Scorched earth? Send in the druids...

Another month, another radical shift of priorities.

A combination of real-life serious-business type stuff has necessitated a long, hard look at What I Own and What It's For, and most importantly, Whether I'm Using It.  This consideration has brought to light certain essential truths about what I play games with, and why.  The short version is that I've recently come to realise that getting back into WFB was a grave error, and so my Warriors of Chaos have been shown the door.

My Skorne have also gone - while I enjoyed playing them, I did not enjoy painting them, for reasons which have been explored previously. M'learned colleague Neal was good enough to take them off my hands, and since he enjoys uniform colourschemes and resilient, stand-up-and-fight forces more than me, I think he'll enjoy them.

The Chaos Warriors, who cost me £60 in three lots, have been sold off for £93 in two, thanks to the local Tale of X Gamers and an apparent high demand for cheap Beastmen on eBay (must be something to do with them being best in units of forty-odd and costing £15 for ten).  I did also part with a GW figure case in the process, but I've had years of loyal service out of it and see this as an opportunity to liberate myself from buying and cutting so much custom foam for the cases, and look into cheaper storage solutions for models not in the current away game force.  Admittedly some of that has gone on long-considered new Cryx toys, and a little more was eaten by postage and packing costs, but I've still turned a net £30 profit on the exchange.

The Skorne, meanwhile, were straight swapped, along with the case foam they live in and a pile of my old No Quarters - while an excellent mag, and improving all the time, it doesn't have infinite rereadability, and lugging them up and down the country every time I move house was becoming tiresome - for a Circle Orboros army, mint and untouched in its boxes.


Circle still fulfil my original goal of having a Hordes faction, they give me an alternative to Cryx that still plays fast and tricksy, the way I like, and they offer a much broader variety of 'looks' than the Skorne do, with great big hairy barbarians and armoured, uniformed paramilitaries and robed druids and big stone stompy things all sort of co-existing together and encouraging me to paint by offering me variety.  Oh, and they'll fit in with my terrain collection a lot better than the Skorne did, and allow me to use my neglected Nyss Hunters across two game systems, since they'll hire out to both my main factions.


As far as getting into a new force goes, acquiring a whole collection of stuff like this means that the limited-toolbox-at-the-start, which I talked about last time, is less of a factor, especially if the collection happens to include some known expensive/good stuff and the job-lot nature absorbs the cost of buying that on its own.  Its being unassembled and unpainted, from somebody else's hobby dead pile, where it's lain neglected for a good two and a half years, is a bonus, and trading it out for something they'll get more enjoyment out of than you will is even better.

So, monthly review: I've gotten rid of some belongings which were frustrating me, replaced them with stuff I'm more interested in and excited about, and I'm £30 up on the trading process, which covers March's bus-fare-club-entry-and-chip-run budget very nicely.

This time last year was when it all started to go wrong, of course, but this time I appear to be consolidating rather than expanding, and that's a good thing.  Almost all my hobbying has been self-financing, and I have a lot to be going along with, so the temptation to spend more money is offset by the 'in progress' pile.  So far, Von's Second Frugal Year is a proper bobby-dazzler.