Showing posts with label bad hair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bad hair. Show all posts

Monday, 18 May 2009

A Day of Frugal Trading

Hello all, and if this is the first time you've visited my blog, Welcome.

I always appreciate new readers and I've hopefully gained a few more after handing out dozens of flyers this weekend. The reason for all this, as you probably know, is my visit to the Lincombe Barn Wargamers Table Top Sale yesterday. One of the aspects of my Year of Frugal Gaming was to see if I could raise money with my hobby. Not huge amounts, but enough so that my gaming, painting and modeling came close to paying for itself and my trip to Lincombe Barn was my first try at running a small stall to sell gaming items. I'd decided to try and sell some of my hand made terrain, as it's something that I've always enjoyed doing and I think that it's an area of the hobby that I'm reasonably good at. The past few weeks have been spent cutting, gluing and painting to get plenty of pieces ready, and yesterday my girlfriend and I loaded up the car and set off to Bristol.
To cut a long story short, I didn't sell as much as I'd hoped, but I had a great day. I made enough to cover my travel and entrance costs and had enough left over for a couple of cups of coffee!

Everyone I spoke to seemed really friendly and a few had even been following the blog, which was great, I spoke to a few other traders, including a house husband who makes trees whilst the kids are asleep! I think he was doing about as much trade as I was, but he seemed remarkably philosophical about the whole business. If you're out there Mystery Tree Man, drop me a line and I'll 'big-up' your products. I also spoke to Mike from the Plymouth Association of Wargamers (those guys get everywhere..) who was also selling some pieces of terrain and some minis. He was really promoting the club, so I really can't excuse not getting along there in the next couple of weeks...

So, as mentioned above, at the end of the day I had a few more pieces left than I'd thought, which means that I'll be selling them off on ebay (with some remarkably cheap postage), so I've added a link to the auctions on the right hand side of the page (over there somewhere --->). The items up for sale will be changing over the next few days, so keep checking back.

This made a bit of a mess of the sidebar so I've had a of a tidy up, adding an FAQ which gives my contact details and the information on the ongoing 'Frugal Challenge' to game and figure manufacturers. Click the link and have a look.

Remember that as well as any comments you may have on the content of the site, I'm always happy to receive comment on the layout and style of the blog as well. Though if you want me to change my background to the generic brown wargamer map style, often used in blogs, then I'm sorry, but I'm sticking with my neons!

See you next week, happy gaming!

Saturday, 14 February 2009

Post Apocalyptic fun!

It's been a busy couple of weeks so I’ll be posting again in a couple of days with my review of the Plymouth Association of Wargamers Show - PAW 2009.

This post is my normal update and ramblings, with a look at how I've created and converted some Post Apocalyptic miniatures for Necromunda. There’s quite a lot to get into in this week’s update in my frugal gaming mission. The Post Office build that I covered in the last two posts seemed quite popular, so thanks for all your feedback on that, it’s much appreciated. A big thanks must also go to Ambrose at Nameless Kingdom Tabletop Gaming who has posted a review of this very blog, thanks Ambrose!

As well as this review, I reached the giddy heights of being mention on the Meeples and Miniatures Podcast . The show was one of the end of year reviews that Neil produced, and I only got round to listening to it last week. He was interviewing Henry Hyde of Battlegames Magazine, the interview got onto the subject of the economic downturn (as we call it here in the UK) and they mentioned a post that has been running on The Miniatures Page , then Henry mentions, ‘there’s also that guy that’s doing A Year of Frugal Gaming’ Wow! That’s me! I’m ‘That guy”! Fame at last! Seriously though, I’m a huge M&M fan, so I felt really honoured to have the blog mentioned. Cheers Guys!

In the last couple of weeks I’ve continued played Necromunda with Matt (a couple of storming victories for my Scavvy gang!), continued work on my Warlock house for Mordheim and even managed to convert and paint some figures. All this and I attended the Plymouth Association of Wargames Annual Show (PAW2009) which I’ll post about in a couple of days.

Converting Miniatures
One of my main frugal gaming goals for the year was to work through all my unpainted figures to clear the backlog. This has (sort of) gone to plan so far as I’ve been using any old figure I can find as part of my Scavvy gang.

I was inspired by the excellent work done by Torben at his Wasted Roads blog and how he’d taken Mordheim/Warhammer Fantasy figures and converted them to be post apocalyptic scavengers. I took his ideas and came up with two simple ideas to make my own post apocalyptic warriors:

  • Take a sci-fi figure and give him a fantasy weapon or,
  • Take a fantasy figure and give him a sci-fi weapon

This is pretty simple but still effective. I took one of my Kallistra sci-fi figures and gave it a blunderbuss from the Warhammer Empire Militia box set. I also took an Empire Militia figure and gave him a funky greenstuff mohawk and a bolt pistol. I added bags and packs from my bits box to both to enhance the scavenger look. I’m pretty happy with how they’ve come out and I’d recommend you give it a go.

I went looking for some good quality figures at the PAW show, but couldn’t find any I fancied. As I did quite well out of the bring and buy at the show, I invested some of my cash in an Empire Flagellant box set, which will give me plenty of weapon-wielding loonies for my Scavvy gang. I’ve also found an unpainted metal Celt Warrior hiding in the back of my figures box, so he’s currently being mutated to have a crab claw. Lucky chaps. I'll put up some photos in future posts.

Until then, let me know what you think, and post any tips you have for cool conversions.