A thing a week 2026, week 27

This week we have a bunch of undead. My games don't feature undead, generally, so despite having a really big pile of them, they don't get a lot of screen time. 

First up we have Grave Kings, well, most of them. The first guy was featured way back in Week 40 of 2023 which feels like a lifetime and about 850 figs ago. Also, wow was my photography shoddy back then. I burned through these guys pretty quickly and probably the guy on the left and the guy in the helm needed a Seraphim Sepia wash or something to make them blend in less with the background (I do like the bleached effect, tho). I put a lot of effort into pulling the highlights up which I think shows though I didn't do nearly enough in the blending which I hate doing. They could have been weathered and dirtied down as undead but I really couldn't be bothered.

Next up we have The Grim Reaper and Wraith Dread Knight. We saw the first of the Grim Reapers of Bones 5 in Bonus Week 53 of 2023. That guy didn't get as much time and doesn't look quite as nice. This guy was mostly drybrushed and I had a really hard time contrasting his cloak in black and his robe in a more blue dark grey. It kind of sells but only in really high light situations. The sand in the hour glass looks OK at arm's length but doesn't really work close up. If the Wraith Dread Knight on the right looks familiar, he should! He's the missing guy in the trio last seen on Week 18 of 2024 which isn't nearly as long ago (maybe 500 figs ago). I tried to match the color scheme so they'd look OK together but this guy got way more effort even if it wasn't very much all told. 

Last up we have Murkillor the Wraith King and he also doesn't doesn't get a link. I was going to do some fancy purple OSL but clearly didn't. This guy was kind of a speed paint with the Grave Kings above and it kind of shows. He's really tall which makes my lack of blending really stand out. Ultimately, he's done and that's what counts.

2026 finished mini counter: 160

A thing a week 2026, week 26

This week we continue our tour of the biggies which will clear out most of them. I also get to re-live the trauma of "I was lazy and glued everything together without thinking about how I'm going to paint them." So we got that to look forward to. 

First up we get both! The blue guy on the left is a Greater Basilisk and he turned out really sharp. This is a high drama, low effort offering and I specifically picked an undercoat that was a little bit glossy. In this case, it works! He's mostly drybrushed with increasingly high valued paints, in this case Golden So Flat Ultramarine. The guy on the right is a Celestial Stag and even though he took way longer, the result is so much less good. Horns in particular eat a lot of time and the total effect is kind of patchy because of the many layers of drybrush I did to pop out the very shallow texture and still do anything with the volumes. More work could have sold it more but I wasn't in that headspace when I painted it.

Next up we have a coupla really big dragons. The blue guy on the left is an Amber Dragon which I couldn't be bothered to look up before I painted him. He's the same color scheme as our basilisk on purpose so I could go a tiny bit faster. This is a great sculpt with a lot of very nice texture so I spent a lot of time dry brushing and washing over it which landed in a nice place. I would have liked his cyan bits to be a tad lighter but he came out well anyway. Probably the base needed more work but when I got there, I was just plain done. The guy on the right is Narthalyssk and despite having as much texture and effort, came out so much less dramatic. Red is hard to highlight and I was afraid of pushing into oranges which I thought would lose contrast with the yellow ventral scales and wing membranes. Joke's on me, though, since I did a lousy job highlighting those too. Under the my very bright painting lights, he looked OK. On the table, his reds look indistinct and his yellows look washed out and dirty. I did like the demon dots, tho. 

2026 finished mini counter: 153

 

A thing a week 2026, week 25

ed> due to some scheduling shenanigans, this guy didn't get posted when it was supposed to. Luckily, with the power of the Internet, I've backdated so that none shall be the wiser.

 This week we start our biggies tour where I work through a bunch of the bigger-than-normal figs in Bones 5. 

First up we have two biggies and neither of them are particularly worthy efforts. The Dragon-Lion on the left needed at least some gap filling and the fur colors really needed to go up at least a couple layers. I got good hue contrast between the scales, the fur, and his mane but none of those parts by themselves is well handled. At the time of this writing, I was going through a really painful medical issue and freaking out about making it to Bricks Cascade so suffice to say, my attention was elsewhere. The Catoblepas on the right is more or less the same deal except that the sculpt featured more or less one texture which makes my indiscretions less obvious. Also of note, I glued it all together and really struggled getting the green on the base he's standing on. Don't worry, I didn't learn, and will make the same mistake many times in the coming weeks. 

One of the most egregious example of gluing stuff together and then struggling to paint stuff is this guy who I call "treasure dragon." Because he's on a pile of treasure. Get it? This guy is purple to contrast with the yellowy gold pile he's laying on and his left arm is a real mess. Somewhere during the painting, it fell off and I think I ended up with a blob of glue that made it not fit correctly so I ended up having to do a lot of filling. It's hard to notice if you don't know but it's definitely not as good as it probably should have been. A coat of Badger Ghost Tint Orange went over the gold which makes it pop a little better and ultimately the composition works even if the dragon's paint job isn't particularly good. They can't all be bangers, kids.

2026 finished mini counter: 149

 

A thing a week 2026, week 24

One of the things I find fun about these kinds of big fig kickstarters is I end up with a bunch of stuff that I might not have ever considered but that I might try really hard to work in somewhere. Notably, last week's offering wasn't this kind of thing. Also like last week, links seem to be few and far between despite how many levers and dials the Reaper site has. If I give the figure a "name" it means "I have no idea what this guy is so here's a silly name for it."

First up we have Night Cloak, "angry dagger worm", and Dire Cabbage. The first and last are the best kind of paint jobs: high drama, low effort. In both cases, the sculpt is doing most of the work and both were painted as successive sets of drybrush and transparent paints. The angry dagger worm guy took way more effort since he wasn't all one color. I had a rough time getting the fleshtones on his underbelly to look OK and, well, they still don't. I was done with him, tho, so that's where he landed.

Next up we have Young Fire Dragon who I might have painted in red if I'd known that before looking up the link and "frogmouth wing guy". These are two more high drama, low effort works. Probably the dragon could use a little more variation top to bottom and/or picking out the wing membranes which I normally do. Still, I don't think either are terrible but neither is particularly good.

2026 finished mini counter: 146

 

A thing a week 2026, week 23

And now for something completely different. Bones 5 came with a bunch of spell effects that make sense if you're playing D&D. I'm not, so some of these guys will have far less utility than otherwise. As such, I didn't do much to paint them and it shows. These guys are (I think) Bigby's Interposing Hand, Bigby's Grasping Hand, and Bigby's Fist and like a lot of Bones 5 figs, I can't find links. 

The pinky-magenta ones are washed and hit with a coat of Badger Ghost Tint Magenta and as usual with the Reaper Bones transparent figures and basically any paint: I had a really hard time getting the paint to stick. As far as I can tell, the material itself is hydrophobic and no amount of washing seems to help. These guys are (I think) Wall of Stone, Wall of Thorns, Tenser's Floating Disk, Spiritual Weapon, and Planar Servant. 

Not shown here are the three hand-sized spell effects that I forgot to shoot that I'll use somehow, somewhere. Ultimately these guys look OK in these shots and the majority of them won't get a lot of screen time which is pretty much par for the course.

2026 finished mini counter: 141  

A thing a week 2026, week 22

As promised, this week we have the hench gals, the other not quite half of Reaper's Henchmen and Hirelings Bones Black Deluxe Boxed Set. Notably, I paid a lot less with the Bones 5 kickstarter. Like the henchdudes, I like these sculpts a lot and really didn't spend enough time with them. These gals (obviously) share a color scheme as a time saving feature and I tried to let the sculpts do as much work as possible with a little bit of OSL to keep things interesting. Notably, I pre-assembled the porter gal and her wheelbarrow which turned out to be a big mistake. Don't worry; I haven't learned and we'll see the same mistake in a couple weeks. No idea why the torch gal insists on blinding herself with the torch in front or why she has no shoes. Quite a few of the Bones 5 sculpts are barefoot which I find very suspicious.

These two are Tara the Silent on the left and Daschelle, Female Rogue on the right. More Golden So Flat Ultramarine this time around and I spent a little extra effort in blending, helped by the fact that these figs are so much smaller. Tara's abs are painted in because she looked wrong without them. Her hair looks better in person since the highlights are just out of frame. I had a heck of a time figuring out what was going on with Daschelle's hands though I think I got it in the end. There's a really nasty mold line going down the rope which I tried my best to paint over. I think it mostly sells. I think these are pretty good results all told. No clue why the hue is off on the top shot. 

2026 finished mini counter: 130

A thing a week 2026, week 21

This week we get some of my favorite fantasy races: catfolk and foxfolk. They were painted as a batch which is probably obvious since they're all in the same color scheme. These first dudes are Bones 5's Catfolk. Left to right: Catfolk Mage, Catfolk Rogue, Catfolk Warrior, Catfolk Paladin, and Catfolk Ranger. NGL, the yarn ball hearldry got me good. These guys probably could have used one or two extra highlights on their fur. It's really hard to paint black fur in general and these guys are only OK. Either way, I'm always happy to add more kitty people to my collection. 

Notably not from Bones 5, we have left to right: Tabaxi Dancer by Velrock, Kogo, Male Kitsune, and Dijoro, Female Kitsune. If Kogo and Dijoro look familiar, they should! They've showed up here a couple times before. In other news, wow has my photography improved. Despite the results, I spent a lot of time on these three, the dancer because she's mostly fur, the other two because they're a comparison to previous works. Like the other catfolk in this post, they're only OK. More highlights would have helped. The sad part is that the dancer got that but it was so patchy that I hit her with a coat of Nuln Oil which darkened everything down too much. She's got an orange twin that will show up at some point in the future. 

2026 finished mini counter: 123

A thing a week 2026, week 20

This week in addition to the normal junk, we're gonna go over a little color theory. Boring stuff first: these are the Dragonfolk add-on for Bones 5 split into Dragonfolk Wizard and Cleric, Dragonfolk Bard and Thief, Dragonfolk Fighter and Ranger and I'll leave figuring out which is which as an exercise for the reader. No back shot for the first three because I'm a doof and forgot to shoot it. You can probably guess what's going on by context. Anyway...

These guys had some really lousy mold lines which I handled very poorly. They also had a lot of really nice contrasting texture that I didn't want to lose so I started exactly the same way as you might expect: dry brush over speed paint base coat. I put some extra effort around some of the highlights and rather than doing a lot of tedious blending, I left most of the color jumps a little stark which lends a bit of a cartoony effect which I kind of like. Overall these are pretty good sculpts for the most part though I don't particularly like the fighter. It wasn't clear whether he was scale in which case he's weirdly proportioned or armor in which case the details are confusing. Clearly I went scale.

Color theory time! These guys are split complementary with the first choice being their scale color played by Akhelian Green Contrast Paint which is probably one of my favorites. When I realized that purple was one of the other potential splits which put yellow as the complement, well, I couldn't say no. Yellow and purple are a pretty good complementary scheme by themselves and while I'd intended to push the yellow more into an orange to be more technically correct, I still think these guys came out well. Everything could have used another level of highlight but I kept the nice darks from the contrast paint which was a goal. Done in about ten hours all told, I think these are a good result.

2026 finished mini counter:  115

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