Thanks! I am still figuring out what secondary hobbies you guys have, so I am never sure how appreciated some of this stuff is. Most of what I see is very 40k/WFB centric. But if this is appreciated I will keep doing it.
Yeah I wouldn't recommend Void 1.1 today. As a matter of fact I was considering getting rid of it some time ago, but I don't really have much, and everything fits in the Gamebox, so its easy to store.
I tried really hard to get into Warzone. I did love the demons with guns thing, but the rest of the armies were really silly. Like a British corporation, German, etc, but what I did love was the WWI theme in the designs. But a lot of the early models were the goofiest around. The later models got much better, but the army lists were just odd. I eventually gave up on it and sold my entire collection. But that starter set was pretty impressive in its day.
So to give you some more insight as to what WFB has to compete with in my life I will share some more pics. Its interesting as I was thinking about writing this post, I gave some thought as to how I got here, and thought it was worth telling. I am originally from Miami, Florida, but in about 4th grade my family moved all the way to Singapore, and there is really where I discovered models, and the 1/76 Matchbox kits I posted earlier. All of asia is crazy about model kits. I was there for a year, then we moved to Hong Kong.
Hong Kong was some of my favorite days as a kid. It was still an British Colony at the time, and so there was a nice mix of east/west going on. But around this time Gundam had been out for awhile, as well as Macross and many other robot anime shows. There were robot toys and model kits everywhere. I grew up on Diaclone before they became Transformers, Dougram, Macross, and Crusher Joe before they became Battletech and Robotech. So while my American cousins were playing with Star Wars, GI Joe, and Transformers, I was knee deep in some of the coolest toys around. I used to take a taxi from our apartment up halfway up the mountain overlooking the harbor, shop downtown for a couple of hours hitting all the toy and model stores, then visit my Dads office before taking a taxi home, all at age 12. Would never allow a kid to do that here in the US. It was a very different time. I was there for 2 years and loved it before we moved to Indonesia for 3 years, which I hated.
Indonesia didn't have much going on at the time. Now I am sure they have 200 channels on cable TV, but when I lived there there was 1/2 hour of news, 1/2 hour of cultural dances, and then an hour of some US TV show dubbed in Indonesian, like the old TV show CHiPs. Or Scooby Doo. Then snow for 22 hours. And no vast amounts of toy stores to buy things at like in Hong Kong. But what I did find in Indonesia at the little grocery stores were these mini model kits made by a Japanese company called Morinaga, as shown below (unassembled and my finished one of the Galbaldy-Bs (Lila Milla Rira's version) from Z Gundam).
Each box came with a little model, which came with another box of terrible tasting candy (I would literally throw away the candy and only keep the model). The cool thing about these little kits were that they didn't require glue to assemble, and some were pretty articulated (the one above is poseable at the shoulders, thighs, and knees). The best part was they only cost $1, so when I earned some allowance I would ride my bike to the store and buy a few. They were packaged in blind packs, so you never knew which one you were going to get. Most of what I got back then was from Gundam, but I discovered in later years they made these kits for most of the anime series at the time.
Size comparison with the finished model next to an Empire General for size comparison.
And the general next to a 1/144 Zaku kit (waiting to be painted as usual) alongside its 1/300 Morinaga counterpart.
Anyway, I loved these kits, along with others around that scale. When I was a kid, in school we sat at these desks where there was a shelf under the desk to store your books and supplies. The teacher couldn't see from her point of view and I would have matchbox cars, army men, you name it in there. Anything I could fit in my pocket was awesome. And living overseas, since we traveled so much, I usually had to entertain myself in hotel rooms or car trips that I didn't want to be on, so I have to stuff my bag with a lot of variety to keep me occupied so I didn't go insane.
Well that still kind of influences me today, and plus I don't have a lot of time. I went through the bigger kit phase like most people but I limit my storage and display area to my home office. You would never know from being elsewhere in my house that I have all this shit. And when people come over they are typically wowed by my office. Even my friends who hate most of this stuff can't keep themselves from going in there. But I also have a collection of old movie posters too. Originals. I have an old rare Star Wars one from the late 70s that if my house was on fire, I would run in to save it. Everything custom framed.
Anyway, one of the problems I had as a kid traveling so much, was when I actually did have money and found something I wanted, my mom would say, 'save your money and you might find something else you want later', and guess what, I typically didn't. And then when I did get them, eventually I took it all for granted and blew up hundreds of kits by strapping them to bottle rockets, shooting them up with BB guns, or literally setting them on fire as I re-enacted battles in the backyard.
When we moved back to the US it then dawned on my that I would probably never see most of these things again, and I regretted everything I did. I found some sellers here and there who sold some kits I built as a kid, but they were hard to find. It wasn't until eBay that I was able to hunt down everything on my wishlist, and man did I buy.
I am after very specific things too. So each of these purchases was its own hunt. The idea was, 'I don't have time to build everything now, so just get it when you find it, and build it later when you have time'. All I'll have to do is go to the closet.
I also eventually got lucky and found a guy in Japan who would help me hunt down items over there, or bid on Yahoo Japan Auctions for me, for a 20% fee. I sent that dude $1000s of dollars. And, eventually got all the Morinagas I had as a kid and many others I didn't know about.
I am not going to lie, some of these that sold for $1 back in the day I paid $80 for. Not many, some I bought in big lots and ended up with many duplicates. I have hundreds of these now which is really way to many. Enough to where I am making custom kits and so on. But not having these ate at me for a couple of decades, so as silly as they might look, having them really brought me back to those days as a kid, being bored in a shitty country and killing time with what few toys I could find.
So I build lots of other small kits from that time period too, like these below, from Dougram.
Some of you will recognize these from Battletech. Shadowhawk and Battlemaster I think. At any rate, these took a great deal of hunting down too. Some of my most prized models, along with 1/200 scale Macross kits. I just don't have a lot of time, nor want a ton of space dedicated to any one thing. I could build a big model, then get bored of looking at it, and then what. I prefer variety.
I should note too, that I rarely care about the stories these robots are from. When I lived overseas, I didn't speak/read the languages, and sometimes could see the shows on TV, but I had no idea what was going on, so I made my own stories up. To this day I don't care, I am a sci-fi fan, and a huge technical design fan, so I am a fan of the design first and foremost, and maybe care a little about the shows they come from. I have to be honest I think most suck. I am really not an anime fan so to speak, just love spaceships and robots.
Sometimes I spend a great deal of time on these little kits, which are old and don't have polycaps like the new ones do. Polycaps are rubber joints they place in shoulders and elbows and such for movement. Many kits are really poseable, but overtime plastic on plastic wears away, making them loose. Sometimes they are lose right away. So I have experimented with plumbers tape, superglue, green stuff, you name it, to try and make joints tight. But sometimes I just have to make my own polycaps. So below you can just see inside where I mounted one in the chest.
And replaced the original arm joint, with a plug that will fit into that whole.
So if I do it right you never know what I did.
Dougram was one of my first loves, and I have a whole shelf dedicated to it. As a matter of fact, while in college I made my first website called Dougram.com, which purpose was to find other Dougram fans and try to share info on. Met some really great peeps back in the day. Eventually I stopped maintaining the site and let the domain expire. Once I had all the info I lost interest I guess.
For those in the know, yes, there is a Battle of Kalnock under that Battle of Stanrey. For those not in the know, these are the games that inspired Battletech. A company called Twentith Century Imports used to import them into the US with a brief translation of the rules, and FASA picked up on them and used them as a basis for Battletech, using the kits TCI was importing for their first designs (now known as the Unseen). These two games, especially in the condition they are in, are some of my most prized games.
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/8780/battle-stanreyhttps://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14165/battle-kalnockSo I have a lot of interests and projects and stuff getting backed up. Once and awhile I focus and finish one or two. But it isn't often. I tend to build to get me to the painting stage, where things kind of pause.
Man I need to dust that warrior's base! lol
Part of the problem is that in order to paint I really need proper lighting and a prepped area, none of which that really works in my office area, as you can see from the lighting in my pics. But assembling I can do anywhere. Couch in front of TV, patio, even on vacation. Some peeps sit and smoke pot or watch TV, I tend to work on something with my hands. While I have a tackle box where I store everything, all it really takes me to build is what is below, most of which fits in that box.
So I just take this around with me. When I am done I assemble something else. When I get the urge to paint then I will pick one of them out.
And things do pile up. It tends to go that way, as when I see something on my wish list I just get it, knowing it might be hard to find it again. Thanks to my mom and living overseas. So this also means I tend to over-buy too, and then have to clean out some things. I tend to build up things kind of modestly in most cases, like to get a nice taste of something but not obsessively get everything. Before my dive in WFB, the most I bought into was Epic, which I literally have 1000s of models for and played the shit out of. WFB is only the second game I have every bought this much for, which is why things like Battalion/Battlefore/Starter sets are so important to me as they will have to sit for some time before I get around to them, and I don't want things cluttered.
Familiar with 1/144 F-Toys? I finally finished all my kits recently. I love WWII fighters. I even have two Finnish ones in there!
EDIT: GOD DAMN MY MODELS ARE DUSTY. So embarrassed. Going to have to do some dusting soon. Which you can imagine is going to be a major pain in the ass. But I took these pics in the morning before work and was rushing and still kind of dark. Forgive me. I am neglecting miniatures.
