I was recently talking with my friend over at Ha! I have no Tuba! about the old White Dwarf article series “The Four Gamers.” The premise of the article was four guys would set an amount that they would spend each month building a Warhammer army (about enough for one regiment a month) and then paint them as they go along. The articles were great in the way that they showcased the thought process behind army building, as well as a realistic depiction of how most people acrue an army (and paint it in a more median fashion).

Unfortunately, I really don’t have the $40 a month lying around unclaimed at the moment, but it didn’t get me thinking about trying to build an army essentially from scratch, in this case by selling or trading terrain I have made for the miniatures. There’s a lot of questions, and perhaps even more problems with this plan, however. For one thing, it is essentially converting time into money at a very low rate–I could probably babysit and make more money per hour (not that I would, since a grown man babysitting would just be creepy).

Second, selling HA terrain on eBay has some risks, mostly in shipping. I got dinged once when a terrain piece I made was broken in shipping, and I had to refund the money. I’ve had better luck since then, but padding an item sufficiently to avoid damage runs the shipping costs way up, cutting into either my profit or the attractiveness of the sale.

Third, as rclyne pointed out, I’d be making my anti-work a lot closer to work.  I like the terrain I make, and sometimes I hate to part with it.  I’d also be adding a stresser to my life in the process.  Unless I thought I could really absorb the workload easily, it would case to be fun, which is sort of the point of a hobby.

And that’s before all the picayune questions like what army would I build, and what terrain would I try to sell, etc.  I’ll have to think about this some more, but feel free to tell me what you think.