Tuesday 12 March 2013

Thinking the Unthinkable

The siren call of 6mm Wargaming could be heard in my house at the weekend. And for one brief moment of utter madness I actually contemplated the idea of selling all my 15mm WWII stuff to make room for a wider range of 6mm terrain and armies. Such heretical thoughts don't belong in my head and I had to stop myself because that way lies madness - the madness of selling armies that have yet to be played with properly and haven't even seen the surface of a decent sized games table.

"Buy more 6mm! You know it makes sense!"
Source : Kamran Goudarzi on deviantART
So what spurred all this nonsense? The wife and I spent Saturday afternoon doing a little spring cleaning (despite the plummeting temperatures and very un-springlike weather) and that also meant re-organising my wargaming stuff. A major part of the big clean-up was sorting out the bedrooms which have grown more and more cluttered over the winter. The younglings rooms are always a mess (I hope your reading this kids!) but ours has also become less like a bedroom and more like a store room. And I have to admit that my ever growing collection of figures and terrain isn't helping matters. It's not a bone of contention yet, but it could be if I don't find a better storage solution soon. 

I recently bought eight 60 ltr lidded storage boxes to help us make better use of space (the loft is too damp and inaccessible to be of use at the moment). So I pulled out all my terrain boxes and cases of models and had a radical reorganisation. This mostly consisted of deciding what I could safely box up long term and what I needed ready access to. The problem is as I was doing this I found myself looking at my 15mm collection and thinking how much easier it would be if I were collecting just 6mm stuff. The Siren song was tugging at my willpower like never before...less storage, cheaper models, easier to paint, bigger armies and 'larger' games... oh you temptress!

Odysseus never knew how lucky he was, all he had to loose was his life! My usual lack of willpower is legendary (hence the 'Big' in BigLee) but for once I resisted the whispered entreaties of these muses of ruin and decided to keep my 15mm models. In fact I'm going a step further and have spoken to my Brother-in-law about fitting in a game sometime in the next few weeks (ie as soon as our schedules come into alignment). I feel the need for a Normandy battle coming on. Maybe my Panzergrenadiers verses the Parachute infantry of the 101st Airborne defending a vital crossroads in a French town. Anything to get these models out of their boxes and onto the games table before I am tempted to sell them again.

15 comments:

  1. HERESY! Thinking of selling armies..... it's a crime against nature. After all the man who dies with the most toys wins!

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  2. I've been playing with the idea to sell some of my 20mm minis too... but they are so precioouusssss

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  3. It was only a brief moment of insanity, but scary non-the-less.

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  4. Lee

    Don't do it - micro armour is plague against rational thinking wargames (ok that's an oxymoron, but you get the idea).

    Cheers
    PD

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  5. Clint has a point, even the Ancient Egyptians knew that they should be buried with all their myriad possessions to assist them in the afterlife.

    You should use 6mm as an adjunct and extension to your 15mm gaming... it's not like it will take up that much more space after all...

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  6. Whew, crisis averted. Actually I think that there is something to what you went through here. Time to rummage around the stuff and actually (Gasp!) play with it. The concept is so novel I think it was staring my in the face the whole time.

    Seriously, Thanks Lee. There is absolutely no reason why I can't be using all my old 28mm stuff.

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  7. 6mm rules! As you know I wouldn't consider any other scale now.

    All our scenery is standardised for 6mm. We're all used to the scale and all future armies will all be 6mm. The scale also allows you to easier pass off troops as different armies - this is much harder in larger scales.

    You can store tens of armies and all the scenery you need in one cupboard.

    You can play huge battles on a standard tabletop.

    Getting armies on the table is much quicker and easier.

    You get the mass effect that larger scales don't allow.

    You get tactical opportunities that larger scales don't allow.

    etc etc. :)

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  8. Sell them as you know you want to, why stress over this, do it now before the sleepless nights.......

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  9. Been there, done that and regretted it ever since... I still miss my OGRE collection and 1/600 ironclads

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  10. If the madness is selling armies that you haven't yet played, then surely your plans to play with them will make it easier to give in to the temptation to sell them.

    Don't do it!!

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  11. My personal problem with 6mm - is that I wind up using the same basing as 25mm so the terrain etc stays the same but boy do they look nice. ;)

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  12. Thanks for all the feedback... rest easy, I'm not selling my 15mm stuff just yet. But I'm definitely looking at expanding my 6mm collection. In fact new batch of models arrived this morning for another Company I'm building to add to the four I have (almost) completed at the moment.

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  13. No sooner then you get rid of something you know you will need it!

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  14. Lee I fell for the Siren's call and sold off my 15mm FOW Russian, well most of them i do have some left if anyone is interested, and I am now arming up with Russian and German 6mm GHQ minis, lots of them for big battles in a little scale!

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  15. Do iiiiiit!
    Do iiiiiit NOW!!

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