Don't get me wrong, I love the things. Well, more accurately, I love that they exist. I dabbled a little bit with Warhammer 40k after getting an Eldar model, and found the modeling part of the hobby stimulating.
The rest of it, though, was not only daunting but expensive. Very expensive. And my area and school simply did not support the demographic that plays these sorts of games, so there was no community support either.
Games Workshop (GW) dominates this genre of table top games where armies crafted, both in miniature form and function, by the players are pitted against one another on a table top battlefield. GW is headquartered in Nottinghamshire, and like Denmark's LEGO brand has the unfortunate property that its origin's currency is far more valuable than greenbacks. That and the expense of producing what a friend calls " a complete hobby" and especially one of the quality of GW's work makes these things cost a lot.
Note that I do not mean that GW makes a great product and everyone else makes something on par with green army men. I mean that GW manages a huge number of properties accompanied by a complete line of modeling supplies, literature, rules, miniatures, events, and dedicated stores and does so with an overall very good end product. Other companies put out comparable wargames that are cheaper and in terms of rules are probably superior. But I am not familiar with them, except in passing, and my experience with this hobby is almost entirely in the realm of making and painting the miniatures, and mostly GW at that.
It has been said* of the table top wargame minis that there are three choices, cheap, good quality, and variety. You of course can only pick two; GW opts for the last two. Seriously, the number of options you have in any given GW model is stupid and I suppose the cost of the hobby can be mitigated somewhat if you keep with it because of the supply of extra bits you accumulate.
As usual, I ranted much about a subject that is tangential to what I really wanted to talk about, and that is the cost of wargaming modeling supplies. They are numerous and specialized, from lichens and mosses to paint and finishes, there is an entire sub-market devoted to the supplies to make little plastic things look good. In terms of performance, good modeling products need to be well suited to their task and engineered to deal with it well. They most economically come in small packages because the rate of use is much smaller than other crafts. They must stand up to repeated abuse, be easy to use effectively, and be something that young teenage males, the main demographic, can handle without too much of a mess.
And I think we've been conditioned to believe that makes these supplies expensive. This is not true; the supplies we get from dedicated modeling suppliers are expensive. Take flock for bases. You can buy it for $4 in half cups, or make it for almost free in gallons. Graded sand for bases as well; buy it at $0.083 a gram or buy it at $0.0065 a gram (A.C. Moore does sell a more natural color that matches the Citadel product, but it is not on the web site; in my store its in with the floral Styrofoam). You can also get your sand from outdoors if you live in a sandy area like me.
What about paint? Those little Citadel paints are fantastic, and fantastically expensive. An once of paint for $4. The colors last a long time, and the metallic colors are the best in acrylic model paint, but what about all that primer? 400 ml of acrylic white spray primer for $15.75. Or 350 mL of enamel spray primer for $4. Don't like spraying? $0.30/mL for acrylic white or $0.06/mL for Liquitex Basics white. The latter, when used the same way Citadel says to use their paints, makes a tougher, flexible, less brush-mark prone primer layer.
Painting Grey knights or some army that is mostly metallic and requires a lot of paint? Don't spend a boat load on small pots of metallic paints, mix your own in appropriate quantities (about two bottles of pigment and one bottle of medium gets you an equivalent of $73 of Citadel paint for $16, and it can be any color metallic you want). I did this for a friend's large aircraft model, intending to bring up images of old polished aluminum planes from the mid 20th century; it worked perfectly for dry brushing over black. You can also buy Plaid brand metallic paints, which are comparable to Citadel's in quality, are cheaper, come in more colors, and a few even come in large bottles**. There is one light green shade in particular that would be well suited to Necrons.
Moss speaks for itself. There are also cheap bags of sea shells and glass shards, as well as plastic crystal chunks and Styrofoam in all manner of shapes and sizes ant craft stores. Seashells in particular are just the sort of thing large monsters can use.
So don't go buying "official" supplies when you don't need to. Use your smarts and look around craft stores that you would never think of for products to abuse for things the designers never thought of.
*Okay, in a paper or actual print article, this would never fly. Its the literary equivalent of "I heard from a guy this one time..." and it is usually lazy. However, I could not tell you where I read this other than in some forum discussion that involved Reaper Miniatures and the exorbitant cost of minis in general. Searching for the quote is time I don't have, not to mention a difficult thing to get through Google.
**Craft grade acrylic paints are good to use, but try the brand out first before doing so. Plaid is thick and creamy and will usually perform as well as a Citadel color, just don't water them down as much as a Citadel paint. You should usually varnish your minis anyway, but craft paint will usually demand it. Plaid metallic colors won't, though.
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