too much stuff!

[Sane Max]

I just bought myself a 15mm army. Now, just for a change, rather than seeing a pack, thinking ‘ooh yes, some of those – click click…… clickclickclick… that should do it….’ I actually sat down, worked out exactly what I needed, what packs I would need to make the army I was aiming for and ordered those packs and nothing else.

My hope was I would end up without too much more stuff to add to my lead-pile, or end up giving away.

So, after doing this, I worked out how many figures would be in the actual army (350). I then added up how many I would actually be getting – 431!!!!!

What the? I mean, seriously, what THE?!!? And this was me being careful, disciplined, organised and retrained. I had never done this exercise with any of my other armies, and I wonder just how many figures I have ‘wasted’ over the years.

Jokes about ‘Lead Piles’ and ‘Unpainted figures protecting against Nuclear War’ are common in the hobby, but this puts that in perspective. Does everyone else here get about 25% more stuff then they were actually planning to, or do you think this is unusual?

[Geof Downton]

Seems unusual to me. 50-75% is far more likely…

One who puts on his armour should not boast like one who takes it off.
Ahab, King of Israel; 1 Kings 20:11

[Geof Downton]

‘Though when I think about it, that probably says more about my planning…

One who puts on his armour should not boast like one who takes it off.
Ahab, King of Israel; 1 Kings 20:11

[willz]

I think its a wargamer thing, I rarely plan my armies they just seem to happen.  However I do regret not buy certain figures in bulk as sometimes figure production is ceased of changed.  An example being Front Rank his first production of figures are a differnt size/scale to the ones he produces now, Front Rank figures are vey nice and I enjoy painting them but they don’t match with his older/first prodution.  Sadly I only bought several hundred rather than several thousand.

I don’t think you can buy to many figures, there is always flea-bay to get rid of unwanted lead or plastic.  Like I said I think its a wargame thing.

Willz.

 

[McKinstry]

The aquisition in excess of initial plan is certainly an issue with me. It is partially due to the number of figures in a pack and partially due to my simply miscalculating.  I also have a tendency to exacerbate the problem with a bad case of “oh shiny” once things are in process.

 

The tree of Life is self pruning.

[Rhoderic]

I often end up buying more than I need, but I’m not terribly concerned about it, and I don’t consider it an “issue”. I’ve accepted it as part of the hobby.

More to the point, I believe that ultimately it’s the path of least resistance. If I was more stringent with my purchases, I’d be contending with other, worse obstacles and downsides instead.

[Hafen von Schlockenberg]

I err in the other direction — my tendency to organize my units based on pack contents is a source of great hilarity among my friends.

[Alan Hamilton]

Hafen von Schlockenberg wrote:

I err in the other direction — my tendency to organize my units based on pack contents is a source of great hilarity among my friends.

Oddly enough that is what I did when I started – Airfix Infantry Combat group and Germans with strecher bearers and chaps carrying jerrycans converted into Bren gunners, PIATs, Light mortars, flamethrowers, mine detectors, demolition charges, Bangalore Torpedoes etc (I still have and use them).  The I went on to organising a planned basic force and gradually making unplanned or scenario driven additions until I have a vast “collection”.

Now I am back to the pack contents driven purchasing so units are much more varied in size.  That said the boxes of Dark Age plastics are configured to multiples of 4 and 8.  I decided this was  way too organised so I now buy 2 or 3 boxes at a time and mix them all up to make the warbands.

So I plan the initial forces to get enough to make 2 reasonably balanced forces so we can play and then add more as necessary or on an occasional whim.  I also look to see which models can be repurposed into new projects or be used in many different forces.

[Deleted User]

For me, planning & acquiring an army is amongst the best part of wargaming.

However, as I use 1/72 plastics, you can throw out extra figures without a pang, and the supplementary 20mm metals generally fit neatly into my plans.

Army size is an interesting topic.

I’ve noticed many of my armies fit into the 200+ figures a side. This gives a medium sized game, playable within 2-4 hours.

My larger armies (Napoleonics & SYW) have several hundreds of figures per army. This mirrors my interest & desire to periodically stage mega games.

 

donald

[Hafen von Schlockenberg]

The owner of the first shop I ever went to had divided bins on his shelves, into which he emptied Hinchliffe and Minifigs boxes. He even provided a pair of diagonals, so you could snip your required number of figures off the 15mm strips.

Those were the days. . .

[irishserb]

I tend to buy what I need to complete units, rather than impulse buying, and have had the luxury over the past 20 years or so, of being able to figs in smaller packs or singles for the most part.  The result is that I tend to have 5-10 percent of extras left over.  My last two sizable purchases yielded 397 figs, of which 388 will be used to fill out the units.  This is pretty typical.

 

 

[Northern Monkey]

Hafen von Schlockenberg wrote:

I err in the other direction — my tendency to organize my units based on pack contents is a source of great hilarity among my friends.

 

this is how I do it and it generally results in having very few spare, unnecessary minis, which keeps the mountain down and saves a few quid too

My attempt at a Blog: http://ablogofwar.blogspot.co.uk/

[MartinR]

I am generally pretty disciplined about working out what I need and buying just that. With metals there are sometimes a few figures left over, which have built up over the decades, but they are often reusable for other things. The worst offenders are large packs of plastic figures, which often have piles of stuff left over and I’m always loath to throw them out. This problem is largely a function of pack size.

"Mistakes in the initial deployment cannot be rectified" - Helmuth von Moltke

[Author]

Posts