpainted figs of various kinds, especially retinue troops and cavalry.
• Hundred Years War. The English and French armies have grown to pretty good size over the last year or so, but still have a ways to go. This is probably less a question of needing more painted units to run a pretty big game, and more about still having a lot of unpainted figs. One nice thing about this is that the extra figures can be useful in the Ottoman project I have begun as well (see below).
• Ottomans, including eastern European opponents. I have begun this project, which has been of interest to me for many years, by having a few bags of figs painted in my last Fernando Enterprises order. The only completed components of these armies are a unit of Janissary archers, two units of Ottoman archers, a unit of Akinji horse archers, and a unit of Hungarian horse archers. I have probably 10-12 bags of various figs for this ready to go.
• Renaissance Italian Wars. I have a growing interest in this period but do not know nearly as much about it yet. I have bought a bunch of figures, but have painted only a few leader figures myself. I do have a bunch of Landsknechts that I had painted. Any time I look at these I want more!

These are just the medieval and renaissance periods. This leaves out gunpowder, ancients and anything in 15mm.

If I had half a brain, I would pick something to complete and plow through it. I will let you know what I decide...