Wildspire Miniatures

 

A few years ago, I backed a couple of Gamefound campaigns by a company called "Blacklist Games". I backed for three sets of miniatures - a horror set, and two sets of fantasy miniatures. Unfortunately, a series of delays occurred, costs increased over the pandemic, and Blacklist ended up out of money and unable to fulfil a large number of crowdfunding projects they'd organised. 

I was relatively sanguine about the incident - crowd-funding is always a risk, and many people are too used to treating it as a pre-order instead. Blacklist had cut their margins to the bone to produce huge numbers of cheap, board game quality miniatures for role-players, and when things changed, they weren't able to continue. A number of other backers definitely feel that Blacklist crossed the line from poor judgement to being mis-leading. I would not back another Blacklist project, and leave it at that.

However, in some good news, a US company called Wildspire Miniatures purchased the rights to the miniatures, and offered original backers an opportunity to buy the miniatures at cost. And so, several years later, I now have two of the three sets of minis I originally ordered (the horror set has been left to a later fulfilment).

This is what I got - for how much is kind of difficult to say. Do I count the money lost to Blacklist? The money I paid Wildspire? In any event, it's more miniatures than I needed. There are a mix of "hero" characters and monsters, with the smaller monsters having duplicates, usually four of each. I really don't like monopose models in RPGs where I can avoid it, so there were plenty to clear out.

So, I separated out three sets of "useful monster minis" and found an assortment of friends who wanted a set. This still leaves me with plenty of useful figures to paint for RPGs, but now my friends also have a slightly more achievable volume of cheap miniatures.

I also chose to get rid of some of the monsters. Some went to my friends, others got lumped into an eBay sale a while back. I got rid of Cthulu because there's rarely a need for him in a campaign, and he's too established in the pop culture to be of any use in horror games. I didn't love the poses on the troll, ogre or dire bear, so off they went.

The demon lord also went, as did the acid elemental. The female giant was actually a difficult call - in some ways, I do quite like the sculpt, but her being on a "huge" base rather than a "large" base really reduced her utility as the bigger giants in Pathfinder don't share her general vibe, and come it at much later levels meaning I'd use her less often. There were also a few little details that I just didn't love about the sculpt, so when looking at a whole table of minis, she ended up in the "sell" pile.

So, everything remaining is now put away in boxes for later. The time taken to sort these all out is why I am avoiding big "bargain" purchases now. I have stuff on my "to do" list right away that I want to be getting on with, and these have literally gotten in the way of that getting finished. That said, if I haven't started these by the end of the year, I may seriously consider passing the rest on as well. If I am interested in running in person RPGs in the future, I need to commit my time to actually painting some of models I plan on using in them. If I'm just sitting on things, dreaming of the future and not doing anything, I can keep dreaming about it without a pile of boxes in my house.

Infinity Game: White Company vs Next Wave - Superiority

 

As previously mentioned, after Christmas I managed to get in a game of Infinity at War Dollies Collective. My opponent is pretty new to Infinity, so we picked the Direct Action mission Superiority. I dug out my White Company because they're the prettiest models I have and I wanted to show off.

I ended up going second. My opponent was on Next Wave, so I hid my expensive pieces but left out a couple of defensive pieces like a Sierra Dronbot.

My opponent managed to score a console so I sent up a Peacemaker's peripheral to try and my way. While I managed to clear a mine and wound a Tekdraken, but wasn't able to capitalise on it. I realised at the end of the turn I'd simply not pushed up far enough and my opponent scored points for controlling more quadrants.

I sent the Beasthunter after Patroclus (played here by the WarCor model) and the Raindancer fireteam. Patroclus refused to die and the Beasthunter was swiftly dispatched.

On the right flank, I wasn't confident of clearing the Juggernaut, so I sent the Kunai Ninja to hold it up, and block it's ability to shoot models I needed to advance. I pushed my Nisse / Jujak fireteam up but was only managed to draw the quadrant scoring.

Third round, and Next Wave went on a big push and did a whole bunch of smushing White Company Troopers. I managed to throw smoke to cover an approach for Shona to hit the Juggernaut. My opponent got a quick lesson in "why you never get too close to Shona" as in one swing she forced seven armour saves, and took the Juggernaut off the table.

I managed to push my Jujaks up the table, having cleared an Ironside, and the engineer managed to push a button for a console. In the end, my Key Ops controlled a zone, but Next Wave controlled the other three, winning the game for my opponent with a score of 6-3.

All in all, it was good to get back to a game of Infinity. I did spend way too much time forgetting to focus on scoring objectives, but we both had a lot of fun. White Company are still a "sometimes" faction for me, but it was good to get them out for a little run.

Plans for 2026

 

And so, 2026 dawns with a dread inevitability. It is an unusual one for me, as it's dawning in a new city for the first time in a couple of decades. The move to Nottingham has hit my hobbying this year, as it takes time to put your life in boxes and and then take it all out again.

There's still plenty of settling in to the new place still to be done, so I'm expecting hobbying to continue to be slow for at least the first part of the year. I'll also be dipping into Flesh and Blood, LARPing, and selling excess possessions on eBay, all of which can be quite time consuming.

So, I'm planning on being quite restrained with my 2026 hobby goals. I want to check in around about the end of March to see how things are going. The main thing I want to get sorted is this Halfling Blood Bowl team project. I want to get some games in at Warhammer World now I'm in Nottingham, and this seems like a nice small and achievable project to make that happen.

Once I've gotten the paints out, I also want to really hit my Combined Army and Shasvastii pretty hard. I'm thinking of trying getting a batch of ten models together and putting some time into just getting some regularly used pieces done. For example, for Vanilla Combined, the Charontid, the Anathematic, Bit and KISS, two Daturazi and four Hungries will mean that a huge number of common list builds will become all or mostly painted.

This might prove to be too big an ask in terms of the size of the batch, but I want to give it a go before deciding if I go for smaller batches first or not. Ideally I want to have painted some of my Nomads by the end of the year, but right now I have a set scheme for my Combined Army and have a whole bunch assembled, undercoated and ready to go, so getting a bunch finished will be good for my soul.

Broadly, I'm trying to get in a game of Infinity a month. I do want to try and build a community in Nottingham, and there are a few folk who are interested. I'm booked in for a game later this month, and I'll try and keep that up.

My side hobby project is that I very much want to work through this year is getting a bunch of bits done from smaller hobby companies, especially for RPGs. Eventually I want to run an in person campaign with miniatures and so on, so building up a good variety of basics will really help build a good foundation for that.

All in all, this year isn't so much about setting goals "for the year", it's about getting started again, seeing how I'm going, and adjusting to match. Everything is far more of a new start than normal. I am much happier in Nottingham, but it is a different pace of life to London, and its an excellent opportunity for a bit of a reset. Making sure I don't fall back into old over-commitment habits is really important.

Christmas and New Year Hobby

I have been pottering on with assembling the Halfling Blood Bowl team. I'd hoped to be a little further along than this, but an assortment of non hobby activities took up a bunch of time. Still, excellent human interaction and resting occurred. 

 

Games Workshop sent me their annual £10 voucher, and I used it towards buying some online only Halfling Star Players. I've also put some money from my eBay sales into picking up the new rulebook and a couple of Treemen (alongside a mat for Infinity), which should show up next month.

The space between Christmas and the New Year also had a meeting of what is intended to be a new gaming club: The War Dollies Collective. The hope is that this will turn into regular club nights, but at the moment these aren't finalised.

There were a wide range of activities on offer. There was a large kit-bashing area for folks to build whatever they fancied. There were also participation games - both some kind of car combat game and a small scale Napoleonic historical game.

I took advantage of the day to arrange a game of Infinity with one of the people I gave a demo to at Dice Cup earlier this year. We had an excellent 300 point game, with me taking White Company and my opponent Next Wave, playing a Direct Action mission.

The arrival of over 300 miniatures from Wildspire Miniatures has also taken up a chunk of time. These models were originally designed by Blacklist Miniatures, who then ended up being incapable of delivering. Wildspire purchased the moulds and produced these models, offering original backers a significant discount to acquire the miniatures. There's still a Horror set that Blacklist failed to deliver that Wildspire has purchased and not produced yet.

So, it has still been a very busy couple of weeks from a hobby perspective. The coming month has some LARP, some card games and some work travel which won't produce interesting things for the blog. Still, I have a few stories to tell about my Infinity game and the Wildspire minis that I'll tell in a short while.