20) Saving For the Lean Times: How to Hobby on a Tight Budget

One of the problems with the Games Workshop games, was that even in the beginning, they were always expensive. It remains a hobby that is exclusionary through investment, and every time they seem to move in the right direction towards making it more accessible to a broader audience, they take two steps back. There is no reason for their modern injection molded plastic minis to cost as much as they do. Other companies make figures of similar quality for less than half the cost, and those companies manage to do just fine. Atlantic Wargames, for example, or Perry miniatures, will happily sell you a box of 36 high quality multi-part fantasy or historical miniatures in 28mm scale for the same price that GW would offer you a box of 10 or 12 figures. Mantic miniatures will sell you a complete starter warband for $45, compared to GW's $120 “start collecting” sets.

That's just the minis. Don't even get me started on the GW books. You'll probably need three of them to play, and they will only be valid for maybe two years, at which point you'll need to buy them again.

Citadel (GW) paints? They are excellent. They are consistent. I love them. Do you get enough paint to justify how much they cost? Heck no.

Games Workshop is expensive. That's a fact. Unfortunately for the wargaming hobby, a lot of people see GW prices and assume that all miniatures games are like that. Perhaps they don't even know that there are other systems and companies besides Games Workshop. The fact is that GW does a great job with marketing and promotion. They have their own stores that exclusively sell their products. Their staff will even teach you how to play their games. They will help you network with other players in the area. Nobody else in the industry can do that, because nobody else is as big.

I'm not going to tell anyone that they shouldn't support GW. If you like GW games, if you like their lore, their miniatures, or their community, that's wonderful. If being part of that game makes you happy, and you enjoy what they have to offer, then you absolutely should keep on enjoying yourself and being happy, because there is no price to set on fulfillment and contentedness in our brief lives. It is healthy and good that you are part of that hobby, and you will never be able to afford drugs, now, so there's that.

But wargaming doesn't have to be expensive! GW isn't the only game in town. There are great systems, and great miniatures out there that are actually rather cheap. Personally, I like Kings of War. I bought a $40 hard copy rulebook that includes every army list and every supplement all in one compilation. That book is everything I need to play. In fact, it is everything I need to play any army in the game. I don't have to buy codexes or army books. It's all in one book. The system is miniatures agnostic, too. Even though the producers of KoW are a miniatures company, they don't actually require you to buy their minis. Mantic lets you use any minis you like, from any manufacturer. You can even use historical minis if you like. The rules are readily available digitally through the Mantic Companion, and have a quick link index section for looking things up easily on the fly. It's a very solid, very balanced game system that has everything I loved about old Warhammer, and none of what I didn't like.

One Page Rules is another great system, and the rules are free in PDF form on the internet. They have multiple versions of wargaming rules depending on which sort of game you like. They have both skirmish sized and large scale rules systems for Fantasy and Sci-Fi. The core rules are simple and straightforward. They literally fit on one sheet of paper, front and back. Special Rules and Army lists fill out the rest of the book, but the core rules themselves live up to the One Page name. Like Kings of War, it is miniatures agnostic. You could play it with rocks and poker chips, if you really wanted to, or little green and tan army men from the dollar store.

But the draw of the hobby for me is that I like building models and painting miniatures, so that means that I need hobby supplies.

That's where Dollar Tree comes in. You would be amazed at what you can find in the craft section, the tool section, and the toy section of your local dollar store. On my last trip there, I found snips, an exacto knife set, a cutting mat, and super glue. That's everything you need to start assembling a kit. They also had these tiny “Jenga” knock off games, which are just a ton of little perfect wooden blocks. These are awesome for making terrain, buildings, objective markers, etc... Best of all, they had these little thin wooden boards for building craft boxes or bird houses. They just need to be trimmed to size a bit, and they are perfect multibases for KoW units! And of course they have school glue and craft sand for basing. Also, pro gamer tip: mouse traps are less than a dollar each, and they are 50mm x 100mm of wood plus good rigid wire to use for pinning and modeling.

When it comes to paint, you can totally get by with acrylic craft paint like Folk Art or Apple Barrel. I painted my whole Mordheim gang with that stuff years ago, and it held up great. It isn't as nice to paint with, and it doesn't flow as well as Citadel or Ral Partha paint, but it will get the job done. For a wet pallet, I tape a large ziploc bag to my desk, put a damp paper towel on top of it, and then tape a piece of parchment paper from the baking section down over that.

Before things went to heck this month, I had planned to purchase the Mantic Dragon Paladin model for my Bretonmark army on payday. Alas, it seemed like it just wasn't meant to be. At least not this month. But then I found Basil. He's a plastic children's toy. He's surprisingly detailed, and the sculpt is nice and characterful. He's the perfect scale. He was $8. I mean, yeah I was pretty broke last week, but I could do $8. And once again, I realized how awesome it is that KoW is miniature agnostic, because GW would never let me use a toy plastic dragon in place of one of their kits.

And I'm not SETTLING for a lesser model, or a dragon that I didn't really want. I genuinely love this little dragon. He is everything that I think of when I imagine a dragon. He is ideal to me. He is actually very detailed, and made from a really nice plastic, too. Granted the sweatshop child who painted him must have been in a bit of a hurry, but that's fine, because I had fun repainting him. I kept the original red and yellow scheme, but painted over it and cleaned up all the lines with my own paints. I picked a darker shade of red for his wings, and used earth shade on all his scaly parts, to give them definition. Cleaning up around his eyes with Mephiston Red made the biggest difference. He looks much more serious now, and not so derpy. I couldn't be more pleased with him.

So, despite some financial setbacks this month, I still managed to make progress on my Bretonmark army. Hopefully it will be done in August or September. With my Dragon sorted out, and my bowmen done, I have managed to stay on target with my hobby progress. All the Bretonmark army needs is a unit of foot knights and a unit of mercenary ogres.

Take care, and drive on.