Where I hide my Naughty Space Pixies …

‘Conan!  What is best in life?’

‘To crush your enemies; see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.’

‘Conan! That’s great but you need to get your chores done first…’

Ah yes, there are things we all enjoy, but unfortunately we have to get the boring stuff out of the way first.  For the last few weeks, I have been in the library of Frugal Towers; researching, writing and getting rather stressed as I put the finishing touches to an academic project I’ve been working on.  However, the work has now been sent off and I’m free to paint, game, generally geek out and then write about it in a mildly amusing, but ultimately badly planned way.

Old School Raider with an old school finger attached

 The main news of the past few weeks is that I have finally completed my Dark Eldar.  I bought my Dark Eldar (or as I like to call them ‘Naughty Space Pixies’) a couple of years ago and left the box gathering dust on a shelf.  When the new Naughty Space Pixies Codex was released last year, I got them out of the box, assembled them, painted a couple and then put them back on the shelf to gather dust.  Eventually I had to paint them all so went for a quick scheme of basecoat, wash and highlight, with minimal detail.  So now I have approximately 1000pts of NSPs on the shelf gathering dust. 

The (semi) interesting fact about these NSPs is my storage technique. I ordered some 25mm self adhesive magnetic discs from Hasslefree Miniatures, at £10 for 100 though smaller packs are available.  Like a lot of gamers out there I’ve experimented with a few different methods of storing my Pixies, Gnomes and Galactic Knights, but I think that these magnets are the way ahead.  The discs only take a second to apply, and once in place are pretty robust.

Once the figures are stickered, it’s simply a case of finding a suitable receptacle to keep them in.  I’ve gone for a metal tool box that I got from a carboot sale for a couple of pounds, but for another unit I’ve used a boxfile with self adhesive steel paper in it.

Even the smell of ginger hair cannot dislodge the magnets.

For me, one of the main benefits of magnetic bases is the ease that the figures can be put away, no messing about shoving the figures into foam holes, just stand them up in the box and they hold themselves in place, winner!

As I rarely travel too far for gaming I think these are a good (Frugal) option for storage.  Anyone who regularly flies or takes trains to tournaments may want to consider something more robust, but then if you’re the sort of gamer who flies to tournaments then you’re probably not the type to worry too much about Frugal Gaming.

So, I’m back, I’ve completed an army and I’ve adopted a new way of storing figures, what more could you possibly ask for?

If you're interested in magnets, you may like to check out my Blood Bowl article.

Von's Frugal Year: Month The Twelfth

Something a bit special for the end of the year; now you too can own your own talking Von head, complete with strange pauses and shoddy sound quality.  Listen to it dispense the starry wisdom ramble on for seven minutes about how to fail at Frugalism, or just leave it paused on your screen to offend the neighbours and frighten the children.



If I've set the jump up properly, you'll find a transcript beyond it.

End of Frugal Year Review

This is traditionally the time of year when magazine editors and TV executives have run out of good ideas and simply rely on re-hashing their previous 12 months of output in the form of 'Best of...' shows or the equally pointless 'Review of the Year' feature.  It's a sickening indictment of our modern culture that we can only celebrate the opportunities that a new year bestows upon us by regurgitating the nonsense that has gone before.  Disgusting.

On a completely unrelated topic, here's some of my favourite frugal blog posts from the last year...

• How to Build a Ruined Wall - My only large terrain project this year and I'm very happy with the results!
• Building a Goblin Rock Lobber - Some much needed war machine support to my Goblin Army for Warhammer,
• The best ways to shop and sell on ebay,
• A look a head at the Ultramarines movie and a look back at previous 40k movies.

In addition, we had some excellent advice by Pete on creating the perfect games night, a really good article by Arabian Knight on use of proxy models and an interesting piece by Von (on army selection and points versus pounds cost).  I’d be interested to know what the best and worst model points versus pennies ratio is in the game.  If anyone has any thoughts let me know.  Von also provided some advice to all frugal gamers.

I hope you've all had a Frugal year and are staring to plan the next one already.  Overall my year has been very successful; I've spent less and gamed more than in 2009 and I've got even more followers on the blog.  Many thanks to Arabian Knight, Pete and Von for all their work over the past year and I hope they'll carry on their frugal mission in the new year.

My posts will return in the January with a new look blog and more Frugal goodness.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all!

Frugal Dave

Congratulations go to Steve who won the draw for a copy of 'Wargaming on a Budget' by Iain Dickie, the book is now in the post.  For those of you who didn't win, make sure you pick up a copy at Pen and Sword books, let them know that you saw the review here!

Frugal Review of the Year - Part 2

Hello again and welcome to the second installment of my two review of my Year of Frugal Gaming. In part one I looked at my favourite blog posts of the year and now I’m looking back over my favourite gaming experiences of the year:

Best Gaming of the Year
This is a bit of a close one, I had two highlights for the year, the first was the Necromunda campaign I’ve been running with Matt. This had some fantastic moments; people being eaten by dogs, gang members being shot off the top of towers, and some totally useless zombies that wouldn’t do what I wanted them to. Though the best part has been to watch our gangs grow in skill and pick up larger and more bizarre weapons as the campaign has progressed. My other favourite piece of gaming was one of the many games of Space Hulk I played when I went to visit Jackson Pope. It was a fantastically tense game which pretty much came down to the last roll of the dice, which I managed to win. In your face Pope!

Best New Game
Well it’s an old one but it’s new to me, and it’s Warhammer Fantasy Battle. I bought the Battle for Skull Pass boxset when my son James came to visit over the summer holidays and we both loved. I then introduced Matt to the game and he loved it too! I have since managed to obtain a large box of Goblins and a Giant, so I’m looking forward to getting those on the gaming table next year.

Meeting People
One of the benefits of running this blog has been the people that I have met. By selling off old miniatures on ebay I met Matt who was a fellow Necromunda player and also met his friend Kenny, who plays 40k. I also met fellow Plymouth based Blogger Von (make sure you check out his work here), and I’ve also spoken to a lot of people at shows who’ve been following my Year of Frugal Gaming. Speaking of Followers, I’d like to say a big ‘thank you’ to everyone who has added themselves as a follower of this blog. It’s always good to know that people are out there reading!

So how did I do?
When I started my Year of Frugal Gaming I set three goals, but did I achieve them?
Goal 1 - Spend less. This is the goal that I certainly achieved! I bought very few new games and far fewer miniatures than last year. I did spend money traveling to shows and buying raw materials for projects, but more of that later.

Goal 2- Game more. I wasn’t sure how I’d done on this this year. My normal games night had been a bit disrupted throughout the year so I thought I’d have played fewer games than in 2008. The figures from my profile on BoardGameGeek speak for themselves, the top list is this year's games, the bottom list is last year's:




I was quite surprised that I'd played more games this year, but many of those listed are party games, which is mainly down to me taking games along to parties and forcing them upon people! This has proved to be a good approach and it also helps people to understand that not are gamers are complete geeks; Its something that we can all enjoy!

Goal 3 - Make money from gaming. Well, this has been the trickiest and, to be fair, wasn’t one that I put a lot of effort into. I made terrain, sold items through ebay and also sold off some old items at the Bring and Buy stalls of local wargaming shows. Selling off old items is an easy and satisfying way to make money, though it’s only a short term measure! Making terrain was pretty hard work and took a lot of time, though I really enjoyed it and all my items sold (eventually) I managed to over the cost of all my materials and transport to the show, and even had enough profit left to put towards an air compressor (which I’d been after for a while). I discovered that it’s not easy to make money from gaming and those people out there who run gaming related companies have my utmost respect.

The Final Statistics
So how many people have visited and read these pages? The official statistics for the year are 39,535 page views over the past 12 months, which works out at over 750 views per week! I’m really impressed with this as a single guy who only posts weekly, so thanks to everyone who’s clicked on these pages in the past year.

Overall I’ve had great fun running the blog, the fact that I have had to write has helped me find the confidence and get out to try new gaming related experiences and actually commit to finishing those projects and clearing out those shelves and cupboards.
So overall, I would say that the best piece of advice I can give to any other gamers who would like to live the frugal lifestyle is to start blogging! I’ve had a great year and I can highly recommend it to anyone. All the best for the new year.

Dave

Frugal Review of the Year - Part 1

Hello everyone,

The end of the year is nearly upon us, so my Year of Frugal Gaming is now drawing to an end. In my last couple of posts I'll be looking back over the past twelve months and picking out some of my highlights from the past year. In part two, I'll talk about my favourite games and gaming related experiences of the past year, but today I'll look back at my favourite blog posts...

Necromunda Terrain
This post proved to be remarkably popular and remains one of the most viewed on the site, probably due to it being towards the top of the list when 'Necromunda Terrain' is typed into various search engines.
I was really pleased with the final results and it's certainly a project I'm going to expand on over the next year. After the original post I added a further post on making a Chemical Plant, which also got some great feedback.

Making Wire Trees
Making wire trees is one of those modelling subjects where you can find a load of different methods and advice on the net. I decided to have a go myself and come up with a quick, easy and effective method. I think I achieved my aims and it's proved to be quite a popular article.

Blood Bowl pitch
Probably the most popular of all my posts, this was the single piece that I had the most fun building and the one that I'm proudest of.It's also the biggest single piece I made and I had to pretty much make it up as I went along. However, I think the results speak for themselves!

Making Ladders
As I love playing Necromunda, I decided to make some ladders to allow my gang members to travel from one level to another.
I came up with two methods, for both metal and wooden effect ladders. The wooden ladders were inspired by an article from Wargames Illustrated, and the metal ladders I made up myself. Both worked well and have been well used on the gaming table!

Open letter to Games workshop
This final artticle hasn't had the enduring appeal of the 'How To' articles, but proved massively popular when first posted and provoked a bit of debate over on The Miniatures Page. It also provoked the odd giggle as well!

So, overall I think the most popular post have been those where I gave a little bit of guidance on making things! They were also the ones I enjoyed making most, so I'm glad they proved so popular! You can find loads more of these type of articles by clicking on the 'How to' tag on the right hand side of the page.

I'll be posting part two of my review in the next couple of days, Merry Christmas!

End of Year review on it's way!

Hello all! My computer has been repaired and I'm back on the net! This coming week, I'll be looking back over my Frugal Year and picking some of my high points and favourite bits. Check back soon!

Dave