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Seems to be the topic of the moment, what with the massive theft of the war of the Roses Normans not a few days ago. It got me thinking - how many of us know of - or emperor forbid - have personally experienced model theft from themselves, their friends or their gaming club?

I'll start with that the organiser of the slow grow 40k league at our FLGS had his entire Cadian army stolen from his car back in August. Lots of really cool modeling and a decent paint job too. Brazenly stolen from his car while it was unlocked for literally 5 mins to transport some items.

This in turn was around 2500pts that he would have taken to a big two day tournament in September but had to pull out. He nearly lost the will to play 40k ever but he bout the dark Imperium boxed set and is now a devotee to nurgle, which helped him keep his interest in 40k.

However, my tale has a happy ending! 3 weeks after his army was stolen, his girlfriend was waiting by the cities bus depot when she noticed two stuffed carrier bags by her stop. Now, she knows of the theft and to give her credit takes interest in his hobby and sees something sticking out of one of them she recognised. It was his models. Literally every model he had was in the two bags and it was sheer blind luck his girlfriend saw them first! And needless to say he was overjoyed but after that he decided to sell them as he was always reminded of loosing them. The only tings that weren't recovered was the codex, data cards and cases - all in all around £80 lost instead of £600+!

Anyone else have any tales to tell?

I don't know of any thefts but I know a couple of guys who fell asleep on trains home and left their cases on the train when they got off.

There was a player at my FLGS who would sometimes take trophies with him. If he won, he would grab a model or two off the table to take home. Usually it was just troops, but sometimes it was a Leman Russ.

This guy was a TFG and it was happening during 6th edition. He would argue about the rules more than he rolled dice, brought 160 Cultists and 6 Heldrakes to every game, and his movement phases usually took 45 minutes. He went undefeated for about a year, in part because people would often run out of time playing him and had to concede. No one really liked him but he had this little cult of people who admired his knowledge of the rules. It got to the point they were dressing like one another.

While everyone suspected he was stealing, the way we caught him was by grabbing a couple trays of his Cultists while he was in the bathroom. He noticed, we offered to help look and got him to open the duffel bag he used for transport. There was a Terminator and a Heavy Weapons Team from a game he just played nestled between the trays. We gave him his models back and told him he needed to do the same.

There was a box waiting the next morning filled with a random assortment of minis. Everything was chipped, he made very ugly conversions out of some of it. The worst part was he repainted some of the models (badly) with a heavy, glossy enamel paint. It was impossible to remove. There was also stuff that clearly did not come from the FLGS. There were also boxed kits in there and a lot of sprues where he removed a couple pieces and left the rest intact. The box also had notebooks, cassette tapes, paint brushes, buttons, headscarves, little bottles full of sand, napkins with restaurant logos, cheap jewelry, and other junk stuffed inside.

We didn't know he was stealing from the store itself and you could tell he was disturbed looking through the box. He never came back and moved away not too long after.

While this didn't affect me personally, many of the people who had their models stolen were sympathetic. Everyone assumed he was autistic, we learned from a cop he was a 'known quantity' who was schizophrenic and had impulse control problems. He'd received probation before judgement a couple times on the condition he continued with treatment and no one really wanted to make his life worse.

So everyone let it go and that was it. Never saw him again.

I had my Khorne 40k Army stolen out of my car back in 2005. Most of the basic infantry were the 2nd edition mono-pose guys, but I had a TON of stuff, all painted. about 4,500 points in that case. I think they stole it because it was a tackle box.


3 days later I go for a walk. I find a small kid (maybe 6 years old) playing "army man" with my models in a front yard. Quick call to the cops to report my finding of these missing items.

The cops wanted to know how I knew they were mine. The closest retailer is 90 miles away, most items were OOP, high-standard custom painting (with matching pictures I had), plus the tackle box is exactly the same as all the other tackle boxes I used for my armies.

The mother tried to cover for her teenage son that did the theft (said she bought them at Toys "R" Us) , but it was seriously obvious she was lying.

All in all, I lost a number of bits, a handful of infantry, and a couple mangled dudes. Cops agreed to not press charges as long as restitution was paid. However, the mother threw an absolute fit when she learned how much 40k figures go for.

I actually felt bad for the 6-year old though. I was taking away his new toys. It wasn't his fault his brother's a thief and his mom's trash.

This is a rather mild one. Our local game store held a painting contest and had around 30 entries, the front part of the store was a bookstore, gaming products were at the back portion of the store and they had a separate dedicated gaming room. Since they wanted all the gamers to look over the models and vote they put everything in a small display case in the gaming room. There was a small $1 lock on the case which was primarily for show since anybody with a screw driver or even a car key could have pried it open. During store events we'd all take a lunch break for pizza at the shop next door as it was included as part of the event, when we came back we discovered that the case had been thrown on the floor in order to smash it open, only the three best entries were taken and then the rest had been stomped on repeatedly and smashed so none of the entries survived intact.

The store staff had gone with us to lunch so whoever smashed everything hid either in a closet or the washroom and then left out the backdoor once the smash and destroy was done. We were all pretty sure who it was since he was the only person absent after lunch but proving it wasn't possible. He did get banned from the store as he already had a couple of other warnings for incidents with anger issues. He was 12 so it wasn't likely he would have had any serious repercussions even if the cops had been called. He wisely stayed away from the store for good as he knew that there were a good 30 people on the look out for him. I've always been suspicious of shifty red headed kids with coke bottle glasses ever since.

However, the mother threw an absolute fit when she learned how much 40k figures go for.

"But they're just fething little man dollies!"

One that a mate of has probably never forgiven us for...

Years back we had a Blood Bowl league at our house and he frequently left his old GW case there with several well painted, now OOP teams in it. The case one day went missing, turns out one of us forgot to lock the door and someone snuck in and stole the case, a jar of coffee and a set of the keys to the house (We got the locks changed immediately).
The thief obviously thought it was a laptop or something, but realised quickly that this was not the case as a friend of a friend found one of the BB minis on the main road sometime later, though we never found the rest of the contents of the case.

We had a guy go into a FLGS and steal 2 new IK. The store owner posted on local social media. Had some local players reach out to the guys when he posted up to sell them locally. They arranged a meeting, but also called the cops to meet there as well. They explained the story, unfortunately cops kept the IK. But that was a win for the good guys.

- Stolen amazon package of rocks/pebbles/fish tank plants for a terrain table from Amazon at the same place in the city. never found them. Thief must have been livid at the 10lb box of shale and fake plants.

- Stolen international package from china with a Carnifex in it. Located said carnifex outside new condominium ripped open and strewn about. This is now my Old One Eye. No damage/he looks great!

- I painted up a number of models for a local GW - when the store closed... the majority of the glass case models including my own disappeared. RIP old metal World Eaters/Khorne and the Calgar I entered into Golden Daemon as a yung blood

My whole Skaven army. From my store, whilst I was doing management training. Considering I’d failed that course and wound up redundant, that was a kick in the balls I could’ve done without.

Never had the heart to replace it.

I miss my discount.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
My whole Skaven army. From my store, whilst I was doing management training. Considering I’d failed that course and wound up redundant, that was a kick in the balls I could’ve done without.

Never had the heart to replace it.

I miss my discount.

OUCH.

So for X-Wing I had painted some lovely green Rebel ships that I was always really proud of.

One night, after a particularly long set of games on top of a long day of work I was packing up my stuff and noticed there was an empty space in my case under the X-Wings, and only three of them were accounted for.

I asked the others if they had seen it out and about and nobody seemed to recall, and to their credit they stayed a good twenty minutes to help me look for it. Eventually, dejected, I spoke to the shop owner and gave him a heads up to let me know if someone tries to turn it in or sell it, 'green x-wing, yellow detail on the canopy, can't miss it' I said.

Why would anyone take a painted ship? Why would anyone take an X-Wing of all things?? Felt really bummed out over it, I think the others could tell, stewed over it on the way home.

And sure enough... I find an unpainted Jek Porkins X-Wing sitting at my paint station at home. I hadn't actually started painting it, but had gotten all excited and cut out a space for it in my case preemptively. Nobody had stolen it, I was just so exhausted I saw the space in my case and my imagination ran away with it.

Told the shop owner next day, quite embarrassed. He thought it was funny as hell.

 Captain Joystick wrote:

Why would anyone take a painted ship? Why would anyone take an X-Wing of all things?? Felt really bummed out over it, I think the others could tell, stewed over it on the way home.

While nothing was stolen this time reason could be simply that somebody wanted free x-wing. Paint is easy to get rid off so there's no real danger of being identified either

A while back on the Warseer forums (I think) there was a story of a guy that had a case stolen. Thief re-primed the army and tried to sell it to a gaming store. It totally stuck out though because some of the models and bits used where custom sculpted and cast that existed no where else on the planet.

I've always found that theft or destruction of customized items to be a far more serious offence than that of factory-made items.

 cuda1179 wrote:
A while back on the Warseer forums (I think) there was a story of a guy that had a case stolen. Thief re-primed the army and tried to sell it to a gaming store. It totally stuck out though because some of the models and bits used where custom sculpted and cast that existed no where else on the planet.

I've always found that theft or destruction of customized items to be a far more serious offence than that of factory-made items.

Yeah customised models are lot riskier to steal. Paint job easy to remove. Conversions much harder so there's still model left. Good reason to convert

Thanksgiving night, about 3 years ago. Someone broke into my car (parked on my driveway) by shattering the passenger side window and stole about 2,500 points of Eldar from it. I was heading out to play at a friend’s the next morning.

To add insult to injury, one year later - also Thanksgiving night - someone broke into it the same way, but that time all they stole was a gym bag of dirty clothing.

Someone left our front door unlocked the other morning and the post sack with all my Ebay parcels ready for the post office was taken from just inside the door. Not only do I have missing stuff but I had to message about 30+ people to tell them it had been taken......