I feel pretty fortunate that I don’t have any significant physical addictions or compulsions. The closest I get is with video games – and even than I can be pretty good in moderating the amount of time I spend on them ( I’d say the “first term cold turkey” I’ve done for the last few years is a pretty good sign of that – though I AM getting pretty twitchy around Easter ! ).
BUT. I do get odd phases where I suffer from strange obsessions. I get totally fixated on something for awhile. A couple of months ago it was for light-gun games. I HAD to have a light gun ! HAD to ! And I obsessively picked though TradeMe till I got one. Well – two actually. And two games ( see what I mean ? ).
My current obsession is kinda odd – and I’m not entirely sure where it came from. It’s for Blood-Bowl. Right – for those of you without a knowledge of Games-Workshop games, Blood-Bowl is board game, a fantasy ( and that’s swords-and-sorcery fantasy too – not leather and latex styled fantasy ) parody of American football ( and not, literally, a bowl full of blood. That would be icky! ). You have little miniatures of the members of your team and you try and score touch-downs without being horribly maimed. I LOVED Blood-Bowl ! The really cool thing was if you played as part of a continuing league – your players got points based on what they managed to achieve, and eventually you started getting other player skills … oh, it was great !
Because I worked in a games store for a bit, I did manage to pick up quite a few of the miniatures fairly inexpensively, and I have a fairly good range of teams. I can field a team of humans, orcs, undead, wood elves, dark elves, chaos warriors, skaven rat-men and ALMOST a goblin team. Not bad.
It was the miniatures that I really liked – and I always slightly preferred the older 2nd edition figures.
I wandered into a Games-Workshop store* and asked if you could still order the older figures after I didn’t see them in the on-line catalogue. They seemed to think you should be able to – so I was happy.
But no – having done some more research on-line, I find out that a LARGE number have been pulled from production and you can’t get them made anymore ! Gasp !
Good news – I already have the majority of the pulled figures ( well – that I WOULD want anyway ).
Bad news – I find myself with filled with an almost overpowering desire to acquire a
2nd ed skaven team.
These out-of-production figures are coming up on E-Bay, but they can get pretty pricey – especially when they’re for pounds sterling. American dollars are bad enough !
What is interesting is that a new range of figures ( 5th ed ) seem to have been made from last year – which I didn’t know about at all. I didn’t think that BB would still be that popular – looks like I was wrong. The new werewolf looks pretty cool. And they’ve finally got a decent figure for the human star player
Griff Oberwald –
he no longer looks like a guy with a duck on his head ( and that’s GOTTA be good ! ).
I might try and start up a BB league at school next year. It’s been something I’ve been thinking of doing for awhile now. And if I’m really sneaky – I can tack on a request on student orders and not have to pay for postage ! Hee hee hee !
… Next post I’ll update my “Little Monsters” painting. It won’t be nearly as geeky as this one ! I promise !
*And if I hadn't been rapidly cornered by some scary employee's - I would have ran out soon after. If you ever find you HAVE to go in - don't make eye-contact and pretend you're deaf.
