It's on like Donkey Kong!

Welcome to my blog, Fantastic Bits of Plastic. The intention of this blog is to chronicle my journey using Lego Minifigures for tabletop wargaming. I’ve been gaming in some capacity or another since the early 1980’s. I’ve run the gamut from RPGs, bookshelf games, board games and in more recent years, miniatures wargaming.  I loved the more 3 dimensional and visual appeal that miniatures added to our games. Soon I found myself immersed in the “hobby within a hobby” of collecting and painting figures, building scenery and relevant model kits without doing alot of...um...”gaming” itself. My interest many periods and in many scales became somewhat of a runaway train and I found storage of all the completed pieces and the hit my pocketbook was taking, a bit excessive. Not to mention the growing mountain of lead that I was amassing (best laid plans and all that). A year or so ago I’d been elbows deep into a new period and suddenly I just decided to take a break from it all. All the painting, all the collecting...all of it. I put down the paintbrush and took a step back. It was around this time I’d come across some really neat pictures during a Google image search of some wargames being played using Lego minifigures after a mention of it in an old post on The Miniatures Page.

" Thinking of getting some kind of ready-made, no paint required, re-customizable toy army. I love the idea of arming each figure with an array of weapons, changing them, or making whatever the heck I want (and well lead figs just aren't so accommodating to my never ending whims. Nor are plastic ones, but they are slightly better). The Playmobil figures are bigger, which I like however the minifigs have a greater variety of things to wield as well as helmets and faces, etc."   - ETeneibrisLux, The Miniatures Page, 2008 

I became really interested in the possibilities these could lend to my own gaming projects. Perhaps it was the allure of the toy nature that appealed to my inner child. Or perhaps the attractive nature of what I call “pick-click-and-play” that Lego minifigures allow. So I started collecting. And boy did I collect! Slowly of course, ordering bits here and bits there, but surely. Like lead miniatures, I was excited to get my parts and pieces in the mail, but unlike lead miniatures, these are ready to go. Much excitement in the past had been dashed knowing all the work that lay ahead of me basing, priming, painting, just to get a figure or two on the table. Don’t get me wrong... I’m still a bit fan of lead figures and wargaming, but not as much into it as I once was. Now I’m smitten with these little ABS plastic wonders and how versatile they are.  Just learning what’s out there as far as custom parts, weapons etc has been exciting and I’m sure I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ve learned all about AFOLs (Adult Fans of Lego) and MOCs (My Own Creation) and we’ve even added an acronym of our own to the lexicon: GULPs (Gamers Using Lego Products)! So this is just the beginning of my journey and I’m anxious to see what lies ahead.