Half My Cyclades Minis Are Still Unpainted and I've Stopped Feeling Bad About It

The Cyclades minis have been sitting on the corner of my desk for months now, half the sculpts painted, half still gray plastic on the sprue, and for a long time that half-finished pile bothered me more than it probably should have.

I got the game at an estate sale, box practically untouched, belonged to a guy who by his family’s account bought a lot of games over the years and never got around to most of them. I’ve mentioned that story before. What I didn’t get into then is what happened once I actually sat down to paint the sculpts myself, because I hit the exact same wall he apparently did, just a slightly different version of it. I did the Athenian faction first, all the way through, actually finished a full army for once, which for me is rare enough to be notable. Then I started on a second faction and just, stopped. Real life got busy for a stretch, the desk got cluttered with other stuff, and by the time I circled back the momentum was gone and it felt like starting over more than picking up where I left off.

For a while I treated that half-painted pile as a small personal failure, one more unfinished project next to a dozen others I don’t like to think about. And then I thought about the guy who owned the box before me, who apparently never played it at all, let alone painted it, and something about the comparison recalibrated how I was looking at my own half-finished shelf. I’d actually played the game. I’d painted an entire faction well enough to be proud of it. The rest sitting gray on the sprue isn’t a failure by his standard, it’s most of the way further than the box ever got in twenty-some years of sitting in somebody’s basement.

So I’ve changed how I think about painting minis generally now, honestly. I don’t try to finish a full set anymore before a game hits the table. I paint whichever faction’s actually in play that session and leave the rest gray until it’s their turn, which sounds like it should bother the completionist part of my brain and somehow doesn’t, not since I reframed it. The gray pieces aren’t unfinished exactly, they’re just not needed yet. There’s a version of me from a few years back who would have found that distinction like a cop-out, some kind of rationalization for not finishing what I started. Current me thinks it’s just a more honest way to spend the actual limited hours I’ve got for this stuff.

The Athenian faction still looks good sitting there fully painted next to the gray ones, honestly. I catch myself looking at that contrast sometimes and thinking it tells a better story than a fully finished set would, half a project, half a start, both of them mine either way.