Club admin and selling Warhammer Great War

Been a hobby bureaucrat today - various bits of club organising (like booking for our Marston Moor all day Pike and Shotte game on the 6th October - ping me if interested), and putting some stuff on eBay.

Specifically, these two.

Warhammer: Great War

Over the Top

I will sell to a follower if you make me a reasonable offer, otherwise bid away and good luck.

Where do I get my explosion markers?

A couple of folks, both online and at the club, asked where I got the explosion markers from.

Well, they're from Small Terrain on eBay - pre-painted and worth it.

I know I could make my own, but frankly, for a tenner?

And that's the last of the 54mm shopping list...

Just nabbed on eBay....

It's the only Swoppet figure in the force (i.e. body and head are removable) but given the rarity of crossbowmen generally I didn't care that much.

I was for a few moments seriously tempted by this... but it's an example of what I mean about wince-inducing price tags... £77 plus postage (ok, it's only £6 a figure, but...)

But they're pretty... and I may start talking myself into them again...

Not buying the bombard, though - the basing's ugly, and it's thirty quid for something I could make with four cotton reels and a pack of balsa bits.

The odd ship or two...

Ok - 26, actually. The only duplicates are the ones from the starter set, but since all the ships have double-sided ID cards and two names, this is Not A Problem. Figuring out how to store them IS.

Chef du Pont - the creamery, and Sarissa 15mm WW2 European buildings...

No, not the nice new ones that are scaled down versions of the 28mm ones.

Before that, Sarissa used to do a nice range of somewhat less detailed buildings that you won't find on their website any more - for a while, when their .com and .co.uk sites were different, you could find them on one but not the other. They weren't as good - but... sometimes they're useful - one of them can be persuaded, I suspect, to pass as the three-storey building to the left of the northlight-roofed creamery building without too much trouble.

If you do need them, eBay seller treadhead2004, aka Arcane Scenery and Models, seems to have both the old and new ranges in stock - search for "15mm buildings" in his store.

I've picked up a terrace, for the above, and also the château from the newer range, which will more than adequately pass for the Chateau Isle St. Marie.

Chef-Du-Pont - the creamery, Plan B

The best laid plans...

Still. I got a good blog post out of plan A.

Plan B is Ade Deacon's fault: he found the perfect eBay item in the right scale, that saves the headache of doing those northlight roof bits....

It's a TT scale (1/100th, i.e. 15mm near as damnit) Triang engine shed, and it arrived last week. OK - so the roof is more regular, and it's missing two chimneys but a) I don't care THAT much and b) work has a 3D printer which'll fix the chimney!

OK, so it'll also need a little work to add doors etc, but that's half the fun!

Auction in aid of Combat Stress

As you've probably noticed, our club's annual WAB campaign day tends to have a charity dice off in aid of the Combat Stress appeal...

With that in mind, here's a quick plug for an eBay auction in aid of Combat Stress, courtesy of Henry Hyde.

"This auction is for the brand new copy of the latest edition of David C R Brown's "Panzer Grenadier Deluxe" (previously known as "Battlegroup Panzer Grenadier") rules that was sent to Royal Marines Major Dave Fielder for review in Miniature Wargames with Battlegames magazine issue 376, which has just been published last week.

In addition to the full colour, highly illustrated hardback rulebook, Major Fielder has also provided a genuine pair of his own Royal Marines Commando shoulder flashes to add to your collection of militaria.

The rulebook normally retails for £35 (see www.caliverbooks.com), but we are hoping that this auction will raise rather more than that because EVERY PENNY of the proceeds of this auction will go towards the Battlegames Combat Stress Appeal (see www.justgiving.com/battlegames/)."

You know you've been painting the same pack of figures too many times...

...when you can spot that someone's stiffed you on an eBay sale because you don't recognise a pose.

The last Battlefront assault boat section I picked up on eBay definitely contains some figures that aren't from UBX09/US747 - that and it's a mortar section short.

Hrmph.

The busyness continues apace - busy painting the third wave for Bloody Omaha (that's going to wind up over 400 figures total, I think).

To cap that off, I'm musical director for a fantasy rock musical at the World SF convention (Loncon 3, weekend of 14-18 August at the Excel), which takes place on the Monday (just in case any of my readers are going).

After that? I'm due a vacation (as are my wife and son who are both in the band!).

What is a thing worth...?

The stock answer, of course, is "whatever someone is prepared to pay for it."

As you may know, I'm a huge Firefly fan. I own the core rulebook and one scenario book for the Serenity RPG, and I'd dearly love the rest.

You can thus imagine my surprise at the "Six Shooters and Spaceships" listing on Amazon. "6 new from £247.19 - 3 used from £157.57".

Bu-wha....?!?!?!?! (as Mal would say).

Even more so when the most I can find one selling for on eBay is £43.

'Verse is plumb kwong-juh duh sometimes, mm?

I blame Ade

Well, someone's got to.

As we have an invite to bring the Bloody Omaha game to a 1940s weekend in Peterborough next month, I may have let slip that I was being a little keener in acquiring enough FoW 29th infantry NOT to have to reuse figures or festoon them with Post-Its.

Ade from Wyvern Wargames has taken it upon himself, the lovely man that he is, to point me at eBay auctions that might help with this... and some.. er... obliging person has... um... had a set already based but unpainted...

Normally, new boxes go for the neck end of £40. New boxes on ebay kick in around the £25 mark. Otherwise intact box that someone's already mounted on bases? £10.50. Result! Thanks, Ade!

Of course, now I have to work out how much pain there will be in getting them off the bases, since the odds are they've been based as per FoW section organisation, not the one I/Rich use for Bloody Omaha. Ah well. Worst case I might have to get ugly with a razor saw....

Change your eBay password

Another day when, as a security certifier at work, I hide my head in my hands for a moment and just sigh.

eBay have had a security issue, in which the database containing "eBay customers’ name, encrypted password, email address, physical address, phone number and date of birth" was hacked into via someone at eBay's internal login that had the appropriate permissions, and the contents acquired.

Here we go again. You know the drill:

• change your eBay password to something new
• if you use the same password anywhere else, change it to something different
• consider using a secure password manager like 1Password if you can't remember passwords
• be vigilant about attempts at identity theft - the hackers got away with your name/address/DoB

Identity and authentication are a key part of today's Internet. Don't treat them lightly.

Miniature Bids - https://miniaturebids.com/

(logo used with permission)

Fed up of eBay seller charges? Yeah. Me too.

Understandably, then, I was intrigued by mention of a new site on various Facebook groups I'm a part of, namely Miniature Bids.

The short summary:

• no buyer seller fees
• pretty much similar approach to eBay in terms of fixed length, sealed max bid auctions
• payment by Paypal
• like eBay, it's just a 'venue' to contact buyer and seller

I've had a nose around (not least wearing my computer security hat), and it looks pretty good and competently put together. So far, there isn't a huge amount in the way of auctions up there, but people are gradually discovering it, and it's not all Games Workshop by a long shot :D

There are a couple of shortcomings at present in that you can't search by tag so (for example) finding all the WW2 28mm figures isn't as easy as you'd like, for one, and there's no way of restricting sale to specific countries, or having different postage rates to different countries. But, they are aware of these, and they're on the list to improve.

I've exchanged a few questions with Gavin from MB on Facebook, from which I've learned the following:

• the basic auction feature (as is currently available) will always be free (win!)
• their business model is to fund the site via advertising and a subscription model, where some site features will only be available to subscribers (but, and I quote, "even at the most expensive subscription package, it will still be cheaper then EBay's version")
• they have plans in place should they need to handle more traffic 
• they seem pretty responsive to questions and suggestions for new features (see above)

In summary? Definitely worth a look. I shall certainly be keeping an eye on it as a source of additions to the lead pile.... although, I'm still completely at a loss to understand this concept of people selling figures... :D

Another set of eBay listings

I've just listed another bunch of stuff on eBay. For anyone whose interested, it includes a fair quantity of assorted late 80s/early 90s fantasy stuff, both Citadel./GW and other, a couple of early-era Tyranid/Genestealer metals, and a bunch of 15mm Minifig Napoleonics and a bulk lot of some unknown make 15mm fantasy stuff.

Slide show for the latter (and despite the title I know they're NOT Minifigs!) is below.

Into The Woods - part 5 - a slight digression

Over Christmas, I grabbed some trees off eBay, on the 'for that price, it's worth a punt" theory.

They're from an eBay seller called everestmodel, who is based in China: they have 99.9% positive feedback in the 10s of thousands, and shipping time is 2-3 weeks.

For 20 quid and change, I picked up 16 6" high deciduous trees, which arrived today. They're clump foliage, pretty securely attached to a twisted wire armature: they do shed a bit, but not as much as some. And, in fact, they are pretty damn decent, all things considered. They will need some form of roots/base, but that shouldn't be too hard, and a thickish coat of something grey/brown to hide the wire twists (although from wargames distance you could get by without), but otherwise? Me like, and they're a good variation on the ones I've been making.

Clearing out the workshop

I've just popped a bunch of old Grenadier/Ral Partha/Citadel stuff from the '80s/early '90s on eBay - mostly D&D tie-in stuff. Feel free to take a peek if you're interested :D