Hobby Your Own Way: Four Game Systems

Some Friday nights at the Wildlings settle into one big game. This one didn't, and it was better for it.

Walk round Bay Games this week and you'd have passed a Warmachine warcaster marshalling their warjacks in one corner, a Warhammer 40k army holding the line a few feet away, Horus Heresy legionaries advancing in perfect formation beside them, and the sharp, stylised ranks of Conquest fighting their own battle entirely. Four systems, four completely different eras and aesthetics, all sharing the same room on the same night.

On the Warmachine table, the standout wasn't just the game: it was what the army was printed on. Daryl brought a force built from his own 3D prints, and the quality of them stopped people walking past. Crisp detail, clean lines, no sign of the layer lines or warping that usually give a home print away the kind of quality that makes people ask what printer and settings he's using rather than where he bought the models.

Right next to him, Kit was on Warmachine duty of a different kind entirely, patiently walking a newbie through their first game. No pressure, no assumption you already know the rules, just someone experienced enough to make a first game feel welcoming rather than overwhelming. That's as much a part of Friday nights as the painted armies are.

Over on the 40k table, Kev's Genestealer Cults were doing exactly what a good Genestealer Cult army should do: looking like they'd crept up out of the underhive rather than been bought off a shelf. The scheme carried across the whole force with real consistency, the kind of army-wide cohesion that only comes from a lot of hours at the paint station.

Further along, Horus Heresy legionaries stood in perfect formation, and the sharp, stylised ranks of Conquest fought their own battle entirely, two more tables, two more completely different aesthetics, both holding their own alongside everything else going on.,

Hobby Your Own Way

If there's one idea that sums up why four completely different games can sit round the same room without anyone feeling like they're playing the "wrong" one, it's this: hobby your own way.

Nobody's told what to collect, what to paint like, or what counts as doing it properly. Someone might spend an Advanced Painting session with Drew chasing a display-cabinet finish. Someone else is three-colour speed painting a unit so it's tabletop-ready by Saturday. Both are doing the hobby exactly right, because there's no one right way to do it — and Warmachine, 40k, Horus Heresy, and Conquest each reward a completely different kind of painter anyway. Rather than pulling everyone toward one "main" game, the club gives all of it room to exist at once.

The Painting Culture Behind It

None of the quality on Friday's tables happens by accident. Painting is treated as a first-class part of the hobby here, not something bolted on around the games.

That shows up in the small stuff, people bringing brushes and half-finished models along, swapping a blending trick across the table, someone stopping mid-game to ask how a scheme was done. It shows up in the structured stuff too, like Drew's Advanced Painting sessions, where an award-winning painter helps people push their own skills further, whatever level they're starting from.

It adds up to a culture where picking up a model and trying to paint it properly isn't intimidating. It's just what people here do.

Why It's Worth Picking Up a Brush

Painting can feel like the bit you do before the "real" hobby starts. It isn't. Winning or losing with an army you painted yourself hits differently to pushing around bare plastic. It's a genuine creative outlet: colour, contrast, composition, a story told through a model's pose or base, entirely yours from start to finish. A lot of people find real headspace in an evening spent layering paint: it's slow in a way modern life mostly isn't, and that's the point. And nothing starts a conversation at the club faster than an interesting paint job; people stop, ask how it was done, and suddenly you're talking to someone you'd never have met otherwise.

Four different systems on the same night just means four different excuses to keep learning the industrial grime of Warmachine asks for something completely different to the clean lines of Conquest or the grimdark chaos of 40k.

Come and Hobby Your Own Way

Whether you've got a half-painted army sitting at home or you've never picked up a brush at all, there's a place for you at the table. Come along to a club night, bring whatever you're working on, and see where it takes you.

Great job this week to Daryl, Kit and Kev

see you all, and everyone else, at the next one.