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Everyone loves the original WD articles and I've seen a few attempts to copy the formula in modern times. But I'm sure I've missed even more. So what ones have you followed or been following and think are worth the read\watch?

Any of the ones Ive seen tend to miss out the crucial part of building an army-the monthly cost. Its why nearly all the modern WD articles cant hold a candle to the original series because they arent realistic.

There was one series I saw trying to replicate it where an Eldar player bought a Wraithknight in month 2 or 3 or something and then dropped out because he couldnt keep up with the other players who had added the core choices first.

Memnoch wrote:
Any of the ones Ive seen tend to miss out the crucial part of building an army-the monthly cost. Its why nearly all the modern WD articles cant hold a candle to the original series because they arent realistic.

There was one series I saw trying to replicate it where an Eldar player bought a Wraithknight in month 2 or 3 or something and then dropped out because he couldnt keep up with the other players who had added the core choices first.

That's something I was thinking about. What would you need to spend on modern GW a month to pull this off now? 50 quid for a core seems unrealistic today. Other games make it possible. Like wargames Atlantic boxes or Kings of war.

Prices / monthly budgets are one hurdle, another one is that most of these lose steam after a while due to various reasons, causing people to drop out or miss deadlines.

I feel TO4G works best as a retrospective medium.

By that, you get four gamers, and agree an annual budget, divvied up over a year without making it pro-rata.

So for instance? Over a year, the maximum budget is say £1,200.00. The participants are free to spend that budget as they wish over 12 months. And everyone presents their working at the end, with the entries being episodic

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I feel TO4G works best as a retrospective medium.

By that, you get four gamers, and agree an annual budget, divvied up over a year without making it pro-rata.

So for instance? Over a year, the maximum budget is say £1,200.00. The participants are free to spend that budget as they wish over 12 months. And everyone presents their working at the end, with the entries being episodic

This doesn't have the same charm. The fixed budget made it interesting to see how they worked what they needed for their army and what they had to counter an opposing army. For that much money you could buy basically everything. And the original concept was to take a standard budget. Most kids could get 25 quid a month through pocket money and petty jobs. An adult could budget that for hobby expenses. Handing someone loads of cash is totally different

Yo7 wrote:

Memnoch wrote:

That's something I was thinking about. What would you need to spend on modern GW a month to pull this off now? 50 quid for a core seems unrealistic today. Other games make it possible. Like wargames Atlantic boxes or Kings of war.

I suppose you could start month 1 with a Start Collecting box as the starting point and then set a budget of 50-70 euro (or equivilant) per month and allow the unspent amount to carry over for the inevitable centerpiece model towards the end. Picking Stormcast as an example most of the range is below €70 so its managable in theory I guess.

That being said you are pretty much picking up 1 unit a month so its going to take a while.

TBH the budget stuff is the least-interesting part of a series like that. I'm far more interested in the modeling and painting progress, the strategy decisions, etc, than in listing MSRP for everything or obsessing over a $5 difference in cost.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
TBH the budget stuff is the least-interesting part of a series like that. I'm far more interested in the modeling and painting progress, the strategy decisions, etc, than in listing MSRP for everything or obsessing over a $5 difference in cost.

Having to budget in your conversion bits was interesting to me. Buy bits are dead now so it wouldn't apply unless you're buying ral partha or reaper metals to use.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
TBH the budget stuff is the least-interesting part of a series like that. I'm far more interested in the modeling and painting progress, the strategy decisions, etc, than in listing MSRP for everything or obsessing over a $5 difference in cost.

Thats the thing though, the original point/charm of the series was to show how it could be done on a budget. Taking out the budget takes away the realism side of it to a certain extent. Even one of the newer versions (think it was around the time of Black Reach) made it fairly clear that the models were being supplied to the the participants so made the whole thing pretty pointless.

Memnoch wrote:

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:
TBH the budget stuff is the least-interesting part of a series like that. I'm far more interested in the modeling and painting progress, the strategy decisions, etc, than in listing MSRP for everything or obsessing over a $5 difference in cost.

Thats the thing though, the original point/charm of the series was to show how it could be done on a budget. Taking out the budget takes away the realism side of it to a certain extent. Even one of the newer versions (think it was around the time of Black Reach) made it fairly clear that the models were being supplied to the the participants so made the whole thing pretty pointless.

And they used new store openings to get extra from their money. It wasn't just rrp either. One if the later ones had lots of demon sculpting. What was that one called?

Memnoch wrote:
Thats the thing though, the original point/charm of the series was to show how it could be done on a budget. Taking out the budget takes away the realism side of it to a certain extent. Even one of the newer versions (think it was around the time of Black Reach) made it fairly clear that the models were being supplied to the the participants so made the whole thing pretty pointless.

It doesn't take away the realism at all. Lots of people have an unlimited budget, at least on the scale of building a new army for a miniatures game. You personally might enjoy "gaming on a budget" content but I don't see how you can seriously argue that it's pointless or unrealistic if the people just buy whatever is best for their project without worrying about exactly how much it costs.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Memnoch wrote:
Thats the thing though, the original point/charm of the series was to show how it could be done on a budget. Taking out the budget takes away the realism side of it to a certain extent. Even one of the newer versions (think it was around the time of Black Reach) made it fairly clear that the models were being supplied to the the participants so made the whole thing pretty pointless.

It doesn't take away the realism at all. Lots of people have an unlimited budget, at least on the scale of building a new army for a miniatures game. You personally might enjoy "gaming on a budget" content but I don't see how you can seriously argue that it's pointless or unrealistic if the people just buy whatever is best for their project without worrying about exactly how much it costs.

Most people don't have unlimited budgets. Just because whales exist doesn't make them realistic for 99% of people. Even those of us with large budgets get to the point where you start looking at the cost and wonder if a steam decks better value for money. You can find loads of youtubers spending more money than they have an they're usually considered manchildren and looked down on. They constantly spend and barely engage with any thing they spent money on.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Memnoch wrote:
Thats the thing though, the original point/charm of the series was to show how it could be done on a budget. Taking out the budget takes away the realism side of it to a certain extent. Even one of the newer versions (think it was around the time of Black Reach) made it fairly clear that the models were being supplied to the the participants so made the whole thing pretty pointless.

It doesn't take away the realism at all. Lots of people have an unlimited budget, at least on the scale of building a new army for a miniatures game. You personally might enjoy "gaming on a budget" content but I don't see how you can seriously argue that it's pointless or unrealistic if the people just buy whatever is best for their project without worrying about exactly how much it costs.

I'd argue lots of people dont have an unlimited budget, certainly not for a hobby that has a pretty high buy in cost. (If you do then good for you). Even when I was younger and hadnt settled down and had bills etc. there was still plenty of things that I skipped on because even then I wouldnt justify the cost.

Having the point behind the original series show how you can build an army over time to a budget is lost when the person can just buy the whole army upfront or even have the models supplied for free. Takes most of the appeal away for me personally. To me it then just becomes "Ive 3000 points of unpainted Necrons sitting in a pile what did I paint this month".

Ive done both approachs over the years (building up over time and buying whole army upfront) and always had more more mass on the armies I built up for some reason.

But yeah boils down to personal choice I guess.

I, for one, enjoy the creative tricks veteran hobbyists employ to cut costs. I love conversions, scratch builds, kitbashes, alt models even more, when apart from making an army unique they save money

With out the budget, the a "Tale of..." is pretty pointless.

The idea was to show that "Yes, even you can make an army in a relatively short period of time!" That was it's marketing intent.

It is similar to escalation leagues in that regard. The whole marketing gimmick is that making an army is fun, not that hard, and modular so not that expensive.

If you take that part out of it, all you have left is a person working out their pile of shame.

 Easy E wrote:
With out the budget, the a "Tale of..." is pretty pointless.

The idea was to show that "Yes, even you can make an army in a relatively short period of time!" That was it's marketing intent.

It is similar to escalation leagues in that regard. The whole marketing gimmick is that making an army is fun, not that hard, and modular so not that expensive.

If you take that part out of it, all you have left is a person working out their pile of shame.

It's also interesting seeing how different players approach army building and how that changes when they start playing with it

Memnoch wrote:
I'd argue lots of people dont have an unlimited budget, certainly not for a hobby that has a pretty high buy in cost. (If you do then good for you)

Some people don't, but TBH 40k is pretty cheap on the overall hobby scale. It's expensive if you're a kid on a birthday money budget but for an adult with a decent job? Not really.

To me it then just becomes "Ive 3000 points of unpainted Necrons sitting in a pile what did I paint this month".

Or "how do I find a conversion that fits my lore for this army" rather than "you can save $1/model if you do this conversion". Opinions are subjective of course but the first seems way more interesting than the second.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
If you take that part out of it, all you have left is a person working out their pile of shame.

It's kind of sad that you think taking away budget restraints reduces the hobby to "working out their pile of shame". What happened to coming up with cool conversion ideas to match the lore? Playing games and figuring out what you want to add to win your next one? Making special characters/scenery/etc for a narrative game?

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

Memnoch wrote:
I'd argue lots of people dont have an unlimited budget, certainly not for a hobby that has a pretty high buy in cost. (If you do then good for you)

Some people don't, but TBH 40k is pretty cheap on the overall hobby scale. It's expensive if you're a kid on a birthday money budget but for an adult with a decent job? Not really.

To me it then just becomes "Ive 3000 points of unpainted Necrons sitting in a pile what did I paint this month".

Or "how do I find a conversion that fits my lore for this army" rather than "you can save $1/model if you do this conversion". Opinions are subjective of course but the first seems way more interesting than the second.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
If you take that part out of it, all you have left is a person working out their pile of shame.

It's kind of sad that you think taking away budget restraints reduces the hobby to "working out their pile of shame". What happened to coming up with cool conversion ideas to match the lore? Playing games and figuring out what you want to add to win your next one? Making special characters/scenery/etc for a narrative game?

40k is very expensive for most hobbies. Especially if you take into account new editions ruining your army. Most hobbies are nearly free, or sub 50 monies easily.

You can't adapt your list or let your army have a personality you then convert or buy into if you pre buy everything. Organic growth looks very different to planned growth. You're arguing the whale experience is the same as the average buyer and its not. The whale buys everything and maybe builds it (probably not if trade groups are anything to go by). While everyone else has to plan these expenses and grow their army over time. Which is by far the more personal and interesting story. It'd the difference between hiking a mountain and flying up in a chopper. Same location, very different story

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
If you take that part out of it, all you have left is a person working out their pile of shame.

It's kind of sad that you think taking away budget restraints reduces the hobby to "working out their pile of shame". What happened to coming up with cool conversion ideas to match the lore? Playing games and figuring out what you want to add to win your next one? Making special characters/scenery/etc for a narrative game?

*** Oops, looks like I messed up Painted Owls quote*****

Thankfully, we have a whole section of Dakka called the P&M blogs that let's you do just this!

Without the Budget, you have a P&M blog where people finish off their pile of shame, with cool conversions and wicked experiments in painting techniques. Arguably, the ONLY unique element of a "Tale of" is the Budget.

 Easy E wrote:
Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Easy E wrote:
If you take that part out of it, all you have left is a person working out their pile of shame.

It's kind of sad that you think taking away budget restraints reduces the hobby to "working out their pile of shame". What happened to coming up with cool conversion ideas to match the lore? Playing games and figuring out what you want to add to win your next one? Making special characters/scenery/etc for a narrative game?

*** Oops, looks like I messed up Painted Owls quote*****

Thankfully, we have a whole section of Dakka called the P&M blogs that let's you do just this!

Without the Budget, you have a P&M blog where people finish off their pile of shame, with cool conversions and wicked experiments in painting techniques. Arguably, the ONLY unique element of a "Tale of" is the Budget.

There's also the league element. The armies were designed to be played against each other. Not just hobby projects

Oh, I had forgotten that part of it.

Yo7 wrote:
40k is very expensive for most hobbies. Especially if you take into account new editions ruining your army. Most hobbies are nearly free, or sub 50 monies easily.

I think you are seriously underestimating the cost of other hobbies. Even cheap things like cooking or knitting can easily run up hundreds of dollars in costs, and there's a whole lot of stuff that is way more expensive. Even a new gaming PC, one of the most common hobbies, costs way more than 40k.

You can't adapt your list or let your army have a personality you then convert or buy into if you pre buy everything.

Why do you need budget limits to have natural growth? Not having a budget limit doesn't mean you're forced to buy everything up front, it just means your buying decisions are based on things like "how do I not lose like that again" or "what conversion looks coolest for my new character" instead of "this kit is $5 cheaper so I'm going to buy it instead of the other one".

It'd the difference between hiking a mountain and flying up in a chopper. Same location, very different story

Only if you assume that funding a 40k army is the most important and interesting part of the process. I do not agree with that assumption.