Wargaming Addiction Yearly Update

About a year ago I made a post detailing the scale of my wargaming addiction. This must have struck a cord with many of you as it was one of my most read posts of last year. In that post I said I was going to keep a record of my wargame expenditure to help me control my spending. Well here is the breakdown of my spending in the last 12 months. This may shock some of you and give comfort to others depending on the state of your own addiction.

Over the past twelve months I've spent £1,111.50 on wargaming. This doesn't include club night fees/subscriptions or travel expenses. This works out to £92.63 a month or £21.38 a week or £3.05 a day. For some reason £3 a day doesn't seem too bad (about the price of a pint) while £1,111 a year seems a lot. I guess that's statistics for you.

However I did sell some Warmachine stuff I didn't need, some figures for Saga as I hated it and a Chaos Space Marine army as I have no interest in 40K any more. This brought in £122.09 so my actual spend was £989.41 for the year or £2.71 a day. As I don't drink or smoke I don't think that's too bad.

So what was the breakdown of my spending.

£396.31 on figures, painted and unpainted
£84.78 on paints including spray primers
£149.78 on rules
£266.34 on terrain
£27.97 on dice
£64.23 on board games

The surprising one for me was the money spent on rules. I'd no idea I'd spent that much, but with the current cost of rules I suppose that's par for the course. I'd like to think that a lot of the expenditure, like dice and terrain, was a one off as I was starting from scratch having gotten rid of my stuff when I quit years ago.

So have I got full value from my purchases? Well let's look at the rules and figures I bought ....

Various models and infantry for FoW some painted most still in a drawer.

Maurice Rules and cards plus two 10mm WSS armies from Pendraken. Not used yet and figures unpainted although still an interest.

FoG:N not used and going to use N@W instead. May be of some use in the future.

Lasalle rules, not used and going to use N@W instead. May be of some use in the future.

Dystopian Wars rules used two or three times. I like them but games take a long time to play. Probably play again sometime in the future.

Johnny Reb III rules and two 10mm ACW armies from Pendraken. Not used and figures unpainted but again still an interest.

Dux Bellorum rules used a couple of times and will use again.

FoG:R rules, not used would like to do some renaissance stuff sometime.

Bolt Action rules and figures. Used a few times and enjoyed them and painted up the Russian figures I bought.

Napoleon at War rules, not used yet and still sorting out my painted armies. My current project and aim to play soon.

Pulp Alley rules, not played yet but looking forward to playing. I have all the figures etc I need to play just need an opponent.

Sadly the main reason for not using most of the above is the lack of an opponent. Most people I know are into skirmish games or GW stuff. So the best I can manage is an occasional historical game which makes it hard to remember the rules and tough to get motivated to paint up the two armies I need to be able to get a game.

So overall I've bought twelve new board games/rulesets in the last twelve months and only played four of them, and some of them have only been played once! Plus the lead and plastic mountain shows no sign of shrinking anytime soon. The amount of unpainted figures I have has convinced me that buying painted stuff from eBay or pro painters is the way to go for now. Although it's more expensive I can use them rather than have hundreds of pounds of unpainted figures stored in the spare room.

I intend to still keep track of my expenditure and I'll post another update next year. It will be interesting to see if things work out as I expect.