I’ve been into Ultramodern Wargaming for almost 10 years at this point, from the first figures ordered in a Dundee student flat to running this blog and spending a lot of time talking, writing, painting, playing and thinking about wargaming. That’s a lot of time to gather a lot of rules, a lot of scenery and a lot of figures. And if there are two things I’ve learn over that time:
- There are too many Ultramodern Wargamers who play just to have Operators with all the gear wiping out hordes of under-equipped insurgents like it’s still 2004 without engaging with how Ultramodern Warfare has actually evolved in the years since.
- My collection is way too large.
Ah ha! You thought this post was just going to be about figure scales based on the header, didn’t you? Nope, it’s a double hit. We get to talk about both physical scale AND collection scale.
Much like my changes to the MDF collection that I’ve almost finished cataloguing, this is again a realization that has come around after the rather monumental house move I went through. The trips back and forth to move my collection of figures rather illuminated how many figures I actually have, made worse by not having enough carry cases to move it all in one go so I actually had to unpack several boxes which reminded me of several ranges I have which have been hiding away in deep storage, such as a whole platoon of Empress British Infantry in Afghanistan that’s been waiting for a repaint.
I’d also draw attention to this video from MSPaints which also had me thinking about how I collect. In the past, a lot of my collection arrived from that idea of “ooo, I should get everything” so I massively overbought compared to how much I painted and how much I used. There are entire forces in there where I’ve kind of lost interest in painting or playing with it. And then, rather than having the fun collection, it becomes a pile that sits there, wearing on the mind while always saying “Eh I’ll get to it”.
So yep, that’s the plan – once I have the MDF shifted, I’ll then do a similar cataloguing of all the figures and put them online. There are a few people who have right of first refusal on a few items but after that, it will be a big sell-off.
With that thought out of the way, let’s talk about more practical matters. Having decided I wanted to massively shrink my collection down in favour of a much more focused one, the question then becomes how do I want to set it up? What is the new focus?
The most sensible thing is to start on the theatres I’m playing, which at the moment is beginning with Shyluz, my fictional Eastern European/Central Asian country, adding to the collection as I need to add new units and elements. This is a much more sensible progression, sticking to adding more physical objects as and when they are required. It can be tough to stick to a plan like this (the mind can be a little bit of a magpie) but having lived the life of rampart collection, maybe it’s time for a bit more focus!
The other side of rebuilding the collection is deciding which figures to refill it with. Something I have noticed over the last few years is that, as much as I like seeing any figures added to the Ultramodern market, I usually find myself preferring the 3D-designed, realistically proportioned but designed for paint (as opposed to purely real scale) figures for Ultramodern gaming. A big part of this comes from the consistency you get by using 3D printed assets for your hard items such as guns and helmet – seeing as we are using equipment that is mass-produced, it should really be consistent from model to model. This feature is what drew me to Spectre in the first place and with the rise of 3D printing, it has become even easier to get high-quality figures in the style I like. And speaking of 3D printing, I wouldn’t be making this decision to change if I didn’t have access to a 3D printer, several Patreon creators providing high-quality figures AND (perhaps the biggest change that made this move possible) the decision by Spectre to start selling STLs of their figures.
This move to primarily printing my own figures allows me to do something unusual – I plan to maintain a common-ish scale and size across my entire collection. As any wargamer who has been collecting for several years will tell you, there is genuinely a scale creep occurring across the hobby – Games Workshop may be the poster child for this (as we’ve seen guardsmen go from 25mm to 28mm to rapidly approaching 32mm) but in some sense this change can be seen in the figures available in a genre – what started with Eureka in true 25mm, through Empress and Spectre in 28mm up to more recent releases from Enemy Spotted Studios and Echelon’s BPRE28 sets. The scale increase arriving at the same time as 3D printed parts increasing in popularity makes a lot of sense – modern rifles are much more slender than swords or muskets so at smaller scale realistic proportions lead to broken barrels and snapped magazines.
The figures from BPRE28mm are actually what kicked off my planning for this scale rejigging – having bought all three BPRE expansions relatively recently and thoroughly enjoying the game, these are physical models I’m not going to get rid of – so we have a yardstick to focus around. Rescaling isn’t a technical science but using a few things like magazines and boots as a rough guide. At the end of the day, it’s mostly about putting some figures I like the look of on the tabletop.
I’ve printed a few figures from Spectre and Combat Octopus at this larger scale and already painted up a replacement intelligence operative from the latest release. In the slicer, the new scale works out to roughly 110% size, a nice easy round number to make rescaling simple and fast without needing piles of paperwork. Having painted up at the larger scale, it’s incredible the extra detail you get to see from the 3D prints, as well as being much easier to catch with techniques like drybrushing – although I do wonder how much the “is easier to paint” comes down to getting older! On things like barrels, the larger scale seems to make some of them slightly more resilient so hopefully, there will be less bendy barrels and snapped suppressors.
So the next step? It’s time to rebuild the forces I’m going to need to play Shyluz. I’ve already printed the new Spectre Russians and the Local Forces at 110% to be the OPFOR to the Combat Octopus pieces I’m using for the Republic of Shyluz Regular Forces (although there may be a slight delay while I wait for my printer to get back to 100% functionality). These pieces will need to be reprinted, along with a chunk of Spectre models I had already printed and based. Luckily, they found a good home with the Creative Regular Opponent to have a play around with, so no resin wasted.
The main thing to happen now is to move forward and tidy up behind me – move forward by painting what is needed, and tidy up by preparing all the figures I plan to get send off to new careful owners.