Which of these are you already doing? Don’t miss Travis’ five ideas for hobbying while Social Distancing this spring. We’re all in this together!

Hello everyone, I hope you find yourselves in good spirits and health in these crazy times. Today I’m covering the kinds of hobby work I’m doing during this shutdown period and how you can flex your hobby muscles.

Idea 1: Spread the Hobby

If you have a significant other or child who has ever shown interest or any sort of desire to learn how to play your wargame of choice this is the perfect opportunity to teach them. Have them watch a youtube video or two of a how-to-play first so that when you begin teaching them, they can follow the game more closely. Don’t overwhelm them with rules or scenarios at first, stick to the basics and small skirmishes and build up from there.

Once they have a good grasp of the rules explore different narrative games you can play or create your own story or setting to build up to! Some ideas for scenery as well are; Christmas villages, pine cones, large rocks, various canned goods, house plants, aquarium pieces, etc. Basically, anything can become a mountain, or a house just let your imagination take over! Speaking of scenery.

Current Project: Teaching my 3-year-old how to read, however, she loves dice, so I have at least got her rolling them.

Idea 2: Get a hobby area set up

TUTORIAL: Make your own light halo for under $50

If you have space, it’s a perfect time to organize and create a space for your hobby! Build a table, get crafty with some cardboard and make some scenery, and catalog your paints you have and throw out all the dried-up ones. Seriously I organized my stuff during my move this past summer and it is so much easier to find what I am looking for when I know what shelf has my unpainted miniatures, what bags contain what bits, and what paints I own.

It really is a time-saver in the long run. Now that I have done it every time, I get a new kit or paints I immediately update my spreadsheet and get the correct bits and whatnot in a labeled baggie.

Current Project: Finishing painting a winter village for the Michigan GT (1 house left)

Idea 3: Brush up on the lore

This is more for the Age of Sigmar or Warhammer 40k people but there is a ton of content out there that are tied to those games right now. If you don’t want any sort of hard or softcover books, Black Library offers their books digitally as well. There are also tons of books on audible that I have been listening to as well lately. Personally, I think the new Gotrek Realmslayer audiobooks have been amazing and I highly recommend them.

Current Project: Listening to Dark Harvest on audible

Idea 4: Paint the plastic crack

Most people who play wargames tend to have more unpainted models than painted and I urge you to take this time to change that. This is a perfect opportunity to finally have a fully painted army on the table. Playing with and against fully painted armies is so much better than staring at an endless tied of grey. Also, get fun with it, set up a zoom meeting or facetime a painting buddy and chat while painting.

Not only will you get some much-needed hobby time, but you will get some of that social interaction that we are missing during the social distancing time. If you want to spice up your painting try new paints, for example, Rob is sending me some non-citadel airbrush paints to try. I have never used non-citadel paints and while I have used my airbrush a lot, I find it has been a mixed bag. (a post on that later).

Editors Note: I sent him a set of Creature Caster Pro-Acryl Paints

Current Project: 6 Varanguard and 40 Marauders

Idea 5: Try other games

With social distancing your basically stuck with who you live with until this is over, and they may not have any interest in your game of choice. (Which is fine!) Make a list of the many wargamers or board games that interest you and show them to the people you want to play with and see if they would be interested in any of them. If so before you buy them watch a let’s play video review of them to make sure they are age-appropriate or so the people know what they are getting into (some games are long and complicated and can turn people off to them).

The goal should be something that your little group will want to pull out and play together long after the social distancing is over. Once you have one in mind call your friendly local gaming store and see if they have it in stock. If so, see if they are willing to do a curbside pick up for it. Your friendly local gaming stores have staff, rent, and bills to pay as well and they need to survive too.

Current Project: Candyland (with my daughter) and Ticket to Ride (with my wife)

There you have it a couple of ideas to cut screen time and flex your hobby muscle while practicing social distancing. Feel free to email me or comment what you’re doing to flex your hobby muscles right now, but most importantly stay safe and healthy my friends!

If you are currently publishing hobby content and would like a shot at getting featured on the site, or getting on our publishing schedule, we would like to hear from you! Please email Rob at spikeybits.com with examples of your work!