So when I saw Troll Trader (or TTCombat) were advertising a mystery box of '£100 of goods' for £30, I thought I'd have a little fun. £30 is in that price range that I'm willing to part with and I was confident that in their product range there would be something I like.
I'd thought I'd share with you all the results, I wasn't wholly disappointed.
I thought I would put the items in a vague order of least exciting/useful first to the most last. So, to begin with:
Hmm, basic set of Age of Sigmar rules? Probably not even the most recent? Not a great start, I might not even try selling this but bin it instead. As an old fart that was sad when the Old World was first killed off, on principle I have never played any game of AOS. It's stubbornness I know, but TOW I'd back now, so I'm happy.
A dice tin that on the back says contains ten Eldar Harlequin Dice. It lied, it was empty.
There was a set of dice in the box though. I have no clue what they are for. Anyone who could identify them for me would be doing me a favour.
Some static flock, might be useful, although I don't normally use static. What am I? A model railway enthusiast?
Trees. I do hate trees. A neccesary evil, but who hasn't knocked over a tree or two in a tabletop game. These seem a little small, definitely not 28mm scale, but they will do I suppose.
A couple of primers. The blue will be handy for when the Enthusiastic opponent gets some more Space Marines. He insists on painting them up as Ultramarines just like the box art. The gold may not be as useful unless I use a whole roll of masking tape and then spray the trims.
A bag of paints. Some are for airbrush, something I do not have any use for. I'm guessing they are just thinner acrylics, so maybe I could use them for mixing. The rest are speed paints.
It's a nice looking red, I'll give it a go.
Some mahoosive oval bases. What am I, an Age Of Sigmar player? Give me square bases any day.
I've never been one for textured bases before. You need a bit of a flat surface to glue the feet to normally. I'm going to have to use green stuff, filing or pinning to make these work. There are some cool looking ones in there though. maybe I will be a convert. (To be honest until now I've probably been to tight to buy textured bases.)
Ah, bazinga. I picked up the Rumbleslam starter set at Salute, so this is a perfect addition.
Some random elf figure. I will prob paint it up and throw it in my d&d box. It's always good to have a choice of adventurer types for inspiration when creating a character.
Some random gun holding hands. These will be super useful to add to my Space Ork bits box. I am always after extra guns for my Orks to hold. I tend to find metal orks with no arms. (The plastic arms always seem to have been lost or broken.) These will be super useful. (Although why do people only seem to sculpt right hands holding guns. Are there no south paws in sci fi?)
Love these goblins. I will paint them up and add them as a unit to my Night Goblin army. They are a little taller than my current plastic goblins, but maybe they can be the older/bigger chaps that guard the spellcasters.
Finally some dusty looking target locks. These are designed for the X-Wing game, although it is always useful to have various types of tokens to hand for different reasons. You always need to indicate something in a game, whether it be an objective, or marking a unit as aiming or suppressed.
In conclusion, I paid £30 and there is probably about £30 worth of stuff I was excited about. The rest of the £100 worth of stuff? Well, most of it will find some use, but that AOS rulebook and the dice tin are worthless. I would say in total there probably is £100 worth of items, I always say though something is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Am I happy with my purchase? I think so. Would I do it again? Maybe.
