@IdaRed:
Thanks for the input John and Marc. Â The differences Marc mentioned do matter to me as I am somewhat obsessive about details. I suspect I will end up a piece junkie eventually as well as I’ve always liked miniatures and model building. Â I’m not going to be painting my newer pieces anytime soon. Â I am very tempted to start practicing on the older pieces first and work my way to the newer sculpts when I am satisfied with my skill level. Â I actually got interested in painting game minis by a friend after he showed me his Battlelore set. Â He showed me how just a little bit of paint–even a basic paint job–could make a mini so much more appealing and more fun to game with. Â I’ve been really impressed with the painted minis posted in this forum. Â Â
I need to sit down and budget out minis. I think I am leaning toward just buying new copies of the games and supplementing with HBG minis for additional sculpts. The main drawback to just buying HBG minis is a number of the basic ones for ANZAC and Italy are out of stock right now.
It sounds as if you already fully qualify as a piece junkie (even if you don’t necessarily own a lot of sculpts right now), so welcome to the club. :)
It also sounds as if we operate on a very similar wavelength when it comes to the kinds of details that we consider important. I have a huge amount of respect for enthusiasts who paint their sculpts – often to an awe-inspiring degree of detail – but in my particular case I’ve never been interested in painting or otherwise customizing my sculpts (which is a good thing, because even if I had the interest I wouldn’t have the time and that I doubt I’d have the required eyesight and manual dexterity). In fact, for me one of the fun challenges of collecting A&A sculpts has always been: how can I organize the sculpts to make the best possible use of the range of designs and colours available, without actually modifying the sculpts themselves? How can I make use of the changes in design and colour that have taken place over the years to represent more powers that the current OOB represent?
I’m still waffling over some of the choices available to me, but one example of what I’m talking about has worked out so well that I consider it finalized. I use the nationally-distinctive butternut-grey ANZAC pieces from G40/2 to represent the southern self-governing Commonwealth Dominions (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa), and I use the British-patterned butternut-grey “ANZAC” pieces from G40/1 (boosted with half of the G40/2 ANZAC AAA units) to represent the northern self-governing Commonwealth Dominions of Canada, Newfoundland and Eire. Initially I had planned to use the “blonde” UK units from D-Day to represent Eire, which starts out as a neutral, but then I realized that this distinction wasn’t necessary: if Eire is neutral then there’s no point in giving it any units at all, and if Eire joins the war then it acquires the same status as the other northern Commonwealth Dominions and thus there’s no need for its units to be different.
