Monday, August 6, 2012

Miniatures, Miniatures, Miniatures.

Recently I've haven't given much thought to RPGs:  I don't have a regular group that I'm playing with and with a busy schedule at home it is hard to set aside a regular time to commit to.  Mostly I've been focusing on miniatures.  I haven't done any gaming, for the same reasons I haven't been playing any RPGs.  But I have been reading, collecting, and painting.

The 6th edition of Warhammer 40K came out recently, so I've been going through that again and again.  I've also gone back and re-read the original Rogue Trader rules, just to put things in perspective.  The are some great things about the original rules, but the new rules really are much, much better.  The may not have the flexibility that the RT rules do, but I can look back and realize now that RT is really designed to create narratives, a sort of RPG/Wargame hybrid (the same sort of thing can be said for 1st and 2nd ed. WFB).  I've also taken a look at Warmachine and Hordes since that seems to be the new hot thing these days.  At first I didn't like the rules,  but they have grown on me, and I like the idea of a game with smaller armies.  I might pick up the Hordes 2 player starter box when it is released.

On the collecting front, I've been buying a lot of stuff on Ebay.  I like to paint (more on that later), but seeing as I had no miniatures 2 months ago, I wanted to get back into the swing of things without having to paint up an army from scratch before I could play.  While I may not always have the best painted miniatures, I refuse to game with unpainted minis, even for simple friendly games.  The painted minis I have purchased really vary in quality.  Some of them are barely passable, others are quite nice.  A lot of what I have purchased is older, OOP Citadels.  The great thing is, most of what I am buying is about 50% off of GW's current prices.  So I am saving money, and I don't have to paint them.  At this point I have close to 1500 pts of Imperial Guard, and over 2000 pts of Space Wolves.

I did buy a Space Wolf starter box unpainted, and I have been working on that over the last few months.  It's the first thing I have painted in over 10 years. The drop pod, 10 Grey Hunters, and 5 Scouts are nearing completion. They are table ready right now, but I'm going to add some more details to them before I call them finished. I have another 10 infantry that I am trying to decide how to configure.  I'll probably make them Wolfguard, as I don't need more Grey Hunters, and have no desire for Blood Claws.  I also have a couple of Rhinos to work on that currently assembled and basecoated.  I'll post some pics of these soon.

The other project that I just finished is a 15mm Viking army for DBA.  I haven't played DBA in years, but I had these minis sitting around and decided to finish them up.  I'm thinking about doing a Norman and an Anglo-Saxon army so that I can have all 3 factions for the 1066 invasion. They are small projects, between 30 and 50 figures, and pretty quick to paint, but I'm not sure when I'll ever get a chance to use them.

I've also been following some kickstarters from Reaper miniatures and Red-Box games.  Both companies are making some amazing looking miniatures at great prices, and their kickstarters have some great deals.  I'm not sure what I'd do with these minis, but they look like they'd be great fun to paint.  The thought even crossed my mind to use these as proxies for Hordes, or try my hand at designing some of my own lists.

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