So you've played Axis and Allies until you've fought every possible bizarre combination of battles. Your Magic Cards are all dog-eared and you just don't have the desire for any more purchases. Your AD&D character has been killed for the tenth time. You need something new to spend your time and money on (and I mean MONEY!).

The answer: lead figures! You may even have a few orcs, elves, or dwarfs left over from your time spent on fantasy role-playing. But you either bought them already painted, or just sprayed paint on, while adding a couple of bright colors with a big dirty brush to give it some sort of detail. You've heard rumors of their being another way, and are looking for a little advice to help you down the road to miniature figure paradise.

The first thing that you'll want to do is to decide on what period or genre you plan on gaming (historical, fantasy, or science fiction), as well as what scale. Standard sizes for land battles range from 6mm, to 10mm, to 15mm, up to 25mm, remembering that these are just general sizes and they can vary by manufacturer (e.g., many figures formerly known as "25s" are now about 28 millimeters in height).

Naval, air, and space figures can vary greatly, and more often depend on the game designer and the type of warfare represented as to which scale chosen. Scales are usually much smaller, such as 1:285, 1: 1200, or even 1:2400! Don't worry about the details on these models, as they are just little bumps an usually not worth the effort. Anyhow, the choices are all before you, and it's up to you based on your interests and financial situation as to what area you'll start to collect figures for.

Some popular systems for miniature gaming are Games Workshop's Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, Epic 40,000, and other related games. They're packaged very nicely, have colorful and fun to read rules, and are popular enough that you'll rarely be looking for opponents. They are all either fantasy or science fiction games with their own "history" and have a lot of adherents in NOVAG. Warzone is another gaming system which includes its own rules, figures, and supplements. It's a science fiction game of 25+mm skirmish combat set in the Earth's distant future.

Most other figure lines don't have specific rules to go with them, but instead you can buy a set of rules, and choose from several manufacturers' figures if you wish. Particularly when recreating an historical game this is the case. Some figure manufacturers have agreements with the producers of rules sets for advertising or some other agreements, but most only give suggested makers, and let you decide.

Once you decide on what wars, past or future, real or unreal, you are going to fight, you'll want to make sure that you have opposing sides for you games. If you've chosen an already popular game, that may not be a problem.

But if you choose to re-fight battles of the Napoleon in 25mm skirmish, you may need to either do an army for both sides or find someone equally as enthusiastic (or crazy) to put together an army also. Before you go out and buy up the world of figures, you'll want to make up an initial order of battle for both sides to help you make your decisions. This could be based upon historical strength reports, or taken from a sci-fi or fantasy book. What this does is gives you a good starting place, and limits your purchases to a doable amount.

So you count your regiments, buy a few painting or uniform guides, and go out an buy the figures (for some the most fun of all) that you'll need to fill out your ranks. When you tear open the packs, you'll notice that you've been given some free lead in the form of excess out the bottom (or other spots) of each figure.

Sometimes this "sprue" can be rather thick and a good pair of snippers can be useful. For cleaning up the mold lines and cutting away excess "flash", you'll need a VERY sharp (careful, kids) X-acto knife. This will be one of your most essential tools, so buy extra blades! Once the figures are cleaned up, some people wash them to get rid of any film covering the figures that could prevent the primer from adhering. This especially true of plastic figures. It may also be necessary to file or sand the seam lines with emory boards or hobby files if they are especially bad.

From here you have several options for getting your figures ready for priming. You can, depending on the base size, attach (with glue) the figure to a stick of wood, old paint jar, metal or plastic sheet, or other surface for better handling while painting them. The surface chosen often depends on the figure's size, and hence the smaller the figure the larger number of figures on the surface, as the smaller the figure the easier it is to "assembly line" paint. (That is, paint one color on each figure in a "regiment" (group) before proceeding to the next color.) This method is one of a few basic techniques for speeding up the figure painting process for wargaming.

After you have all of your figures strongly attached to their selected surface, take them to a well-ventilated area (like outside) and spray them with primer. The color of primer you use is up to you, but remember, if you're using bright colored paints, white is a good base, while if you are painting in dark colors, gray or black are better. Make sure that you get a good all-over covering, especially in folds and creases, but don't overdo it!

That can make your figures look like blobs by obscuring all of the detail on the model. Let the figures dry overnight to prevent mixing with your brushapplied paints.

The first color you apply to your newly-primed models should be the one that covers the greatest area. Exceptions to this are colors that are in recesses, and will be hard to get to once the upper surface is painted. You can then add an ink wash (if desired) to bring out depth in the model. Washes aren't used much with small scale figures (15mm or less) as the figures usually don't have the detail to justify using them.

Before you apply paint over the wash, allow a few hours for it to dry. Once it does, you can apply highlights and dry-brushes to bring out the detail further. Go though all of the larger surface areas on the model before adding the detail painting. You can then go back through the entire group to look for any major errors and correct them if you feel they need it. If much time is used in fixing a very small problem on each figure, then your overall process will be slowed down and not be completed.

As you add the detail to your figure, try to choose colors that bring out that item, and ones that contrast with the base color. Try no to use inappropriate metallics. Other areas to be thinking of are flesh tone and hair color. Yeah, it would be "neat" to have red skin and purple hair, but even in a sci-fi game it looks pretty odd.

After you've finished off the figures to your satisfaction, you'll want to put them on bases, or at least "do up" the attached bases to match the work you've done on the figure itself Common methods for covering bases are to either coat the base (minus the figure's feet) with glue or paint, and "dunk" the base into "flocking" (tiny pieces of colored foam) or "ballast" (tiny sand-like rocks). If you are using flocking, you are then done, but with ballast, you will need to paint the surface with one color, let it dry, and dry brush over that with a lighter shade of the same. It has a very nice effect, but is a little more work.

So there's your regiment right? Wrong. You have to protect your figures, for they will be waging combat for many endless years! How to do that? Again, you have a couple of options. You can either spray your figures with clear "dullcoat" or if you prefer "glosscoat". Some folks use brush-on figure sealer (usually glossy), and follow that with a spray of flat coating. This protects the figures about as much as they can be, but it can fade yellow, add too much buildup and hide detail, and it is more time consuming.

The final suggestion I have is to find the right storage case. You can use Tupperware bins, cigar boxes, shoe boxes, fishing tackle boxes, or any one of many hobby/craft containers available at local hardware and craft stores. Pistol cases, and others designed especially for miniatures are good for individual 25mm figures, but are bulky compared to the other alternatives.