What's in the booooooooox

So, the other night, perusing Facebook when I probably should have been sleeping, I came across a chap that was looking to get rid of some Warhammer. I offered to take it off his hands if no one else wanted them, and offered to wait a week or so to see if he got any better offers. It turned out that with the advent of Age of Sigmar, his entire group of friends had dropped the game entirely, leaving him with a box of miniatures just taking up space, and as he was moving house shortly he wanted to get shot of them as soon as possible. I spent most of a day on an instant messaging service trying to persuade him to bung them on eBay or wait and see if he got a better offer, but he was keen for them to go somewhere where they'd get used. Today.

Not knowing what to expect (and considering the fact that I might be getting lured into a strangers flat so that they could murder and/or eat me) I ended up meeting the guy who was perfectly charming and walking away with a box of Warhammer. A large box.

Se7en references in the title of this post aside, it wasn't my wife's head in the box, but this:

That's a ton of stuff. Also, a phone charger!

I started pulling out models, trying to sort them by army as I went, but I kept finding interesting things that weren't Warhammer.

Like these:

Potentially the sweetest card sleeves in this world or the next (further investigation has revealed that there isn't enough to sleeve a whole deck. Curse you cruel fate!). 

I had some assistance in sorting through the box:

Although her greatest delight was mostly in taking and moving to the floor the non-Warhammer things that I'd set aside so that I could contact the guy to make sure he definitely didn't want them, and you'll see why:

Well, maybe not that holy sock. 

This, more so...

And this, I thought would probably have some sentimental value at least...

It turned out the watch and the lighter were his father's, so I'm glad I messaged him rather than just tossing them in the bin! There was also an expired bank card, which from chatting to the guy about when he last looked in the box probably wasn't expired when he put it in there...

As you can see, there was also some 3D glasses, some filters, the little tool you use for getting the SIM card out of an iPhone, at least one Magic deck (I'm tempted to just shuffle it up and play without going through the cards to see the synergies just to see what happens) as well as 5 pens, a key ring, and a whole host of old house keys:

And a paintbrush, admittedly, but my daughter had that away and I haven't seen it since.

After a brief break for dinner and a beer:

I continued pulling miniatures out of the box until I ran out of space on the chest we use as a coffee table:

(You'll notice that things start getting less organised towards the camera as I realised that I wasn't going to have enough space to lay out everything)

Even after all this, there was still another hundred or so miniatures in the bottom of the box! The original post described it as a Skaven and Chaos army with 'a few other bits that never get used', which ended up being: a small Wood Elf force, with some chaps riding stags; a Chaos army, with some warriors, wolves, chaps on juggernauts, converted chariots, two Daemon Princes and mounted Slaanesh types; and a Skaven army, that looks like the models from the Island of Blood starter set that have been added to with a Screaming Bell, two Doomwheels, a handful of Stormvermin and a smattering of metal models!

There were some other interesting bits, like this armless Warrior Priest that I don't recognise (EDIT: a day or two later, I've stared at him some more and think he's from a vignette that GW produced of a Warrior Priest blessing a chap's rifle, but don't quote me on that), a plastic Dark Elf sorceress and a handful of dwarfs!

Most excitingly, though, was the discovery of TEN Skaven Jezzails! Super exciting, as up until now I'd managed to acquire the princely total of... one, from a trader at Salute a couple of years back. Also, the hardback Warriors of Chaos army book that the Jezzails are resting on in the above picture, which I realise I haven't mentioned until now...

I also enjoyed this little gem, amongst a smattering of 40K orks, which I can only assume is a converted RPG character, holding a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels!

Piling everything back into the box to await the time I can give them a proper sort (I'm going to need some more boxes!), we then spent some time tidying out the drawers of our desk - many years ago, it was my hobby desk, and the drawers are full of old maps, bases, interestingly shaped oddments of plastic and old knife blades, but these days it's used exclusively by my wife for her crafting, so we're taking out my bits and bobs (most of which have been sat untouched for a couple of years now). Fun tip - do this FOR your wife, not WITH her, as she probably won't take too kindly to your proclamations of 'hey, remember I thought I was out of 40mm bases and spent that afternoon going through every box in the house looking for some? Turns out there were something like twenty in here'...

I came back to these miniatures an evening or two later, and tried sorting them into separate boxes by army, so that I could work out just how much there was, but the boxes I used still weren't big enough! I'll have to get some bigger receptacles an spend an afternoon costing out what I've got using Battlescribe (my army list app of choice for pretty much every game system).

And so, the Tally... Normally, painted miniatures don't add to the Tally, but what about half-painted miniatures? What about miniatures that I'll likely touch up or repaint? It looks like a lot of these figures are painted with enamels, which won't match any of my other miniatures... Plus the fact that I still haven't counted exactly how many miniatures there actually are! I think I'll skip the Tally for these, so bear in mind, if I end up ending the year on a positive score, just remember that it won't really count due to this massive box of miniatures acquired!

Delves in my stripping pot...

Having finally overcome my deeply ingrained (and generally unfounded) nerdrage, my wife and I have been catching up with Marvel's cinematic output (I'd previously only seen The Avengers , having decried all comic book films as a comic book fan). We've been watching them in chronological order, and we're now currently halfway through Agents of SHIELD, waiting for Iron Man 3 and Thor 2 to pop up on Netflix! As tends to happen in these scenarios, I found myself with a hankering to recreate what I'd seen in (roughly) 28mm, and so duly procured a Marvel Heroclix Avengers Movie Mini Gamefor the four sculpts within, with the intention to strip and repaint them:

Which reminded me, some of the miniatures in my stripping pot had been there for over a year, so it was probably about time to clear it out before adding anything else to it!

So, so time last February (I thought March, but the Valentines cards in the background of the next picture would suggest otherwise!) I picked up a whole bevy of Batman Heroclix from Blue Rat Games with the intention of painting up a posse or two for the Batman Miniatures Game:

Including picking up one particular Two-Face figure purely for the fact that it came with a 1:1 scale replica of Two-Face's coin, which I (should I ever manage to get a crew painted) will use to make every decision whilst playing as Two-Face!

There are some nice little sculpts in the Heroclix range (although admittedly generally not as nice as the entire range of miniatures that Knight Models has brought out in the time that these have been sat in my stripping pot), although they are sometimes hidden under thick (and goofy!) layers of paint:

Chilling. Master of fear indeed.

So, I attempted to strip them. Nail polish remover would absolutely destroy the plastic that they're made from, so I gave it a go in some Fairy Power Spray, which I'd read positive reviews of:

But nothing. Months of dunking, scrubbing, and repeating, and nothing. Frustrated, I dumped the lot into my usual stripping pot (of Surgical Spirit), where once more, they were dunked, scrubbed, rinse and repeat. Almost no change to the paint. What are they painting these things with?! As you can see, they've been in long enough that the glue holding them together has dissolved, but not the paint:

As well as the various Batman Heroclix, there were also a couple of Mage Knight sculpts that I fancied repurposing for the Dungeons and Dragons project (which I should really make a greater effort to get off the ground, what with the release date for the next edition having been announced and everythig); some Games Workshop Dwarf Slayers that you've seen in previous posts before their fragrant bath; the old Spirit Host ghost I picked up at Salute; Manfred, an old Fighter; and a mounted Eomer that I picked up as a potential base for a mounted Robb Stark conversion for the ASOIAF project.

Although I wasn't able to remove the paint from the Heroclix (which after another rinse off I'm probably just going to paint over the top of. Or throw into a fire.), they are now however exceptionally clean, and somewhat soapy smelling, leaving my stripping pot looking like this:

Into which have gone the Avengers from the start of the post, just in the off chance that their paint is somehow different from the previous releases...

One of the benefits of having a blog...

...is that sometimes people contact you out of the blue with miniatures that you need for your collection. I got one such email from a nice young man by the name of Greg the other day, and a couple of emails and the exchange of monies later, I now have Daemon slayer 3 taking a lazy bath in my stripping pot:

No change to the tally though, as since a chum of mine had stated that he was looking to paint up some Blood Angels as part of our 500 point 40k plans, I dug this chap out of my stripping pot to gift to him:

Missing his weapon top, but easily fixable!

So, one up and one down with no finished painted miniatures yet leaves the tally still at:

22 vs 35 = -13

Collecting Dwarf Slayers Redux

Having had a fellow enthusiast by the name of James Peake (he doesn't currently have a blog, but I'll update with a link if that changes) get in touch, I was able to cross off a couple more Slayers from my list of Dorfs I need. Unfortunately, he'd also pulled together a much more comprehensive list that the one that I'd previously cobbled together (in the form of a pdf and spreadsheet), which revealed in handy pictoral form that there's a bunch more than I thought that I want (please note, my list still doesn't include Slayer pirates, 54mm releases etc, as they're not currently on my 'want list'):

(10/10, woo!)

(at some point I'll get around to picking up the Troll Slayers...)

(just need the command figures now from the newest set!)

The following images are shamelessly stolen from James Peake's PDF, so I can take no credit for them (except for the shaky crossing through to signify that I own them already, that's all me)

(If I were to get the Blood Bowl Slayers though, I'd be faced with a difficult choice: do I convert them to be armed so that they fit into a unit, or leave them as-is in their original form?) 

(Mmmm, Talisman-y)

(I own two of these, but I forget which. Note to self: dig out of storage and cross them off shakily using MS Paint)

 (Oh, the unit filler you'll be)

(Unreleased, iirc. Can't justify the price this guy tends to go for...)

I realise now that I still don't have a picture of the Battle for Skull Pass plastic slayer for this, but hey, you know what it looks like right?

[edit]: no change to the tally, as the trades were on a one-for-one basis - two marauder slayers and a more modern standard bearer for these three, who are now having a relaxing bath in the stripping pot: