Managing the collection

In the latest issue of Miniature Wargames (448, already added to the index), there's a column by Tom Holden about wargamers not only being gamers and painters, but also hoarders.

I guess this is familiar to most longtime wargamers. We have a tendency of buying stuff, storing stuff, hoarding stuff ... without ever using most of it. I recently saw a remark by someone on a discussion forum "If wargamers would only buy what they would actually use and play with, the wargaming industry would be in deep trouble."

But anyway, this hobby of ours indeed has a tendency of growing out of control at regular intervals. I guess every individual wargamer need to find the right balance.

Personally, I have culled my collection at regular intervals, often triggered by a house move. Since 2008, we live in our current house, and I am lucky to have my own wargaming room. But, I try to keep the room nice and clean, without collecting junk in there. After all, the gaming room serves as a gaming room, not as a storage space, and having a nice room helps in making gaming enjoyable.

I also have my "work space" in the garage, where I do my painting, and where I keep my "junk". In that space, things grow out of control now and then, so I regularly try to toss out or sell things I longer need: boardgames, materials for modeling projects I will never finish, etc. It really helps to prioritize, and to be realistic about things. E.g.:

• Games? Is there any chance I will still play the game in the next 10 years or so? If the asnwer is no, I bring it to the local gaming shop.
• Books? Is there any chance I will read the book ever again? If no, I bring it to the local charity shop, or put in the local "book exchange closet" (boekenruilkastje in Dutch, don't know how to translate it, but it's a box where people can leave old books for free and take some other ones for free left there by other people).
• Miniatures? If the miniatures are unpainted, I don;t have a hard time getting rid of them. Exceptions are vintage fantasy miniatures - I'm a sucker for those!

I'm still not ready to make really rational choices based on life expectancy though. I'm 53 now. Suppose I live for another 25 years - that's 25*52 = 1300 weeks. If we would play a game per week, that means 1300 games. Perhaps that's a bit optimistic, so what about a game a month? That's 300 games. What figures and rules do I need for those 300 games ... ? Nah, we're not ready for that sort of analysis yet!

Vintage Fantasy Figures (3)

I managed to identify some more figures from the batch I acquired some time ago (see also previous blogposts).

Some more Citadel, but rather from the historical ranges than the fantasy ranges:

• 2 figures from the Medievals range: M& Infantry in Aketon with Hand Weapons
• Dar Ages range: DA21 Crossbowmen
• Dark Ages range: DA23 Staff Slinger
• Might be a DA78 figure, but not sure

Some more Ral Partha:

•  E311, Dwarf of the Anvil
• 3 copies of E111 Halfling Esquirw
• ... both from the Wizards, Warriors and Warlocks range

And finally  3 Ninja Warriors from Dixon Miniatures:

• SN1 Ninja throwing Shuriken Star
• SN1 Ninja shooting short bow
• SN3 Ninja charging with sword

Vintage Fantasy Figures (2)

Earlier I reported on a large amount of vintage scifi and fantasy figures I acquired (read here and here and here). I managed to identify some more miniatures. I apologize for the quality of the photographs (bad shadows and some perspective correction ...).

A first group are Chronicle figures, according to LostMinisWiki: "Chronicle Miniatures was owned by Nick Lund. In the mid-1980s it was bought by Citadel Miniatures. Nick Lund went to work at the Citadel Design Studio and Citadel continued to distribute the original Chronicle Miniatures under the Chronicle brand name but these were gradually replaced with new designs. When Nick Lund joined Grenadier Miniatures to form Grenadier Miniatures UK, the Chronicle brand ceased to exist."

It took me a while browsing through the collector sites (LostMinisWiki and CitadelCollectors) before I could find them, since the Chronicle range was not well known to me. Curiously, some figures came in multiples of 2,3 or 4 castings. Since I assume they all came from the same collector, it might be he/she bought mutiples, or perhaps they were sold as mutiples in blisters or bags?

From left to right, top to bottom:

• CF3 Wizard
• CF4.v2 Illusionist with wand
• CF8 Ranger with sword, shield and bow
• CF9v1 Elf-Fighter Wizard
• CF10 Thief Backstabbing
• CF12 Assassin
• CF14 Hireling carrying pack and lantern
• CF15 Female Cleric
• CF17 Ninja
• CF19 Half Orc Adventurer with long axe and shield
• CF26 Gnome Fighter/Illusionist
• CF27 Halfling Adventurer
• CF29 Female Barbarian
• CF30 - Female Ranger
• CF32 Left-Handed Fighter
• CM14 Ghoul
• CT10 Evil Cleric

Another group I managed to identify are individual figures from old Citadel and Ral Partha ranges, and a Minifig and Custom Cast miniature that escaped my attention before.

 From left to right, top to bottom:

• Citadel Dwarf Adventurers - Fighters (miniature 29 here)
• Citadel Fantasy Adventurers FA 30-1 Female Ranger (here)
• Citadel FTH Fantasy Tribe Hobgoblin (here)
• Citadel SAM12 Warrior Monk with Naginata (here), weapon missing.
• Ral Partha Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night 01-16 Beowulf Nordic Hero (here)
• Ral Partha 1200 AD - Spanish Catalan Archer 42-165 (http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=1200_A.D.#Spanish)
• Ral Partha Personalities and Things that go Bump in the Night 01-13 Assassin (here)
• Minifigs ORC6 Orc Hurling Spear (here) 
• Custom Cast - Fighter from 1057 The Companions (here) - obviously Boromir.

Cataloguing the Collection (12)

A very easy count in the next 3 drawers. All ACW figures, most of them Perry, a few Foundry IIRC.

The basing is not very important, since we are using these with our hex-based ACW house rules.

396 figures total, all painted by wargaming buddy Frank (who has given up on miniature wargaming some years ago, and sold of his entire collection).

Union and Conf Artillery and Cavalry, and Generals.

Confederate Infantry

Union Infantry

Cataloguing the Collection (11)

This time 2 drawers with assorted 25/28mm scifi miniatures.

Since these figures have mostly been used for skirmish games (our ongoing Antares campaign), it's a ragtag collection of all sorts of manufacturers, ranging from classic GW to cheap plastic toys. Some of them I bought in the nineties, but some others only very recently. I do remember the origin of most of them (or can recognize them), but some of the obscure ones are hard to trace several years or even a decade after acquiring them.

Cataloguing the collection (9)

I resumed my efforts of indexing my collection of miniatures. Next up in my figure drawers were the "Animals" and "Skaven".

Cataloguing the collection ... (8)

The next drawer to be photographed and indexed contained more fantasy monsters. Grand total is now at 1207 miniatures.

Some miniatures in this batch are some of my earliest conversions:

Plastic Atlantic 1/72 tigers, converted to Chaos Hounds for use in WFB.
Note the horns on the leftmost figure and the skaven head on the rightmost figure.

Proper chaos hounds miniatures. Two leftmost from Ral Partha, the others from Citadel.
left figure is a conversion, plastic turtle head.

Citadel chimaera body, and a Marauder spider's head.
Also served as a chaos hounds, but sometimes as a chaos spawn.

Cataloguing the collection ... (7)

Some minor additions this time ... total now at 1140. I estimate I am about two-thirds through the fantasy stuff, although my large army of Skaven still have to be entered.

Some highlights from this round are shown below.

The first photograph is a Slaanesh Champion of Chaos. I must have painted this figures during the early nineties.

The 2nd figure is one of my early conversions - and an attempt to make a heavily mutated Chaos champion. The body is that of a plastic Genestealer from the 1st edition Spacehulk box, Head is from a giant rat, arms and halberd from a skaven. Wings and long tail are from plastic toy animals.

Cataloguing the collection ... (6)

The next drawer contains a couple of large monsters, so not too many figures to add, but a large variety. The counter stands now at 1076.

Mostly oldhammer Citadel monsters and chaos figures, but also a few more recent acquisitions ... A sample is shown below.

Citadel, Oldhammer Slaanesh Daemonetters & Fiends

Ral Partha Displacer Beast

Citadel Culchan C29

Reaper Bones Spirit of the Forest & Earth Elemental

Cataloguing the collection ... (5)

This time, I opened a drawer with various monsters and other biggies. Current total in the up-to-date catalogue now totals 997 figures.

Some highlights from this batch:

Citadel Elementals

Citadel Fimir

Mithril Fangorn figures

Cataloguing the collection ... (4)

Another drawer of figures (mostly individual figures for adventuring) added to my database. 926 and counting ... This was a trip down memory lane, since many of these figures (especially the Citadel figuters and villagers) were painted 25 years ago when iw as just starting to collect my first figures.

A few highlights:

Citadel Armoured Knights

Metal Magic Sultan and Belly Dancers

Various Citadel Fighters & Villagers

Cataloguing the collection ... (3)

Another drawer of figures photographed and indexed - mostly Bretonnians and medieval types that have appeared earlier on this blog. Now at 826 figures.

A few highlights of the figures added:

Flags - all Citadel except 2nd from the right (Harlequin).

Plastic knights from the Battlemaster game box.

Plastic knights from WFB5th edition box.

Cataloguing the collection ... (2)

In a previous post, I mentioned that I had started cataloguing my collection of 25mm fantasy figures. During the past week, I entered the drawers with Undead and Lizardmen figures. So far, 716 figures have been photographed and entered in the database (take a look!)

Below are a few shots of figures I have entered during this latest batch.

Undead Standard bearers, both Citadel figures. Note the cardboard banners, something that I would do much better these days. Figures painted early to mid-nineties.

Regiment of lizardmen, all Harlequin figures.

Cataloguing the collection ...

Once your collection of wargaming figures passes a certain threshold, it becomes difficult to keep track of how many figures you have and of what type. Currently, I don't even know how many figures I have. Mostly, this does not matter, but it would be helpful to have some sort of system where I can quickly look up whether I have some suitable force for some scenario I am thinking up.

Hence, I started a little experiment in putting together an excel sheet (actually, it's a Google docs document), and seeing how far I can get with listing the figures in my collection. A few years ago, I also started doing this, but if you don't have the discipline to keep up with new additions, it quickly becomes useless.

Anyway, here's a screenshot of my efforts so far - in this case for my 25mm fantasy figures.

As you can see, there are various columns for each type/group of figures:

• Description: a description of the figure(s), useful for me to know what figure is listed. The grouping of figures is something that should make sense to me. E.g. Orc Warriors are all listed as 1 group, irrespective of weapons/shields etc. But I do make a difference between Citadel and Ral Partha Orcs. I realize other people might catalogue their figures in another way - after all this should be useful for me - not someone else ;-)
• Number: how many figures in the group.
• Origin: manufacturer (if known)
• Remarks: some useful remarks for me, e.g. where I bought the figure, how the figures are painted etc. Again, this is something that is useful for me to quickly realize what figure we are talking about.
• Catalogue Reference: I plan to list here any references to the catalogues of the manufacturer. Useful for some unusual or rare figures, or from lesser well-known manufacturers. Saves me time trying to relocate a specific figure again.
• Bloglink: if the figure(s) somehow featured in a blogpost on this very blog.
• Link to picture: the idea is that here links are provided to an image in my Google Photos collection, or a link to an image posted on the blog.

If you want to take a look yourself, follow this link.