A thing a week 2026, week 19

These guys are more or less only grouped together because they were painted in the same pseudo-batch. The blending here is a little sus mostly because I couldn't be bothered to do more. The ultramarine here is Golden So Flat and for whatever reason, I've always had a rough time blending it. That sucks because it's a really nice shade. Left to right we have: Brother Hammond, Traveling Monk, Grundor Hoardtaker, Barbarian, and Baran Blacktree, Veteran Warrior. Baran's shield really wanted some heraldry but I clearly couldn't be bothered. Probably his armor needed another metallic coat and additional shading. Grundor's base red played by Flesh Tearer's Red Contrast Paint is still surprisingly glossy which still surprises me every time. Brother Hammond's nice dark brown basecoat got kind of lost and I either needed to go higher on the highlights or bring the darks back down. 

These three mage-y dudes are left to right: Erebus Nalas, Evil Sorcerer, Young Mage, and Luwin Phost, Wizard. I am super bad to use whatever colors are on my palette at time of painting which is why these guys are all the same color as Baran's cloak. Also, I generally think that wizened mages should look like Gandalf which is a really hard thing to break away from. Nalas's OSL doesn't really cover up the weakness of the fire effect or the patchiness of the color fades. Young Mage came out really well to the point that I have him as a high quality fig (#1 for the year) but forgot to do a turnaround shot. Probably the lights could have gone higher regardless, and the orb on the end of his staff is pretty weak. Luwin's OSL looks a little subtle in these shots but they sell pretty well on the table.

Overall, a pretty OK offering for the week, IMO.  

2026 finished mini counter: 109, high quality: 1/10 

A thing a week 2026, week 18

And now for something completely different. With the mechs complete, I'm moving on to the next big phase: Bones 5 and I don't have a fancy theme for it. 

These eight dudes are the Henchmen option from Bones 5 and slightly more than half of the Henchmen and Hirelings pack on the Reaper store (the gals will arrive later). These guys were done mostly as a batch with a little bit of extra OSL effort on the lantern bearer, torch guy, and fire thrower. They didn't take super long at about twelve hours all told but I certainly could have doubled that easily as the sculpts can certainly take higher quality paint jobs. The read a little better in person than in these closeups, I think because my lighting washed out some of the detail. 

It felt a little weird going back to characters after so...many...mechs which are mostly a paint-by-numbers kind of process. Still, these were a good step back to more "normal" painting.  

2026 finished mini counter: 103

Heavy Metal Menagerie, bonus week (2026 week 17)

At time of writing, I thought last week was the end of the theme but as it turns out I decided to test out my FDM printer's fine detail abilities by printing out a bunch of mechs. Results were...mixed, as you can probably tell. I have a Bambu A1 mostly because it was widely hailed as about as user friendly a printer you can get and I can safely say that it is certainly user friendly. If I knew more about how the thing is configured I could probably dial it in better for this kind of work.

These four are fee sculpts from Matt Mason and are fills for some mechs I didn't have from official sources. Left to right we have Jagermech, Fafnir, Centurion, and Dragon. All four of them have print defects, most notably the missing arm badly camouflaged as battle damage on the Dragon but they painted up just fine otherwise. These guys are out of order in my record so my counts are sus from here until it catches up.

2026 finished mini counter: 94
 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 16 (2026 week 16)

This is the last of my force packs from the Battletech Kickstarters, the last week of this mega theme, and the last week for this first leg of this year's goals. As one might have guessed, we have Legendary Mechwarriors III Force Pack and like the last two, I didn't spend all that much time on them. These are all The Bounty Hunter or pals of, the former well-described as the

Dread Pirate Roberts of the Battletech universe. I chose the art variants closest in color to make my job easier and other than a handful of c-bill symbols, they have very few details. The edge highlighting got lost in the two dark green oil washes they got so they don't read as well as I'd hoped. Also, for reasons I don't fully comprehend, the image over there isn't alignable to the top of the frame. Technology; whattayagonndo amirite?

Left to right: Griffin C, Mad Cat S, MAD-8K Marauder II, Marauder,  Loki Mk II A, WHM-9K Warhammer

2026 finished mini counter: 91 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 15 (2026 week 15)

This week we have Legendary Mechwarriors II Force Pack and it's weird to have a tanker in there if I'm honest. I am not super well read in Battletech fiction so I only vaguely know who any of these folks are. Like last week, I tried to match the art in the cards which only shows one perspective so probably there's some stuff missing. 

Left to right we have Jeremiah Rose's CGR-3K Charger, Marcus GioAvanti's Archangel, Marcus Barton's DVS-2 Devastator, Abdoun Ricol's Red Hunter 3146, Callandre Kell's SM5 Field Commander

2026 finished mini counter: 85 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 14 (2026 week 14)

We're heading down the home stretch now. These are Legendary Mechwariors Pack and I considered doing a lot more work on these than I ended up doing. I did make an effort to match the art that came on their cards but I didn't spend a lot of time on them, either. There's a tiny bit of freehand on the Dire Wolf, particularly a very derpy Wolf Clan logo which is as much as I could be bothered with. Maybe in a world where I'm bored (ha!) and have a lot of spare time (ha!) I'll go back and make a real effort.

Left to right: Natasha Kerensky's Widowmaker,  Aiden Pryde's Timber Wolf, Grayson Death Carlyle's Mad-3R Marauder, Morgan Kell's ARC-2R Archer

2026 finished mini counter: 80 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 13 (2026 week 13)

This week we begin the final stretch of this mega theme. These first four mechs are Eridani Light Horse Hunter Lance and a gift from a pal. Sarna says that they've kept their original "SLDF olive drab" color scheme so that's what I painted. I thought I'd picked a light enough basecoat but it darkened down quite a lot after the oil wash. The cockpits on these could have been a little lighter as they don't read super well on the table. The Tbolt fell off of his smoke trails which was very fortuitous since it meant I could pant them more carefully. Actually, Sarna says it's intentionally configurable. Left to right: Sagittaire, Thunderbolt, Cyclops, Banshee

These guys are the remainder of the non-legendary salvage boxes in my collection and since I was already doing a batch in the olive drab, I painted these guys in the same scheme. I have many Grendels and at least a couple Dire Wolves but the Blood Asp is both new to my painted collection and new to me. Cool though it may be, it's out of my time period (Clan Invasion). Left to right: Blood Asp, Dire Wolf (Daishi), Mongrel (Grendel)

2026 finished mini counter: 76 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 12 (2026 week 12)

Have you ever wondered what a heavily militarized phone company might look like? No, me, neither, but Battletech has answered our unasked question. I present to you Comstar Command Level II. Their in-universe color scheme is supposed to be plain white with symbols. For those who aren't painters, white is really hard to paint. You don't just slap a white basecoat on a thing and call it a day if you want something that looks good. 

These guys got a wolf grey basecoat, almost no details, then a typical white drybrush and oil wash. Oil washing black over light colors is always a gamble and despite thinning it way down, these guys dirtied up more than I wanted. I could have taken the time to fix that but I clearly didn't. Despite that, I'm still happy with these.

Left to right:  Mercury, Sentinel, Black Knight, King Crab, Highlander, Exterminator

2026 finished mini counter: 69 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 11 (2026 week 11)

This is a Clan Heavy Star and I wanted more green and flame orangey guys to go with my previous Jade Falcon-ish mechs. Week 8's mechs were a little darker than I wanted so I specifically lightened these to match Week 3's mechs a bit more closely. They're still undershaded through the airbrush and I backed off a bit on the oil wash which still got me the shading I wanted and kept the orangey bits brighter than normal. Overall, I think, a good result.

Left to right:  Hunchback IIC, Stone Rhino, Supernova, Marauder IIC, Warhammer IIC.

2026 finished mini counter: 63 

Heavy Metal Menagerie week 10 (2026 week 10)

Another week, another clan star, particularly a Clan Heavy Striker Star. I liked the result from week 4 and wanted to do more guys in that color scheme so these are that. I kind of got that. Unlike most of my mechs, these guys look better close up than on the table where they look a little indistinct. The dry brush edge highlighting worked well but despite being very high contrast, doesn't read super well at arm's length for reasons I don't fully understand. Left to right we have: Ice Ferret (Fenris), Mad Dog (Vulture), Gargoyle (Man O' War), Hellbringer (Loki), and Viper (Dragonfly).

2026 finished mini counter: 58 

Heavy Metal Menagerie week 9 (2026 week 9)

This is an Inner Sphere Direct Fire Lance and they were a goddamn mess. They'd been kicking around my prep table for weeks being overtaken by the last three batches because their mold lines were soooooo bad. So far, these have been the worst of the boxes I've dealt with and as a result, they took way, way too long. For their colors, I wanted to match the Inner Sphere Command Lance from week 52 of last year. In addition to really liking that color scheme, I'd hoped that the high contrast would hide many of the prep shortcomings on these guys and I think it worked. Left to right we have: Orion, Marauder II, Atlas, Crusader. 

2026 finished mini counter: 53 

Heavy Metal Menagerie week 8 (2026 week 8)

Most of the giant batches are behind us now, so I'm grinding through the force packs one box a time. These would be a Clan Command Star and (clearly) did them in a similar color scheme as last week. These guys don't have the wash step, though I did spend more time on their base coat. They aren't quite as nice as last week but I'm not unhappy with where they landed. Not sure what happened with the back shot on these; my shooting has been fairly consistent of late and that is a lousy shot. 

I was excited to get these guys done since they fit some holes in the enemy forces I've been blowing up. Left to right: Mist Lynx (Koshi), Shadow Cat, Dire Wolf (Daishi), Summoner (Thor), and Stormcrow (Ryoken). 

2026 finished mini counter: 49
 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 7 (2026 week 7)

If my math is correct and I can manage to keep to the schedule I've been keeping, this is right around the midpoint of this mega theme. I'd expected to take a break at some point in my Battletech backlog, but I'm playing a lot of Alpha Strike (Aces, in particular), and at this point I'm so close to the end of the backlog. Provided that I don't buy any additional boxes to fill some empty spots in my roster, we should be closing this theme out in week 14.

First up we have a pair of elemental stars from the Clan Invasion box set. These guys are big burly space marine kinds of dudes in clantech power armor. I hate these guys. Their size and smoke plumes mean that mold lines were really sketchy to deal with so mostly I did a lousy job. Their smoke trails were fun which is another example of a low effort high drama effect--my favorite! They read OK on the table but don't hold up under scrutiny.  

These guys would be the rest of the box set which I got with the kickstarter. Left to right: Adder (Puma), Nova (Black Hawk), Executioner (Gladiator), Timber Wolf (Mad Cat), Mongrel (Grendel). I went with

Jade Falcon colors (kind of) to go with week 3's offering. My airbrush basecoat was iffy on these guys so I took an extra step to hit them with a dark green wash (a mix of Pro Acryl Transparent Green which is very blue mixed with some Transparent Yellow to shift the hue into more of a pure green). Everything else was more or less the same and I think they look a lot better than the last batch. Not sure I'm going to take the time to hit future batches with a wash (I'd prefer to get it right with the airbrush) but I like the deeper saturation on these. 

2026 finished mini counter: 44

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 6 (2026 week 6)

If you guessed we'd get more mechs this week, you guessed correctly! Probably the title was a dead giveaway, tho. This week we've got mechs from the Mercenaries Box Set which I kickstarted whenever that kickstarter was going (2023? time is a flat circle right now). I liked the dark blue base and wanted to do an analogous color scheme and I don't think it worked out. The lighter blue could have been higher value and that might have helped but...no. The orange cockpits can't carry my bad color choices but hey, that's how we learn, right?

A bunch of these are new to me fitting cleanly between the points that I stopped playing a lot of Battletech in the mid 90s and, well, today more or less. These four from left to right are: Caesar, Devastator, Ostsol, and Quickdraw. 

These four are left to right: Flea, Starslayer, Chameleon, and Firefly. Of these, I only know the Flea and mostly because I've blown up so many of them in MW5:Mercs. The Firefly is a fun example of "an airplane with legs" style of mechs which I thought were a lot more rare in the Battletech universe than they seem to be. Those dirty clanners even have some! 

2026 finished mini counter: 37 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 5 (2026 week 5)

Our next installment of mechs is from the main box: A Game of Armored Combat and I'm not sure that's the same SKU as the one currently available from Catalyst. The one I have came with one of the kickstarters and comes with some of my favorite mechs. It also came with a bunch of vehicles but we've already seen them at the end of last year. 

These chonky dudes are (left to right): Thunderbolt, Awesome, Battlemaster, Catapult. Aside from the Awesome which I think is overrated, the other three are some of the mechs I've used the most across all Battletech universe games. In fact, I've got a Thunderbolt and Battlemaster in my Scouring Sands company. I sure hope they survived!

These less chonky dudes are (left to right): Locust, Wolverine, Shadow Hawk, and Commando. I'm using the Locust and Command, too! I painted these guys a while ago now in a flurry of painting exuberance. I have the luxury and resources to play fully painted so when I realized that I wanted four of these guys in my force, well, I knew what I had to do. The oil wash dirtied down the light yellow some on these guys which wasn't intended. It was also (obivously) not fixed.

2026 finished mini counter: 29 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 4 (2026 week 4)

This week we have, you guessed it, more mechs. This is a Clan Fire Star including (left to right): Fire Moth (Dasher),  Nova Cat, Warhawk (Maskari), Cougar, Kit Fox (Uller). I had fun with the bright green but I knew that oil washes are more kind to dark colors so I hit these guys with a Reaper Forest Green that seemed fit for the task. These are almost in Clan Wolf livery but again for the record, I can't be bothered to use someone else's color scheme. 

The dark grey on the forest green doesn't read well here and probably could have been lighter. Also probably these guys could use a highlight color of some sort, but the edges look real good.  

2026 finished mini counter: 21
 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 3 (2026 week 3)

These guys are Clan Cavalry Star including (left to right): Locust IIC, Griffin IIC, Black Python, Shadow Hawk IIC, and Jenner IIC. Scouring Sands campaign is against the Jade Falcon but I really wanted to do the desert camo so for these guys I picked a bright green for their main color. They aren't specifically in any Jade Falcon livery that I'm aware of because TBH, I can't be bothered to follow someone else's color scheme. 

These guys follow the same basic scheme as most of my mechs featuring heavy use of the airbrush and generally being done in a few hours per batch. The oil wash went on a little heavy which dirtied up the light orange. I could have fixed this but I couldn't be bothred. The Black Python in the middle is new to me and I really like its design. If only it weren't a dirty, dirty clanner. 

2026 finished mini counter: 16

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 2 (2026 week 2)

For this batch, the Inner Sphere Fire Lance (left to right: Trebuchet, Zeus, Stalker, Longbow), I wanted to experiment with pushing contrast paints through the airbrush. I had it on very good authority that this would result in a tint or a filter but that it wouldn't do the normal contrast paint thing, specifically gather in the recesses to darken and whatnot. I figured if I oversprayed a bit, I'd put down enough contrast paint to a) work like contrast paints usually do, and b) be a lot faster/smoother than doing so with a brush. The culprit: Blood Angels Red, a tone that I don't particularly care for (I like Flesh Tearer's Red a lot better). 

I was kind of right. Overspraying does work, provided you move fast enough to cover the target before things dry. That's a challenge since it dries way faster coming out of an airbrush which isn't really that surprising. The result I got was very patchy and I spent not enough effort cleaning these guys up, though the drybrush and oil wash at the end of the process hide it pretty well. Ultimately, these guys got to a more orange-y destination that I'm not unhappy with.

2026 finished mini counter: 11
 

Heavy Metal Menagarie, week 1 (2026 week 1)

We kick off the new year with a new theme, and if you were paying attention last month, it should be no surprise that it's mechs. These guys are from Battletech Aces Scouring Sands, a few of the support vehicles of which we saw a couple weeks ago. For those not familiar, Aces is a solo or co-op campaign engine for Alpha Strike and I am super stoked to give it a shot. By the time this is posted, I've probably played at least a couple missions, even. 

These hefty guys are (left to right) Thunderbolt IIC, Bane, and Marauder IIC. I wanted to do a camo pattern because I'd never done one. They were basecoated with Pro Acryl Yellow Ochre through the airbrush and the darker splotches played by Pro Acryl Dark Golden Brown were freehanded on. Edges were pulled out by a not-light-enough drybrush and the whole batch was hit with a light oilwash. The oil wash darkened these guys down way more than I was expecting. I could have gone back and fixed that when I put the oil wash on, but, meh, these are dirty clanners and I'm fine if their mechs look dirty too.

These other dudes (left to right) are Howler, Summoner (Thor), Rifleman IIC, and Locust IIC. The Bane and Howler are new to me but the Scouring Sands campaign is happening after all the Battletech I'm familiar with. Notably, I stopped playing around the time I went off to college way back in the last milennium. 

2026 finished mini counter: 7

2026 crafting challenge

This will be the seventh full year for this series of challenges which has been almost unbelievably productive. Keeping with last years' structure, I'm less interested in big counts, not that I don't like big counts, than getting through older categories in my pile of shamepotential. We're overdue for a Reaper Bones 7 which will push the goalposts further out but otherwise I've been fairly disciplined about not buying/printing a stupid number of figs for the last few years. With a little luck and a lot of work, we'll be under 500 left. 

Valid things:

• A finished piece or WIP representing a reasonable amount of progress
• Gaming terrain, prop, scatter built and/or printed but not just printed
• One or more painted minis
• A sketch in digital or traditional media
  
• An article or other piece of writing of, I dunno, 1000 words or so
• A Lego build of non-trivial complexity
• Other?  Dunno, categories are hard.

Goals:

• Twelve figures of significant quality featuring OSL/NMM/something else notable 
• Complete 2023 prints/purchases (<10)   
• Pick any two of these, bonus points for all three which is certainly possible:
• Complete Battletech collection (~100)   
• Complete Bones 5 kickstarter minis (~100)
• Complete Bones 6 kickstarter minis (~100)