Miniature gaming

As many of you might be aware, I made a decision some time ago to forego miniature gaming due to the onset of my arthritis. I clean out almost every single miniature in the house as well as my paints, terrain and hobby supplies. After that I focused on getting involved in board games, wargames like ASL and some of FFG’s Living Card Game range.

Ultimately this appears to have left me quite unhappy. While I enjoy board games and LCGs it seems that these didn’t really give me the sort of experience that games like Warmachine, Hordes, Malifaux or others do. This has left me in a bit of a conundrum.

This came to a head recently when I realized that, as part of a collection I was slowly selling for a friend, there was a fairly significant number of Cygnar miniatures in my basement. Not only that but they were almost all assembled and about half of them were painted.

I am not the best person when it comes to resisting temptation. As tempting as the figures are though, their availability still didn’t change the fact that my hands really just don’t work they way that they used to. To test this out I took some time to assemble a Cygnar Firefly Light Warjack, one of the plastic models, and my finger joints were still sore the next day. Not good.

That said, I did manage to get the model assembled.

I am currently in the process of assembling the Long Gunner UA and experiencing the same issues with my joints. I am not sure if this is going to be a continuing problem or if the pain will reduce as I strengthen and stretch the joints. Time will tell but I am going to assume that they will always get this sore.

Painting is, without any sort of testing, out of the question. I already know that my hands, shoulders and chest won’t be able to handle the stress of painting. Happily there are all sorts of people that will trade money for painting so I should be able to slowly expand the painted figures in the force.

I’ve decided, despite the pain, to give this a try. Mostly because the Cygnar force is a convenient and quick way to get back into playing Warmachine and satiate the desire I have to push some minis around a table and roll some dice. I will be heading down to Sentry Box this Sunday to see how badly I remember the rules and hopefully I can continue to play despite my hands.