A Wonderful Blast from the Past

Following a trail of links, this morning I found myself inspired by a set of photos of an old-school fantasy army made up of vintage Minifigs and Citadel sculpts, and paint jobs inspired by King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King.

Love the pine bark armor and pine cone standard!

You really can't go wrong with animated hands, especially giant ones.

There need to be more saturated pastels in today's painter's palette.

When it comes to miniatures, I absolutely eat this stuff up. This sort of whacked-out imagery evokes memories from my childhood of strange books and movies, imagery that made me fall in love with all things fantastic. It brings to mind Brian Froud and Alan Lee and Terry Gilliam and innumerable other creative visionaries. It reminds me of a time when all fantasy wasn't necessarily grimdark and serious and codified.

Check out the full photoset here and bask in the trippy glory!

Why I'll Always Be An Aesthetic Snob

I've posted before on the aesthetic appeal of miniatures games being one of the primary draws of the hobby for me. So you can imagine how gratified I was to read a post over at The League of Ausburg stating the very same. Best quote of the post:

If this is wargames porn then I am a pornographer without shame. Enjoy my dark secret and damn the eyes of wargaming's Mary Whitehouse Brigade. Mediocrity breeds the same.

I couldn't agree more.

Games featuring unpainted figures or, worse, proxies are the sort of affairs best conducted behind drawn curtains, with many a backwards glance over the shoulder. "I'm just testing out the new rules for this unit I haven't ordered yet, honest!" Games featuring unpainted or proxy figures run in public?

For me, the work I put into building the aesthetic appeal of miniatures games is sort of the point of the hobby itself. Otherwise I might as well be playing hex-and-chit wargames or their computer equivalents. To my mind, it's worth gaming less if it means each individual game looks better. (And, honestly, my [in]frequent gaming is due more to the fact that minis aren't my primary hobby; insistence on high-quality tabletop presentation need not be a barrier to frequent gameplay if minis are your main concern.)

We live in a world of instant gratification. I see no problem with taking my time on this one thing, and of experiencing the payoff of my hard work; of seeing my painting and terrain-building efforts get better and better over time, and of reveling in the uniquely thrilling beauty of a fully-realized tabletop layout.

Why I'll Always Love Miniatures Gaming

The RPG side of my gaming hobby has been experiencing a sort of golden age of late. I'm currently involved in...let's see, four campaigns, easily a lifetime high. (It's one of the reasons posts around here have gotten a bit thin on the ground--been too busy gaming to write about it!) But I've also been thinking a lot about the other side of my gaming hobby: miniatures wargames.

I've talked in the past about how that side has been subject to increasing atrophy over the years. Back in high school I'd say I was involved in minis wargaming at least as as much as RPGs. Nowadays I'm lucky if I can get in a game every six months. Most of my hobby today consists of painting figures. (Still gotta post pics of my Germanic Space Ork army that I put together last year...). Although this is partly down to a question of lack of time (viz. the "four campaigns" mentioned above, ahem), I also feel this is due to the wargaming and RPG hobbies going their separate ways over the last 10-15 years. There just simply aren't as many RPGers who play minis games as there used to be, it seems.

There are a variety of causes behind this, I think. Certainly, Games Workshop played its part by very much intentionally nurturing the perception of miniatures wargaming as its own thing (or, as GW calls it, The Hobby). I also think the emergence of pre-painted figures played a major role; people who were reluctant or indifferent towards painting no longer had to. The irony, of course, is that over the same span of time, D&D's various successive editions have become evermore miniatures-centric. Pre-painted figures enabled the quick and easy acquisition of lots of single models or small groups of models. But the idea of building and painting a large army and making the terrain to go with it? I've shown my miniatures cabinet to about a half-dozen gamers, ranging from total noobs to old grognards like me, over the last year. To a person, they have reacted with a sort of ambivalent amazement. The overall impression was summed up by one of their words: "I'd never have the patience to paint all those figures!" As if I did it all in a week of cocaine-fueled frenzy.

A while back I saw someone post some provocative words online. (Just the once?) The words were to the effect of, "Miniatures painting is a craft. It's not an art. Get off your high horse." I was a little taken aback at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I tended to agree. But I'd add a corrolary: done right, playing a miniatures game is where the art comes in. The sight of a table full of lovingly-crafted terrain and hand-painted miniatures is something to truly give one pause, to remind one of the beauty of human endeavor and creativity, hours of work simply for the sake of having a fun afternoon in the company of a few friends. I was reminded of all this today when I followed a link from the always-excellent World War 20mm blog to a series of pictures taken at a recent club game. Here's a selection of my favorites; the rest can be found here.

Those are pictures taken from the game in progress, not just posed to look pretty. That organic, almost alchemical process of figures interacting with terrain to create spontaneous vignettes...if that's not art, I don't know what art is. Aside from my own selfish reasons, I really wish more RPGers were also miniatures wargaming enthusiasts. It's such a rewarding aspect of the gaming hobby, and it's because of pictures like those above that, as much as my participation might have shrunken over the years, I'll never truly walk away from miniatures gaming.