Free hugs!

I had a meeting in Cleveland so I took advantage of the chance to check out a hobby shop I’d heard about — Warzone-Matrix (no link, the website has been neglected for nearly 10 years and the Facebook page looks like it’s been hijacked by 9/11 conspiracy buffs; Google it and see the reviews and photos there). In fact I first heard about it when an acquaintance from overseas mentioned he wanted to check it out when he was passing through the States. I confused it with another shop, or else a version of it from long enough ago it bears no resemblance to what I found last month. What I thought it was, was a basic wargaming type shop with current games. What it actually is, is treasure trove of stuff old and new. It was strongest on RPGs and board games, but had a fair amount of miniatures stuff, and I found a couple of TSR blister packs. One was, sadly, showing lead rot; I got this one instead:

They’re both mounted on fender washers for stability. They follow the TSR tradition of packaging seemingly unrelated monsters together, but as both kill by grabbing you, there is a weak theme.

The roper needed a little more animation, and I bent his tentacles as much as I dared (they were all splayed straight out). He really looks like he wants to give someone a hug.

Being monsters, they painted up really fast and looked pretty good for an otherwise middling line.

Harvester of Sorrow at the FLGS

There are three friendly local game stores (FLGS’s ) in my town, although they have managed to keep their markets mostly separate.  The oldest is JC’s Comics and Cards, which sits between a record store and video store, and mostly sells comics and cards, as the name suggests.  A few games can be had there, but it is just a sideline.  The only figures they had, last I checked, are a few collectible pre-painted plastics (HeroClix, etc.).  Down the street is the newest store, Underhill’s, which specializes in board games but also carries a lot of WotC product and a few other RPGs.  They mostly carry D&D pre-painted plastics too, as well as a few odds and ends like game pieces for Zombies!!! which are sold in bags of 100.  (Yeah, I’ll have to do some zombies some time).  The third is a JAC Games, which I don’t frequent much, but the last time I was there they had almost exclusively Games Workshop products and figures.  They did not even have dice bags.  Both Underhill’s and JAC have large gaming tables in the store and I think they are doing it right.  Underhill’s even holds mini conventions (games days) right in the store!  (There is third game store that moved to a new location that is harder to get to and they have shifted to mostly card & video games which don’t interest me).  I hear that there is a gentleman’s agreement among these three not to compete for the limited slices of the markets that exists and since they are competing with Amazon.com and other online corporate welfare queens, good for them!   But if I want to buy figures, I have to go all the way to another town to Kenmore Komics & Games, which carries pretty much everything from games to comics to models and anime videos.  The RPG selection is the best in the area, and the figures are mostly Reaper and MegaMinis, two companies I do like a lot.

Anyway, Kenmore Komics is liquidating the Reaper Warlord line, and the last time I was in I got, for less than $40, this:

That is mostly undead pirates, but also a goblin pirate, two human pirates, a monkey with a powder keg, and the Overladen Henchman figure.  In the front are a skeleton playing a violin and a wraith that came with a ridiculously huge flag; I replaced it with a sword.

So, pirates may be next big project (I have a goodly number of older pirate figures still waiting to be painted, but perhaps this will get the juices flowing.

So on one hand I do feel bad about Kenmore’s loss.  I know they are losing money even if they recover the cost of the minis because these figures have been taking up retail space for a long time.  But on the other hand, a whole freaking pirate crew for well under $40!  Score!