Sunday, October 09, 2005

Miniatures - a lifelong obsession

I've recently started on the potentially futile exercise of getting all the miniatures I own in all the different scales (30mm, 25mm, 15mm, 6mm) into a state where they can be used for gaming or else selling them off on e-bay or at conventions bring and buy sales. The other aspect of this is actually cataloging all the many that I've aquired over the last 28 or so years that I've been doing miniatures gaming.

The main thing that has struck me has been the steady growth of figures in the supposed main scales of 25mm up to 28/30mm and 15mm to 18mm, usually with a welcome increase in detail and sharpness of casting, but making older figures look a bit undernourished in comparison. I've particularly seen this with the fantasy figures where my old Ral Partha and Citadel metals look tiny compared to the Reaper figures that I've bought recently.

The other part of this exercise has been to start to try and paint everything I'm going to keep and get them into a usable condition for gaming or display purposes, this is going to take a long time and it's a good thing I enjoy painting minis or else I'd be going crazy at the thought of how many thousand of the things are there to be worked on (possible exaggeration, but well into three figures). Initially my focus is on my 15mm armies from Peter Pig for the Hordes of the Things rules from WRG, and my 25/28mm figures for the Duel from Alternative Armies and Warhammer Fantasy Battle by well, you know who.

Actually as well as being enjoyable this exercise is proving to be a productive one, with me starting to realise just how much is available in terms of painting advice on the web. There is a definite feel of satisfaction in seeing figures arrayed in painted ranks on their bases and its helping to keep me working at it.

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