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I know nothing about HeroClix, but when I bought a bunch of the World of Warcraft and Star Wars Minis prepaints years ago, I found that you could pick what you wanted from various eBay sellers pretty cheaply. I've seen D&D Minis sold the same way as I've occasionally picked up a few of those as well.

I'd presume HeroClix stuff is sold in the same ways also.

Yeah batman potential wasn't lost on me

You can shop individuals, I don't think every single figure is a available but a lot. Some as cheap as a quarter.

My kiddo likes blind bags and isn't well versed in super heroes so random figures aren't a heavy drawback. Gonna research to see if I should stick to the cheap ones or if there is any profit (more likely mitigation of cost than true profit) in buying the more expensive newer sets and selling any super/rare/chase figures (whatever a chase figure is). Those do seem to have higher costs on MM and people play the game locally so I may have a market.

Been waiting for a deal of the day I want to get to combine with a sampler platter of 'clix figures to see if she likes them, nothing yet (wallet is pleased).

Got more done this weekend than expected, nothing finished though. Primed 26 zombies and got all the flesh down. I've started working on the soldiers and hazmat/scientists and hope to get theclot done soonish. These and two more will put me at 200 for the year which is under even 2/3 of my goal but over half and between buying a house and this unique/wonderful/trying experience of the second baby... I'll say I did alright, probably more volume than any previous year.

Gonna do what I can but the calendar is running out for this year.

Oh hey, what do you guys think about the urban/tiger stripe camo pattern in the middle on my enforcers? Would be simple but could be neat?

Lots o' Zombies! 200 minis in a year is still well more than most get through, and you could probably bulk that up a fair bit if/when you get Zombicide or get through some Dungeon Saga stuff! Well done!

It might just be the time of year and the context, but at first glance at your tiger stripe camo, I thought “mummy?"

200 is very good going, many struggle to get 20 done in a year and I think the new baby and house move adds to the impressiveness. Still about a 5th of the year to go as well, I think that 250 is a possibility.

You're disappointed in 200, and you have a wife, kid and house? I have the first two but not the third, and I have finished... 10 minis this year I think, plus 20-30 that are still WIP, plus a couple of scratch-built terrain pieces .

I think 200 is an amazing effort. I remember building my home a few years back and working full time at the same time nearly broke me, no thought whatsoever of hobby and I had the option to just leave it a week or two. You have two dependents that cannot be left to their own devices. I can't even imagine. So 200 is a damn good effort. But you still have a month and a half, that's plenty of time to knock out another 50-70.....

Well remember guys, most of the stuff I've painted as been table top quality infantry and boardgame pieces, not a lot of terribly fancy models. Sure I only count the tentacle dragon as one, but there are a lot of boardgame models that got maybe 30-60 minutes of paint max in the mix too.

Thanks for all of the kind words For those of you nutters who keep saying I should get another 50+ done... remember I still gotta clear 28 more even be at 200 to start with

I do plan to hit dungeon saga pretty hard pretty fast but I'll get it fairly late in the year most likely.

Ah, you are just being humble. They may only be "board game" models. But you have cleaned, primed, painted and rebased them with a level of care and attention I find hard to summon even on the really spectacular models. Plus that tentacled dragon has got to be at least 28 models just for the conversion idea and execution. So much awesome.

Bah you are too kind archer, but thanks all the same. I'll file the kind words away for a gloomy day

@Grimdork, dude, most of us only paint to a tabletop standard. 200 is more than what I've painted in 5 years (excluding my Zombicide horde that was a painting splurge that got me in deep with the wife for how much time I was spending away from her and the kids). We don't paint to a commission level, nor do I expect myself too. I want it "good enough" to help my gameplay, not to win awards. You have a wife, two kids and a hard job, you e done awesome. Usually it's me who needs a reality check . Plus the basing and the 10,000,000 posts you've made in everyone else's threads to encourage them, you are a trooper that I've come to depend on here. Keep up the great work and don't make me come over there .

I know Theo, just feel bad for not trying a little harder to improve as a painter even a bit

I'm pleased with the amount though. Next year will be more of an effort to paint more than I buy while reducing the pile further.

I'd like to chime in and say that you have been one of my primary inspirations for painting this year. 200 is a fine total, and I've enjoyed ogling every one of them.

A horde of 200 zombies? Break out the HMGs!

Thanks alot Josh, I'm touched . Shas, 200 anything for the year. Probably just 30-50 of that will be zombies.

If I get a core set of zombicide and paint every other zombie I own, then maybe we're talking 200...

I have to agree with the general sentiment, GrimDork. In my mind, you are "the guy who gets things done." I haven't painted a miniature in years. I intend to, sure, and when the lunar cycle is right I go nuts with modifying miniatures. But your ability to take things from start to finish is inspiring. And frankly, so are your modifications. You and I buy a fair amount of the same Mantic stuff, and we have some ideas in common, but you carry a motherload more of those ideas out than I do. Looking over your work is always an inspiration - your workbench is always teeming with ideas.

Great idea for turning the DBX Sorak into a Swordspawn, by the way. I'd been thinking of trying to sandwich some kind of minigun between his outstretched arms, but blades are a much better idea.

I know this is ancient history at this point, but I liked what you did with your deadzone and battlesystems terrain. I have some battlesystems terrain in a box - like most of my collection, it will probably stay there for a good while before I get to it. But I'm curious as to how you found it. It certainly looks good in your photos. Did you find it worked well in practice? Strong enough? Stable enough on the table? Were you constantly knocking walls and rooms out of alignment as you moved pieces around, or was that not a problem? How much time does it take to throw together relative to Mantic's battlezones?

Should I impose any more on your time with these questions?

No. But thanks for putting up with them. If you do have time, I'd be interested to hear your response. Otherwise, use your time more wisely and paint some more miniatures.

+1 to all the praise. I love this thread because it's always moving, you're always chirpy and communicative, and you're able to finish an inspiring amount of stuff given the job and family.

It's a personal inspiration to me to get more done and enjoy myself more with the hobby, and also to be more positive and active on Dakka.

Keep it up dude!

Aww gee guys, thanks It's this level of support that keeps me at dakka and keeps me working on models, so I thank you all for it and will be glad if it continues

@Vermonter I kind of liked the idea of the sword spawn but didn't have any rebs painted and so didn't want to order yet more minis for them (kind of out of character for me but my 'get all the things' attitude was by its nature a limited thing, and that's good for both my shelf space and bank account..), so I talked myself into the rebs team when I saw it. Lots of cool aliens overall.

Battle systems is great. I think fantasy nailed what the scifi promised a little better, but scifi is still fine. It has more prep time than I was anticipating (but 'none' was probably unrealistic) but if you slow yourself down and take the time to prep all of your pieces, it goes together pretty easily. I think building layouts with battle systems is a bit faster than doing something in battlezones, though I tend to expect most of my BZ stuff to be permanent whereas I never do for the BS layouts. Putting together a layout, especially with some height is kind of time intensive, I used more than half of my stuff (mostly extra nicknacks and walls I didn't have enough clips for that got left out) for that 2x2' enclosed layout and it probably took anywhere between 1-4 hours to do it. I can't really remember, and I think I did it in 10-30 minute bits at a time which is why the bad estimate. But you have to work slowly and methodically, and if you do something out of order or change something.. you will have to backtrack to reassign different clips and such.

The stuff is pretty solid on the table, the scatter bits will go all over the place because they're scatter and the floor is card so no friction really. On the rubber mats they sit a little better. The walls and clipped in bits don't move much.

As a caveat to the cleaning stage for BS stuff, fantasy is supposed to be a lot looser on tolerances which means less cutting, and the new post apoc is supposed to be at least as good if not better (plus no ramps so quicker/easier construction and more bits to use). I think I'm gonna like my post apoc stuff the best.

On strength... I think it's definitely gonna be easier to ruin BS because its card, but it's not so black and white. BS will typically survive drops better though it doesn't run into too many drops really imo, if you manage to slide a whole 2x2' layout off of a table onto the floor you can expect some harsh bends and sheering, though you'd have to have a weakass table or some kind of horribly circumstance for that to happen. BZ's obviously can hold up better because thick hard plastic doesn't break easily, even if it's cold and drops far... but what will happen if you drop a building is your clips will pop out and a fair few of them will probably sheer and break off. This is especially annoying if you have it painted and hot-glued together. I'm starting to reconsider my stance on hotglue and may switch to supergluing the clips in, it will look cleaner on the inside and the hot glue has a tendency to separate over time. Maybe I have cheap hot glue?

I think BS and BZ have similar construction times though with BZ i'm usually making something permanent and never with BS, even if I leave a BS structure together for months I rarely consider making permanent alterations to the card (I did one time to make a clean room work out of the pieces I have).

Anyway enough prattling on about that, hopefully I managed to answer your questions?


@Da Boss, thanks

I love chattering on folks, even if it's not particularly pertinent feel free to talk as much as you like here, old hands and newcomers alike.



So in other news.... I kind of sort of started researching my old personal poison WoW. Current expansion sounds neat and the one after that next summer sounds even cooler. I went ahead and spent $15 to try it out again, so far so good. Burned up my amazon points I was saving for Zombicide to get a fancy new Razer Tartarus gamepad to replace my dead old nostromo n52 (just can't get them for reasonable rates anymore) and dug out my old gaming mouse.

I suspect that this will eat into painting time a little bit, but there are loads of times that I've got a little time but not really in the mood to paint.

Let me know if you guys see a large drop off in my productivity and host an intervention if necessary

 GrimDork wrote:
I know Theo, just feel bad for not trying a little harder to improve as a painter even a bit

I'm pleased with the amount though. Next year will be more of an effort to paint more than I buy while reducing the pile further.

The more you paint, the more you improve. It really is a question of practice. I would love to be able to paint at 1/4 of the rate you achieve with the quality you achieve.

Yeah, sometimes i wish I could get myself to slow down and try out some new things... but most of the time I'm pretty happy with what I do.

Not WoW! *starts prepping for intervention*

I think you've done great with your painting this year. Your blog is one of my favorites to come and see what you are up to.

Nothing wrong at all with being happy with what you do. Personally I feel I have reached a painting plateua, but it is good enough for what I want so is not really an issue.

@Vermonter: why the lack of painting Sir?

Oh snap if WoW is on the horizon we will maybe see you next season......

Heh. I'll admit that I've put in more hours these first few days back than what would be usual... but I got rained out for almost two whole days and re-subbed over the weekend while the kids were especially good. Some of that time would have been good for painting but as often as I have to stop what I'm doing to play with the baby to keep her happy, it's pretty hard to paint.

I'll find time, it's typically more fulfilling than playing WoW.

Have to echo the others here and say 200 minis is a pretty big achievement! And the quality isn't that bad. Don't sell yourself short! They look great in the batreps and the cinematic pics

Keep it up! Certainly makes me want to paint more. Though I could never keep up with you

Going to gather them all up for an year end shot?

I struggle with my one-a-week goal, so you guys who bang out hundreds of high quality minis amaze me. Plus you do all sorts of terrain, etc. Keep it up!

While I’ve never played WoW, I do understand computer game distractions. Whatever keeps you happy. Can be hard with a little one though. Once I had to quickly AFK to get The Boy out of his crib when he woke up early from a nap, move his bouncy chair next to the computer, and finish out the raid. Nobody died, and the flashy lights kept him entertained. If you keep a small workspace next to your computer, you can do things like clean mold lines during load screens a/o crafting, to maximize your hobby time.

Yeah but you put a lot more effort in per min ckig, really excellent figures at which time gawk.

If I can track everything down, Nev, then sure. Probably can and will.

At the moment my hobby space and computer occupy the same office and I've almost always done just as you say, hobby during queues and breaks and what not. Let game idle while i take a 10-30 minute TV/paint break and so on.

Working on getting another tablet/laptop so I can bring the WoW upstairs while I hangout with the kids. Well not just wow, dakka, other lower end games, and so on.

Good progress this year Grim. Thats gone now you are platying WOW again though.

Dooooooooomed, doooomed!