Can't afford it anymore.

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ConflictGames

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When Covid hit, New Boardgames, mini purchases and paint was the first thing we cut back on. 10 months later I miss it like crazy, but still can not afford to go back to that level of hobby spending. I guess I'm venting a bit, but also looking for recommendations for less expensive ways to paint and buy minis.

Thanks in advance for the advice.
 
I guess I'm venting a bit, but also looking for recommendations for less expensive ways to paint and buy minis.

Thanks in advance for the advice.
First of all welcome to the board! As for your question, it would be helpful if you could describe your miniature and painting needs. Collecting minis for a 40k army is going to take a different approach than buying minis for a Curse of Strahd campaign if that makes sense.
 
It's also a different situation if your priority is playing the games, and want a cheap alternative to miniatures, or if painting minis is the big appeal, and one is looking for cheaper minis.
 
First of all welcome to the board! As for your question, it would be helpful if you could describe your miniature and painting needs. Collecting minis for a 40k army is going to take a different approach than buying minis for a Curse of Strahd campaign if that makes sense.
you're right. I am more of tabletop gaming when is comes to using my miniatures. So it more about the utility over the quality. Does that help?
 
What games do you play?
 
EM4 miniatures are the cheapest 28mm alternative

you can buy armies of orcs or dwarves for £10.50 for 50 minis (https://em4miniatures.com/collections/plastic-fantasy-miniatures)

£2.99 for a squad of not-Space Marines

space_rangers_1024x1024@2x.jpg


And a host of other cheap as chips minis, from a line of Mythos investigators and Lovecraftian Horrors to Civil War histoicals.



Another good option is to look into different scales

1/72 scale, which is pennies on the dollar in comparison to available 28mm minis,hasa plethora of fantasy and historical options readily available


15mm scale is even cheaper and pretty much anything fantasy or sciFi you can imagine is well covered

 
I love playing WHFB at 15mm. The sense of scale is prefect. I also really like it for a lot of historical stuff as it allows a lot more battlefield to maneuver in. At 15mm you still have some figure to paint to, so it's a cool compromise.
 
EM4 miniatures are the cheapest 28mm alternative

you can buy armies of orcs or dwarves for £10.50 for 50 minis (https://em4miniatures.com/collections/plastic-fantasy-miniatures)

£2.99 for a squad of not-Space Marines

space_rangers_1024x1024@2x.jpg


And a host of other cheap as chips minis, from a line of Mythos investigators and Lovecraftian Horrors to Civil War histoicals.



Another good option is to look into different scales

1/72 scale, which is pennies on the dollar in comparison to available 28mm minis,hasa plethora of fantasy and historical options readily available


15mm scale is even cheaper and pretty much anything fantasy or sciFi you can imagine is well covered

holy cow!!!

Thank you. Where have your been all my life!!
 
Pathfinder, fate, SWADE and a little good o' dnd (5e and 1e) -You?
Hah! I meant miniature-wise. :grin: I'm pretty slutty, I'll play most games. My current roster is Black Hack and other assorted OSR goodies, some PbtA stuff, a little D&D with my kids, and my current favorite game, Swords of the Serpentine.
 
holy cow!!!

Thank you. Where have your been all my life!!
I suggest you keep an eye out for the D&D Adventure System games at your local thrift stores. You can get a decent range of minis for maybe $20-$30
 
I've pretty much given up on boardgames and card games, largely for obvious reasons. But the solo games just never really cut the mustard. Some of them are good games but it's either spend hours setting up (even during play) or the game just isn't much cop. I was initially inmmpressed with Marvel Heroes cardgame by FFG but while the gameplay is decent, the scenarios/villain packs were just bland. They had production delays and then covid hit. I got out right before. I'm not sure what's even hot anymore. In fact I haven't done any roleplaying throughout this entire crisis, although I'm sure I could have gotten something together.
 
you're right. I am more of tabletop gaming when is comes to using my miniatures. So it more about the utility over the quality. Does that help?
I almost forgot. Cardstock miniatures are cheap and don't look half-bad. I ran Savage Worlds for years using cardstock miniatures as a cost-saving measure and no one ever complained.
 
There's a FB group for people who play WFB in 10mm. They use a mix of single-based and multi-based figures, on a 3x2ft table. An army for £25 that you can paint in a week.

A 15mm figure is 1/2 the size of a 28. That's 1/4 the painting required, and 1/8 the volume for storage and price. Several manufacturers do 40k proxy figures. If you really want a combined-arms SF force (platoon of troops and a few vehicles), I'd say that 15mm gives you more bang for your buck, and a proper tactical space to game in anyway.

Play older versions of 40k. A 1000-pt army in wild and weird 2nd edition can be a squad of 10 marines, a squad of 5 terminators, a couple of characters and a vehicle.

Buying second hand and restoring old minis is a hobby in itself, or look at toys and cheap model kits or diecast. Do an ebay search on Tehnolog and see what your money gets you in Russia.

Use 28mm historical plastics in place of fantasy figures - especially for LotR. Prices are hysterically cheaper than GW. Look at Oathmark fantasy figures, or Warlord's. Victrix historicals are every bit as well-made as GW's stuff.

Convert like crazy.

Go for skirmish games that need a handful of figures. Avoid the "boutique" stuff like Infinity or Malifaux, and FFG's counter-fest games.

Go for games not tied to any figure line, that can use what's in your collection already. Wiley Games' Fistful of Lead or Galactic Heroes can be played with 5 minis. The Osprey games are cheap, and several of them - Lion Rampant, Dragon Rampant, Zona Alfa - are classics.

Avoid GW for hobby accessories like trees, grass or sand, look in hobby superstores or model railway shops instead. For non-specialist (read: normal-sized) tools and glues, DIY stores are best.

PVA glue (white glue or Elmer's glue) has about a million different uses. Never buy from art stores, always from DIY places.

Buildings - make your own. Brown corrugated card looks like logging for 15mm or smaller, cork tiles look like concrete or mud brick, put scorch tape on the edge of cardboard and spray it grey for modern ruins. Print out card buildings, or look in the kids' section in a bookshop for "build and play" models.

Playing surface is a £10 tablecloth with books under it for hills. Roads and rivers are coloured felt, card or foam sheets cut into strips.

You can make a small town for a GW scale game in a weekend. You'll make a castle and town in an evening for 10mm.
 
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For painting, avoid GW and go for... pretty much any other hobby acrylic range. GW pots are smaller than most other ranges (12ml vs 17ml or 20ml), more expensive and the stupid lids make them dry out quicker. GW are good paints, but...

Brushes - Rosemary and Co watercolour brushes are a fraction of the price of expensive brushes, and still great. Learn how to look after your brushes. I'd avoid the ultra-cheap brush sets you often see - the brushes fail quickly.

Sprays - car primers are great. For high-volume colour coats, Montana Gold are much lower pressure than hobby paints - more control and last longer.

I've heard that cheap, bulk US acrylics like Apple Barrel are actually ok; the British equivalents are awful and will put you off painting for life. Save them for scenery and buildings.

Student acrylic paints are fine and you get a lot in a basic set. You may find that the professional versions are too expensive, as they contain much more pigment.
 
Even at 15mm you can bang out a great table in a weekend, and I mean with some choice of terrains and everything. Cork makes great cliffs with very little work, and getting a hotwire cutter for foam can be a lifesaver for quick hills. I'd recommend a topographic approach to hills rather than slopes as it's means your figs aren't sliding all over the place. Prime it black, flock, drybrush the crap out of it and you're good. Gloss varnish makes a fine river, no need to mess about with those real water products or whatnot. I make a ton of great buildings out of foamcore and cardstock, but for 15mm standard foamcore might be a bit thick. Tree kits from woodland scenics are affordable, and playable terrain only needs handful of trees per base. If you want your stuff to be durable I'd recommend using sand, painting it, and sealing rather than going the flock route. Vinyl floor tiles make great bases for scenery that won't warp up no matter how much glue you swab on them. Dish sponge makes great hedgerows, and paint up nicely, and are way easier to make than actual fence. If you buy plastic models save all the extra sprue parts for making easy rubble.

Legacy of more than few years working at my FLGS.:thumbsup:
 
I don't think taking the absolute cheapest solution is always best or even cost effective in the long run. Sometimes spending a little more up front saves you money or time on the back end.

  • Avoid specialty art shops when possible, the markup can be substantial.
  • I can confirm that cheap auto primer works fine for minis.
  • Army Painter and Vallejo are comparatively inexpensive and work just as well as GW paints. In fact I am slowly phasing out my large collection of GW paints for these two brands.
  • Army Painter has a regiment brush and that thing is a great value for $7. I used it to paint many Imperial Guard and swear by that sucker, it is a workhorse brush.
  • Taking care of your paints and tools saves money in the long run. For example I have GW paint pots from the early 90's that are still in good condition because I keep a glass marble inside the pot as a shaker and make sure to keep the paints hydrated. I clean and condition my brushes with The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver, it's $5 a tin and will last you for years. I got a cheap storage box from Harbor Freight (under $10, maybe $5) to safely store my files, Exacto, "bitz" etc.
  • Cheap acrylics like Apple Barrel are great for stuff like basing and terrain; in fact I have one on my desk as I type this. I wouldn't use them for minis though.
  • I have heard a lot of janky basing solutions on the cheap over the years; for my unbased minis I use the laser cut 25mm and 50mm round wooden bases from Litko; it's cheap and will keep everything looking nice and consistent. This isn't my idea- a close friend who is a Golden Daemon winner does this, if it's good enough for him it's good enough for me.
 
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As far as paint goes, Warcolours is hands down the highest quality for the cheapest price, even when taking shipping into account.

They are higher pigmentation than Vallejo or Citadel, have infinitely superior bottles that won't dry out, spill, or gunk up, and cost about a third of the price. Their labelling system is also, IMO, far superior and intuitive.

The big thing thats really going to save you money on paint though is learning to mix your own colours/shades. With about 10-15 paints you can mix every colour you'd ever need to use, without having to buy 300 individual bottles.

For Primer, my preference is Krylon ultra-matt camo, which runs about 3 bucks a can. Gesso is also a cheap & fast alternative, especially if you live in a climate where spray priming is heavily weather-dependant.

The one thing you don't want to go cheap on is brushes, but, as Brock mentions above, if you take proper care of them they will last a long time. But you don't need any specialty products for that - I use shampoo and conditioner on my brushes, just like my own hair.
 
For small dungeon groups, there are eBay sellers who sell individual sprues so you don't have to buy a box of 30-40 figures. If you only want 5 orcs or knights, this is the way to go.

For converting, command sprues tend to contain cloaks, horns, banners and other weirdness.

The Frostgrave and Oathmark plastics made by North Star are worth a mention. Each sprue offers a range of options, so you can make figures with a mixture weapons. They have a great range of eclectic sets (wnen wizards and demons) that can swap parts easily.

Of especial note is the Frostgrave soldiers set/sprue. It has a range of dungeoneering gear - torches, lanterns, rope, packs - and a great mix of weapon arms. It's one of those sets every kitbasher needs.

The bodies in the set are in heavy, ragged clothes, so they work well with many head or arm sets. Mix with GW Skitarii Ranger heads and rifles for "SF wasteland warrior" figures. GW dual-purposes many sets, so spare heads and arms are common and cheap on eBay.

Another tip is to multi-purpose your purchases. Adventurers from any era can fight Xenomorphs, Predators or Lovecraftian horrors, right?

GW goblins from the Hobbit set are brilliant as diseased little horrors. Mine have also served as slaves for my skaven, SF + post-apoc mutants and Martense-House style cthulhoid degenerates. They'd be great troglodytes if I ever did a caving adventure in the style of "The Descent" movie.

Wargames Atlantic is a new US company that makes a great range of unusual sets. They make SF plastics as well as historical and fantasy.
 
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One option is to make your own minis out of cardstock. I have started doing that for groups or hordes of enemies, particularly things that are more or less within the same size range as the player characters. Since this is just for personal use, I grab art online (particularly from Deviant Art), put it on a template I made, print it, then cut them out and put bases on them. I use Morrison stands for the bases:

Amazon product

I even put a little number under the images, to make it easier to keep track of which ones have taken damage in battle.

Another option is to buy sets of minis from board games on eBay. You can often get them down to around $1 each by doing that. Some of the bigger mini sellers on eBay have a lot of regular minis (designed for rpgs) for around $1 each, and most of them will combine shipping.
 
I almost forgot. Cardstock miniatures are cheap and don't look half-bad. I ran Savage Worlds for years using cardstock miniatures as a cost-saving measure and no one ever complained.

Printable Heroes is a blog with free and for-sale paper and VT minis that look very cool.

There are also loads of good quality ones for sale or PWYW on Drivethru.
 
I suppose you can always dig up your first mini projects (most likely they don't look great compared to what you can do now), strip the paint and have a go at them again.
 
And the abyss stares back and snickers into its hand at your pathetic jar of break fluid and worn nasty-ass toothbrush. :grin: I have stripped minis before, many times, but usually stuff I bought used, not my own work. I have a real block about stripping my own paint jobs.
 
Two lines can satisfy all your miniature needs for bog-standard D&D: Reaper Bones and Nolzur's Marvelous Unpainted Miniatures. Both lines are inexpensive and look decent on the table.
Bones quality can be pretty potato, especially when it’s using the cheap white plastic. Nolzur’s is much better quality.
I use Bones for stuff I’m gonna slap some paint on and then Quickshade.

The stuff that comes in the Bones Kickstarters is the better quality light grey plastic and the high quality dark grey plastic.
 
Bones quality can be pretty potato, especially when it’s using the cheap white plastic. Nolzur’s is much better quality.
I use Bones for stuff I’m gonna slap some paint on and then Quickshade.
You just gotta mix and match what works best for you, I some cases I prefer Bones sometimes Nolzur's. Bones look fine painted up. When I need large quantities where detail doesn't matter like giant centipedes x12 or skeletons x12 Bones is usually the superior choice. That said the Nolzur's are good, I own a ton of them as well but sometimes the look is off for me. Their cheap bandits, elementals, and barbarians in particular were a welcome addition to my collection.

I reserve my hard earned $$ for pewter or resin miniatures from boutique outfits (most of them are in the UK). PCs always get a nice pewter or resin mini.

I have a real block about stripping my own paint jobs.
Really? I have stripped an entire squad of Guard before. It wasn't exactly fun but I am glad I did it.
 
I spend too long on paint jobs to want to do that.
 
I’ve picked up a ton of 40K minis with shit paint jobs for super cheap. I think I’m going to get one of those larger sonic cleansers and fill it full of 99% Isopropyl alcohol. Most of the cheap minis are put together with Crazy Glue and are falling apart, so Iso dissolves the Crazy Glue too.

Simple Green gets metal minis perfect. Plastic ones are a bitch though.
 
Yeah, I've never had much luck cleaning plastics. I've never tried a sonic cleanser or isopropyl though. Used figs are one of the main reasons I miss having a FLGS.
 
Dettol works a treat on plastics, if you can get it.

For metal minis, I just use acetone. Throw them in a container, and wait a day or two...all the paint/glue, etc is melted off, coalescing in an acrylic ball.
 
There's a safe paint stripper called Biostrip 20 in the UK that works very well on both plastic and metal minis. It has no smell and is non-toxic.

It will start to lift acrylic paint off in under an hour, although you get better results if you leave it longer. Then scrub the figure with your toothbrush and wash the gloop off under a running tap.

Word of warning - it turns resin rubbery, so don't use it on those Forgeworld models!

Wilko homeware shops sell something similar as their own-brand paint stripper.
 
I've been painting up a bunch of Bones figures for a kid I know (he got them for Xmas) and I really hate them. Bendy, soft details and some of them don't take paint well.
I know they're cheap... but... grrrr...

I have, however, painted figures with craft paints and gotten OK results. I'm no master painter to where I'm doing fancy stuff that requires better.

I have seen great boards done up with 2d miniatures (standees)... terrain and everything. They can be made to be a lot more stylized the the 3d sort and push a theme/atmosphere that I'd struggle to get across with 'normal' minis.


My own concerns are mostly aesthetic and spacial... the tables I've made are 4x8.
For my purposes...
28mm-ish is for small skirmish, like .45 Adventures, Confrontation, Chaos in Carpathia or original Rogue Trader.
15mm is for modern 40K sized forces, Stargrunt and Lion Rampant.
6mm is for armies... and setting where there can be HUGE stuff on the table, like mecha and lots of tanks... dragons and castles.

There is amazing stuff being made for all those scales, in enough variety to let your imagination go a bit wild. I'll happily scale down rules to better fit my visuals... like, I just started with Gaslands and I'm doing it in 6mm, so cars will have a lot more room to maneuver.

Also, I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but historical figures are just about always cheaper than fantasy/scifi... and some of the old Warhammer factions can be nicely proxied with their historical counterparts.
 
My goals are “good enough” so everything is speed painted and I almost exclusively use craft store paint (not apple barrel, in my experience it’s poop).

I don’t go for lots of detail, I paint in bold bright colors and dip the minis in Minwax. Then dull coat and it’s all done!

I follow the “three foot rule,” they need to look fine from 3 feet away.

I also don’t like having unpainted miniatures on a table. So if a game is coming, I feel like everything must be painted. My goal is always under 20 hours for 100 figures at 28mm
 
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