Welcome to 6mm fantasy.

Welcome, welcome.

First posts can be difficult things, often with a lack of content to get going. I have the exact opposite issue. I have several posts worth of content, almost ready to be shared all at once, but diving in to photos from the get go just didn't feel right.

In recent weeks the image hosting site photobucket has caused a stir by removing the ability for free users to share photos using third party linking- unless they pay an obscene amount to unlock their account. This has left many wargames forums in tatters- with some people even unable to rescue their own photos of their account with out unlocking it first!

I have used photobucket to host my pictures for many years, on many forums, and now many of my painting logs will begin to disappear (as I refuse to pay over $300 to unlock my account. Thankfully I have several back ups of all my work.)

6mm fantasy has no solid home on the interwebs. The two main 6mm groups located on facebook are great communities, but very 'temporary'. Facebook is not a good host to painting logs, or for long term reference. Posts will disappear over night, and many people can miss updates. They do provide a fantastic resource for 'instant gratification', but no easy way to look back, even just for nostalgia. The Tactical command forum- home to the Epic warhammer 40k community- has several sub forums where 6mm fantasy is posted. But being home to mostly sci-fi and the fantasy content is spread so thin, posts can often go unread by fans, or can be passed over by the 'Games workshop only' crowd. Other forums are plagued with a sort of 'favouritism' for their most popular genre or just not suitable as a home for 6mm fantasy.

So switching my painting log over from tactical command to my own self managed blog seemed like a good idea, and this was the perfect time to do it. Thanks Photobucket!

I went with a Blogger account (despite my reluctance to recommend it to others) as my school gave me a free account with huge storage capacity, and copyright issues aside, its a pretty good free platform.

So here I intend to keep a record of my painting logs and post tutorials for as many things 6mm scale fantasy I am able to. I will also post pictures & news of anything that I come across from the facebook groups, as to provide a more permanent reference. I'd love to set up and maintain our own dedicated forum- but seeing how thin 6mm fantasy is already spread, and often other peoples reluctance to use forums, it seems too much of a gamble right now, where as a blog is monetary risk free. 


So if you have a blog or website and would like me to share it here, please get in touch. Alternatively, if you do not have your own place to host your work, I'd love to show off some 'miniatures of the week' type posts, so please do get in touch!

I'd would be happy to bring in a readership of about 100 people for each post! That's approximately only 2.5% of both the 6mm & Epic 40k communities on facebook! I'd like to revisit the idea of a permanent forum in the future, but for now, I'm settling for a place I can share my own work, and help try improve the visibility of 6mm fantasy.


Though I intend to keep this blog as close to being a pure source of 6mm fantasy, there is going to be a lot of bleed through from other sections of the hobby. Its quite likely I will post some of my Epic 40k work from time to time, some of which will be relevant for both genres, as well the odd 6mm historical piece. The odd 10mm piece might slip in and on rare occasions warhammer fantasy, Age of Sigmar or 40k will get a mention, though its not my intent to flood this page with anything large scale, but there is always some cross over- especially with terrain and tutorials! More often than not, it will be the odd 'think piece' or rant, as there are already plenty of places more suitable for me to post larger scale stuff! Visually, this page is too be all about 6mm!


I have more plans in my head than I can put in to practice sometimes! I've been working on some tutorials, though my photographing work may need some improving. But I'd love to see 6mm fantasy gain more attention. Almost every other genre and scale has tons of blogs, forums, competitions, gift exchange, painting services. 6mm sometimes seems to be a private club, and 6mm fantasy even more so!

So the first rule of 6mm Fantasy is: You DO talk about 6mm fantasy! The second rule of 6mm fantasy club is: You MUST talk about 6mm fantasy!

As a genre, it seems to be shrinking in to the background again, where as it should be gaining huge popularity! I've seen several posts as of late, from miniature companies saying that its just not selling as well as they need it to be to continue! 6mm sci-fi and historicals seemed to hit an all time high a couple of years ago, with many garage companies springing up! Its time for 6mm fantasy to do the same!



I will aim to keep posts less 'wordy' in the future. It was hard to keep this one balanced between 'introduction' and 'huge rant'. 

 

Small Amendment 21 May 2024:

Greetings from the world of tomorrow! The above was originally posted on the 7th July 2017. I've been posting on wargaming forums since the early 2000s now and sadly seen the demise of most of them in favour of places like facebook, discord, and other social media. Loosing Warseer (for what feels like the 5th and very final time) this year was the final nail in posting on forums and and whilst I've not managed to keep up to date posting on my own blogs (I have three main wargaming ones now: this one, my main fantasy one and my dedicated middle earth one), I've moved on from using social media for posting hobby content. I tried to return to using forums but as most of the ones I like were gone or much like dakka, which I only now find useful for keeping up for news & rumours I felt like it time to really start using my blogs again.

This mean rescuing what I could from the old forums. I was able to save a few old posts saved from Warseers before it was closed for good for my WFB blog. And I've started archiving some more old posts from tactical command forum here. I'd already done this for most of my 6mm fantasy. But this means I'll be backdating some Epic 40k posts from before this 'opening' post ever went live. The photos are terrible. The painting is probably shocking. But I wanted to rescue the relics of the past.