I've got a fairly insane collection going on now that I've paired down with a little trading. I guess it's not really getting rid of stuff if you're trading for more stuff but I've certainly reduced my factions. I'm getting closer to my ultimate goal which is to own all of Khador and my second objective to own all of Mercs. Ultimately I'd lilke 1 complete Warmachine faction and one complete Hordes faction, both fully painted, and then I can finally rest.
My current miniatures collection
I really just got into the hobby a couple 3-4 years ago and it started with board games. I can remember the first gamer game: Last Night on Earth that I bought from Barnes and Noble. I actually loved it so much that I made a how to play video of it that now has over 35,000 views. After that I introduced that game to my friends it began my table top obsession. I ended up purchasing dozens and dozens of games which I loved. I got involved with Boardgamegeek.com and began trading games.
It got to the point where I wasn't playing the games and I was more trying to collected the newest and the best. After a friend of mine introduced me to his giant box of unplayed Heroclix I began my obsession with them. I read about them, collected them, traded them, and occasionally played them.
That died out pretty quickly because of the game's not so great balancing. I was able to wipe out my friends quite easily with more expensive and powerful models.
After that I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a Warhammer 40k starter box called Dark Vengeance. The act of building and painting miniatures blew my mind and I fell in love with it. I began purchasing models and trading board games for them, I own 3 large armies but I've only actually played 1 game ever.
I loved displaying the models and it scratched a creative itch that I've been missing in my life.
I tried to get my friend into 40k but he actually owned Warmachine already which I never heard of. I thought the models were much more boring because of the tiny legged jacks and the not so interesting fluff but it stuck with me. One day I ended up selling a lot of my Heroclix to Coolstuffinc and traded it for both 2 player battleboxes of Warmachien and Hordes.
Once I got my first game in I was so amazed. There was so much complexity and diversity that it made my brain happy. It was far superior to 40k and even though the models and stories didn't wow me, I was deeply entrenched.
The faction I gravitated to the most was Circle Orboros. I began playing games with them with some friends and doing very well with them. The lists I created were able to overpower my friends and I soon drifted away from them because they were a negative play experience for my game group.
I then moved on to Menoth. Menoth was ok for a while but the whole religious theme wasn't for me. I didn't like the Warjacks or the Warcasters very much and I faded away from it.
I then got into Khador. Khador is my true faction. It's not my usual play style but I felt that it didn't give my opponents a negative experience. Later when we integrated Steamroller I was told I was not very fun to play against because I would always find ways to win on scenario instead of the "Play Like You Got A Pair" mentality. I was too calculating and played moves ahead which made my friends angry because all they wanted to do was smash models against each other.
I got the friend who got me into Heroclix to purchase a set of Mercenaries. I told him not to choose that faction but he wanted to be the special unique snowflake and ended up getting Pirates. I ended up trading him some D&D stuff for his collection which he never even took out of the box.
I played some Mercenaries for a while but it didn't suit me. I did ended up getting the Cephalyx All-in-One-Army Box because I thought it was such a great deal.
We began playing at our local store, GMI Games in Riverside, and we entered a Steamroller tournament which I ended up winning with Khador.
Later I entered another tournament with Circle of Orboros and also won.
In the store there were a couple people playing Infinity and we were in awe with the amount of terrain they used and decided to get armies for it. We took a break from Warmachine and played Infinity for a couple of months. I did very poorly at first because I tried to play it like Warmachine but there were too many things that dependent on dice rolls for it to be a fun game for me.
Towards the end I was very good at calculating the odds and playing very safe and began winning most of my games. We decided to quit after I convinced my group that Warmachine was far supperior, and after a few games they agreed.
We've taken a break from Warmachine now that MKIII is coming I'm gearing up to start playing again in June. If I had to do it all over again I probably would have never gotten into Heroclix, 40k, or Infinity. Warmachine is the clear winner in table top miniatures as far as game play is concerned. The fact that they are trying to dumb the game down to lower the barrier of entry with Pre-Measuring and simplified rules worries me though. I still hope that the game will be as rich and complex as it was in MKII.
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