I was hoping that this post will start with the good old "I finished some more model galleries", but sadly that is not the case. Between the "Crôn-mas Miracle!" and other, more earthly holidays, I've been away from the keyboard quite a lot. Worry not though, this year will be full of content on here, I promise you that!
December has been absolutely wild for the collection! Where to even begin? I'll share images one by one and then post a group photo at the end, since I want to go step by step and ruminate on all the things separately, that's how much this month got me excited.
The big boy is up first. Controversial as it might be, I think it is a valuable piece of any serious Confrontation collection, if anything for the period of Rackham's history which it marked. I grabbed this one for extremely cheap, 30 euros along with the Confrontation 3 book, so it wasn't that big of a sacrifice. Personally, aside from the historical significance, I dislike the pre-painted plastics for Confrontation, mostly for what it did to the game and the company and the fact that I'm honestly not that impressed with the miniatures. The box art is gorgeous, all the gaming accessories are great, and actually the terrain piece is pretty cool, albeit a bit on the thin side which was a bit disappointing. But the Wolfen and Griffin miniatures are a huge downgrade from what we were spoiled with in metal in the previous Rackham era. People say that over time the pre-painted miniatures got better, but I honestly haven't seen that quality anywhere so far in my Rackham journey, aside from AT-43. Regardless of the negatives, happy to own this piece of history.
Speaking of pre-painted plastics and AT-43, a little second hand lot popped up locally for pennies (8 euros to be exact) and it'd be a bummer to let it slip by. I forgot to pull 'em out of storage when I was taking photos for this post and realized I missed them when I packed everything back, so you're just gonna have to trust me. Essentially, the lot consists of UNA Shock TacArms, one black Wraith Golgoth and a few Bane Goliaths in need of some glue. Main reason I bought these was because of how cheap they were listed for, but little did I know that these TacArms are supposedly rare-ish. I know absolutely nothing about various rarities and values of AT-43 things, so this nugget of wisdom was handed over to me on the 7 Hills server. Guess I got lucky!
This is where things start to get spicy. Cyclops of Mid-Nor, Predators of Blood, Apostates of Darkness, and the Drune Horned Raiders boxes came as a deal, all English and NIB for a total of 90 euros. I'd consider that a pretty good deal even for community standards. The Cyclops is quite rare, I've only ever seen one that was English/NIB and that one alone went for around 90-100 euros. Apostates by default hang around the 100 euro mark for the most part and Predators have just steadily been increasing in price for the past year, though they have been seeing a bit of a dip, at least on eBay. Only the Raiders are somewhat common and affordable, this box actually being the first dip into Drunes for me. So all in all, this was an amazing deal to snag and I'm so excited to finally add the Cyclops to my collection, as it is one of my favorite Mid-Nor models next to the Demon Tower. And I'm happy to expand my Ophidian collection with the Apostates, since Ophidians in general have been a bit of a dried up well when it comes to English editions. Predators of Blood are a duplicate box for me, thus they are already available for trading or selling on my buy-sell-trade post on the 7 Hills server, but I'm kinda debating if I should keep the box as allies for my Daikinee army. Gonna think on that for a little more.
I've also managed to grab a little weird lot of used things, namely Cynwall and Wolfen card packs (which I also forgot to photo), a big ol' stack of loose English cards and six painted Ira Tenebrae models (also forgotten). Same as the Predators above, the card packs are duplicates for me, so they will be listed for sale/trade as well. Regarding the loose cards, the stack is actually way bigger in person than how it looked like in the listing of the seller, so that was a pleasant surprise. I'd assume the previous owner was a big fan of Dirz, since it seems like the stack has almost all Dirz profile cards sans Tarascus and Sasia's Second Incarnation. I'm excited for these cards, primarily since they will be a tremendous help when buying Dirz models, since I can now simply purchase non-English blisters/boxes knowing I already have the English ones. Also especially excited for the small stack of Hybrid cards, since there are some great profiles in there. The non-Dirz cards are a bit more frustrating, because while there definitely are some full sets, some things are lacking... for example, all of Morzath's cards except the Cyclops, or all of Sulfur's cards but missing the Troll. It is what it is, it'll be nice having spares at least!
The above used card lot also included these packs from Cry Havoc magazines, I just forgot to pull 'em out for the family photo, yada yada. These will also help tracking down the magazines, since many copies out there come without the cards, or if I end up getting duplicates I'll probably make someone else happy.
Here is a small continuation of the dip into Drunes, Morgwen and the Lanyfhs crossing my path for less than 10e was a deal I didn't want to skip. Not much to say about these other than that I'm excited about finally owning and growing a Drune army. Having painted so many Sessairs it'll be a thrill to explore the darker side of the Kelts. And also Lanyfhs are amazing, screw the haters.
Yes, I bend the knee and admit defeat. Alahan got me this time around! This is one of the rare models from the Lions that I enjoy and it showed up locally for extremely cheap so I went and grabbed it. Definitely one of my least favorite factions still, but credit where credit is due and I'm pretty sure I'll find a use for it eventually.
And then last but definitely not the least, Erhyl and Irul. After so much chasing and being patient, I finally found them. Here and there Erhyl has been popping up, but Irul is the elusive one. Previously I ever saw only a few of them out in the wild, but my recaster-sense went off every time and I never pulled the trigger.
However, this purchase required some investigative work first, which made it that much more exciting. While talking to the seller, they provided an image of the miniatures and specifically for Irul said that "Irul has no card, Rackham never printed cards" which raised an eyebrow.
I know that a few people from the 7 Hills have Irul and I've reached out to ask if they have the card and if they could provide a photo, but none of them could. Extensive searching mojo online fielded no result for physical evidence of a card, obviously aside from the scan that is up on the wiki and many other places. Essentially, it boils down to the fact that VPC models came with promo cards only and that some of the released cards were put up on the Rackham site for people to download and print at home. Some VPC art cards do exist, like the VPC Lanyfhs, but seeing as how Irul came out in 2007 maybe something changed with the way Rackham was doing things by then. Until someone, anyone, can show me a physical Irul card I will believe that it simply does not exist. Ironically, his card is one of my visually favorite cards ever made for Confrontation.
There's also a bit of a story behind this purchase once I actually paid for it. I was contemplating a long time if I should pull the trigger on this deal, because it was a bit expensive, yet completely justified, so when I finally did I breathed out a sigh of relief. It was happening! Sadly, this was just before the holidays, so shipping was bound to be slower. I received a tracking number and I was checking it fervently almost every day while it made its trip through France and toward Scandinavia. All was well, until it wasn't! On the French La Poste the tracking showed that the package was delivered to a pickup point in Sweden, but when I checked the Swedish tracking website, the package didn't exist at all. A bunch of visits and calls proved fruitless since nobody knew where the package was or that it even arrived or that it even existed. Luckily during one of the calls to the Swedish postal service, in which I was somewhere around 140th in the queue I shit you not, I get told that tracking numbers from one country don't necessarily work in other countries and that there exists this "international tracking number" which you need to provide in that case in order to locate a parcel. Long story short, lots of stress, but I finally picked it up literally an hour before they'd return it back to France! Lesson learned for the future, don't order important things at the end of the year and ask for international tracking just in case.
I am microscopically sad that Erhyl is in French, but what that is saying to my collector brain is that it only leaves space to track down an English version too! In any case, this marks a gigantic step for my Daikinee collection, about which I'll talk more about soon.
And that's it! Hope you enjoyed the read and stay tuned, because in a few days I have a fun little post in the pipeline!
