Transcript
If you’re like me, you have been lovingly cultivating, feeding and growing your own personal treasure trove of miniatures and terrain pieces like a venerable gold dragon presiding over its hoard. Some people desperately want us to feel bad and refer to this mass of plastic riches as our “pile of shame” and yet – you and I both know, this is really our Pile of Opportunity!
That’s right, we seek and acquire miniatures and models on a scale far beyond our mere earthly ability to paint and base such vast numbers of hobby-related products. Some say we may be afflicted. Others stand in awe of our overwhelming stock of plastic crack. And some relate to that invisible drive, nay, compulsion! to recreate our friendly local game store’s stockroom in our own home.
Greetings good humans, I’m Ignatius and you’re you and we’re all stuck on this rock together. Welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where we deal in the dreams and nightmares of our tabletop gaming hobby.
All right, let’s talk about these Piles of Opportunity. Or as I like to call it: The Art of Collecting Miniatures.
Now we all buy models for use in our games, we’ve got all kinds of excuses, you and me, excuses and mental gymnastics to game ourselves into buying more stuff. We succumb to advertising – which is just our brains losing battles against a highly sophisticated industry of behavioral scientists deploying artificial intelligence algorithms to exploit our base human responses – and we’re all addicted to those tasty little dopamine treats. Hey, we’re human! It is what it is.
So as far as the art of collecting miniatures goes, I’ve got three rules for myself.
The first rule of collecting miniatures is … we don’t talk about collecting miniatures. The second rule is … We Don’t Talk About Collecting Miniatures. [pause] You knew that was coming, don’t even front.
All right, jokes aside, I do have three rules of thumb that I consider intrinsic to artfully collecting miniatures.
Rule Number One – The Rule of Cool
Now, I gotta preface this one with the idea that I don’t play large war-games. I don’t build army-scale … armies? So if you play Age of Sigmar or Warhammer 40k or Kings of War, or other games where you need to field like acres of units, you’re stuck sometimes having to buy miniatures that may not fit the Rule of Cool according to your own aesthetic within the army you’re playing. But the Rule of Cool definitely applies and sometimes even drives my own purchase decisions when considering skirmish games and Dungeons and Dragons.
For me, the rule of cool means that I need to really, REALLY, like a miniature in order to drop some cash on it. I’ve gotten more stringent on myself as time passes with this personal internal metric. If I even think for a second that something about a miniature just doesn’t inspire me 100 percent, I pass on it. Usually. Every solid rule has exceptions and of course the rule of cool is no different.
Rule Number Two – Multi-usage
I gauge every miniature on whether or not I can use it in multiple games. My typical internal question is “can I use this model in D&D?” because most miniatures I look at, aside from the growing arena of 3D printable sculpts, are from skirmish or war-game types of studios. Games Workshop makes a ton of really badass miniatures – but if I don’t think I can use a wicked cool GW model in a D&D campaign or a skirmish game, I’m gonna pass on it. Now this is just for me, of course, you gotta do you, figure out what you want from your miniatures.
For example, 99% of the big Warhammer command units, these massive models with hero or commander characters on big ol’ mounts or whatever, I’m never gonna be able to use those in a game outside of Age of Sigmar or 40k. So I just don’t invest in those.
But again there are always exceptions. As another example, I picked up a GW Daughters of Khaine Morathi kit because it absolutely fits the Rule of Cool for me AND I can totally see putting her on a table as a “BBG” (big bad guy) in a D&D campaign. Can you imagine my players seeing Morathi appear in front of their little hero miniatures? I can hear the shock and awe already.
Rule Number Three – Organization
All right, we both know we’ve got miniatures and terrain pieces crammed in boxes, stashed under beds and in closets, buried in basement bunkers, maybe even squirreled away in attics, et cetera. We both know the feeling of surprised excitement when we open some box or other looking for something and stumble across a miniature or two or twenty that we completely and utterly forgot even existed. Not only does it exist, our dopamine hit says, but it exists IN OUR POSSESSION! That’s right, the Pile of Opportunity has excelled once again! And then we stuff it back in the box with the full and fully flawed confidence that we’ll be working on those miniatures as soon as next week!
What’s the saying? Oh right, “rinse and repeat”.
So organization. Hey, relax, I know you’re freaking out. You’re like, dude, Ignatius, I AM organized. Or, dude, Ignatius, I know where everything is. No, you don’t. But that’s okay – this is a painless method of organization. You don’t have to unearth your collection, you don’t have to put things in labelled boxes, you don’t have to organize a single physical item in your Pile of Opportunity. You can organize everything virtually. It’s a simple concept really, but it does require one extra set of actions at the time of purchase. Get a picture of that miniature you just bought – take a pic of it on your phone, swipe the box art jpeg from the website, whatever, just get a picture. And then rename that image file with something that relates to categories you want to view your collection with. Like I have here, I name all miniatures that are dwarfs with the start of the file name being Dwarf underscore. Or Monster underscore. Or Undead underscore. After the underscore, put whatever name I wanna refer to that mini as. And if you do this with every miniature you collect, you’ll have a very simple visual gallery of all the miniatures you own. After I paint a mini, I remove it from the Pile of Opportunity gallery.
For me, all these rules apply to terrain as well, just the same thing – especially Rule Number Two – Multi-usage. Most terrain can be used in any game, so it’s really not that big of a deal.
Now, of course, all these things are just suggestions. There is no one way to do any of this hobby stuff. Or even any of this life stuff. This is how I’m currently operating as far as collecting miniatures and terrain, and I just wanted to share in case my thoughts might inspire some ideas in other folks. If you have other methods for controlling and operating your Pile of Opportunity, drop ‘em down in the comments, I’m always looking to upgrade and widen my thoughts on things and I’m sure a lot of you out there feel the same.
Until next time, let them dice roll! See ya!