Josh Baines breaks down turning his Warhammer hobby into income
By Taylor Winnie Hughes on March 10, 2025
Josh Baines is a local tabletop game enthusiast who started specializing in Warhammer four years ago. He has worked in tabletop stores in Edmonton selling products and managing tournaments. Now he owns 3UpTableTop, a media outlet where he creates content about tabletop gaming. Baines tells us about what got him into Warhammer, the struggles and benefits of turning your hobby into a business, and about why he focuses primarily on Edmonton’s Warhammer community as his target audience.
Q: What was the driving force behind you picking up and playing Warhammer and sticking with it?
A: At first, me and my buddies, Dyllyn and Matt, were like, “Let’s play some Warhammer. It’ll be a fun little cute experiment,” to see if we like it. Then I was like, “Dyllyn, let’s go play a tournament.” In my first ever tournament, I lost so miserably. It’s probably the worst score I’ve ever seen and I’ve been to a lot of tournaments and I have run a lot of tournaments. It was awful, but I had a great time. Then I won the favorite opponent award on a small little wooden plaque. The people you play against vote on who their favorite person was, and I won it. I almost started crying in the middle of the store. I was like, “Wow, I did this terrible, but people are this nice.” From there I realized I really have missed having people in my life and having a way to go meet new people, hang out and make friends. I went from having like two friends I talked to, to like 30 people every day.
Q: How has that sense of community impacted your life?
A: If I didn’t start playing Warhammer, I would be a much more miserable person. I go to Warhammer events and it’s like a fun little reunion of all of my long lost family members and we’re like, “Dude nice new toys.” There’s a reason people go to church. I think it’s actually really important in this to have a place of community you can go to consistently to express yourself and find joy in the comforts of others, and I think in modern society, we lose that a lot. So to me, the Warhammer community and places are kind of like my own church in that way. It’s where I go to be like, “My soul is refreshed,” if that makes sense. It’s nice to go talk to people. They’re all really nice, and at the end of the day, it’s a game. It’s an imperfect game, so if you aren’t chill, people are angry.
Q: What’s your advice to somebody interested in getting into Warhammer?
A: Go very slow. Facebook and Kijiji are your friends. Buy used lots and buy them cheap. Go find people that actually play the game and tournaments in your local scene to play against. They’re usually really nice people. If you really don’t want to spend money on it, you can get Tabletop Simulator. There’s a whole way to play digitally. If you really want to try it to see how the dice roll, there you go. It’s fine online, but it’s soulless. You also have to go into it with the right mindset. It’ll never be a balanced or competitive game. It’s dice man. Sometimes you need to roll 18 sixes and you do that, and your opponent gets really upset, and you go, “Man, I’m just flicking dice around.”
Q: What spurned you to turn your hobby into a small side gig?
A: One day one of my teachers said to me, “You got to be the sun, not the moon. Don’t reflect light. Be the light.” And I was like, “Dude, that’s so real.” I wanted to do something with my hobby because why not? So I made a blog that day. Writing was cool but I wasn’t very consistent at it, because it’s hard to write a large block of text every day. Turns out writing is very hard. But I wanted to start posting more stuff so I made a podcast. I was basically talking about the Edmonton Warhammer scene and I got all the big names on the podcast and whatnot. A lot of cool interviews happened there. Eventually I was like, I can probably monetize a part two of this, so I started doing that. It would be two hours of just talking. The first hour would be free, the second hour would be on Patreon. I got probably about a dozen subscribers in the first month, but things got in the way, so I stopped posting as much. I wanted to reformat it anyways because it wasn’t really exactly what I wanted to do, so I said, “I’m going to start streaming Warhammer.” I was like, “Dang, this looks like a way to have an excuse to buy more expensive toys and be a tax write off.” I looked into it and thought, “Streaming won’t be that won’t be that hard to do. Just need a couple of cameras and a way to plug them in.” I was wrong. It’s very difficult, but it is infinitely more fun to do something live and talk to people actively while you’re doing it, than uploading solo work.
Q: Edmonton’s Warhammer scene specifically is kind of niche. How many people do you estimate are in the Edmonton Warhammer scene?
A: I would say about 600 people are actively involved. The total number of people I know of casually is over 1000.
Q: Do you plan on expanding to other cities? What’s your target audience in the end?
A: I’d love to expand but I don’t drive so it’s hard. I kind of have expanded a little bit anyways. I know some people around Alberta. I have a few contacts, some pretty larger names, that I’m trying to get in with right now. I’d like to be a global phenomenon one day, you know, be the next Tabletop Tactics. Those are my heroes right there.
Q: How often do you have to stay immersed in Warhammer news to stay on top of the frequent changes in the community?
A: Every morning I wake up and I go on two websites. The first is Warhammer Community, which is the actual official website for releasing their news. Then there’s GoonHammer, which releases articles about stuff in advance. Those are my two main sources. I spend at least a good hour every morning reading those, and then for extra research, I’ll have a YouTube video going on about new things happening or tournament results.
Q: Do you see this turning into a full time source of income for you?
A: I do. When I was on winter break, I spent two weeks where I streamed every day, sometimes multiple times a day. I went from two subscribers on YouTube after six months of my podcast to about 150. That was just in a week and a half of just streaming. So I can do it, it’s just I don’t have the time right now to put all my energy in doing that and it kind of sucks. If I could do nothing but focus on it, I totally would. I’d just abandon all else and just do that, and be happy, successful and spend money on toys the rest of my life. I’m hoping by December to have 500 subscribers, which I think is very doable if I just stay focused this summer.
Q: At the pace you’re at, how long until you could make your hobby a permanent full-time source of income for you?
A: Probably like three years at the pace I’m going if I keep it up and if I do it on a more consistent kind of a schedule, which I’m working towards right now. I finally have a way to do things consistently, which is nice. Three or four years if I get lucky.
Q: You stream occasionally at Red Claw Gaming and at Gamer’s Den. Are there any other tabletop stores in the city that ask you to stream for them?
A: I don’t stream for them, I beg them to let me stream there and they say yes. I would like to stream at Taps Games eventually, down on the south side. It’s really far but I know the owner. He’s a nice guy so I’ll probably get in with him. There is a large Games Workshop event coming up soon, so on the down low, I might be able to stream it, but that’s not guaranteed. I’m just talking to somebody about it right now. There’s a group in the city called Trident, and they run events all over Saint Albert. I’m pretty good friends with those guys so I can usually stream their events. They run probably most of the events in the city, so we’ve talked about it, it’s just a matter of finding room in the places. That’s been the biggest issue.
Q: It sounds like one of your biggest successes in turning your hobby into a job in this specific instance is knowing people, would you agree with that?
A: Yeah, for sure. If you enter the hobby space without having been part of the community, you’re going to fail so quickly. “Random Andy” starts writing about Warhammer, but has clearly never played a game. You notice it a mile away. I also wouldn’t be able to stream or do any of this without the connections I’d made before starting.
Q: So you do a lot of Warhammer stuff, but you’re not exclusively Warhammer. Are you hoping to expand a bit more into other tabletop games in the future, or keep your focus very Warhammer centric?
A: The website is called 3UpTableTop, not 3UpWarhammer, but if I do make any content that is not Warhammer related, it does not do well. I accept that, because for me it’s still about having fun. I’m going to branch out. I’d like to do a lot more stuff in board game centric areas because board games are my life, but right now we’re just building an audience. I don’t want to waste time on a precious stream when if I stream Warhammer right now or write about Warhammer right now, I can get probably three subscribers guaranteed every time. If it’s not Warhammer, I might get zero subscribers and like two views. So I’ll take the Warhammer path for now.
Q: Can you tell me about the Warhammer charity event you’re hoping to create yourself?
A: Last year, me and my buddy Dave helped out at Food for the Food God. There is a conversation right now amongst me and two others about starting a charity event pretty similar to Food for the Food God, but on a much larger scale. Instead of like 16 people, it’d be closer to like 32 or even 64 people. It’s kind of on the down low so I’m giving spoilers, but it’s a lot of investment to get there. Hopefully by next year it’s up and running, but life demands what life demands so we get there when we get there. It’s essentially the exact same concept as Food for the Food God, just larger scale and not themed around Christmas. Giving back to people outside of the community, and just charity work in general, is really important to me. Wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am today without the kind, generous donations of people to my family. So, it’s good that I can do this little game hobby to help others.
Q: What would you say to somebody interested in turning their hobby into a job?
A: Prepare to make a ton of sacrifices. I once interviewed a guy, Scott Fox of iVardensphere, and he said pretty much exact same thing to me. It really changed how I saw things. If you want to be successful, genuinely successful, you have to be ready to lose a lot of opportunities and a lot of small moments. Like, he has kids and he basically doesn’t ever get to see them, and it sucks. But it’s how he continues being successful in this. That’s a conversation he had with his wife that he’s not gonna be around all the time. You gotta be ready to be really unhappy in certain ways to be happier later.
Baines’ last thought:
Day’s never finished.
You can keep up to date on Baines’ journey on his website and YouTube, or you can catch him streaming live in the community on weekends.
Questions and answers edited for clarity.