[unofficial weekender] There she blows!

[sundancer 42985xp 2]

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First time visitor to OTT? Then please introduce yourself in the New Member Thread and look around in the Project System. Then come back and read on…

Introduce yourselves (New member thread)

https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/

Read all of this before you start as it will save any trouble later.

First thing you must do is make your “pledge”. It can be anything gaming related, big or small, and you don’t even have to finish it. No, in here, happiness is the road. Have fun doing whatever it is, but it is not a race. Accompany your work with pictures or we might think you are do something sinister and just using us for cover.

You are also presented with a few questions. It is to get the conversation started. Try and keep your answers ‘conversational’, no text speak, and certainly no “basically”. This is how we all get to know each other better. While you are here feel free to tell us a story, show a picture, joke, tales of love or woe, or just add your own little bit. This is the whole point…in here it is just us.

If you have never taken part before we may bark and bite, but we also like a cuddle! It is all done in the best possible taste and it is character building. feel free to give as good as you get.

A few other things to note: NO RELIGION & NO POLITICS! Glasgow pub rules are in effect. If you need to make a better point then it is fine, but don’t take the piss. And always keep it civil.

Play plenty of music to go with your work. Loud and through proper speakers. Write us a playlist of things we might not have heard before.

Now, after all of that there is only one ‘real’ rule in here and it cannot be broken: NO DICKS! (Exceptions may be made for little fighting men with little plastic/resin/metal wieners)

And don’t forget the highlights of the weekend: The Weekender on Friday and XLBS on Sunday. And the little show that is the unofficial Hobby Hangout over at twitch.tv

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Questions:

• Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?”
• What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection?
• What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason?

And now back to the show.

[sundancer 42985xp 1]

Pledge: do more hobby… any kind of… not loose steam and momentum

Answers:

• I think it’s more “manufacturer agnostic” because the datasheets and art is very detailed on what it should look like. Using a random mech and just go “this is an Atlas” can be done but I think that would take away from the game.
• Possibly the mini NES my wife bought me years back… she paid a scalper more or less. I love her, but that was way to expensive.
• this is going to sound very heretic but possibly my purchase of The Star Wars LCG. I went in and bought enough stuff for 4 factions IIRC and only ever played it once. Never opened the box after that… :S

It’s Friday!

[demonsub 12746xp 1]

Hey, you were on time this week.

Pledge is to get more models assembled and cleaned up ready to paint, then on Sunday or Monday I’ll get another game of Five Parsecs played.
Also tomorrow I’ll be introducing Moonstone to two friends, our first multiplayer game since lockdown and I’m pretty excited for this.

Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?”

I’d say manufacturer agnostic because quite a few of those mechs are very distinctive in appearance, the madcat for example, although I’ve heard that the marauder has changed in appearance a few times over the years.

What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection?

This one is a difficult one for me as I tend to look for a bargain and certainly not indulge scalpers. I’ve bought a few pieces of pre-painted terrain which I thought was expensive for what I got, otherwise I cannot really think of anything.

What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason?

Funny thing is that I’m selling a bunch of Thousand Sons I’ve never played with to a friend tomorrow. The big one in the past is the Dark Souls board game on Kickstarter, especially since I went all in. I love Dark Souls but the board game just didn’t play very well. I did easily sell everything on though and actually made my money back.

As for music does this count?

 

[limburger 21711xp 0]

ooh … it’s early so I guess I need to get in 😀

(1) Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?”
It’s whatever the flock you want it to be as long as you can source your minis.

(2) What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection?
Tricky … I don’t compare the value of my kickstarter rewards in terms of their actual worth, because I know they will decrease in value as soon as they hit retail anyway. I think the Conan RPG books are now cheaper than they were during the kickstarter.

(3) What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason?

The one thing that comes to mind would be Starwars Legion … and that’s mostly because I didn’t expect the supply situation to be as bad as was predicted. Having said that I doubt I’d want to get rid of it, because I like collecting stuff …

or rather … I just can’t get to the point that I could ever pick just one or two or a handful of games to focus on.

[crazyredcoatParticipant 13642xp 1]

Not sure if I have an pledge this week. Not really feeling all that enthusiastic right now, but that might change later in the week. School technically starts up again next week, though even now I get the impression that everything is still up in the air…which is just fantastic… If I find the energy I might try and prime the base of the Marine I finished last week. Still undecided on the chapter badge on that one, but if I do anything today I’m likely to just change the whole mini, so I’ll leave that for now.

Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?”

Really, if you ignore competition rules then any game can use whatever minis you like so long as you can show what it represents in the game. I want to see what GW would do if an entire tournament showed up with ‘third party’ and proxy armies for one of there big things that they promote. It won’t happen, because someone will break ranks so they can win by default, but I’d like to see it.

What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection?

An Imperial Knight, probably, though I got that cheaper than GW prices when I got it. A lot of my GW minis are exponsive, though. That being said, the recent Warlord price increases are looking a bit high as well…

What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason?

That is a dangerous question to ask, because sometimes I’d probably say all of it because it was an extravagance. At the moment, while I don’t really regret it, my Song of Ice and Fire game…because I still haven’t painted it all and I still haven’t played the game…and the way things are going it’s looking like it’ll be a while before I even can. But the answer to this question would probably be different tomorrow.

Have some music:

[danlee 22443xp 2]

Well I managed to finish my Skitarii unit this evening while watching the Weekender. I’m pretty sure they’re going to fall off the flying stands the first time I try to use them, but I’ll worry about that later. https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1427037/

 

 

This weeks pledge is to do the gold leaf on my Egyptians – I will do it. I’m not committing to anything else!

 

1. Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?” – From what I’ve seen of it I’d say manufacturer agnostic is a better term. The unit designs are very specific.
2. What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection? – Nagash I guess. Was happy enough to pay about £90 for a centre piece model at the time but compared to the cost of a similar sized 3D print it now seems very expensive.
3. What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason? – Nothing really. Almost everything I’ve bought I’ve used or painted. No wait – I forgot about a few kickstarters. The Horizon Zero Dawn board game didn’t appeal to me after reading the rules so I sold it once it had all arrived. I made a small loss but nothing too bad. I also didn’t like the Arena: The Contest game (tried playing a few times but it was all tactical combat, little story, and too difficult to concentrate on with the kids around) so I sold it all too.

[limburger 21711xp 0]

@crazyredcoat I’d go even one step further … games that say ‘you can only use our minis’ only ever do it because it is good for business. It is never any good for the players.

It never happens in historical games (even though some may attempt it), because it is impossible to enforce and the communities haven’t accepted it as a feature of their games.

With any fictional setting such limitations get sold as ‘features’ and somehow the fans accept it. There’s also laws that makes enforcing such limitations practical as you’re dealing with copyright and IP. As a result a company can claim that only their products are allowed to  be called speesj merines(tm) and anything else is not.

However such claims can’t stop anyone from using alternate sources or scratch-build designs, because all you really need for the game to be playable is a figure of similar size that is different enough from the other troops in an army so the opponent (and yourself) don’t get confused as to what is what.

There is some wiggle room though for small / independent manufacturers. A game like Moonstone can be played without their minis, but it would practically defeat their reason for making those rules if the profit margins are low and they can’t possibly compete with a big company that could make similar figures at a lower cost.

I think GW could use a bit more competition to force them to make more fun miniatures (and keep all of their factions up to date). The potential for cheaper minis would be another benefit, but I doubt there is much that can be won unless someone with the same mass production capability as GW steps up.

It would become more difficult for new gamers to understand what game is being played though.
Especially if there’s a Starwars tournament and everyone is using spacemarines as proxies for Stormtroopers and WW2/modern war era troops for rebels …

OTOH … it would be very cool and may start people think about the quality of rules too.

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

I think there is a difference in “using something as a proxy” and “using a different makers model that looks similar”. (See the miniature- vs manufacturer agnostic)

If it would be tournament legal to use 3rd party Stormtrooper for Legion or 3rd party Space Marines for G’Wullu games rules would become much more the focal point. AMG can’t do that because they don’t own the IP. That’s for the Mouse to decide. G’Wullu *could* do it… but hence they are there only to sell minis and not games they won’t.

[tuffyears 23171xp 1]

Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?” never played tabletop battle tech
What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection? insert any GW project from my collection
What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason? AOS 3.0 boxset just really haven’t got the feel for it, but I wouldn’t sell it.

This week I’m mainly reading Alien RPG

[limburger 21711xp 0]

@sundancer : GW can’t do it because they make a living selling minis … the rules are a means to sell those minis.

However I think that healthy competition would work in our favour.
One needs to look at historicals to see what can be done.
I’ve got early war Dutch troops for WW 2 … because I didn’t have to wait for Warlord to produce them for Bolt-action.
I’ve got several sources for early war German paratroopers and can pick the ones I like best, because I don’t have to wait for a manufacturer of rules to make them.
We get lots of niche troops because there’s someone out there that can make a product that fits a specific niche and be profitable enough for them.

It kind of sucks that we don’t see a copy-left approach to miniature design as we’ve seen with rules.
As such even if I want to use stormtroopers in something other than Legion I am forced to buy them from a company that can’t even produce enough for their own system, because there is no legal alternative.

fun fact

EA had to deal with Boeing and other manufacturers of military hardware to be allowed to use representations of the vehicles and weapons in their games.
I don’t know if any modern era wargames have had similar issues  … maybe it’s a matter of scale and size of the market?
Battlefield/Call of Duty selling more than even GW can dream of and thus rules change ?

[danlee 22443xp 2]

Made more progress with the Egyptian project today, dry fitting the first third of the terrain. Hitting a few problems but will plough on. This is going to be huge. https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1660768/

 

[horati0nosebl0wer 19649xp 2]

Pledge: Get over my case of The Rona and have camels to show for it.

 

I couldn’t say if Battletech were minis/manufacturer agnostic. I think really as you change manufacturers it would be reasonable to have different minis.

Overpriced item? I was about to say one of my air compressors for airbrushing but then I remembered my ongoing Arabian Knights project. One monster that has yet to make it takes the cake for cost.

In hindsight I’d buy a brand new air compressor that uses oil instead of secondhand only after getting into a permanent home. I move often so hobby command desk areas are valuable.

Now… as I am only here for a moment and back to quarantine. Here is my contribution to discussion.

[sundancer 42985xp 0]

This has to be the shortest weekender thread ever…. NEXT THREAD:

[unofficial weekender] Staaaaaaaaar Waaaaaaaaaaaars… and a bit of Marvel.

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