Inspired by my recent purchase at Warlords Bad Santa sale , I thought I’d let you guys take a peek behind the mental illness curtain and talk about my approach to choosing a faction in miniature gaming. I low key hope to find out there are other people out there with the same issues.
When a new miniature game comes out and or your local game group gets interested in a game, one of the first thing you have to do is choose a faction you want to play. Sometimes you only have the choice of one of the two factions found in the starter box.
Usually for me I am not crazy about one faction or the other and I might reluctantly start collecting one or the other. So I usually trade or buy for a second half of the boxset and then buy two or three of the release wave that supports my faction choice. What sucks is, these purchases often languish in my “pile of shame”.
Months to a year or more pass and a new faction is coming out. THIS ONE, is the one I want. So now I have this pile of, assembled at best, figures that I really didn’t want in the first place and I want this new faction.
So what do I do with these unwanted figures? I might try to move them but most likely I will box them up and forget about them. Now lets buy into this new faction that I “really wanted”. I buy for about a year or more creating a larger pile of boxes, plus a rulebook I wont read. I may even purchase custom measuring sticks or dice. Hopefully I at least mailed SOME stuff to a painter to be painted. By and large though, it all remains unpainted.
Now it’s time to buy another faction! What’s that you say!?!? Why? Because usually about this time I find “a deal”. Usually at least an army’s worth of figures, either used or a really good sale. If used, they are usually mostly assembled with about 20% still in the box or on the sprue. This is faction that I also wasn’t really interested in, but it is difficult for me to pass up a good deal.
So at this point I have at least three different factions for a game that I most likely have not played a single game for. Lets be honest, I haven’t read the rulebook either.. Now this is where things get… not normal? or at least for most people.
I will read a book, usually historical, and this will fire up my hyperfocusness towards creating a force that represents the unit/group I read about. Nine times out of ten it will be for a system I already own. So this leaves me with yet ANOTHER faction for a game system that I probably have played once or twice by this point and adds greatly to the “pile of shame”.
Speaking of, I don’t paint and rarely even assemble stuff. So basically its a large pile of potential that will burn out a contract painter long before it puts their kids through college.
Lastly, another way I end up buying into another faction is, getting something for free. Be it something like the “Warlord mystery box” or a friend gives me a box of infantry. I can never seem to just concentrate on one faction, getting all the things I need and then trying to get good with them. I just end up in a never ending circle of buying more and different factions. I cant even conceive of only playing one or two game system. So yeah..
PS: What I ended up getting from the Bad Santa sale was:
Panzerjager I tank destroyer (for my early war Germans)
Soviet BT-7 fast tank (for a good deal I got on Soviets)
Fallschirmjager (got free!)
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