How Did You Do Yours?

I've been reviewing a life in gaming of late, in light of completing my Big Fantasy Project - IE: getting 6000 or so models fully painted or at least paid for and in the queue with my painter, and I can see two distinct purchasing patterns right from the outset.

I was fortunate that in the mid 80s whilst at school, I was able to earn £50 per week painting whilst friends slaved for £7 - £10 a day in a weekend job.

This gave me considerable freedom to travel the UK and buy what I wanted.

Now this took two formats as already hinted at:

1. Walk into a GW branch be it my local Sheffield branch, Manchester or Leeds or go to Games of Liverpool and literally buy every model of a type at the counter, clear a shelf of multiple boxed sets or latterly just sweep a couple of freshly filled rails of blisters into my own shopping basket.

2. Place a mail order and buy 10-20 of each pose much as I would do for my historical armies, giving me at least a number of mono-pose units or a mix of complimentary poses (not as easy as it is now).

This means that I have armies with both lots of variety and others which were not really bought as armies by gamers - Lizardmen, pre the Trish Morrison ranges for example, with large mono-pose regiments. And who had Undead armies before Forces Of Fantasy?

I like both methods as they sort of date the buys and the armies.

Did anyone else take this approach? From 1983 I basically only bought with massed batttles in mind, my RPG stuff lingering in cardboard box limbo or being co-opted into the armies.

 

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