Because of the new edition coming out and the fact that I picked up the new box for myself, I’ve been thinking about the highs and lows that buying a new box brings. Because building and painting miniatures is as much a part of the hobby as actually playing games, it’s easy to think that each new box would represent untapped potential still on the sprue.
But it’s not really as simple as that, is it?
I’ve mentioned several times in the past that my gateway back into the miniatures hobby was Blood Bowl. And this was spurred on by two things that collided at exactly the right time for me: I had been playing Blood Bowl on my iPad and thinking about being a teenager and painting miniatures. The right time happened to be me living for the first time abroad and taking language classes at a place where I walked by a Warhammer store every day for months.
Ducking inside and walking out with a Blood Bowl starter box really was everything I’d hoped. I had the nostalgia of putting together plastic minis and then dunking them in paint without any pressure to make sure what I was doing was any good because I didn’t know anyone. The only person who saw my laboriously painted figures was my wife who, rightly, saw it as a harmless hobby to keep me from reading about American politics and ranting about the rights and wrongs of it.
As I picked up more teams, I naturally got better at painting because, like all things, it’s a skill that improves with use. I am, by no means, a great painter. But I wasn’t embarrassed to take my Snotlings to my very first tournament in Berlin.
I’d probably been in the hobby again for two years or so, long enough that I was looking around at other games, when Necromunda: Ash Wastes was announced. I’d looked at Necromunda. I remembered playing it as a teenager. But, until Ash Wastes, the starter box had been Dark Uprising and, honestly, it was a little too dark for me. It just wasn’t the entry point for me. But Ash Wastes…
I blame the manager at my Warhammer store for getting me psyched about Ash Wastes. He was also a New Yorker and we would bullshit together and, honestly, I got a little wound up at the idea of Necromunda but… Mad Max! I liked the look of the box. It had the right amount of terrain, the right number of vehicles, a gang I was really interested in and another I was willing to paint. It was damn near perfect and I still remember the day I brought it home.
Jesus fucking Christ was there a lot of plastic in there. There were four sprues per gang, several terrain sprues, a templates sprue, another for scatter terrain. There were dice, cards, a paper mat. It was like Christmas in a box! And that was when the sinking feeling started in my gut.
I’d just finished painting a box of miniatures when I finished Cursed City. It was a large box and with a lot of different model types to paint. So, you’d think I’d feel strong going into it but, like Blood Bowl, most of the minis didn’t have human faces. Maybe only eight or ten and the results were… okay…
Now I was staring down at ten new Orlock gangers (plus the two more each per bike!), each of whom had a face. Yes, yes, I could use the rebreather heads or whatever on them and save a little work but, when I pictured Necromunda gangs, I remember the gangs from the 90’s, where they all had faces! And I had a problem I didn’t have back when I got myself Blood Bowl, I knew I was going to be taking my miniatures out into the wild.
Buying this box meant I was joining a Necromunda community, now. And you don’t have to browse Instagram or Reddit for very long before you see just how crazy some of the modeling and painting in this group can get. Shout out to friend of the ‘zine Rokksville and his cray-cray conversions. But now I’m staring down at fourteen Orlock dudes that I’m not sure I can paint noses on without looking like clowns. So the pressure was on for painting. But it was also on for the game itself.
Vehicle rules were new to Necromunda. And, as I very quickly found out, they were clunky and a bit “bolted on”.
I’d had visions of Mad Max on the tabletop ripping gunshots through my head. Now I was looking at faces I wasn’t sure I could paint and vehicles I wasn’t sure I wanted to play.
Had I just wasted €225? Was I going to have even a fraction of the fun I’d had with Blood Bowl even though Necromunda cost me so much more?
Anyone who’s spent a moment looking around this site will know the answer. And I found it while actually playing other people. Were my Orlocks going to win any prizes for best painted gang? Not hardly. But I also didn’t have the worst painted gang. In fact, a lot of people starting out with the game show up with gray plastic, just recently glued together, to see if those builds are even worth painting. So, showing up to a game with a gang of freshly painted future-bikers doesn’t net any negative comments.
… other players just have a baseline of respect for anyone who attempts to paint faces…
And, as for my fear of painting faces, I don’t want to oversell it because practice may not make perfect but it makes it pretty okay. It turns out that other players just have a baseline of respect for anyone who attempts to paint faces because it’s a task known for its difficulty. While I was worried people would see cross-eyed splodgey paint messes, it turns out it was me who was worried and everyone else who thought they were cool. That sinking feeling that I had when opening the Ash Wastes box wasn’t the pressure I was feeling from other players. It was a level of pressure and expectation I was putting on myself.
And what’s funny is, after fourteen faces, the fear subsides anyway because the mystery fades. It’ll be like painting anything else. There are a few tricks to it and necessarily a steady hand, but they’re not any harder to learn to do than doing folds in garments. Time and practice. That’s all it is.
So was the box worth it? I don’t play a lot of Ash Wastes games (even though I do love them) but if you’ve seen the game tables I’ve posted, be they set in the sump sea or underhive sector, a lot of the dimensionality comes from the Ash Wastes terrain I got in the box and subsequently added to. I’m playing my Orlocks in a campaign right now. And, years after, I’m still heavily involved with the game. So, yeah, the box was worth it. Once I got out of my own way and just had fun.
Now, get those minis put together! Get them painted! Get some games in. Once you see that even the best painter wants to look at your figures and will compliment you on something nice you’ve done, you’ll know it was you putting the “shame” into the pile of potential. And then there is no losing. There’s just having fun.
