Category Archives: Hobby Musings

When does painting = work?

Lately I have a problem: I can’t seem to get excited about painting. The reason is simple: it feels like it’s something I have to do, not something I want to do. In other words, it’s a lot like work.

I run an ongoing AD&D campaign, and I use miniatures for that. Which means that in addition to the normal prep work of getting an adventure together, I need to find time to paint miniatures in time for when they will be needed. So far, my method has been to paint up a bunch of stuff for a good story arc or two, then take a brief hiatus while one of my friends runs something for a while. In the meantime, I paint more miniatures to be used the next time I run my campaign. So far it’s worked pretty well. But now it’s starting to get on my nerves.

With all the miniature gaming I’ve been doing lately (and all the miniature gaming I want to do) there are a whole lot of things I would rather be painting than the miniatures required for my AD&D game. And they’re all just sitting there in the insanity pile. So, although I’d love to get my Dreadball teams painted; or start that new proxy Imperial Guard army with Wargames Factory Greatcoats; or paint those damn WFB High Elves and Dwarfs that are still mostly unpainted; or paint any of the (many) Clan War miniatures I have; or repaint some Heroclix for a SS3 scenario or two; or build and paint some scenery (for anything); or paint those Terminators and Genestealers for Space Hulk; or paint some Hydra Retro Raygun or Bob Murch’s Pulp Figures; or dive head first into Western miniatures for some Wild West skirmish; or even paint some fantasy miniatures that I’m in no hurry to use for an upcoming game…I can’t. (And those are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head. If I was home, where my miniatures are, I could list a lot more.)

I can’t because I need 20 kobolds, a female cleric, a griffon and a gelatinous cube by next week. (Note: I don’t actually need any of this stuff, but my players read this, so I’m wary of giving anything away.)

It’s kind of like all those books I never appreciated when I was forced to read them for school, but loved when I reread them later in life. If I feel obligated to do something, it kind of sucks the joy out of it.

Don’t get me wrong: I’d love to paint any miniature as opposed to, say, shovel snow or rake leaves. But I find I spend less time per session at the painting table, because I just can’t get into it. Which of course makes the overall job that much longer.

I’d be interested to hear some thoughts on this from other gamers and miniature enthusiasts. I’m curious to know if any of you experience the same thing from time to time, or if it’s just me finding problems with everything, including my hobbies. I’m particularly interested in any professional painters out there, considering that for you, it actually IS work. What happens if someone commissions you to paint something that you hate painting ? How do you get motivated to do it (aside from the fact that you’re getting paid)? When do you ever have time to paint your own stuff?

Games Workshop: WTF?

Like many FLGS’s, one of the local stores I patronize regularly has had to come up with inventive ways of competing with online discounters. This place has loads of old lead, including lots of GW stuff from the past 10 years or so, still new in the box. His compete strategy is simple: if you buy anything other than GW, he gives you a gift certificate for 30% of the purchase value towards anything in the store aside from GW stuff. For GW stuff, he gives you a $20 gift certificate for every $100 you spend.

That’s a pretty good deal, I would say. Or is it? It sure is as far as the non-GW stuff goes. But for the GW stuff, I’m not so sure.

Let me explain.

I recently accrued $100 worth of GW purchases at the store, so I had a $20 credit burning a hole in my pocket. I don’t buy any of the new stuff, since I never play the games anymore. What did I buy? Lots of individual regiment boxes for armies I don’t play, mainly for use in skirmish games and as cannon fodder for my AD&D game. For example, I bought a unit box of Empire Swordsmen for $30 there (I told you he has a lot of stuff still new in box, priced according to when he ordered them…in this case I’d say about 8 years ago or so.) I also bought a bunch of metal miniatures considering he sells all his old metal GW stuff for half price.

Well, I now have a gaming table that I’m hoping gets a lot of use. I have a couple of armies  for both their games, but like many gamers I always consider more. So yesterday I went to the store, thinking I might plop down a decent chunk of change on a battalion box, either for 40K or WFB. Why not? He has some battalion boxes from 8-9 years ago still on the shelf, and they’re priced accordingly as low as $90. Take $20 off that, and it’s starting to look like a deal, depending on the army you pick.

I looked at all the battalion boxes he had for sale for both games, and let me tell you, there’s a huge difference in what you get for what you spend, both across armies and across time.

He had two versions of the Empire Battalion box. (Since I already bought a box of swordsmen, I considered getting a battalion and having an Empire army ready to go.) Both versions contained 20 State Troops, 10 Handgunners, and 8 Reiksguard Knights. One also came with a Cannon and crew, the other came with 10 Greatswords instead. The Cannon was the cheaper choice: it was $90. The Greatswords cost $105. (This is the current version available on the GW website.) Maybe a little expensive, but not a terrible deal, considering you get over 40 miniatures per box.

The best deal I found was a Skaven Battalion, which contained 40 Clanrats, 20 Plague Monks, 2 Rat Ogres with Handler, and 2 Rat Swarms with Handlers for $115. These are the old syle Skaven, not the new ones. But with over 60 miniatures, it’s not a bad deal.

But these are either old WFB Battalions, or they’re the exception. The newer ones have fewer figures. and they cost more. And they changed the game itself to favor more miniatures and bigger units.

As far as old 40K Battalions went, the ones with the most miniatures for the money were the Tyranids and the Tau. I don’t want or need more Tyranids, and I don’t know anything about the Tau. Maybe if he had one of the older Tau codices there I would have considered buying it since it was priced at $90 and included 10 Fire Warriors, 3 Stealth Suits, 1 Battlesuit, 1 Devilfish Tank, and 12 Kroots. But I’m not buying a new codex for $45, and I don’t even own the latest version of the game.

This month GW released the new Eldar models, and everyone is outraged at the price hike. The Eldar Battalion is especially egregious. You get a total of 17 miniatures: 10 Guardians, 5 Dire Avengers, a Viper Jetbike, and a Wave Serpent tank. For $115. Now, GW will have its fanboys who think this is “really a good deal for what you’re getting, especially given the quality of the models”, but that’s just bullshit. And yeah, you get a tank. Big fucking deal. See the Tau above. 15 troops does not a Battalion make. They used to sell WFB regiments of 20 miniatures for 30 bucks! I know: I just bought some!

So, back to my original question: is $20 off already inflated prices actually a good deal? Or has GW’s pricing plan pretty much invalidated what this poor store owner is trying to do? By anyone’s estimation, 20 bucks off is a pretty good deal. Unless you’re paying way too much for what you’re getting to begin with. Not the owner’s fault, but he’s the one who stocks the items and has to deal with the crap from people who hate GW’s prices, who then buy from someone online. As he put it to me yesterday, “People only come to me if I’m their last resort. They need it tomorrow or something like that.”

Despite what you may think, this isn’t really a rant on GW’s prices, although any discussion about GW is bound to get around to pricing eventually (and it’s not hard to see why). It’s a speculation about what the fuck GW is really doing. Let me repeat that: this is pure speculation. I have no real knowledge of GW’s business plan or goals.

For retailers, there are already a ton of restrictions when it comes to selling GW stuff, even online. Recently, I have heard that the War Store has had to stop selling GW bits or risk losing the ability to sell GW at all, which they do for 20% off already, although they are forbidden to show any prices and/or merchandise on the site. How long do you think that will continue? And if the War Store and online sellers are having problems with the restrictions, how much trouble do you think the FLGS owner in his brick and mortar place can ever begin to compete? He can’t, really. Unless he’s a GW store.

Which makes me wonder if GW is actually trying to price the retailer out of the market, so that anyone who wants to buy GW stuff will have to buy directly from GW. it seems like a dumb idea, but is it really? No more wholesale sales to retailers, and they can charge what they want. While they can’t control the secondary market, they can make all the new stuff impossible to get for less than whatever they want to charge. While it cuts their third-party distribution network and limits exposure to their games, they have enough money to open new stores. Seems like a shitty business practice to me, but what do I know? All I know is FLGS owners everywhere aren’t moving GW stuff as much as they should, because most people consider retail too expensive and get it online for cheaper. What if that suddenly went away? Who would benefit?

I’m really trying to figure out GW’s game plan here. It reminds me of something that happened in the mid-90’s, when I was working in a comic book store. Anyone familiar with the crash of the comics market in the 90’s knows there were plenty of bad marketing ideas that capitalized on collectors’-especially new collectors’-unrealistic expectations of the “guaranteed” value of comics increasing over time. Thus there were gimmicky covers, multiple covers of the same issue (buy them all to have a complete collection!), price hikes, gratuitous cameos of “hot” characters and crossover storylines intended to dive sales of shitty books. That, coupled with the decision of Marvel Comics to distribute their own stuff exclusively, meant that Joe Retailer no longer enjoyed the big wholesale discount he got from buying all his Marvel and everything else from a third-party distributor. DC soon followed suit and became exclusive to one distributor, so now Joe Retailer had to order from more places, which means he ordered less from each, which means he paid more overall. To make matters worse, eventually the collectors stopped buying into the crap, and a lot of comic shops went out of business when they couldn’t move the merchandise they ordered two months previously in anticipation of collector demand that was suddenly no longer there.

Shortly before the big crash, though, Marvel started advertising something called “Marvel Mart” in their comics, which was a way for the individual collector to order from Marvel directly. As I recall, it was packaged in a way that implied the comic shop was an unreliable way to get your comics on time and in good condition. Plus, if you ordered directly, you saved money, since it was cheaper than Joe Retailer. Well, comic store owners went ballistic, since it seemed that Marvel was trying to drive them out of business. If I remember correctly, Marvel relented and Marvel Mart went away, mainly because Marvel didn’t expect the backlash from retailers. After all, Marvel comics accounted for something like 70% of comic sales at the time. Take that away, and how can an owner survive? Most didn’t. The store I worked at survived for a time on Magic: the Gathering card sales. Then it went out of business, too.

Much as I love playing other games, for most people GW is synonymous with miniatures gaming, for better or worse.  I have to think that this will hit the wall at some point, but that wall just keeps getting pushed back.

I didn’t buy anything yesterday after all, although I am considering the older Empire Battalion and/or maybe the Tau, if I can find the older codex. I still have two WFB armies I’m working on (which means I haven’t made much progress). I just feel bad for this store owner and others like him, who are really struggling and fighting an uphill battle. To be fair, it’s not just GW’s fault; they just have the worst prices. Amazon sells X-Wing stuff for a lot less than retail, for example. It wasn’t too long ago I considered opening a store of my own. With the current state of the market, I’d be rolling some heavily-loaded dice if I did. I just think it’s sad that the little guy might not be around too much longer.

 

 

My Pile of Insanity

Like most miniatures enthusiasts, I have an ever-increasing mountain of unpainted lead and plastic that might one day get me my own episode of Hoarders.

Well, I will not go gentle into that good night, friends. I’m doing something about it. They say the first step is to admit you have a problem. Well, I submit to you my pile of insanity. Judge not lest ye be judged. I know some of you are worse.

First up: my desk. Thousands of miniatures have been painted and, in some cases, repainted here. Considering 90% of the painting I do nowadays is for the AD&D campaign I’m running, I have to be careful about what I show so as not to give my players any warning of what’s coming. In front of the paint rack is a group of miniatures, most of which are primed black. Some have been in this state for YEARS. The current project is a group of 10 Wargames Factory Zombie Vixens. Once these are done I have 20 more to paint. You may notice the backscratcher on the right. Highly recommended for those of us who spend hours painting hunched over.

This rack contains leftover bits on sprues,  Plano cases full of painted miniatures (don’t count), old boxed sets of Grenadier and Ral Partha miniatures (one day I’ll get around to repainting them), basing materials and supplies, etc. All the white card boxes are full of Heroclix miniatures, sorted by team. There are some hidden gems here, too. For example, I have about 40 Rogue Trader Beakie Space Marines, still on the sprue. I’m saving them for a rainy day.

Here is one side of my closet. The miniatures are on the second shelf, all unpainted: boxed sets of Wyrd, Confrontation, Alkemy and Privateer Press stuff; an unopened High Elf Battle Ready Battalion; an unopened WFB Battle of Skull Pass; several unopened regiments of High Elves, including a Cavalry Patrol; my Cawdor Necromunda Gang; some Warzone stuff I bought just because I liked it; a box of Defiance UAMC Marines; a box of Wargames Factory Shock Troopers (soon to be joined by 2 more boxes en route); a Reaper Dwarf Cannon; some Mantic Dwarfs, a box of Judge Dredd Gangers I bought at Gen Con for 5 bucks; and a Clan War Crab Regiment to go with the Clan War base set I haven’t painted. It’s over by the Space Hulk game that has all unpainted miniatures in it, too.

Below that are three shelves full of mostly unpainted scenery. Yes, that’s an original Warhammer Mighty Fortress. I’ve never used it, but that doesn’t mean I won’t. Three boxes of Pegasus Gothic buildings and ruins share the same shelf, along with a GW Chapel. (All those tackle boxes and miniatures cases have painted WFB and 40K armies in them, so they don’t count towards the pile of insanity.)

Here’s the other side of my closet, just for the hell of it. No miniatures here, just RPGs and card binders.

You could dive into this and never come up.

And lastly, here’s the box o’blisters. Way too much stuff to list here individually, but Reaper, Hasslefree, Pulp Figures, Armorcast, Warhammer FB, Privateer Press, Confrontation, Moonlight Miniatures, East Riding Miniatures, Wyrd, Killer B, Bronze Age, Rattrap and plenty of nameless and/or forgotten miniatures companies have at least one and most likely more than one blister in here.

If I was so inclined, I could count all the unpainted miniatures I have to paint. But I’m not so inclined.

After a recent barrage of orders, I decided I need to do something about this. I can’t keep buying stuff and not painting it. That’s craziness. So I’m doing what others in this hobby of ours have done. I’m making a plan.

Ten miniatures a week. If I can do ten miniatures a week and stop buying more than ten miniatures a week, I should make some headway, right?  Although the miniatures I paint are to some degree influenced by my needs for the AD&D campaign, that game is on a brief hiatus. So I can use the opportunity to blow through some lead. First step: start with the shit on my desk.

Over the last 2 weeks, I’ve painted 20 miniatures. I’ve bought about 50. So I’m starting over. Monday-Monday…10 miniatures, no new purchases.

Starting now.

Thinking of Opening a FLGS

There used to be a Friendly Local Game Store in my area up until about 10 years ago. Now the closest one is 40 miles away.

The owner was a gamer who decided it would be cool to own a store. For a long time there was a dedicated group of gamers that met there often to play and patronize the store. Warhammer and 40K were the only miniatures games played in the store, and it only stocked GW games and miniatures. Privateer Press was in in its infancy, so no one was playing that yet, and Flames of War was the new kid on the block. There was a lot of CCG gaming too, mostly Magic and Pokemon (For the kids. Mostly. Don’t ask…there were some creepy people there.)

It seemed to do well, but the place had its problems. Like the fact that the owner had no use for his regular customers once they had bought their armies and weren’t interested in buying more. And like the owner’s wife.  Whenever she was around she was a rather vocal and annoying presence in the store, and she loathed gaming and gamers and didn’t mind letting us all know it. Plus, she tried (unsuccessfully) to insert herself and her own choice of products into the workings of the store…for example, she famously insisted her husband carry the Thomas the Tank Engine line of wooden train sets for toddlers. (When the store closed, I’m pretty sure they still had every Thomas toy they ever stocked, and they had the whiole line. That stuff wasn’t cheap.) It was poor decisions like this (and like her habit of changing her toddler on the gaming tables) that ultimately led to people deciding not to play in the store as often. I don’t know why the owner eventually closed up shop, as he seemed to still be doing a decent business when he did (and he was a millionaire through inheritance, besides) but I suspect it was more his wife’s decision than his own. Time for him to “grow up” and all that.

So for about ten years there’s been nowhere central to play in my area. Most of the regulars splintered off into little groups, and I have no idea where they play now or even if they still do. All my friends who played miniatures games from that time are now scattered, and I’m pretty much left with a bunch of WFB and W40K armies and miniatures that never get used. So now I’m considering opening my own game store.

A bit about me: I am unmarried and have no children, so I don’t have a family to support. I own my own business and I would be able to continue operating it while running the store on the side. I am not rich by any means, but I am fortunate enough that I don’t have any problem paying my bills. In short, if I were to open a store, I would not have to rely on it to make a living. In fact, I would not have to draw a paycheck from it at all for as long as necessary.

From what I gather just from browsing the forums, this is probably a good thing; as no one seems to be getting rich owning a game store nowadays (if they ever did).

But my reasons for opening a game store are mostly selfish, and making money isn’t really one of them. Of course, no one goes into business looking to lose money, and if I was hemorrhaging cash every month I would probably close up shop fast. But I could live with a store doing a little better than breaking even, if all my goals were met.

That being said, here are my reasons:

  1. I would like to raise awareness of the hobby and promote smaller-press games and miniatures. I would like to introduce people to great game systems like Kings of War, Rattrap’s .45 Adventure, Hydra’s War Rocket, It Came from Beyond the Still, and the Two Hour Wargames stuff. Promoting these kinds of games would show people there’s an alternative to GW and that it’s possible to have a good time with miniatures that don’t have to cost an arm and a leg. (Of course, I would carry and promote GW stuff too, seeing how they’re the biggest company around and most people in the hobby play their games. Even though I don’t like their business model or their practices, ignoring them would ensure my store fails before it ever gets on its feet.)
  2. It would be nice to attract some fellow gamers. Currently I play RPGs with some close friends, but none of them are very big into miniatures games. When we get together, which is infrequently, it’s pretty much solely to play RPGs. I’ve tried to get them interested in some skirmish level games, something that doesn’t necessitate a huge layout of cash and/or time (like 40K), and I’ve had some modest success. But the simple truth is that if I want to play miniatures games (and I do), then the burden of buying and painting miniatures and buying, painting and constructing scenery lies with me and me alone. It would be nice to have other gamers who really love the hobby help out with that.
  3. I’d like to have a great place to play. Although I’m in the process of setting up a pretty cool gaming room in my home, at the end of the day, if my friends don’t come over, I don’t play. And I’m pretty selective about who I invite to my home. I’d rather play games elsewhere with people I don’t know all that well.

So it looks to me that my reasons for opening a game store can be summed up as follows: I want to open a game store as an extension of my hobby, so that I can play more games more often. Not exactly a great business model, right?

My strategy to stay in business would be to stock merchandise from games that people play already (like Warhammer, War Machine, Heroclix and Magic: the Gathering), and slowly bring in other stuff that people may not know about (like A Call to Arms: Star Fleet, War Rocket and All Things Zombie). I’d like to carry Reaper’s stuff, including their paints; and Mantic’s games in order to give people an alternative or supplement to GW’s stuff. I’d carry as much Fantasy Flight stuff as I could, and I’d promote everything with in-store demos, workshops, game nights and tournaments. I would want the store to always have something going on, whether it’s a board game, miniatures game, card game or rpg.

The obstacles to my success, as seen by me, include:

  1. The economy. Like it or not, our hobby is a luxury. No one needs to spend money on this stuff, and with the economy in the shitter, fewer people are able to.  The price hike on metal isn’t helping anyone, really; and even plastic and resin miniatures are pricey nowadays. And that’s not even considering the biggest pig at the trough, GW, whose annual price increases certainly don’t help retailers to sell more of their stuff, and actually puts them in the role of “GW apologist” far too often. But again, ignoring GW isn’t an option, and they’re not about to change, so you’re screwed either way, it seems.
  2. My competition isn’t the FLGS 40 miles away. It’s Amazon.com and Internet discounters. Who wants to pay $50 for the latest Pathfinder Core Ruleset from my store when they can get it on Amazon for $20? Not many people. Sure, supporting the little guy is a noble ideal, but the truth is a lot of us, myself included, shop at Wal-Mart even though we know it’s bad for the economy. Because $25 DVD players are tough to say no to, as are $5 DVDs. I know I won’t be able to match any Internet discount, and I know eBay is a good source for secondary market miniatures (especially GW stuff).  So just getting people to buy stuff from me as opposed to getting it  cheaper someplace else will be an ongoing challenge.
  3. All the financing for this business venture is probably coming from me. I don’t anticipate selling a bank on financing a business of this nature. Perhaps some of you can tell me if they encountered any problems with getting a business loan based on the fact that you’re opening a store that sells (often overpriced) toy soldiers. And how much money do you need to start things up?

I am now at the stage where I will be talking to business consultants about how best to proceed should I decide to take the plunge. I would greatly appreciate the input of brick and mortar game store owners and people in the business. Please offer your opinions and let me know what I haven’t considered, what I have been woefully naive about, etc. Feel free to comment on this blog or email me at angrypiper@angrypiper.com.