The small things

Just a quick update this week.

You may recall that I mentioned seeing the exceedingly rare Sigrid from DotR on eBay a while ago. While I didn’t get that figure, the seller also had a few other gems up for auction, most notably (from my perspective) Renate (which I didn’t get either) and this little guy:

It’s probably the single most expensive figure I’ve ever bought, though the price ended up being pretty much in line with earlier auctions I’ve seen for this particular model. The weak British pound helped, so at least there’s some upside to the whole Brexit-thing (from my perspective). Even so, I couldn’t afford more than one of the three figures I wanted, so I had to pick one and hope my bid was high enough.

The three-legged goblin is fairly pivotal to the events of the whole Enemy Within campaign, but the PCs won’t interact all that much with it (and that’s probably all I can say without spoiling anything). In that light, I probably should have gone for Renate, who can actually become a PC, but the goblin is just so iconic that I couldn’t resist it.

Croaker

Not dead – not dead

Uh – It’s been how long since I last wrote something? This time I can’t even blame some new Battlefleet Gothic-related product; I just never got around to writing anything.

I have been painting a bit though and am almost done with my Colette crew. I’ve already started a few proper Oldhammer figures (more dwarves), so if you’ve been holding your proverbial nose through all this new stuff don’t worry, normal service should be resumed shortly.

Here’s what I’ve done over these past weeks:

Now I just need to do a few finishing touches on Cassandra. That doesn’t mean that I’m entirely done with Malifaux though. I’ve played my first match with the crew, and even though it works reasonably well as it is (as long as you don’t have to kill too much stuff), it really needs some extra units to round it out.

In other (and much more Oldhammer-relevant) news, I saw this up for auction some time ago, and I just thought I'd show it to you:

It’s Sigrid from Death on the Reik!

I think I’ve mentioned it before, but this figure is so rare that I’ve never even seen a picture of it before, outside of the official flyer. I did place a bid on it, but the price reached a level I simply couldn’t justify (though not quite Kemmler-levels).

It’s a shame, ‘cause I really wanted it for my collection, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to get another chance, but that’s life I guess. At least now I can use the money to round out my Malifaux crew instead.

Croaker.

Striking gold (in space!)

Some weeks ago I wrote about my love for Battlefleet Gothic (BFG), which had been rekindled by the arrival of a (rather good) PC version of said game – Battlefleet Gothic: Armada.

I’m still playing Armada whenever I get half an hour to myself, but the more I play, the more I long to try the real thing. So, I did something stupid. Something you should never, ever do.

I bought the base game on eBay with nothing more to go on than a photo of the front cover and a description that it was “complete”.

Stupid! Stupid! – as Mr. Pool would say.

However, it was relatively cheap (a nice version of BFG can get expensive) and from a reputable seller, so I figured it was worth a shot (as much as I thought about it beforehand anyway).

Well, after paying for shipping, import tax from the US and a “handling fee” (a.k.a. the 15 pound arbitrary “fuck you” toll the Danish Customs levy on each package they check*) it wasn’t all that cheap after all, so it was with some trepidation that I opened the box when it finally arrived.

Inside I found this:

The very sharp-eyed amongst you may have noticed that it isn’t, in fact, complete. It’s missing a few normal dice (no biggie), a flight-stand (should be fixable) and four order-dice (a bigger problem – these are not cheap).

Other than that, it’s in excellent condition, with the counter-sheets unpunished and most of the ships still on sprues. This actually presents me with a bit of a dilemma, as I could potentially make some money by selling them and buying pre-assembled ships instead. I’ll think about it, but I’m just not sure it’s worth the hassle.

Not too bad, but it’s still not actually “complete”, which should piss me off, except that the box also contained these:

I really don’t know what the Epic magazines were doing there (and I have very little interest in Epic stuff from between the time of Adeptus Titanicus and Epic: Armageddon anyway), but the rest is pretty sweet.

All in all a very good haul. The next step will be to buy a small fleet for each of the four main factions (and maybe Tyranids, which are cool. Tau, Dark Eldar and Necrons can go jump the sea for all that I care).

This will probably take some time since everything connected to BFG seems to be massively overpriced on eBay (probably because of the game’s relatively limited print run). To make matters worse, it seems that BFG was more popular in the US and Australia than in the UK (at least that’s where a lot of sellers ship from) – which brings me back to my rant on the cost of importing stuff from outside the EU. Oh well.

Croaker

  

* I’m sorry to get all political, and it’s not really my business, but WTF UK!? If I end up having to pay import taxes on all my oldhammer goodies in a few years, we are going to have words. 

Wanted! Bold adventurers

Every good tale needs a good opening.

There’s the classic “A long, long time ago, in a land far away”, which is good for all occasions. There’s also the iconic (and brilliant) “In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort”, which I’d never dare appropriate for myself.

And then there’s this:

 This poster is the beginning to Mistaken Identity, the first part of The Enemy Within (TEW) – and what a great opening it is. The GM gives the players this handout (hoping that none of them wants to be a dwarf) and off they go. They can, of cause, roll up their own characters, but GW also provided these pre-made ones:

Citadel produced (or reused) miniatures for them, which seemed to be a natural place to get started om my goal of collecting all the miniatures associated with TEW. I therefor present to you:

Someone (not me) seems to have been a bit overly vigorous with the brush when stripping the two figures on the left (Harbull and Johann). The detail is still quite fine, but they have become very shiny.

These are the character models released along with Shadows over Bögenhafen. They are not the rarest of the set, though I suspect they may be some of the most expensive. Wanda can be especially pricy, with a buy-now price around £50 – which just goes to show that you should never trust those things. I got her for £8.

Croaker

A letter

Dear eBay sellers.

We have a bit of a mixed relationship, don’t we? On one hand, you provide me with the overpriced bits of cardboard and oddly shaped lumps of toxic metal that I crave so badly. On the other hand, you do cost me a lot of money, and sometimes one of you tries to pull some dodgy tricks, like offering stuff at low prices, but then overcharging for postage, or canceling an auction after it’s ended, if you aren’t satisfied with final offer.

In the end, however, most of you are fine chaps, and I feel like we all appreciate these little toys. That is why I’m never surprised, but always glad, that you go to such great lengths to protect my purchases. We understand that the fine postal workers of the world don’t always share our delicate touch, and so it is up to us to protect the objects of our affection during transit.

Why, when you send me a batch of minis, it’s not unusual for one of you to place every single figure in a separate Ziploc bag, then wrap them individually in bubble-wrap, and place it all in a sturdy cardboard box, surrounded by those little foam thingies. Truly outstanding dedication.

It is also why, when one of you decides to post a 25 year old, and relatively rare, box, wrapped in nothing but a single layer of brown paper, I’m not only baffled but also somewhat disappointed. If I then find that the box has been taped shut, using normal office tape, so that I either have to cut it open and live with patches of tape on my game, or try to rip it off, thereby risking further damage to the box, I’m inclined to be outright annoyed! 

So, dear eBay sellers, I hope this sad affair won’t repeat itself. It would not do for our relationship to be tarnished so.

Love

Croaker

My old AHQ box lid, which will now have to perform its duty a little longer, as its replacement was sadly mangled on the way here. Luckily, the contents survived intact, so now I have all the room- and corridor tiles I need.