Ok, so I have mentioned that I have gotten into a new hobby. I am buying and soon hope to be painting Warmachine models. I plan to actually play the game, not just collect and paint, but painting is a long and hopefully fun part of the hobby. My wife disagrees in fact, she says that all that it is going to do is aggitate me. 'You are going to make a mistake, and then scream and swear' What the $%&@@! is she thinking?

So I am talking to my friend, the man who has been trying to get me to play this game with him for over a year now. He has spent a lot of money on the little pewter dudes, paints, and materials. His work looks good and he enjoys it, but the point of tying him into this rant is that he is just throwing his money at his hobby. We were talking about a particular unit of undead goodness called the Bane Thralls.


They come either 2 in a 'blister' pack or six in a boxed set. I received a blister of them for my birthday from a friend who happened to have them in his comic book shop and wanted to clear the space as he only had 2 Warmachine items in stock. My friend has the box set and is in the process of painting them now. Like any smart game maker, Privateer Press, the maker of Warmachine, has a system where you can play the 6 member unit or you can add troppers up to a total of 10. Obviously they want to make money. In theory you can not play the unit without the leader, which only comes in the box set, thereby increasing the cost of said box to slightly more than that of 3 blisters.

I was discussing how I was looking to pick up a boxed set on Ebay because they are $30 or so new, and I did not want to spend that much. We also discussed how he is using more expensive paints than I have, and his defense when I said I will stick to the standard paints as I can not justify the increased cost was that they are nearly the same price. The paints that he is buying are over $3 a bottle. The ones that I am using (I only need to buy 3 or 4 colors to paint 2 different schemed armies because I was given an ample set of them for my birthday- thanx!) are $2.75 per. I have say 16 colors and need a different blue, a brighter red and some metals like gold and steel. He has about 30 bottles or more and said he had all the colors that I would need to paint one of my two factions.

The conversation drifted to the rules of the game and setting up a time to play, and then moved to our next games night. Games night leads to poker night and I, feeling proud, advised him that I had won $50 the night before in less than an hour of incredible luck on an online site. His response was what spurred the recent rash of financial priority posts. He said 'there is your box of Bane Thralls, right there.' He expressed a sense that I was silly for waiting until I could get them at a good price when I just said that I had the money to pay retail for them already. I am pretty much flat out refusing to pay anything more than half price for the miniatures simply based on principle.


People have a very hard time with this concept. I have enough of the minis to spend a lot of time painting them, seeing as how I will be painting in short shift at night after the children are asleep. I have enough to be able to field a small army from two different factions once I assemble a few of the guys I got in a starter set from ebay ($18 including shipping, retail price on the box is $39.99) meaning I can play with someone who does not own a set. My Nephews already want to come over and check the game out, and of course my four year old wants to play, help build/paint, learn the rules. It is not like ok I have a lot of guys but if I don't have this one model I can not play, so why would I pay full price if I can wait patiently for a good deal, or my next birthday to get more?