My Models, My Models, And Me: A Small Blog About Warhammer

In 2023 I got back into painting little teeny tiny models after about fifteen solid years of absence. I left Warhammer for a whole bunch of reasons; I’d indulged too much in it, I couldn’t really enjoy it under the withering (and often… accurate) gaze of my disapproving parents, and as I grew into my awkward late teens I started to properly realise that I didn’t really know what I wanted out of it.

Like regularly tuning in to watch new episodes of The Simpsons, Warhammer just became something in my life that stopped happening - a natural drifting away that occurred with little fanfare or drama as my values and goals adjusted away from models and 28mm scale battlefields towards building myself into a successful and self-actualised adult. 

Whoops! Fucked that up a little! 

So now we’re back at the models!

In searching around for something to do, I rediscovered my pile of Old Warhammer Stuff at the back of a cupboard inside a steadily mouldering cardboard box. Not too many models (other than a handful of soft-metal characters), but a treasure trove of old White Dwarf magazines and source books alongside a notebook that contained hundreds of little army lists* and stories that I had made with my friends. 

One thing spilled naturally into another, and the youtube content that I was already consuming morphed from cool, distant projects that other people were doing into step-by-step tutorials that I could maybe apply to the stuff that I had excavated from my past. 

You know, as a joke. To see if I like it. Nothing serious though!

Here is the first White Dwarf I ever bought. Honestly I am surprised it even looks this good - I used to carry this around like a talisman. 

Let's take a peek inside...wait, this isn't right, why does a WD from 2002 have a painting guide for a major character model still sold in 2025 for an immensely popular faction? Weird. Must be some sort of glitch.

Since then, it has become this dual exercise in childhood wish-fulfilliment and conscientious goal setting. Each model contains as many or as few goals as I grant it, each faction contains as many or as few goals as I grant it - it’s like a plastic garden where I have allowed myself to exert control over expectations and outcomes. At worst I paint a model, at best I paint a model that I’m slightly happier with. Not exactly life-or-death. 

The rediscovery of my old notes, lists, and models broke my heart a little, I think as a kid I used to be so terrified of imperfection that these projects never really left the starting line. I remember spending so much time coming up with endless stuff - what a unit would look like, why they would be armed like this, what purpose did they have, how they met the main force - making it all make sense on the page, and then when it came to putting it into action the models would remain a sad grey, or coated in a simple primer, unable to handle the weight of all these tiny dreams. 

As I keep on engaging and persevering in my hobby projects I’m acting out the passions that went into my old notebooks. With significantly more discernment, I might add; the younger version of me gets a pass on a lot of things, but he would never have wanted the BloodBowl Gnome team because he was dumb as fuck. There’s a surprising element of self-forgiveness and self-reflection involved (matters of taste aside) in doing something that your younger self was too afraid to do, and coming to terms with that has been more difficult and heavier than I would have thought for painting little plastic soldiers. 

These fuckers are SO fun go play BloodBowl be a lil freak get some sports in ya.

As an adult (loath though I may be to admit adulthood) re-engaging with the hobby has provided me with an incredible sense of stillness and focus. I like the feeling of sitting down to finish something, it feels like a magic trick where I wave my hands and grey nothing transforms into a pile of goons, henchmen, and associated flunkies. I understand that I’m not necessarily creating anything by doing this, but what it allows me to do is re-engage the parts of myself that stall and rust the longer I go without an outlet. I’m solving creative problems, and I’m doing it in a cloistered, controlled environment - models don’t suddenly grow limbs and change shape, I’m in a fixed space where the instruction manuals are (mostly) clear, and the paint goes on the parts you are subtly guided to paint. Easy. 

I'm not gonna go into it here, but I adore what's happened since I've been away. I love the new AoS stuff so much, I love the broad design and narrative space, and I love my weird vampires (but not enough to paint some base rims apparently).

Painting and modelling has, in an incredibly gentle way, let me carve out a space where the only input is creative, the only actions are creative ones, and the output is something for me alone. There’s no room for anything else in this space other than paint, glue, process, and inspiration. My body becomes a machine that turns tiny plastic sprues into painted figures, and while I will never engage in this hobby with the same fervour as when I was younger, I am using it to slowly help rediscover a version of myself that was ever able to feel with such genuine intensity. A person that could read a Codex and immediately envision an army with a theme and lore to go with it, and would take the time late at night to give each hypothetical unit yet another bullshit Latin-esque name and figure out their battle honours, their wins, their losses, and what could be done to reflect this.  

Each time I sit down I catch a small glimpse of the creative, fulfilled person I wanted to be when I was a kid, and the feelings that need to be there to believe in that person again. I keep on getting caught by currents that drag me into terrifyingly deep waters, and I have to spend all of my strength swimming back to shore only to repeat it again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. For so much of my day I cannot imagine a world where exhaustion is not a constant, but when I clear my crowded desk and set up my slightly too bright lamp, for an hour or so I get to tangibly feel that this wasn’t always the case, and that this doesn’t always need to be the case.

I might drift away from Warhammer again - I probably will! - but for now coming back to this hobby and covering my plastic skeletons in dirt and rust has given me a truly valuable space. An absolute goldmine of feelings and focus. A priceless plastic port in some truly troubled waters. 

Wait, wait, wait, wait no, no hold up Games Workshop don’t read this please, god, don’t put the prices up I was kidding, I was kidding - the port is looking extremely premium for what I’m getting if we’re being honest here.

*So ok explainer at the end of the article - your units have point values, and you have like fit your army into a certain value like 750 points or 1.5k points (bring this one back) or 2k points (current standard) etc. etc. etc. This would be your army list! Previously you also had really strict force restrictions, so you would have to take x amount of y units, or a special upgrade would let you take restricted units, so if you wanted to theme things you would have to be a bit creative around what the book would let you do. Also the wargear section used to be bonkers.