Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Saw a recent topic about a guy's ex destroying all his models and the drama that ensued, but it got me thinking. Say you were to lose all your models in some freak incident. The shelf they are on collapses or the government takes them to use in their experiments to bring miniatures to life and fight wars with them---whatever the case is, would it be so horrible?

I love my models. I enjoy painting and battling with them. But if they were to suddenly all be gone, I can't help thinking it would bring a tremendous sense of freedom. I could start a new army with no other ties. I could even go to another game system if I wanted. Not saying I want this in any way, but a tiny piece of me is like, "Wow, I could just start from scratch, no investment keeping me with any army, or game company or anything."

Anyone else feel the same?

surpisingly when I think of it yea i would like that

So this is the same question minus the gf angle?

I would be...irked, but then move on. After you've had your house burned to the ground with no insurance you start to realize how fragile possessions are, and you stop getting too attached to things.

It would suck, but if all your stuff is now gone, you know what that means? TIME TO REPLACE IT WITH MORE STUFF YAY-YEAH.

Well, after losing most of mine, I just started over. Managed to rescue my Captain since he was the only one in the flat at the time, and my LotD survived since they were in a box in her mum's. Starting over wasn't so bad, I was gutted about some of my OOP models that were lost, but I did get a chance to remake one of my Tactical squads, just a little better.

I'm assuming Insurance doesn't cover this particular freak event?

I'd be kinda gutted I lost my models, but I doubt I'd get homicidal/suicidal about it. Probably just re-install DOW tbh.

I guess it would go along the line of how long you’ve had them. I’m new so if my collection went up in smoke for instance I would be incredible depressed as I haven’t felt that I have gotten my mileage out of them for the amount of money I have spent. Now lets say I’ve now had this army for a few years and I’ve played them every possible way then I wouldn’t be as heart broken and would look forward to possible starting a new army or even getting the same army but now knowing what to buy so I don’t over spend on getting a little of everything as I did when one starts the hobby trying to figure out their own play style.

Im military, whenever i change bases theres a government shipping that handles my stuff free of charge so i dont have to pay to ship several hundred pounds of crap.

The cost comes in on them being nice to my things.

Furniture, beds, clothes, random electronics (with proper padding, i keep the boxes/foam for everything), and misc stuff that isnt fragile is fine. If it can break easily, i worry.

Even if i got refunded for my entire army's cost if the trunk i transport them in (Gorilla trunk = footlocker with wheels) disappeared, i would be freaking out because that is a LOT of work i just lost. I wouldnt have the motivation to rebuild my army even negating the cost factor.
Fortunately we are allowed to pack our own stuff, its just not under warranty if something inside breaks. Im packing the holy hell out of my miniatures before they get their hands on them lol. That trunk holds them pretty well - i'll just beef it up.

Vineheart01 wrote:
Im military, whenever i change bases theres a government shipping that handles my stuff free of charge so i dont have to pay to ship several hundred pounds of crap.

The cost comes in on them being nice to my things.

Furniture, beds, clothes, random electronics (with proper padding, i keep the boxes/foam for everything), and misc stuff that isnt fragile is fine. If it can break easily, i worry.

Even if i got refunded for my entire army's cost if the trunk i transport them in (Gorilla trunk = footlocker with wheels) disappeared, i would be freaking out because that is a LOT of work i just lost. I wouldnt have the motivation to rebuild my army even negating the cost factor.
Fortunately we are allowed to pack our own stuff, its just not under warranty if something inside breaks. Im packing the holy hell out of my miniatures before they get their hands on them lol. That trunk holds them pretty well - i'll just beef it up.

What branch you in? I am army and we don't get to pack our own stuff if they are shipping it. I have already decided my army is being transported in my POV when I PCS next time. Ancient family grandfather clock? Sure lets risk it. Tiny plastic models? No thanks, I'll bring that myself.

Lose thousands of dollars worth of models?

Nah. Nah.

I would not be happy about that.

That wouldn't be freeing at all. If I had to classify myself I am a modeller and painter over a gamer, and destruction of my models would be a terrifying and depressing destruction of a hobby I have put hundreds of hours and no small amount of pride into for the last nearly twenty years of my life. My Ultramarines army has models from every different Tactical Squad re-model since Rogue Trader. Hell, I am turning 31, and I can look up at a shelf that has models on it I painted in 8th grade (Necromunda FTW)!

I work very hard for my money, and can't easily just replace all that. It just "ain't that simple".

In other terms, spend twenty years doing renovations and additions to a house you love, and then have it maliciously burnt down. I'll bet it wouldn't be freeing.

Yeah, I look at my models all the time, (the finished ones, anyway) and think "damn I'm awesome." The loss of my models wouldn't be just the loss of a burdensome part of the hobby, it would be a loss of everything I've put into the hobby so far, and would really, really upset me. I would probably never touch another mini again, so deep would be my heartache.

While on Active duty one of my friends came over to where I had my entire historicals collection stored (about 3k painted 15mm Napoleonics) to liberate them and play a few games with them. Never saw any of them again. No, not happy. R'tard even made off with my collection of unpainted, and by then OOP figs.

 dracpanzer wrote:
While on Active duty one of my friends came over to where I had my entire historicals collection stored (about 3k painted 15mm Napoleonics) to liberate them and play a few games with them. Never saw any of them again. No, not happy. R'tard even made off with my collection of unpainted, and by then OOP figs.

If you knew the guy, how weren't you able to get them back later?

Anyway, as for me I have few finished models. As in, fully painted. But even still, it would suck to lose them, as I've already spent considerable time cutting and filing them, and even painting on the ones that have had some paint put on them already. I'm the slowest person ever in doing those things, and it takes me several hours to finish just a single miniature (such as this, so far my only painted Ork miniature that is the result of probably an hour of assembling and cleaning up and - I kid you not - 10 hours of painting). But the total level of suck would of course depend on whether or not I'd get my money back. If I didn't, I'd go berserk, after all I've spent around 2300 euros already. A freak accident or such should be covered by insurance. Kind of like the loudspeaker I managed to knock over and break while moving to my current apartment. Someone stealing them - not that anyone's likely to steal the stuff I have at home, as I don't get visitors outside the family anyway (and in the case of someone actually breaking in insurance SHOULD cover it), but I do store some of them at the LGS because I travel on foot and it's a pain to carry them around all the time. There hasn't been any real cases of theft there that I've heard of though, and a lot of players store their figs there.

Lots of painstaking conversions and hard to find models. I would not be happy.

All would burn.

ALL.

BURN.

Dannyevilguy wrote:

Vineheart01 wrote:
Im military, whenever i change bases theres a government shipping that handles my stuff free of charge so i dont have to pay to ship several hundred pounds of crap.

The cost comes in on them being nice to my things.

Furniture, beds, clothes, random electronics (with proper padding, i keep the boxes/foam for everything), and misc stuff that isnt fragile is fine. If it can break easily, i worry.

Even if i got refunded for my entire army's cost if the trunk i transport them in (Gorilla trunk = footlocker with wheels) disappeared, i would be freaking out because that is a LOT of work i just lost. I wouldnt have the motivation to rebuild my army even negating the cost factor.
Fortunately we are allowed to pack our own stuff, its just not under warranty if something inside breaks. Im packing the holy hell out of my miniatures before they get their hands on them lol. That trunk holds them pretty well - i'll just beef it up.

What branch you in? I am army and we don't get to pack our own stuff if they are shipping it. I have already decided my army is being transported in my POV when I PCS next time. Ancient family grandfather clock? Sure lets risk it. Tiny plastic models? No thanks, I'll bring that myself.

Im airforce. We are allowed to prepack if we want, we just void the warranty if its damaged by shipping. We are (to my knowledge) still covered if it disappears all together, but if it breaks then its on us not the company.
I would transport them myself but im in Korea atm (as the tag on my post clearly shows...unless i use a work computer lol) and hauling a gorilla trunk around as luggage would be annoying. My stuff forces land shipment cuz of the size on my tv and computers (theyre larger than 17inches diagonally....fml seriously?) so i have to wait a month for it to get around. Im not waiting a month with 3 changes of clothes lol.
My trunk is pretty sturdy though, probably dont need to do anything but reinforce the walls that tend to bend a little.

Earlier today, I was actually typing a reply to this thread in favor of it feeling good to get a fresh start in the hobby, but my head got all muddled when I was typing it.

Since then, I've gotten some clarity.

I was initially going to post an example from World of Warcraft, where I sold off my main character's gear late in an expansion, crafted a set of replacement gear, and went and got back most of the gear I'd sold, for precisely the reason of liking the feeling I get when I get nice things.

But it's a bad example. I didn't delete my infrastructure of characters to start over. I started again from a point well into the game.

Another example I was going to use was my thoughts about deleting a gakload of my high-level characters, because every time I go to roll up a new character, I end up going, "Why? I already have this, or something close to this."

That was also a bad example.

They are both bad examples because I was, and still am, unwilling to delete my high-level characters, because of the months of effort and time that went into those characters. (seriously, my former main character has nearly 100 days of time played on her alone.)

It would be crushing to lose the hundreds if not thousands of hours of effort, to say nothing of the thousands of dollars that I've put into my 40k armies. Only when I think about it in the narrow context of a project I've been wanting to do, but haven't done because I already have models I could use, does it become appealing.

But that's not the only reason those were bad examples.

Remember how I sold off my main character's gear in World of Warcraft, just to work on getting it back again? As fun as it was for the few weeks it took to get it all back, I ended up exactly where I'd been before; with so much good stuff that there was nothing left to get that I wanted badly enough to go and get.

That's exactly what would happen. While it's all well and good to think, "Hey, this time around, maybe I'll do things right, plan things out in advance and whatnot," that's not what would happen with me. I'd end up bloating my collection again after I got enough stuff to play a decent game with. I'd end up just where I am now. Only instead of a few weeks at 50 cents a day (the cost of a World of Warcraft subscription), it's years of time and thousands of dollars spent.

So I'm going to change my initial answer. Yes, it would be so bad. At least for me.

I'm not sure about this.... On the one hand there is the pain of losing your carefully prepared and loving painted miniatures, on the other hand it might be nice to wipe the slate clean and start all over again. It would be like coming into the war games hobby afresh.....hmmmm

For me though its not about the money, I guess I could just go out with a credit card and replace much that was lost, what would make me weep is the lost time and effort that was involved in collecting and painting the mini's in the first place. I've lost and sold entire armies over the many, many years that i've been involved with War Gaming, and there is a large part of me that wishes i'd kept them.

So, on reflection, no. Just no......

 Dannyevilguy wrote:
Saw a recent topic about a guy's ex destroying all his models and the drama that ensued, but it got me thinking. Say you were to lose all your models in some freak incident. The shelf they are on collapses or the government takes them to use in their experiments to bring miniatures to life and fight wars with them---whatever the case is, would it be so horrible?

I love my models. I enjoy painting and battling with them. But if they were to suddenly all be gone, I can't help thinking it would bring a tremendous sense of freedom. I could start a new army with no other ties. I could even go to another game system if I wanted. Not saying I want this in any way, but a tiny piece of me is like, "Wow, I could just start from scratch, no investment keeping me with any army, or game company or anything."

Anyone else feel the same?

depends upon the situation, if we were compensated for the loss then yes i would be happpy, as i could start from scratch- and make a far better job of it instead of the mess i've got myself into

for 40k

do 3 armies probably Dark Eldar, marines of some sort and IG...

start some historicals- probably flames of war/Bolt Action

do some warmachine stuff


thats me sorted, of course thing are never simple in real life

I "quit" when I went to uni in 2005, I sold literally everything hobby related I owned on eBay. 2 years later I pick it up again. The heartache from selling so many OOP and painted armies and miniatures was pretty bad, but I've had great fun building up my collection again from scratch and finding new copies of my old tuff on eBay.

Sure it's cost me a lot (only did it as I know have a good job), more than I made selling it initially, but I've enjoyed it immensely so I can see where you're coming from!

If insurance paid up for several thousand painted models - yeah I would not be as annoyed but I would still not be in any way happy about it. Especially since I am rubbish at painting and pay other people to do that so double my costs.........

You know your existing models have no bearing on what you do in the future with armies, game systems, companies, etc. You can change any of those things without losing your models. It's not that hard.

You can start over without losing anything. Just put everything you have in a moving box (or how ever many you'd need), stash it away and turn a new page.

Edit: And to answer your question. Yes, it would be fething bad to lose it all.

Id be gutted, its not the money though, its the effort.

I wouldn't give a gak if £500 worth of unpainted models went up, but I would be pretty gutted if my well painted army, especially my magnetized LSS (see gallery) that I spent ages on went up in flames.

I suppose I wouldn't even be bothered if I gave them to a kid, or sold them to a gamer, because I like the idea of people playing with something I put alot of effort into, but their total destruction would be sad.

If my models were assembled out of the box and not painted/only primed, and the insurance would cover the damage I wouldn't care that much.

But since there is no model in my collection I didn't spend lots of time on (seachring for bits, heavily converting and painting to a high standard)... well... you could say that I would be more than slightly upset.

Even so far that I would ditch the hobby alltogether.

 mattyrm wrote:
Id be gutted, its not the money though, its the effort.

I wouldn't give a gak if £500 worth of unpainted models went up, but I would be pretty gutted if my well painted army, especially my magnetized LSS (see gallery) that I spent ages on went up in flames.

I suppose I wouldn't even be bothered if I gave them to a kid, or sold them to a gamer, because I like the idea of people playing with something I put alot of effort into, but their total destruction would be sad.

This.

I am having this "Crisis of consious" with my Old School D and D stuff after a recent purchase I had of all of the old school stuff over at Drivethrurpg.com.

In 1994/1995, I gave my younger cousins the bulk of a VERY substancial collection of not just the D and D, but various other games to make room for my expanding 40K obsession/ collecting.

NOW, I want to release myself... on/of 40K with a passion and want my D and D stuff back.

Miniatures games are kinda strange, and in some aspects, it serves me right, but it doesn't help with the missing hole feeling in your gut when you want the stuff back.

Sure it all went to a great place, ( future gamers), but it doesn't help that I'm rebuying stuff that I already had and gave away to someone else.

Funny about it though, the painting and effort is the thing.

Models come and go, but when its gone, you rotate it through, your sometimes caught with that "Whatever happened to..." thing.

When you put the time and the effort into something as fiesably unpriceable as art efforts, its more of a harsher price to yourself then anything monitarily.

10+ hours on an army, then gone and gone for good? No, that is a bad deal.



Thing about it is, that "Stuff" can really tie one down. it's part of the "HHHobby" that they arn't really pushing to hard.

And in the way in which GW squats units/ armies? every year it is getting a littl bit easier to bear the loss of GW's stuff for more interesting and different minis.

Well see that all depends on 1 major thing: are my models insured?

If it was destruction of property, you damn well better believe I'd be making a civil suit for the damages.

Now if it were some fire/theft or what not that was covered by home owners insurance, it wouldn't be the end of the world as it would mean getting to buy all new models and correct the things that perhaps I'd have preferred to do differently, or swap units out with those that I found to be more useful.

The retail value of my 2 WFB armies is only $1500 anyway, so it wouldn't be a huge financial loss, and I enjoy painting so new models would keep me quite busy.


Alternately, were this to happen I think I might possible shift out of gaming and strictly into painting single pieces which is certainly softer on my wallet.

I'd be more saddened by the loss of my ponies or ball jointed dolls

 redbristles wrote:
I "quit" when I went to uni in 2005, I sold literally everything hobby related I owned on eBay. 2 years later I pick it up again. The heartache from selling so many OOP and painted armies and miniatures was pretty bad

I quit gaming and gave a friend of mine all my stuff when I moved in with my wife and we were about to have a kid. The worst of it was my Battletech stuff. Many, many now OOP mechs that would cost a fortune to replace. Conversions that I would have no idea how to redo without seeing my original. A few years later I got back into gaming...

Just last month, I had a client ship me his 2500pt SoB army, along with an extra 40 some SoB models for payment. I managed to pick up a mangled box that had an entire side torn open, 90% of the figures gone, and someone else's present stuffed inside. That was quite a loss :<

Oh, and that doesn't even include the whole nightmare of trying to deal with USPS, them telling me I'm SOL, and the "professional" call by my local postmaster whose first words were "It ain't our fault, it's yours."

Let's start with facts: if you don't have any unpainted models you die.

Even if ou could survive such a thing (you can't btw) then you will have to buy tons of models just so you can have the multiple small incompete armies required to qualify as a TT wargamer.

I can see no benefit in hoping any of these scenarios comes to pass, this was lies madness!