The Bucket Strikes Back!

The Bucket has come home to Mik's Minis. It's still going to be the same bucket, more or less, but I guess we're calling this one v4.0! We'll need a new banner Biscuit! For those unfamiliar, the Barter Bucket is a place to trade game items and swap conversion bits, whether on a scale of a single backpack or an entire army. The bucket shouldn't be a new concept however, having been around nine hundred days apparently but here's the rundown on how the bucket works, more or less. There are just a few tweaks and some changes in addition to how it used to work:

• The Barter Bucket will post the first Saturday of each month, a banner link on the right will direct you to the current month's bucket
• Send in your requests, as usual, to me here: miksminis at gmail.com
• Keep those requests detailed and limited to x3 wants and x3 haves at a time, there is no deadline as I will update the current bucket throughout the month as requests come in
  
• We're opening the bucket up to ALL things gaming related; whatever genre, scale, company, and what-not; RPG products, Flames of War, 15mm sci-fi, 40K/WHFB, novels, Privateer Press, whatever is fair game
  
• It is a trading bucket, so no requests for selling things please
• "free to a good home" works just as well, let's get unwanted stuff in the hands of those who will use it
• I'll post the requests listed with people's emails, it's between you guys to work out all the details

I think that's about it, I'm sure I left something out but this stuff kind of runs itself. Seeing how we just switched things to here, I'll be starting it over fresh, just get those requests in and remember,

"Change comes from within...your bits box!"

Bolters, Backpacks, and the Barter Bucket

It takes a village...of gamers to build a platoon from scratch out of bits

I have been meticulously piecing these guys together for some time. It started a couple of months back when I began putting in requests to the Barter Bucket to flesh these guys out. It wasn't until I finished assembling this project that I realized just how much the Barter Bucket actually helped me in getting everything completed. I simply couldn't have done them without it.

The title of the post kind of says it all. I had bolters and I had backpacks, and that is about all I had to be honest. I had a few spare bits here and there, and pretty much all of the first and second edition parts were mine, but otherwise the fifteen Deathwatch troops I made all came from parts and bits mailed in from the Barter Bucket. The torsos, the legs, most of the arms, pouches, a wide variety of bare heads, and shoulder pads all came in the post.

I had fifteen small plastic bags and I started separating parts for each individual figure in each bag. At first it seemed impossible, I had fifteen bags that contained only circular bases, a bolter, and a backpack. That was my foundation for each trooper, then as I got parts in over time I slowly added pieces to each bag until each one contained a complete fig.

So, without the help of my fellow gamers out there, I'd still have fifteen bolters and backpacks sitting around in little baggies and nothing else to show for my ambitious project. I'd like to extend a hearty thanks to all who pitched in. If I forgot someone, ugh, I'm so sorry, just leave me a biting missive and I'll fix it! And if you're listed below and have a blog I didn't link to, let me know that so I can fix that as well. So, mucho thanks to the following!

Extremis Diabolous

GW Pertinent

Sons of Twilight

Señor Kent

Iron Hands and More

Jeff "Sons of Medusa" B.

...and an extra special thanks goes to someone who helped out by
just sending me the rest of the items on my checklist all in one go!

John at Santa Cruz Warhammer

Meanwhile in Bucket Land...

"I'm totally double-dipping here. This is an editorial I wrote up for the blog Santa Cruz Warhammer, and it focuses on community building through the Barter Bucket. I thought it was important enough of a concept to post it here on my own blog as well. If you haven't checked out the Bucket, head over there and do so, it's a pretty nifty idea." -Mik

Have you ever played the game Dominion? I have, it's a lot of fun, but when I first saw the components and started reading the rules I just shook my head. I thought there'd be no way I'd get the hang of it. Surprisingly you not only get the hang of it by turn two of your very first game, it keeps building momentum and gets better and better every time you play it.

I think of our Barter Bucket in the same way. You may see it and think, "Sheesh, mailing bits, asking for bits, sending whole figs, it all sounds pretty involved." Once you do it though, the beauty of it starts to unveil, and every time after that it keeps building momentum and keeps getting better and better.

Personally I'm building a Deathwatch squad to use for an RPG. Those little DW shoulder pads are hard to come by, if I buy them on eBay, I'm looking at $5 bucks a pop after shipping. Popular bits selling places put them at $3 bucks each. That's $30 bucks, minimum, to outfit ten troops with just shoulder pads! Through my dealings with Bucket however, many individuals have sent me their extras; DW shoulder pads they weren't using or didn't need. One person sent me just a single pad, it was the only one they had and postage was less than forty cents. It all adds up and it all helps, no matter how small.

I don't know these people other than that they're fellow gamers who share the same hobby that I do. If we lived in the same zip code I'm sure we'd be rolling dice together at the game table. As it is, we're still building a larger gaming network. Someone sent me a bunch of Bolter scopes and a slew of Space Wolf heads, I didn't have anything they were looking for at the time, but I'll be watching their needs in the future closely and see how I can help.

And that's where the door swings both ways. The Bucket is not about just sitting back and getting free stuff for nothing. You get out of it what you put into it and I've sent pieces all over the place, including overseas. A pair of IG autocannons I had laying around went to the UK, I didn't need them, and someone else is now getting good use out of them. Same thing with some Terminator thunder hammers that I sent off to the west coast, my Terminator Assault squad was already built, what did I need the extras for? Now someone is building a squad with their son for the first time and putting them to use. Someone posted they needed Goblin Fanatics. I don't really do WHFB, so I didn't think much of it at the time, but one day I was digging in a bits box for Apothecary parts and what did I find? An old, battered Blood Bowl Fanatic, half painted and lying forgotten at the bottom of a parts pile. I can guarantee he would never see the light of day in my possession, but now that's going to change and all I had to do was take five minutes out of my day and drop it in the mail.

Like the game Dominion, what looks complicated at first shows itself to be anything but. As you progress along, using the Barter Bucket becomes more than just mailing off bits, you realize you're networking with other gamers and in helping one another out, you're building that community. Who knows, maybe you'll see someone you've traded with at a big convention down the road, sit down for a chat and a cold beverage, they won't be strangers.

The Barter Bucket Strikes Again

Around October of last year I came up with the idea of running a "barter bucket" here at Mik's Minis. I was wanting to trade away my spare stuff that someone else might want more than I, and get it in exchange for stuff I really wanted that might not mean as much to someone else. It quickly took off, and soon I was running the Barter Bucket for Ron over at From the Warp. It was pretty successful for a while, and working with Ron was a blast. After a while Ron took the blog in a different direction. I thought the bucket might be lost in the Warp, but in less than a week, the fine folks over at Santa Cruz Warhammer gave me shout and before I knew it, the bucket was back in action on the west coast!

Well it's been a little over a month at its new home, and the blogmeisters at SCWH have been very cool about adding this feature to their blog. I'm getting a lot of emails every week, so I know people are getting good use out of it, but we can always use more. The bucket is the same as it always has been; it's a place for gamers to trade their bits to one another in the same vein as scratching each other's backs, less of a money making endeavor.

I'll speak about my own experience on the bucket. Just last week I got the above Space Marine codex in the mail, quickly by an overnight parcel actually. A fellow player had an extra copy, and didn't need it, but he did need a few extra pieces. Basically the above codex cost me the following; a couple of of pairs of marine 'shooty' arms, a Dire Avenger power sword, a melta gun, and a thunder hammer. Doesn't seem like a lot, but if you need those pieces for a specific conversion, and you don't have them, it can make or break your project. You've got to go to a parts place, hope they're modestly priced, shipping is cheap, and cross your fingers that they also have all the pieces you need in one place.

Well in the case of Señor Pierre and myself, we both had extra stuff we weren't using, and we both had just what the other guy needed. A quick swap later, and voila, you've got the magic of the Barter Bucket! Head over and join in the trading today!

Friday's Barter Bucket

It's a bucket...for bartering!

As mentioned, this is the first installment of Mik's Barter Bucket, huzzah! This is an attempt to get some of the stuff I've got and don't need or use into the hands of those out there who might need or use them. We're all a big community after all! Speaking of being in a community, I've been approached by entities of greater influence than I of perhaps giving the Barter Bucket a little more exposure. I'll keep y'all posted on how this progresses.

The list of stuff I have for letting go might be kind of random, and I won't lump it all in here at once, but add a little bit at a time. If it's used or painted, assembled or whatever, I'll include a current pic, if it's something new in the box or whatever, I'll probably just link it off of GW's site or some other place. I will try to keep the items 'themed' though, so if you see a few Space Wolf items together, that'll be all I've got for example.

What I have (so far), all reasonable offers, for sale:


Scout Sergeant Telion, he is fully painted as shown, click the link for more shots. He is painted as a Dark Angel, but some Simple Green should be able to strip him. It's an awesome fig, but I won't be fielding a 'fake' Dark Angels chapter anymore, hence this choice is no longer viable. For Ultramarine players, I have filed off his Ultramar symbols, but that's good news for other codex players looking to pick up a leader for their scouts.


Black Templars Champion, I've painted up this fig as my Librarian, again, click the link for more shots. He's obviously not a Dark Angels (hence he's getting the boot), same as above, a little Simple Green should do the trick. All of his Black Templars iconography is intact, and I have his BT backpack also. This is the limited edition, GW 25th anniversary figure that was released back in 2000, it is currently out of print.


My Blood Angels Terminator contest entry. Unfortunately I didn't place in the top ten, but that's okay, it was still fun to convert and I tried my best at painting it up (you can see lots more finished pics here). Since I don't play the Blood Angels, and he's not trophy status, he's on the chopping block as well. He is something of a relic, incorporating three generations of terminator parts into the single model. I can truly say that there's not another terminator like this one anywhere in the world, mwahahaha!


Space Wolf Rune Priest. Unlike the sample photo, mine is still in the unopened package, brand new. I picked him up a while back to lead a Chaos Marine army, which never took off. With all the Space Wolf hype lately, surely he can find a home in someone's pack. I've got a few old Space Wolf decals to throw in with the model as well.


Codex: Chaos Space Marines, since I'm (obviously) not going the Chaos route, I don't need the codex anymore. It's in good shape, hasn't been thumbed through a whole lot, and has been sitting on the shelf with the rest since I bought it new.


Speaking of Chaos, I also have another brand new item, still sealed in the box, this Chaos Space Marines Daemon Prince. Another casualty of a failure to launch on a new army, this whopping HQ unit will serve you and the ruinous powers well.

That's all I've got for now, there's tons more lurking around, but this is a test run for now. If you know some players out there who might not be subscribers, and they play, or plan on playing, an army that can benefit from anything I've shown, let them know too! We'll use PayPal so everything is nice and 'safe'. I guess I'll have to put up a profile box (on the right) so you can get my email out of it. If you have a question, post it under comments so others can benefit from whatever it was you were wondering. Thanks!

Mik's Barter Bucket

I'm trying something new here at Mik's Minis...

I've got stuff laying around I don't necessarily need, maybe you do too? I've done the eBay thing, ad nauseam, in the past, but I thought I'd give the 'local' community here first dibs on stuff I'm letting go. Obviously trading is best for everyone involved, but whatever works. So, ala Bartertown, and the line, "You throw me the idol, I'll throw you the whip..." let's give this 'barter bucket' a whirl. And yes, I'm a sucker for alliteration.

The highest traffic occurs over the weekend so I should have the first round of goods up on Friday. I don't know if it'll be a weekly feature, but we'll see...