Sunday Sermon: Special Edition Miniatures

I had to start with a picture of one that got away. Dr Brainiac is still kicking me for this!

This is a pretty much becoming a more and more contentious issue for many hobbyists and collectors. It was actually quite rare to spot Special Edition miniatures only a few years back. They were thankfully pretty rare and actually weren't that 'special' or 'limited' in the first place. However, there have been more and more grumbles over this sort of thing going on in the last few years. Perhaps it's because we're all becoming more and more grumpy... hey look it's a possibility, some of us are turning into right miserable tossers. It could also be because more and more of these 'special edition' or 'limited edition' miniatures are being linked to certain products, promotions and events, that by their very nature are elitist and exclusive. That and there seems to be more and more of them being released for everything nowadays. Partially it has been brought on by the explosion in the shear number of smaller games starting up, it also has had some pretty strong links with the growing popularity of crowd funding, but there's also that old chestnut of convention exclusive miniatures.

I'll tell you where I stand on such things philosophically, I don't like them. I never have, not because I don't like alternative sculpts, because I do, no it is more to do with the fact that I'm not a big fan of anything that further ostracizes certain people from certain aspects of our community. I am, however, a big fat giant hypocrit on it as a topic, because despite me thinking its a bit wrong for them to exist on the one hand... guess what? I'm the first chump in line to buy them when I can. I once had a good chuckle when a friend of mine explained to a young kid that the reason he had a cool limited edition Games Workshop miniature from a Games Day, and the young kid didn't was because he was around the company when they were first starting out, and he was supporting them then. This kid paused, scrunched his nose up and said, "so I'm being punished for not being old enough?", you know what? The little kid had a point. These sorts of miniatures are like a badge of honour for some of the worst elitist behaviour you'll see in our hobby.
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