Tuesday, January 20, 2015

At the Century Mark: Taking Stock of the Leadpile

For those who keep track of such things, this is my hundredth post. I've had a couple things banging about for a little while, as I've finished some small terrain pieces and there's a pair of miniatures awaiting formal introduction to the world, but neither of these seems quite grand enough for the occasion. With apologies to Mr. Murray over at The Leadpile, which blog's brilliant name I am appropriating for this post, I decided to take a dive into my own model mountain.

All this began with a rather mundane trade request on the Oldhammer forums. Mr. Papafakis needed an orc hand and I have more than I'll likely use in a lifetime.


Asslessman, of Leadplague, beat me to the punch and he's probably closer to this particular modeling emergency so I'll let him handle it and wait for one in my own hemisphere. But in the middle of this Papafakis mentioned digging through his "leadpile" and Asslessman showed a little teaser picture of his workbench. You know the sort, where you're talking about working on one thing but there lurking in the background is this other thing with an equally interesting story all its own. Maybe something like this . . .


I usually try to crop down to what I'm writing about for the sake of focus . . .



. . . but I've probably been guilty of the same thing from time to time. It's almost inevitable, really, since our workspaces tend to be at least a little cluttered with several projects competing for time and attention.

Anyway, this hint of Asslessman's painting cue left me thinking that I'm long overdue for a decent consideration of the not in commission part of my own collection and maybe a little reorganization. (Only a very little. Don't get all worked up. I didn't want to be at it all week, but it's good to see what you've got and make sure you know where stuff is from time to time.)

So, without further ado, here's my 28mm "leadpile." 



Or at least most of it. (Every time I thought I had it I remembered more miniatures in another corner. I eventually gave up, figuring whatever was missing from the group shot was minor and could be added later to the "closeups.") That's only the 28ish mm stuff. It includes none of the bits or materials, no smaller scales, and none of the related hobbies that lack war, gaming, or both. I know this isn't the largest pile out there, but it's still impressive when you spread it all out. Lots of dusty and lots of old.

To get a better handle on things I've sorted it somewhat approximately by "army" or "collection." Let's work backwards from most recent to oldest.

First, here's some EM4 I picked up . . .

(With one odd lot included that apparently isn't the mech I thought it was but probably also isn't EM4.) That's 19 typical miniatures and one largish one. No big deal.

Next up we have a small but growing collection of unpainted Ramshackle. 

8 large castings and 13 normal ones bringing us to 32 regular and 9 large.

Add to that an assortment of Spacelords, two "Slann" to be, some missed Ramshackle monkeys, and a group of miniatures I . . . uh . . . well, I don't show those to my wife.

Not even absolutely clear where they all came from. (Well, e-bay, but not sure who made them.) That's 21 more for running totals of 51 regular, 2 small, and 9 large.

To this we can add some random Citadel imperials, pirates, adventurers, and oddities.

I'm tempted to skip robo-bacon, since he's technically a "vehicle" for another miniature, but when we get that far this count will have become silly, so let's count him for now. 10 regular, 2 large, 4 small, and one mount for 63-11-6-1 (RLSM). That's getting to be enough to keep one painting for a while.

Here things get more temporally complicated . . .

The bulk of my guard I bought recently, but you can see some "brutal childhood paintjobs of the '80s" there. (These are, incidentally, the first wearing my own paint on this list, though they will be FAR from the last.) So that's 15 regulars, 3 larges (R+M=L, right?) and one midget for 78-14-7-1.

Now we're starting to get into acquisitions that might even be two years old (which is good): genestealers . . .

I'm counting 31 and a Zoat, so let's call our totals 109-15-7-1.

 Next up, Eldar . . .
That's 40ish with ten or so slated for deaccession. (That's a fancy museum term for "sale or trade.") Still, at present that leaves us in the neighborhood of 149-15-7-1. That's more significant digits than we're entitled to, but we'll round off at the end of the show.

At this point we move out of the modern era and back into childhood or at least early adulthood. Five dragon kings (to the tune of the twelve days of Christmas) . . .

. . . brings us up to 149-20-7-1.

About the same time I started buying dragons I also bought into Necromunda.


That's 22 more regulars (if you can call the Goliaths regular), though at most only 13 of the are likely to get paint. (The rest are really donors in waiting.) 171-20-7-1, if you care to know.

And then there were squats . . .

I'd estimate there are about 45 stunties there with maybe five in the discard pile. We'll count the bike with ancestor sidecar (how is that not painted yet?) as one large for 215-21-7-1. (Calling squats "regular" might be somewhat controversial, but they're close enough to be the same amount of work. Really so was the ratling earlier, but we'll call him small as he's special.) 

And this is where we stretch the ability to estimate from pictures . . . 

Let's call it 120 orks, a dozen snots and grots, and a half dozen bikes. Oh, and assorted parts. (The modern "ork" models belong to this category and not in the totals, I think. They were a gift from a friend.) So wow, that made a difference. 335-27-19-1

And now we get REALLY silly . . .


Yeah, I quit counting now. Let's just say lots and call it a day. Gard, but there's several dozen TERMINATORS in that box. I have a companies worth of brutal childhood termies. Ahyup. Now, to be completely fair the brutal childhood paint isn't all my own, but most of it (the dark stuff in particular) is. I don't really know precisely what's there. Maybe a hundred beakies, fifty lead marines (most actually lead even), a solid few dozen terminators (no kidding, I loved the things), five old jetbikes (one with rider), a "new" one (with rider), a dreadnought, two land speeders (with crew), four vehicles (old spice counts, right?), a half dzen wolves, and lots of parts. That's where I really ought to make a deaccession list, but I haven't yet. So lets say that's 180-5-6-4 grand totaling (to one significant digit) the 28mil sci-fi out at 500-30-30-5-4 (LRSMV). Or a really grand total of nigh on 600 things to paint. Yowza!

Mind you, I started with D&D (of course) so last but not least are the TRULY brutal paintjobs.

And I failed to include my 25mm Medievals, which really ought to be there, since there's a fair bit of 25mil in the dungeon crawl mix. But hey, who's counting?

Oh, wait . . . where was I? Lost count.

To finish this odd quest, here's a few shots of my painting and gaming territory.

Workspace with lots-o-lights.

The pile in it's natural habitat.


Materials storage and auxiliary workspace.


Materials and parts.

And a place to call home.

(Which is where I keep and store most of the models actually wearing paint.)

Thanks for coming with me. I hope you'll come along for another century of modeling, music, and mystery. (I'll keep the music to a minimum.)

Sincerely,
The Composer







4 comments:

  1. That's funny to see how a blurry silhouette at the back of a photo can trigger such misteries !

    I admit I often try to see what's at the back of teh pics to get a teaser of what I can expect of other fellow bloggers.

    I'll take a picture of my work space as it is right now with a few explanations too. I'll try to avoid getting any more lead out though, that's always a dangerous thing to do.

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  2. Oh my! There is no doubt about it. You are suffering from the highly contagious, enviable, and enjoyable modeler's Shinytinitis virus!

    It appears you need immediate intervention at your man-cave table with your glue, paint, and brushes.



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  3. Ooh, ooh, ooh!!! Land Raiders, Land Raiders!!!

    Sorry, I just love'em :)

    I admit that I always zoom in on pictures of painting desks, a bit of snooping around to see what else to expect...like JB mentioned. It's probably why I try to frame my pics so that sneaky people like me can't see what else I haven't finished yet :p

    I've got a whole bunch of minis, projects & other mini related stuff to keep me going until well after my death. I've (so far) succeeded in my self imposed ban on buying more minis (trading is not the same ok!!!), which has forced me to convert more than I normally would. Something that I enjoy anyway, so it's a bit of a win win situation really.

    I'm just about to buy a new shelf to help organise my hobby room (again, this does not count to mini related expenditure!!!) this coming weekend, so I'll take pics of the room after that.

    Cheers.

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  4. Asslessman,

    Don't mean to create dangerous work conditions for anyone, so no need to disturb any lead dust if you don't want to. But I look forward to the pics.

    Jay,

    I suspect that's a quite astute diagnosis. Worries me a little bit sometimes, as I've known serious cases to be terminal to all manner of social relationships. But I try to keep it controlled. (With liberal applications of paint.)

    The one,

    Yeah, I have some silly neat old stuff I really need to get painted and out into the world. But I have too much of it and there's other neat stuff I also want. (I think that's the disease Jay was talking about speaking there.)

    I've attempted therapies like the one you mention. And then there was a fire sale. And I also discovered e-Bay. I've solved both of those problems, more or less, but not without dropping a wad of cash first.

    Anyway, looking forward to any and all pictures that result.

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