Hey, you were on time this week.

Pledge is to get more models assembled and cleaned up ready to paint, then on Sunday or Monday I’ll get another game of Five Parsecs played.
Also tomorrow I’ll be introducing Moonstone to two friends, our first multiplayer game since lockdown and I’m pretty excited for this.

Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?”

I’d say manufacturer agnostic because quite a few of those mechs are very distinctive in appearance, the madcat for example, although I’ve heard that the marauder has changed in appearance a few times over the years.

What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection?

This one is a difficult one for me as I tend to look for a bargain and certainly not indulge scalpers. I’ve bought a few pieces of pre-painted terrain which I thought was expensive for what I got, otherwise I cannot really think of anything.

What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason?

Funny thing is that I’m selling a bunch of Thousand Sons I’ve never played with to a friend tomorrow. The big one in the past is the Dark Souls board game on Kickstarter, especially since I went all in. I love Dark Souls but the board game just didn’t play very well. I did easily sell everything on though and actually made my money back.

As for music does this count?

Not sure if I have an pledge this week. Not really feeling all that enthusiastic right now, but that might change later in the week. School technically starts up again next week, though even now I get the impression that everything is still up in the air…which is just fantastic… If I find the energy I might try and prime the base of the Marine I finished last week. Still undecided on the chapter badge on that one, but if I do anything today I’m likely to just change the whole mini, so I’ll leave that for now.

Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?”

Really, if you ignore competition rules then any game can use whatever minis you like so long as you can show what it represents in the game. I want to see what GW would do if an entire tournament showed up with ‘third party’ and proxy armies for one of there big things that they promote. It won’t happen, because someone will break ranks so they can win by default, but I’d like to see it.

What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection?

An Imperial Knight, probably, though I got that cheaper than GW prices when I got it. A lot of my GW minis are exponsive, though. That being said, the recent Warlord price increases are looking a bit high as well…

What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason?

That is a dangerous question to ask, because sometimes I’d probably say all of it because it was an extravagance. At the moment, while I don’t really regret it, my Song of Ice and Fire game…because I still haven’t painted it all and I still haven’t played the game…and the way things are going it’s looking like it’ll be a while before I even can. But the answer to this question would probably be different tomorrow.

Have some music:

@crazyredcoat I’d go even one step further … games that say ‘you can only use our minis’ only ever do it because it is good for business. It is never any good for the players.

It never happens in historical games (even though some may attempt it), because it is impossible to enforce and the communities haven’t accepted it as a feature of their games.

With any fictional setting such limitations get sold as ‘features’ and somehow the fans accept it. There’s also laws that makes enforcing such limitations practical as you’re dealing with copyright and IP. As a result a company can claim that only their products are allowed to  be called speesj merines(tm) and anything else is not.

However such claims can’t stop anyone from using alternate sources or scratch-build designs, because all you really need for the game to be playable is a figure of similar size that is different enough from the other troops in an army so the opponent (and yourself) don’t get confused as to what is what.

There is some wiggle room though for small / independent manufacturers. A game like Moonstone can be played without their minis, but it would practically defeat their reason for making those rules if the profit margins are low and they can’t possibly compete with a big company that could make similar figures at a lower cost.

I think GW could use a bit more competition to force them to make more fun miniatures (and keep all of their factions up to date). The potential for cheaper minis would be another benefit, but I doubt there is much that can be won unless someone with the same mass production capability as GW steps up.

It would become more difficult for new gamers to understand what game is being played though.
Especially if there’s a Starwars tournament and everyone is using spacemarines as proxies for Stormtroopers and WW2/modern war era troops for rebels …

OTOH … it would be very cool and may start people think about the quality of rules too.

Is Battletech really figure agnostic or is it more “manufacturer agnostic?” never played tabletop battle tech
What is the most overpaid item in any of your hobby collection? insert any GW project from my collection
What is the item in your hobby collection that you wished in hindsight you haven’t bought and for what reason? AOS 3.0 boxset just really haven’t got the feel for it, but I wouldn’t sell it.

This week I’m mainly reading Alien RPG

Made more progress with the Egyptian project today, dry fitting the first third of the terrain. Hitting a few problems but will plough on. This is going to be huge. https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1660768/