Hobby Golf Shame League

I think this year we’ve seen a rise in the number of people complaining about the size of their hobby piles. This issue’s always been around. But for me I noticed several youtubers discussing the scale of their plastic crack. For me, I’ve had projects I’ve been waiting to begin for 2-3 years that keep getting delayed ‘cos I jump into another project.

The recent posts for the Anti Shiny Syndrome League and XLBS have mentioned me some here are looking cut their hobby piles.

One youtuber, Dana Howl, made a jump from just making promises about clearing her backlog to making a game of it. My local gaming friends were intrigued by her idea. We didn’t want to join a larger group, preferring to keep it among ourselves. So I set up a spreadsheet to be filled in according to rules initially based on Danas.

The idea behind this system is to track what’s on your hobby queue. Miniatures purchased go on the queue. Miniatures painted or sold come off the queue.

I wanted us to log all unpainted miniatures we own. But the group decision was to start at 0 and only log new purchases. The league was set to run for 3 months then we’ll see how it’s working for people.

In addition to logging +1/-1, I added some penalties for early release – within 30 days – purchases. These applied to box sets and their quantity of minis. This was to discourage fear of missing out. KS counts for this as well though points aren’t added till you receive the goods.

Bonuses were available for those who completed box sets or larger. However these bonuses weren’t as large as the penalties. You’re supposed to be clearing your queue so you should be painting more than you buy.

There’s no minimum paint standard. You decide when a mini is done and can be removed from your queue.

Selling minis counts equally alongside painting them. It’s all about clearing your queue. Painting minis can earn you some bonuses but for basic scores there’s no difference.

Overall you’ll get a score that reflects the state of your hobby queue. Below or near 0 is good. Much higher than that and you’ve got work to do.

The rules as first written.

The spreadsheet has formulae to calculate any bonuses. It was originally written in Google and exported to be uploaded here. Then found I couldn’t upload it. So I’ve added some screen shots. These were taken when we’d nearly completed the first 3 month run.

We’re near the end of the first 3 months. Over this time we’ve found people had differing approaches to this.

For me it’s only a way of tracking my hobby pile and determining when I’ve done enough to justify buying more.

For others it’s been an active competition to see who can finish with the best score.

This has led to some frustration with the rules. Current criticisms include:

• the buy within 30 days penalty is a huge downer for someone who’s been waiting for a new set. Current opinion is we don’t suffer from FOMO much and you should have the freedom to buy one or two early purchases without penalty.
• also the 30 day penalty is especially oppressive for participants who don’t paint that much to the point that it’s effectively insurmountable.
• generally the buy within 30 days of release penalties are too heavy.
• equalise the penalties and bonuses for finishing boxes.
• add some kind of roll over so those with a huge score don’t get it cleared for the next round.
• should paint be added to hobby shame? Once we slowed on buying minis we started looking at buying more paint.

On the whole it’s been well received. Participants have still bought miniatures but their scores have acted as brake when they’re looking at new forces.

For myself I hadn’t planned many purchases till I played a demo of Star Wars Legion and bought all relevant minis in the shop. But I’ve been good since then. Only bought Yoda! Oh and Anakin. Got my score near 0 so I’m pretty pleased with myself