58. Lessons learned

After the short but boring and not really necessary summary from last week (thanks for Your patience), let’s get to another, much more interesting anniversary theme: What would I do otherwise, if I had to start over?

Not that I would really regret anything (except maybe the first point…), but I wrote a small list about:

• No Reaper Bones: until lately, Reaper was my go-to manufacturer for bigger miniatures. Its cheap, most designs look really good and quality is (most of the times, but not always) good enough. But that material… The problem is not with the soft details and the frustrating deburring, but how it reacts to paint. Its more or less well known, that their plastic material doesn’t like the solvents from spray cans. And I used spray primers on them, so its my fault. Well, maybe, but:
• I used Army Painter spray cans, which should be a bit more compatible than others.
• I primed them very carefully, from bigger distance, so that most of the solvents can evaporate before reaching the surface.
• I brush primed them with Vallejo primer before. (Why You ask? Because this primer seems to be a bit hydrophobic, what I don’t like. And I think, it should protect the material against the spray-solvents)
• I varnished them with spray varnish at the end, but it shouldn’t be a problem, because there are some layers of paint between the plastic and the solvent vapor.
• I have two miniatures, which were not even near any spray, and still…

All of them got sticky with time. And I hate it! I put a lot of time and effort in them, and they are just f*cked up. No more plastic Reaper Bones (Bones Black seems to be better, but it may turn out bad with a little bit more time…! This is the only point, what I really regret.

• Mass battle games in small scale: The only mass battle game we play is Oathmark, and we started it in 28mm scale, because of more reasons:
• Northstars line of Oathmark plastic boxed sets is very good and affordable.
• 28mm is the most popular scale, and it has the widest selection.
• I wanted multi propose miniatures to use them in more rulesets (for example Frostgrave and Oathmark), and to use the same terrain pieces in every possible game.

But mass battle games need a lot of miniatures. And painting a lot of miniatures is simple very time consuming (especially with my painting speed…). Smaller scales need much less time (and storage space!). Yes, the selection is smaller, but with 3D printing getting more and more accessible, that should be just a small problem. If I had to start over, I would choose something like 15-10mm (20mm=1/72 is not small enough, and 6mm is already microscopic for me). But, maybe I would have collected bigger armies, so at the end I wouldn’t have win anything… Or just go with cards only?

• More MDF terrain: I love making terrain (more than painting), but again, time… MDF sets can look quite good, are very quick to build and are pretty cheap. I would use more of them. Why don’t do I, You ask, because I can still continue with them? Because I think the most important on a good looking table is not the quality of the single terrain pieces, but the style homogeneity. In my opinion, a table with very different looking pieces looks like that everything was just thrown on it, I simply don’t like the look.  And as I have already scratch build pieces, Im afraid, that they would be just too different… But Im still getting slowly into MDF buildings, however not for every use.

• Concentrate more on less: I just have too many different systems, and I have no time to build, paint and play them all… It would have been better to start slowly… But this hobby has no brakes. And which of my systems would I cancel? None of them! They are all good in their own way, I want them all! But it would have been better to give a system more time to settle. Having that many parallel running projects is fun (because I can choose to continue what I ever feel like) but at the same time pretty frustrating (constant feeling of nothing ever will be ready). Starting slower would have been a better choice…

But with all the bad things, Im very happy that I started to realize my old dreams! Its never too late for a happy childhood!