Bot War – the war wages on (clearing the backlog)

I have started the process of cataloguing all of my bots. Using a very sophisticated system of a spreadsheet, a heavy duty supermarket bag, and 2 cardboard boxes.  The bag has all of the individual bot packs in, I take one out, log it on the spreadsheet, and then if it is metal it goes in one box, resin the other.

The spreadsheet is used to define the following attributes of a bot:

• Name
• Faction
• Material (Metal/Resin)
• Traders Galaxy state (Current/Legacy/Promo)
• Subfaction/Notes

After doing this for a while the data starts to look something like this…

One problem I have found is that I can’t remember all of the bots names, and as I have a large number of legacy miniatures which have either been fully discontinued or updated with newer versions.  Quite a few were purchased from the Traders Galaxy site directly so don’t have any merchandising stickers on with the contents, or they simply have “Promo” on the label so I’m having to dig through old Facebook posts and my archive of stat cards to try and determine who the Bot may be.

The other problem I have is the sorting I have done. Whilst I split them into 2 boxes to have metal in one and resin in the other for protection, I should have actually split between Current/Legacy status.  I’d rather paint all current models first and get them to the table, then work through the legacy pile in slow time.  So I need to go back and resort the pikes I’ve done so far. Any I can’t identify will then also go into the Legacy box. Promos will go into the Current box.

I may also add a column to the spreadsheet to identify how keen I am to paint it, because there are definitely some bots I want to get done first. So I may look to add a priority to the entries to help sort this.

** Data Update…. January 17th 2022

Welcome to my 4th Bot War project.

You can check out my previous Bot War OnTableTop project blogs:

Cult of the Destroyer

Atlanticans Rising

Beastlords

Painting Challenge 2020

This one though is the biggie, the one to rule them all, the final push, it’s time to clear the backlog!

I became interested in Bot War around April/May 2019 after seeing a Twitch hobby streamer talking about them in one of the streams I frequent. As a huge fan of 80s kids cartoons and toy lines I knew this was going to be something I wanted to get in on. I finally pulled the trigger on my first purchases in August 2019 and since then I’ve loved collecting and supporting the game, knocking out painting projects every now and then, but as I’m a painter first and game second I jump around all manner of hobby projects. Like many other hobbyists who’ve been involved for multiple decades, our backlogs are huge and our list of potential projects is stupidly long. My Bot War collection is no different. Its time to change that. Its time to get this lot painted…..

Usually I would fire up my PC and go searching for references, start mocking up colour schemes and figuring out paint palette options, but this is not like those other projects. What I will do is start planning what I want to paint, and I’ll be honest, I can’t remember everything I have in my backlog.

I’ll fire up a spreadsheet and start to catalogue everything during the week, this will help me with balancing the different factions. I know I have the majority of the Infesters, Trashers, Beastlords, Democracy, Valiants, and Deceivers factions. I have a decent amount of COILS, some Overlords, but at present, I don’t have any Red Star Nation (which I find strange as I loved both Centurions and DinoRiders growing up).

I have recently received the new Turbo Edition Starter set and so will be starting with these as the new COILS look fantastic, and as a mini-challenge for this project I have signed up to run a demo table of Bot War at Bournemouth’s Beachhead 2022 event in February. For that I will be looking to have a few factions that I can have playable on the day, but to also have a few on display.  Given I already have Atlanticans and Deceivers painted up, I figure having Valiants, COILS, Infesters, and Democracy forces available for play would be a good goal… I think I have 10 weeks to do this. Whilst I won’t have everything painted, 2.5 weeks should be sufficient to get a decent force ready, and I won’t be looking at going past a high tabletop level for the painting and will mostly be following the boxart. As there are now unit stat cards this will help for any demo purposes as well as saving my brain trying to come up with original schemes.

So, let the war rage on, and let’s battle this bot backlog!