Friday 22 January 2010

Pete the Frugalista

Hey, Frugal Gamers! I think I had best introduce myself before the year disappears any further. My name is (don’t all shout at once) Pete, and I’ve been following Dave’s blog since I read about his fantastic tips for Dettol as a paint remover. This changed my life – primarily, it changed the way I smelled and the expression on my wife’s face on an evening, as I spent yet more time with a toothbrush and a tub of antiseptic Dark Elves.

Since you can’t stop me (moo ha ha), I’ll explain a bit of my history. I started gaming many years ago, when Games Workshop had a sale. I bought a lot of Dark Elves, and lost many games with them against a more experienced friend. Since then, I have played a range of GW games (Necromunda, Gorkamorka, Warhammer 40K, Mordheim) and lost a truly hideous number of games. I’ve also branched out into other game genres – card games, board games, roleplay games, and I’ll give anything a try if it becomes available.

As a frugal gamer, I have my own plans for fulfilling the Two Commandments of Dave:

Spend Less

I’ve already not done too well at this one, to be honest. Already this year, I’ve bid on a number of items on eBay to try and round out my collection. As far as new models go, I am resolved not to buy anything unless it is in a sale – Maelstrom Games is my store of choice for GW models, and they hold sales throughout the year with up to 17% off. This is a boon for anyone looking to save money on their models!

I feel that my losses here will be slightly mitigated by selling old games. I have a huge collection of Star Trek CCG cards which have been waiting for many years to come out of storage. I didn’t expect their eventual return to be a cataloguing exercise, prior to selling them. I also plan to go through old models and sell off anything that’s never going to get painted.

Play More

Games are no good sitting in cupboards. To this end, I am going to try and hold a Games Night at least every six weeks – that should be eight nights by the end of the year. My wife and I have held a few over the last couple of years, but we have a young son now and painful experience last year has taught us that we need to find a babysitter to make a Games Night work well. I will, however, be including any babysitting costs as a gaming cost this year, just to keep myself on focus!

Pete’s Year Ahead

One of the resolutions I have set myself is to paint all my Dark Elf figures. This resolution should help me stop buying too much more for them, because if I buy more... then I have to paint more. This doesn’t make sense (but then, when have gamers ever really made sense?) I plan to bring you any painting tips I learn along the way – nothing to save money, but at the very least it’ll make me feel guilty if I fall behind!

Alongside my Games Night resolution, I’ll use the opportunity to review games and give advice on how to run your own Games Nights.

Finally, writing this introduction has made me realise that I have quite a few things that I want to run forward with and talk more about that could easily become their own essays. I’ll be sure to write about those when I get the chance to.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Seems like a good list of goals to me.

I'd like to thank you for linking back to your old Dettol post, as I wasn't reading blogs back then, so it would've slipped by me completely if you hadn't reposted. Pray tell, did that plastic figure come out completely clean after just one day in the Dettol bath?

Witteridderludo said...

welcome to the frugal gaming community, may your goasl be met and your posts entertainting!

looking forward to read more from you

Von said...

Hey, Pete! Welcome to the Frugal Mission!

Good luck with going forward. The "paint before you buy" thing does work, up to a point, although if you play games with exciting new releases it becomes a bit tricky (damn you Privateer Press! damn you!).

Introductions have that sort of effect on people, too, so I shouldn't worry overmuch about it.

Looking forward to the board game reviews in particular. I think they count as Frugal - I know I'm paranoid about buying board games unless I know people like them and I tend to go nuts on review-reading and never buy anything. I really should learn to do that with miniatures...

pete the pagan-gerbil said...

@Warhammer 39,999:
That old post was actually Dave's, who started this blog - my own experiment with a plastic miniature came out perfectly clean! I'm due to do some more soon, I'll be writing up more about what I discover (like how long is too long...)

@Witteridderludo:
Thank you! Look forward to writing more!

@Von:
I'm finding it hard already - I won a couple of nice eBay auctions recently, but I'm going to try and justify those as 'future modelling projects' as they're not ready-to-game models. But that feels like cheating!

Dave said...

Hiya Pete and welcome to A Year of Frugal Gaming! I'm looking forward to your Reviews and updates.

All the best

Dave