So many minis, so little room...

So, this blog is already fulfilling one of its primary objectives - giving me something to do whilst avoiding painting to my deadlines. I have a D&D game coming up in less than a week and I have two principal PC models, plus a major surprise for my players still to finish!

Yesterday I promised photos of badly painted miniatures, badly displayed in cramped conditions. What I neglected to mention was that the photos would also be bad. When I want to show minis I'm actually half way proud of, I'll take some proper pictures (i.e. not on my phone), but this was really just meant to illustrate a point - I have way too many models and no where near enough proper display space for them.

I'd love to get some glass shelf display cases, but I've never been able to prioritise spending money on them over other things... like more models. I did however deliberately build these IKEA Billy Bookcases with two shelves much shorter than the others, with the idea of holding my main collections of Warhammer Fantasy and 40k minis.

So here we have some very cramped High Elves (at the back) and Wood Elves - plus an incomplete cardboard house from the 4th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battle box set - so many more elves of both kinds still waiting to be painted. My combined Elf armies are probably only second in number to my Space Marines.

And here we have a very rag tag crew of Orcs and Goblins - again mostly plastics and even some Heroquest plastics in there (Gah!), although I have recently been investing in lots of proper metal Oldhammer Orcs and Gobbos, so these guys are set to recieve some impressive reinforcements very soon, and may well be trying to kick the snooty elves off the shelf entirely.

And then we have the marines (the painted ones at least) - these are the Fire Angels in all their base primary colour glory! Or not ;)

Quite honestly, I'm not that proud of the painting for (most of ) these, but I am proud of the collection and some of the simple conversions I've made to give them their own character. Can anybody spot the repurposed Manta Force vehicle? That was a bitch to work with and paint with its brittle, oily, paint and glue resistant plastic, but I love the final piece, even if it was painted with claggy paint and terrible brushes that should have already been in the bin.

There is the vast majority of an entire 2nd Company of troops there (only missing two tactical squads) plus a smattering of veterans and scouts. I'm currently light on vehicles (painted ones anyway), but I do love Squad VI - a whole tactical squad mounted on bikes. They probably deserve a feature at some point.

In fact I aim to do a number of features on the Fire Angels, but before I let myself get sucked into that, I really do need to finish these PC minis, so that I can delight in a TPK in 3D and full colour next weekend :)