Making the tough decisions

I have to narrow down my endeavors on the miniature front this year. I have a mountain of unpainted lead that is likely big enough to shield me completely from errant radiation. I have limited financial resources and climbing medical expenses, so I have to learn to focus. I'm also undoubtedly going to have to part with some things from my pile.

But how? I have such eclectic tastes and magpie instincts that everything looks like fair game as it's released. The lure of the "ooh, shiny" is almost too much to bear.

Some large guidelines are already in place, simply because of my interests. I'll be sticking to skirmish-level gaming, which was always my intent, as you can see in the subtitle at the top of this blog. I don't have the attention span or patience to paint large armies. I much prefer an assemblage of characterful individuals on my table.

I'm sticking to 28mm, or 32mm, or "heroic scale" or whatever it's called now. I want my baseline humans to be about an inch tall. My eyes are too old now to paint details on anything smaller, and I want everything to be pretty much compatible.

So here's what I'm thinking so far:

Modern zombies: I have multiple rulesets and sources for these, and I absolutely LOVE zombie gaming. With Zombicide's Toxic Mall expansion coming out and the remaining character figs from their Kickstarter due, and the recent 7ombieTV expansion from Crooked Dice, and the continued creativity of Kev White at Hasslefree and the folks at Studio Miniatures, and too many other good companies to mention, this one genre could keep me booked all day every day until 2014.

I am going to resist with all my might the urge to expand into pulp zombies, Weird WWII zombies, ancient zombies, or any other kind of zombies (except the Strain, see "Far Future" below.) When I do get my John Jenkins Designs Terror-Cotta Warriors painted up, they will inhabit a museum in either my modern setting or my gothic horror/steampunk games. Speaking of ...

Gothic Horror and Steampunk: This will primarily be Empire of the Dead, although there will be a good mix of Malifaux and some Hordes and Warmachine (primarily Cryx) in there. I also recently bought the pdf of the Chaos in Carpathia rules and plan to give them a spin. And I may pick up some of the constructs coming out for Dystopian Legions. The rank-and-file troops, at 40mm, would just stand out too much, I fear. However, this giant sumbitch here is gonna be mine:

"You are direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9.
You have five seconds to comply."

Just like the Dark Age Abomination model, sometimes size is all that matters!

Far future: This will mainly be for Sedition Wars. I went a little nuts (for me) during the kickstarter campaign, but I'm really looking forward to getting my gribbly hands on these. Plus, if I were to lose about 100 pounds or so, I think I could cosplay Vokker Dargu.

The metal Vokker Dargu figure from Studio McVey. They've added an exclusive
conscript figure of him to the SW:BoA kickstarter deal to compensate for delays.

"Dead Space," which significantly influenced the look of Battle for Alabaster, is one of my favorite videogames of all time. How I'm going to figure out a way to shoehorn my Relic Knights Star Nebula Corsairs into this setting to justify that kickstarter spending remains to be seen.

Engineer Isaac Clarke from the "Dead Space" series of games.
I love it that most of his weapons are modified tools.

Captain Harker and Ceasar, space pirates!

There are also a couple of tasty Dreadball figures I might try to worm in there too.

Mantic's John Doe MVP for Dreadball. I prefer to preserve his Lovecraftian mystery and think of him as "The Lurker at the Goal Line."

Of course, Dark Age then has to go and release the new factions of the CORE and the Kukulkani. Dammit! Can't you people see how weak I am?!?