Over at The Miniatures Page forum, in the Painting Message Board, there’s an ongoing monthly topic called “The Pledge”. It’s a nice way to try to stick to some goal for the year and keep ones-self motivated to try and shrink the lead/plastic mountain.
Much like Jeff “Chirine” Berry, I find that I enjoy modeling about as much as I enjoy world-building and DM’ing. I may not be good enough to put minis on CoolMiniOrNot.com but they work well at the table and I have fun with it.
My pledge for the year is to limit my miniatures buying to any of the new Ral Partha figures coming from the Chaos Wars Wave 2 Kickstarter, and any figures in the future to support specific things in my campaigns, if needed. So that might mean some elves in 15mm. And possibly some levies/peasants in 15mm. But I’m keeping it as minimal as possible. I want to paint everything in my backlog, which at the beginning of January was at 415 to paint.
In Jan and Feb, I bought/received 10, painted up 66, so I was at a net of +56 miniatures.
So how did I do in March?
I started March with 359 in the pile.
I added 3 from going through a scrap/miscellaneous bag and finding figures that could be used.
I painted 30 figures:
4 – 25mm D&D Monsters
8 – 25mm D&D PCs/NPCs
2 – 25mm wargames figures – Elves
11 – 15mm fantasy cavalry/knights
5 – Battlemechs, including a Crescent Hawks Phoenix Hawk LAM.
For the year, I have a net of: +83 figures.
And no purchases! Two months in a row and counting…
Pictures are coming! I just have to put down the paint brush and figure out my photo rig and camera set-up… I have a ton of figures to photograph and share with you all.
A quick question. I am not into miniatures, but I got the idea to get some figures, custom made or otherwise, to represent the players and major NPC's in my campaign. I went to the area's best hobby shop, they had some very expensive professionally done miniatures under the glass, but could tell me nothing about getting a specific figure or about getting one custom made. Internet was just as confusing. Where can I get the sales staff to look for a specific miniature or get one custom made?
@Brooser Bear – The company that I know about that does custom figures is called Hero Forge – https://www.heroforge.com/. I can't speak to their quality personally, I know they've gotten a lot of reviews around the web.
Doing a search for custom 3d miniatures on the web comes up with quite a few hits:
https://www.google.com/?q=custom+printed+miniatures+3d
If you know of anyone with a 3D printer, they can probably clue you into that side of the world. I tend to just paint my figures in colors and in ways that are close to some of my players, or they've brought me specific miniatures to paint and use as their characters.
@Brooser Bear – this article from GeekDad is pretty good too, on what to expect and think about. http://geekdad.com/2015/06/3d-printed-miniatures/
@Stu Rat – so far, I'm resisting those temptations. I have all those Ral Partha figures to paint. Then we'll see about more.