# RPG A DAY 2024: Marvelous miniature / Great gamer gadget tags: #thoughts #thoughts/RPGaDay/2024 ![[RPGaDAY2024-024x723.jpg]] Next year, I'm definitely going with a different prompt set for RPG a Day. We're going back to the well of similar ideas way too much. It's more than a little frustrating, not for the least reason being that I'm here as much for the entertainment as anybody else. When prompts are just restated versions of one another, it gets a little tedious. I'm willing to tolerate much in my life, but tedium is where I draw the line. At that point, I might as well just automate the process. ## Marvelous miniature As much as I love war games, and as large as my collection is, I have a shockingly small number of actual miniatures. Mainly because they're just really difficult to maintain and manage if you don't happen to have standardized hands. It's one of those things that sort of goes with the hobby nobody thinks about. Not that they should, but it does become an issue for some of us. My general taste in miniatures tends to run toward games which aren't particularly picky about what minis you use with it. The more flexible, the better, as far as I'm concerned. Who knows what you're going to have to bring to the table? Maybe you're going to have to just put together some standees. As long as you get to push some stuff around, check out the terrain, and work the abstraction of the buttons and levers of mechanics, I'm generally satisfied. But that doesn't mean I don't care at all. There are one or two miniatures here and there that I have always wanted to be able to put on the tabletop. Right now, I would love to have [a combat group of **Steel Rift** miniatures from Death Ray](https://deathraydesigns.com/product-category/minis/steel-rift/).^[In the course of writing this bit, I discovered there's no **[[Steel Rift]]** page n the garden. Madness! Rectified.] ![[Steel Rift - Tracked Authority Faction Box.png]] In particular, that Eisenbach Ultra-Heavy HEV is beautiful in my eyes. Absolutely gorgeous. Is it the most detailed miniature I've ever seen in my life? Absolutely not. For that, you would have to go over to some of the incredible [Forge World work for **Warhammer 40k**](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0BnH-HkjX4). There are some beautiful designs in [the classic **Battletech** line, and I would say the Marauder is certainly among them](https://www.baphominiatures.com/marauder). There's just something about the Death Ray **Steel Rift** designs that I find tickles my aesthetic in just the right way. They're not overly detailed. There are areas of broad color which can be emphasized with gradients or just left to lighting to take care of. The details are broad enough to really catch a darkening dye in order to create that sense of depth. That ambient occlusion, even in the synthetic, brings. They are deliberately designed so that the arms and even lower torsos are magnetically attachable, so switching out weapons is fast and easy in case you want to change your build right before a game. The Eisenbach is pleasantly intimidating, and I would take great pleasure in pushing it around as my chosen avatar, killing while the killing is good. That said, I think I'd like to put legs on the Volstrecker. Probably quad, come to think of it. This is why the Eisenbach wins. Seriously. Let's play some **Steel Rift**. I am so down. ## Great game gadget [[RPG A DAY 2024 - An accessory you appreciate|Is this just where I link to the previous response regarding accessories?]]^[[[RPG A DAY 2024 - An accessory you'd like to see|There are actually two]]. This pains me.] I feel like it might be somewhat redundant, but feel free to go back and read that one over again anyway. My answer remains the same. That Starforged dashboard is even now tucked into my gaming bag in a place of honor, ready to be hustled off to convention time. I'm actively looking forward to getting to fiddle with it in the process of play. That's a good gadget. Otherwise, what gadgetry do you really have associated with gaming? Dice towers, okay. Those are keen. A little difficult to pack up and take with you unless they fold, which some do. Useful if you need to roll 60 D6 at a time. That happens. The dice trays, which are made of leather or pseudo-leather with snaps, which click together at the corners to make it a bowl, when otherwise it lies flat. Those things are pretty handy. No one wants to go chasing dice all over the floor, especially at a convention. I'm pretty sure I actually have one of those in my bag already, which came with something or other. Nothing else really comes to mind right now. The question I ask myself is, *"Should it?"* This is a hobby where all you need to play is literally a book, a pencil, a piece of paper, and maybe dice. You can get by without the dice via careful selection of game or carefully torn up slips of paper. There's a decent argument to be made that anything else adds unnecessary complication. What I do know is that I seem to keep my gadgetry to a minimum when it comes to my gaming. This is a huge irony given that so much of it has moved online in one context or another. Even given the entire digital panoply of the web at my fingertips, I avoid unnecessary gadgetry. It's a sobering thing to realize.