Introduction
The random rants and pictures from a guy who paints miniatures. Firestorm Armada (made by Spartan Games, UK); Hordes (Privateer Press, USA); Warhammer 40k (Games Workshop, UK); and anything else I end up adding.
How did I get here? Well, once upon a time in college, I saw a couple of people playing this neat custom wargame: no squares, no hex grid, and not even the same pieces on each side! They let me "drive" one of the units for a game, and I had fun with it, but I was scared away by the horror stories of what the game cost so I never picked it up myself. Years later, my son was getting into Star Wars miniatures and I realized the economics of that one were even worse than what had scared me away earlier! The boxes of figures were randomized, so you didn't know for sure which ones you had bought until the transaction was final. This economic model seems to work well for the company that makes the minis because it's a fairly constant revenue stream; there are always new models coming out. Magic: The Gathering, the card game, works this way, and they must be doing something right because the game has been doing well for something like 20 years! But I could see it was a terrible money pit to get stuck in, so I looked for something else. After some discussion, my son and I agreed we would try Warhammer 40,000. The miniatures were higher quality, arguably more expensive, but the boxes were not random. If you wanted a squad of Space Marine Devastators, then you bought a box of them and that's what you got. My son lost interest in the game after a year or two, but I was hooked.
After watching the prices go up and up for a few years while the playability of the game went down, I started looking for alternatives. At some point, other games based on the same theory as Warhammer started to appear. Games Workshop suddenly had competition, and I think even now they don't truly realize that! So I defected to other games that I like better, where the prices aren't nearly as absurd, the factions are reasonably balanced against each other, and the rules are clear enough that debates about how something works are mercifully rare.
It took years for my painting skills to get to where I would dare show The Entire World my finished products, but I think it's time to assemble my various pictures all in one place. Maybe this is will lead to my fifteen minutes of fame, or maybe nobody but me will ever know this exists. I know not, and care not, which!
How did I get here? Well, once upon a time in college, I saw a couple of people playing this neat custom wargame: no squares, no hex grid, and not even the same pieces on each side! They let me "drive" one of the units for a game, and I had fun with it, but I was scared away by the horror stories of what the game cost so I never picked it up myself. Years later, my son was getting into Star Wars miniatures and I realized the economics of that one were even worse than what had scared me away earlier! The boxes of figures were randomized, so you didn't know for sure which ones you had bought until the transaction was final. This economic model seems to work well for the company that makes the minis because it's a fairly constant revenue stream; there are always new models coming out. Magic: The Gathering, the card game, works this way, and they must be doing something right because the game has been doing well for something like 20 years! But I could see it was a terrible money pit to get stuck in, so I looked for something else. After some discussion, my son and I agreed we would try Warhammer 40,000. The miniatures were higher quality, arguably more expensive, but the boxes were not random. If you wanted a squad of Space Marine Devastators, then you bought a box of them and that's what you got. My son lost interest in the game after a year or two, but I was hooked.
After watching the prices go up and up for a few years while the playability of the game went down, I started looking for alternatives. At some point, other games based on the same theory as Warhammer started to appear. Games Workshop suddenly had competition, and I think even now they don't truly realize that! So I defected to other games that I like better, where the prices aren't nearly as absurd, the factions are reasonably balanced against each other, and the rules are clear enough that debates about how something works are mercifully rare.
It took years for my painting skills to get to where I would dare show The Entire World my finished products, but I think it's time to assemble my various pictures all in one place. Maybe this is will lead to my fifteen minutes of fame, or maybe nobody but me will ever know this exists. I know not, and care not, which!
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