OK, so you've won a gazillion pounds/euros/ dollars on the lottery - or you are a Saudi Prince - and you have (effectively) unlimited funds to spend on your gaming/hobby projects - what would you do?
Huge house with purpose built games room and likewise a purpose built library, for books, magazines, comics etc.
Top designers to design and produce whatever range of figures you feel like. And top painters to paint and base 'em.
The other alternative could be that you have soooooo much money you spend it on "other" projects - fast women, fast cars etc - that you are far too occupied with these other things that you're too busy for wargaming and toy soldiers. That is a potential nightmare...
Geoff
Easy, not in any particular order,
Buy a mansion. have a kitchen, a loo, bedroom and living room, all other rooms would be themed to period / genre, so I would have a napoleonic French / Austrian room and a French / Russian one, a naval room, a WWII 10mm room and a WWII 1/72 room etc, each with one or more dedicated tables - it would be just 1 table per room if I only had a small mansion!
Next, I would never paint a figure again and would have every army I wanted, plus a few I didn't.
Next i would buy one of the vacated department stores in my nearest town and turn it into a wargamers paradise, it would have traders, game tables and every month, the equivalent of game show would be held. Every customer who came in through the door would be given £10 to spend.
Finally, if I had any money left over, once a month in the grounds of my mansion, I would run a wargame at 1:1 with a cast of real people all dressed up in costume
I'd make the National Trust an offer they couldn't refuse to buy Cragside.
Billiard Room becomes figure storage, painting area, PC(s) and 3D printer(s) area, laser cutter area and photography booth.
Drawing room gets as many of these (or similar) as can comfortably fit.
(https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/46/9a/51469a0c7d909700a6dd396584231590.jpg)
Plenty of room for "visiting firemen" to stay over for extended games.
As to the alternative option to spend the money ... I've never been into cars, fast or otherwise, nor fast women either. As my grandfather once said,"I'm too old to chase women, too old to catch them and too old to know what to do with them if I did!" :D
1) Establish a wargamers-only scholarship to benefit the gaming elite and improve the quality of postings on websites. Fantasy gamers and those who think seven figures a side count as a Japanese army will not be considered; likewise any who don't know a Roman scutum was usually oval, that Vietnam hasn't just been a swamp to give bad US movies a setting, or that the SYW actually involved very intelligent tactics.
2) Hire a team of enforcers to explain to rules lawyers that their day is past.
3) Have a set of dice constructed that don't reliably roll a 1 when I've carefully set things up so that 2-6 would win a critical melee.
4) Sponsor a few armies and troop types unaccountably missing from 10mm ranges - T'ang, Tibetan, Abyssinian, Ming, Inca, Tlaxcalan, ancient Hebrew; thureophoroi, Sherden guardsmen.
5) Buy a time machine and go stir up wars that should have happened so I can game them - Alexander's campaign against Carthage; Chandragupta's invasion of China; an Inca-Mexican conflict.
LOL! ;D Big House... Castle may be accepted. Large staff recruited from... (You've guessed it!)... attractive 'Ladies' who have SUDDENLY had an urge to paint and play with 'toy soldiers'...
...and a Tank... various types considered... in which to 'button up' and escape from the above... for a while! ;) LOL!
Oh Well. Perhaps all I could wish for would be longevity, dexterity, eyesight...
... AND the above! ;D
Or, on a less narcissistic view... a converted aircraft carrier... (Maybe a couple 'up for offers' soon... )... fitted out for conventions... and capable of cruises... :)
I have no idea...
Hmmm, I've always fancied my own farm where I could grow all the food and raise all the animals I needed. A converted barn as a games room sounds nice, but I'm rather taken with Norm's idea of themed games rooms. I'd certainly have my own study, ideally in a turreted tower with views across my 'estate'.
Until then I'll have to make do with the view from the lounge window and borrow said lounge for my gaming. Hey ho.
I do like the sound of that nightmare.
Ask Leon what he wanted for a 40% share in Pendraken......I'd not remotely want to make any company decisions......Leon does far too good a job already !
Cheers - Phil. :)
Buy Phil remote-control micro-manipulator sculpting hands with no edged, pointy, crushing, abrasive, corrosive, superheated, cryonic, electrically-charged, radioactive, or poisonous bits at the user interface, then sit back and watch him find a way around the safety features anyway.
:P
Cheers - Phil. ;D ;D
Quote from: FierceKitty on 11 May 2021, 06:46:18 AM
Buy Phil remote-control micro-manipulator sculpting hands with no edged, pointy, crushing, abrasive, corrosive, superheated, cryonic, electrically-charged, radioactive, or poisonous bits at the user interface, then sit back and watch him find a way around the safety features anyway.
But think of the pharmacutical companies that would put out of bussiness ;)
The big house:
I see a couple of immediate possibilities here.
A bunch of "executive" homes recently built a couple of miles away.
Each has 5 bedrooms, and a triple garage with big room, toilet and kitchenette on top.
The garage block would become the hobby centre.
* Fitness stuff in one garage.
* DIY / Building stuff in another.
* Games stuff and a big table upstairs.
The main house has capacity for a small contingent to stay over.
However, for a little more there are big country houses that regularly pop up in the market.
These usually incorporate extensive grounds, stables, carriage house, a billiard room (with room for the big table), a few other big rooms and a host of bedrooms.
One of these could become a gaming Mecca to impress even the lads at Little Wars TV.
The extensive grounds mean space to build and test Trebeuchets without disturbing the neighbours.
The Armies:
Looks forlornly at the existing pile of unpainted metal.
First thing: Spread the lead pile out in the big gaming room, decide what to keep and what would be better served with other gamers.
Next focus on a few main groups of armies and rules.
Enlist some help to get them all painted and based.
I enjoy the painting side of the hobby, but am not sufficiently productive to get all the armies in place at once.
Decide whether I'd like to go "Grande Manner" with any of my collections.
You know the sort of drill.
Keep the same armies, but with bigger panoramic bases.
I've never really enjoyed the mega game where one pushes hundreds of bases about, but I've often felt that 3 15mm Celts on a 40x20mm base is a poor representation of a warband.
Finally, decide whether I'd like to try anything new.
Both Crossfire and Chain of Command appeal, but require investment in a new range of WW2 terrain and scenery.
Transport
Something more appropriate for a billionaire, but with plenty of space to transport armies and terrain.
None of this Lamborghini with a boot the size of a handbag nonsense.
So megalomania appears to be the order of the day, giant retractable tables like Goldfinger's scale model of Fort Knox, which disturbingly for Leon probably involves larger scale figures by the gazillion and abandonment of Norm's 'wargaming in small spaces' ethos, offering stupid levels of money to professional painters and sculptors to get what you want, having scantily clad young ladies pushing your toy soldiers around the table like a WW2 RAF Battle of Britain operations room ....
OK. I'll give it a try.
.... but only once ..... perhaps twice .....
Having bought any of the recent posts re-accommodations for wargaming. I would then sponsor the research and development into producing a"General Jumbo's2 army I'm 10 mmjustcos i could and always envied the comic strip character
I'm going to be VERY boring and say not much different to what I already do.
I already have ludicrous numbers of minis 1/72 or 20mm and 10mm in the painting pile so I dont need any more. (*) Plus boardgames, PC games, books,....
I have bought painted units and ebay armies, they do not have the same appeal as the ones what I dun meself even if they are a whole lot prettier.
I have a games room/office which can fit a 6x4 foldable table and 2 chubby wargamers. (just) And enough SoA meetings or local (ish) clubs to go to if I want to get bigger. (me or the games)
With many of the above suggestions, I would just end up with even more worries about personal and property security, maintenance, the army of paid flunkies, etc.
So compared to the days of waiting for the next box of Airfix to come out so you could convert WW1 Germans into camel riding horse archers, I think I already live in an ideal world (from a wargaming stance) and would be forced to give away the dosh. Possibly to that nice Mr. Sunak before he figured out a way to get it anyway.
* Although I might be persuaded to swap each 10mm figure for a 54mm equivalent from the companies that advertise in Toy Soldier.
Must go now, Matron says its cabbage soup for lunch.
I would commission a range of offensive 28m figures aimed at people I dislike.
Quote from: Norm on 10 May 2021, 10:19:31 PM
Finally, if I had any money left over, once a month in the grounds of my mansion, I would run a wargame at 1:1 with a cast of real people all dressed up in costume
Now that sounds like fun!
Quote from: Techno II on 11 May 2021, 06:41:25 AM
Ask Leon what he wanted for a 40% share in Pendraken......I'd not remotely want to make any company decisions......Leon does far too good a job already !
At current market value... a 12-pack of Coke Zero and a bar of Dairy Milk should do it!
Quote from: flamingpig0 on 11 May 2021, 10:16:45 AM
I would commission a range of offensive 28m figures aimed at people I dislike.
That's quite tempting as well... We did something along those lines with our 28mm US Survivalist 'Leader':
(https://www.minibits.net/_img/products/1045/SurvivalistLeader.jpg)
Quote from: Leon on 11 May 2021, 10:21:47 AM
Now that sounds like fun!
At current market value... a 12-pack of Coke Zero and a bar of Dairy Milk should do it!
That's quite tempting as well... We did something along those lines with our 28mm US Survivalist 'Leader':
(https://www.minibits.net/_img/products/1045/SurvivalistLeader.jpg)
Also a range of 10mm Space Amazons - assuming they aren't part of the forthcoming Pendraken scifi ranges ( hint hint)
Have all my figures painted by first class painters to save my aged Eyes and occasionally unsteady hands 😜
No clue
Had already given this some thought if my premium bonds came up.
First up would be to pay all Pendraken's costs for designing, sculpting, producing and releasing the most comprehensive War of 1812 10mm range ever.
Whilst looking for a 2 acre-ish plot with detached house. Have 3 wargames tables, either in one large room or 3 rooms, one for our regular 15mm or 28mm meets, another for my 10mm and another for my Bevintgon Tank Museum, to house my existing 1/72 tank collection, which has more tanks than Bovington. A huge library to house the books I've already got, with spare capacity for all the rest I'd be ordering......
A proper writing desk! And multiple painting stations so I can have even more half-finished batches of figures lying around.
Oh, a probably a real tank in the drive passing through the food forest. ;)
If there was any change after that, I'd buy up half the advertising space in the wargames mags for the next 4 years, and only put in adverts for 6mm and 10mm figures (and my army lists of course) as an antidote to the 28mm mafia ;D
And then a real tank museum Up North, that's a bit more accessible! Like somewhere near a railway line and near rentable cottages/b&bs :-
I would also commission the following:
10mm Georgian medieval army
10mm Wellington in India range
1/72 M6 heavy tank series
10mm Napoleonic Persian and Caucasus armies
10mm Napoleonic African armies (a whole new genre of wargaming that hasn't been tapped yet - who isn't going to love poisoned arrows, pike blocks, armoured cavalry, close order archer units??)
10mm 1956 Cold War range
All the world's 10mm scultpors would never be out of work!
I'd employ a Turkish language translators to find and translate Turkish history documents/archives/books and get them published in English.
I'd get Leon to drop me list of order numbers each month, and one will be drawn at random to have his/her household bills paid for a year. It was gadzillions right?
Then I'd drop dead and some poor bustard will have to flog it all on Minis Barter.com ;D
Buy a nice size house for the family with a good few acres, and with space and planning permission to build a two storey out building. 2/3rds of the downstaris would be a large wargames room with space for two 16 foot x 6 foot tables tables or 8 standard 6x4 foot tables. The walls would have custom built cupboards with draws to store the figures in. There would also be my study/painting room.The other 1/3rd would house the garage with a couple fully working tanks.
Upstairs would be 4 bedrooms with zip linked beds (so doubles or singles), Lounge/cinema room and a kitchen. This would accommodate guests or fellow wargamers as needed.
A further building would hold the Range and Armory so guests could shoot genuine WW2 firearms
The woods would host paintball games
I would set up a foundation to pay for a number of bright students from developing countries to come and obtain qualifications in skills that their home country needed, the only condition being that they must take the skills back home, so that I was not supporting a Brian drain.
Quote from: flamingpig0 on 11 May 2021, 10:16:45 AM
I would commission a range of offensive 28m figures aimed at people I dislike.
A number of the old GW - now Foundry - 28mm WotR figures designed by the Perry Twins were based on a load of their White Company re-enactment pals.
One poor chap - known to all as Tubby Tim - ended up in his trade mark over stuffed doublet and bulging hose and a ridiculous robin-hood style hat, pulling a longbow.
Thankfully I managed to avoid being characterises - or if I was I never knew it !!!
If we are really talking about an obscene amount of money, of the ten-figure kind, I'd leave this car-crash of a country and emigrate to Australia. I could buy us into the Australian system with a lump sum, though with that amount of money you could just pay for all your needs as and when.
We would live in the style to which we'd like to become accustomed. This would entail a large house, probably in the Yarra Valley near to Melbourne, within walking distance of a winery with a good restaurant. On reflection I might just buy the winery.
The house would need to be able to accommodate a wargames room least half as large again as the one I have now, capable of containing a table at least 1.5 x 3 meters with room to spare. I would also need another room, containing a bespoke storage system for my models, with space to expand, a separate studio for painting and modelling, and a library/study.
I wouldn't want anybody else to paint figures for me for two reasons. First, nobody can paint figures to my satisfaction and, second, because painting and collecting is, as far as I'm concerned, inseparable from wargaming itself.
The house would need to have a cellar, room for say 500 bottles should do it (though if I buy the winery this might not be necessary), and a large 21st Century kitchen so that I could pursue my other passion.
I'd want a large garden with a state of the art barbecue. In a place like Melbourne where you can get all four seasons in an afternoon, you'd still spend a lot of time outside. I'd need to employ a gardener to look after it, of course.
In the garage I'd have some kind of electric car, probably a Tesla Model S, to get around the immediate vicinity and into Melbourne when I needed to, and the 4.2 litre Series 1 E-Type Jaguar in British Racing Green I dreamed of as a young man, fully restored with modern cooling and electrical systems and brakes.
Finally, I'd make Leon an offer he couldn't refuse, and establish Pendraken Miniatures (Australia) Pty Ltd to supply the Southern Hemisphere with all its 10mm wargames' needs. Clearly, as the CE of what will by now be the dominant global wargames entity, Leon would probably want to spend part of the year in Australia, as and when he decided it was necessary.
Finally, I would use my financial clout to have the International Standards Organisation impose standards on wargames figures. The only permissible sizes would be 6mm, 10mm, 15mm, 20mm, 25mm and 30mm, measured from the base to the eyes. It should be possible – the Germans did it with their 30mm Zinnfiguren nearly 100 years ago. Scale-creep would be a thing of the past and all the aberrations, such as 12mm, 18mm and 28mm would be 'phased out'.
I also have a Plan B but it is a bit too ambitious.
1) Buy an island (more Inner Hebrides than Bahamas)
2) Build a tower
3) Get a carpenter to make 3 tables with drawer space below
4) Find out how much it will take for Leon to introduce Chariot Armies - and Byzantines - and Swedes 1813
5) Find out how much it would take to get Anne Hathaway over for a game
6) Homeless ex servicemen charity
7) How much would it take for Leon to rename his building "The Nobby Annex"
8 ) All expenses paid Forum Convention at a location of my choice (probably somewhere in S Wales so Techno II has no excuses). I would only attend virtually as a shadowy figure to say things like "Gentlemen, you have all done very well with cavalry, now let's see what you can do with something ... mechanised."
9) Some kind of school program to teach children history through 10mm gaming
10) Put in a ridiculous order to Pendraken. "There were 4423 Centurions built. Please send me 4424, plus figures for Waterloo at 1:1 and one Kiera."
Quote from: fsn on 11 May 2021, 05:38:01 PM
5) Find out how much it would take to get Anne Hathaway over for a game
That's presumably not a "wargame", but some other sort of high-jinks...
Oo-err missus.
Geoff ;)
Quote from: Leon on 11 May 2021, 10:21:47 AM
That's quite tempting as well... We did something along those lines with our 28mm US Survivalist 'Leader':
(https://www.minibits.net/_img/products/1045/SurvivalistLeader.jpg)
Hands are a bit large.
Extra credit for figure holding a karaoke mic' and performing "I will survive".
"You may be wondering why I've invited you here, Gentlemen".
You chaps with your worthy charities are making us early responders look bad.
Folks who wanted tanks might contemplate that an M3 type halftrack has rubber tracks so is road legal.
What better mount to head down to Aldi for the big weekly shop.
I'm frankly surprised by the low levels of interest in lasers, pirhana tanks, dormant volcanoes and henchmen with sharpened bowler hats.
Or even packets of birdseed, rocket backpacks, roller skates and big mallets.
Keep the fun suggestions coming....
Quote from: steve_holmes_11 on 11 May 2021, 09:38:47 PM
Hands are a bit large.
I am not sure whether I should be cheered or horrified that a totalitarian society can have a sense of humour - note size of envelope from North Korea
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DepNeUJVMAA-Eu4?format=jpg&name=large)
Quote from: steve_holmes_11 on 11 May 2021, 09:50:09 PM
I'm frankly surprised by the low levels of interest in lasers, piranha tanks, dormant volcanoes and henchmen with sharpened bowler hats.
How do you think we
became so rich? We had these things (and a white Persian kitty) on the way up.
Quote from: FierceKitty on 12 May 2021, 02:41:41 AM
How do you think we became so rich? We had these things (and a white Persian kitty) on the way up.
Do hope that you have changed your Tailor, though. ;)
(Or 'dispensed with his services' in an appropriate manner... ) ;D
Well.....
Time to put my money where I said I would. ;)
A massive win on the lotto last night ! <:-P <:-P......A free lucky dip AND a fiver (apparently...though that's an unusual occurrence for two numbers...but that's what it says on the site.)
How much of that fiver do you reckon Leon will want for my 40% stake in Pendraken. :-\
Cheers - Phil. :)
I know you are centuries old Phil, but a fiver hasn't be massive since at least 1700 ;) I did get the sarcasum
Quote from: Techno II on 16 May 2021, 07:40:02 AM
Well.....
Time to put my money where I said I would. ;)
A massive win on the lotto last night ! <:-P <:-P......A free lucky dip AND a fiver (apparently...though that's an unusual occurrence for two numbers...but that's what it says on the site.)
How much of that fiver do you reckon Leon will want for my 40% stake in Pendraken. :-
Cheers - Phil. :)
Are you the new one on Dragon's Den?
Look..... Guys.....Don't worry....I promise....I'm not going let this change me. ;)
(I mean, that win wouldn't even buy me the Ferrari I've already got..I think that was £5.99...and only because it was the first issue 'loss leader' on one of those 'part works' magazines.....
Even if we ever won silly money.... =O =O =O =O...Von wouldn't ever let me buy any sort of sports car...(a)'cos I'd drive it too slowly.....and (b) probably crash it, anyway..)
Cheers - Phil. :)
Quote from: Techno II on 16 May 2021, 10:03:28 AM
Look..... Guys.....Don't worry....I promise....I'm not going let this change me. ;)
Even if we ever won silly money.... =O =O =O =O...Von wouldn't ever let me buy any sort of sports car...(a)'cos I'd drive it too slowly.....and (b) probably crash it, anyway..)
Cheers - Phil. :)
If you ever won silly money Von would be spending it on Gee Gees, you MIGHT, get a nice new Landrover to pull the horse box.
Nah.....Von can have the Land Rover.
I'm definitely happier driving little Fiesta sized vehicles. ;)
Cheers - Phil. :)
Pay for all forum members to have Amazon prime subscriptions.
Oops - cross threading again.