A thing a week 2025, week 13

More right-down-the-plate work this week, plus a short rant. 

First up we have Elven Blacksmith and Sarah, the Seeress. If Sarah looks familiar, it's because she showed up way back in week 51 of 2022 which seems a lot further in the rear-view than it actually is. Mold lines on both were pretty awful and I did not enough work to deal with them sanely. None of the details on either is as good as it could have been (speed paint) though I take some pride in noting that this version of Sarah done in less than half the time turned out much better. I guess several hundred figs of practice does add up. The blue on her dress got a little chalky in the higher tones but I think I got the volumes correctly. The orb on her staff looks particularly good in this shot but in stark reversal, it doesn't look as good in person. The blacksmith is kind of a mess. The right side of her face was a mess of mold issues and I did what I could to give it any definition. Also, there wasn't any indication of a shirt in the sculpt but I was dumb to not paint one on--wouldn't even be the first time. She looks dumb without it especially with her armored leg plates. Which blacksmiths commonly wear. Or something. Anyway.

Here we have Finari, Female Paladin and Isabeau Laroche, Paladin both in bones white. I noted yesterday that practically-armored gals are under-represented in the hobby and I stick to that assertion. This week we have an excellent example. Finari is in ridonkulous boobplate fantasy armor and I bought the fig nonetheless. While not as bad as a lot of the examples you can find, it's not great, Bob. I give a pass for figs to not have helmets on so you can see/paint the face in expressive ways FWIW. Isabeau is far more realistically dressed though I had to paint out the boob window because I had to, that's why, and you can still tell she's a gal without it. Finari's hair is going to be a mess in actual combat as opposed to on a Hollywood set. Isabeau's cleverly tied it all up where it won't be a problem in either case. Neither of them is in heels (I have some standards FFS) and they're clearly both martial characters but Finari is clearly in the armored gal pinup vein while Isabeau isn't. Hollywood and video games on the whole have so warped our understanding of how things should look that we expect the former when the latter is actually way better and not less cool on the table. Last rant: those are clearly two handed swords. As in most sculpts, there's stuff to like about both and they're easy to tell apart on the table even though I painted them in mostly the same scheme. I missed another opportunity to put some heraldry on Isabeau's shield just like last week because: speed paint.

Last up we have Innkeeper Sophie from bones 4. I assume she's a mascot for Reaper or something since she shows up in every bones kickstarter and apparently as ReaperCon semi-exclusives. I haven't found any lore online but there are many Sophies in my collection now, though this is the first one I painted. She's got some weird mold issues around her face which I painted around and I am very thankful I painted her wings as a subassembly because it made everything much saner. The texture of her wings and the highlights I did got washed out in the last minute wash I stuck on there. Lots of this paint job is phoned in and probably a half hour more of refinement would have been good. Maybe in the future when I don't have a several hundred long backlog. 

2025 finished mini counter: 51, 2025 specific figs remaining: 88

A thing a week 2025, week 12

Back to the grind this week with four offerings right down the middle of the plate. These and next week's are basically what passes as speed paints as I get these days.

First up we have Hagar, Dwarf Fighter and Durok, Dwarf Ranger from Reaper both in bones white. I've spent a lot of pixels on decrying the difficulties with bones white material and these guys have all of that in spades. The molds are soft and really don't flatter the molds at all. Looking closely at these shots, I'm thinking that Hagar's torso covering shouldn't be a breastplate. I also note that Durok's cloak looks like it's shiny but it's actually just patchy. Not sure if that's better but they'll look fine in my small squad of Dwarves. They were done in something like four hours for the two of them.

Next up we have Erick, Paladin Initiate and Alandin, Elf Paladin, the former as normal bones white, the latter from Bones 4. Erick is pretty much what he looks like and, yes, I missed an opportunity to do some freehand on his shield--speed paint here. Alandin would have been painted much earlier but I glued the wrong arm in the wrong place and then convinced myself I was missing a piece only to realize my mistake not super long ago. I painted Alandin as a gal because I thought it fit the sculpt better but I don't think that was the sculptor's intent. I like cheesecake-y fantasy pinups as much as the next guy on the Internet but I feel that normal practical armor non-boobplate martial gals are sorely under-represented in the hobby. We'll get a nice contrast next week so tune in then!

2025 finished mini counter: 46, 2025 specific figs remaining: 93

A thing a week 2025, week 11

Two offerings today, both from the year's goal list and both larger than they might appear.  

First up we have Chaos Toad Brawler from Bones 4. He's a big fella, and despite my best efforts, I did a lousy job with his mold lines. Quite a few of these guys have gotten screen time and probably this guy would have as well if he'd been painted. I was going to do some demon dots but decided against given the excellent texturing...that I pretty much failed to pick out. I like the red and did an OK job with the highlights but it doesn't super sell in these shots. The dark carapace, teeth, and spikes don't sell in either these shots or in person, so I got that goin' for me. The black eyes are just as creepy as I intended

This guy is obviously a Zombie Shark and he's also from Bones 4 and also a thing of nightmare. This guy had some weird mold issues which mostly show as noise which is nice but he's really lazily painted. Most of him is a speedpaint base with a drybrush over the top. He's not countershaded which isn't correct and his guts are painted mostly with palette sludge which I guess tracks. The black teeth don't super sell (was going for a megalodon fossil tooth regardless of its incorrectness) but the slop of washes and on the oozy bits and guts and whatnot do which are also not correct. What I did do that kind of works is the base. It's stacked cork (probably obvious) with a bunch of grit and what not on it. I didn't have any sellable underwater vegetation so I spent extra time grunging it up. I had an intent to do a bunch of caustics on both the shark and the base but I didn't do any of that. I like being done and this guys is just that and I'd like to forget all about it since it still creeps me out.

2025 finished mini counter: 42, 2025 specific figs remaining: 97

A thing a week 2025, week 10

After perhaps too many weeks making limited progress toward this year's goals, we're about to plow straight into them starting this week. First up we have two questionable sculpts and two very questionable molds. The guy on the left is an Anhurian Cavalry and the guy on the right I found as Onyx Chevalier, Overlords Solo but was listed as Overlord Cavalry in the Bones 4 Fan Favorites catalog. The sculpts are made much worse by the quality of the molds and the bones white plastic. I did what I could with the mold lines and warped features but could not get the lean out of the overlord dude. The results are OK and the Anhurian guy can go with the other questionable sculpts/molds of Anhurian crossbow and Arnhurian spear dudes I painted very early on. 

This guy is clearly a mammoth and from Bones 4 and until I went and looked up the link at reapermini.com, I was puzzled by why he's so small. Turns out, he's a Pygmy Mammoth! This is about the pinnacle of lazy painting consisting of a zenithal, a contrast paint base coat, a minimal drybrush for highlights, and a handful of details picked out. The tusks were probably the most expensive part since the paint I was using was too thin on my wet palette requiring far too many coats. The result is OK for a speed paint but better than I might have hoped.

2025 finished mini counter: 40, 2025 specific figs remaining: 99

A thing a week 2025, week 9

Like I promised last week, we also aren't making any progress toward our greater yearly goals this week though there are some high quality works herein. I'm still dialing in my photography setup some but it's overall, way easier than it was this time last year.

First up we have a generic old-skool space marine. I don't know what set he comes from or if the color scheme is a proper chapter and TBH, I don't super care, either, since I don't play any of James Workshop's jamesgames. I'd mentioned offhand to a pal who also paints that I'd never painted a space marine, probably because he was showing off an army of them. The next time we met, he handed me this guy. He's mostly painted with the airbrush and he came to me primed very heavily so his details are pretty soft. The highlighting is pretty subtle in normal light and especially these close-ups, but they looked so strong when painting him. The yellow was a choice since a) it's hard, and b) I don't paint in yellow very often. I don't regret that choice, but it was significantly harder than a red or a green or something and now I've painted a space marine.

Next up we have a copy of one of my all-time favorite sculpts, one that's shown up here a couple times already, even. This Cat Captain from Vae Victics was one of the last prints on my old Mars Pro and if you missed it last time, she's a self-supported sculpt which is still a super power on my newer Saturn 2. I'd intended to paint this one in the color of one of my favorite Internet cats, Yoshi from Eevie and Yoshi, particularly as a cream point or something like that; I'm not a cat expert, but ended up just doing the cream part for reasons. I got the shadows, I think, but am missing the highlights in a bad way, especially on the yellow details. I like the scheme, otherwise, tho. The double base is because I wasn't confident in my ability to drill a magnet into the original base despite having done it twice already. Our favorite kitty officer will undoubtedly show up again in the future, likely with fewer layer lines.

Another very old print, this is Valera, Angel of Rock from Twin Goddess. I was super excited to paint Valera when I first purchased the STL. As one of the second batch off my old Mars Pro like the Black Witch Tabaxi from last week, she kicked around for far too long. I had a heck of a time gluing her together mostly because she's in the super brittle old resin, and because her wings are so heavy so astute viewers can see the mess where they connect. She also broke off of her perch at one point so there's a discontinuity that I painted over on her left foot. She's got awful layer lines and yet, I still super love this fig and have spent dozens of hours on her over the years. She'll count as my sixth high quality work for 2025 and, Fate willing, she'll show up again here in the future with fewer layer lines.

Last up this week we have another high quality work and a sculpt I super like. This very leggy gal is Ragna, Blade of the North from Drunken Dwarf. She embodies two of the things I look for in sculpts: she has a lot of character and a nice open pose. She's short of the last one as she has a surfeit of details that don't make a lot of sense, but two out of three ain't bad. I spent somewhere around eight hours on her and I think it shows. I wanted texture on her cloak which is maybe a little less sharp than I'd like, and I wanted to take the highlights on her face and hair higher than normal both of which I got. Other than a handful of lousy support scars, her print is pretty good, too. I did extra work shadowing and highlighting the various metallics on her and keeping the color in her skin tones. She's probably the most complete work I've produced so far.

2025 finished mini counter: 37, 7/12 high quality

A thing a week 2025, week 8

This week we're still clearing out the stuff left on my painting table which we can also look forward to next week, too. I don't expect to drain the entire queue mostly because some of the ones remaining a tryhard efforts and we're not there yet. 

First up we have Black Witch Tabaxi from Printed Obsession and an old print that has been kicking around my painting table for far, far too long. At time of painting, like 40 months and the oldest one I had printed but not painted. I liked the preview on the MyMiniFactory page a lot more than the printed fig once I had it in my hand. She's got all kinds of ruffles, bows, and bejangles that looked less like "hardened war mage" than "circus trickster" so my enthusiasm to finish dwindled. In the intervening 40 months she got paint occasionally until earlier this year when I started picking out more of the details and cleaning up a frankly very poor basecoat. I don't know that I'll paint her again, but overall I think this is as good a result as I was going to get. Sadly we don't see her eyes in the forward facing shot so we don't see all of her character but she'll suffice as the black cat challenge for this year.

Next up we have Zerynthia Noble Mage from Miniatures Blueprint, another sculpt that I liked a lot better in preview than in hand. I didn't handle the print cleanup as well as I should have and ended up with some very soft details on her back and the top of her elaborate staff broke off and I just plain couldn't salvage it. I might have printed her shorter than normal to fit with my collection and if so, know that I'm totally disabused of such muckery now. I went back and forth with the yellow details three times until I landed on that scheme which sells better on the painting table than in these shots. Her skin tones are patchy but otherwise OK and I did an OK job on her face which also doesn't hold up in these close-ups. I don't think we'll see her again here but who knows.

This is Siln Tanadu Moon Elf Cleric from HackNSlashMinis and another sculpt I liked more in preview than in hand. I suppose three's a trend. I like all the character, especially in her expression, but I really dislike all the bejangles and negative space. I made this worse by gluing her shield arm on before priming but TBH, I was never going to paint her in assemblies. I also did a bad job in the print cleanup phase so a lot of her details aren't as sharp as they should be. Her face would benefit from another couple hours of cleanup as well as the lack of depth in her armor and shield, but overall as a speed paint, I think this is an OK result.

Last up w have Kathrina Bright on Foot from Titan Forge, another high character sculpt that sat on my desk for far too long. The very obvious, very large banner screamed out for freehand and that's more than a little intimidating. I knew I wanted to do a White Rose from The Black Company, one of my favorite fantasy series. The banner and her arm are a separate piece and the glue kept failing on me. If you look close you can see how badly it's glued on, even. Her armor is mostly Army Painter Speed Paint metallics with a few highlights. Since she's mostly armor, that seemed like a good choice and I did some work to add depth through judicious highlighting with Vallejo Metal Colors and shadowing with Badger Ghost Tints. I don't think it's 100% where I want it, but I'm happier with the results. The freehand itself took maybe a few hours made worse by mostly using palette sludge that was way past its best-by date. Her face probably needed more work than it got. At this point I'm not looking to do another big freehand on a banner, but if that changes, I know what to do.

2025 finished mini counter: 34

A thing a week 2025, week 7

Another week, another zero finished figs toward my goal. It's almost like I didn't plan this out enough or something. 

This would be Angeline - Female Paladin from RN Estudio, one of my favorite sculptors. She has a very nicely sculpted face which is why I bought the STL though I'm not a huge fan of all the bejangles on her armor. This one was printed two and a half years ago on my old printer and kicked around on my painting desk for way too long. I pretty frequently get daunted by very busy minis which is dumb because they tend to be high floor efforts. As usual, the 5s and 4s are missing in her skirt and despite my best efforts, the metallics are patchy partially due to the low-res layer lines in this print. I did not realize that the highlight on her hair is facing that much forward and the leaf highlights are pretty washed out. Not my best work TBH, but she's the best color: painted.

This is Daerel the Blademaster from RM Printable and one of the first prints I got off of my old Mars Pro with the extremely brittle resin. Her sword has broken off far too many times and the layer lines are really visible. She's been kicking around my painting table for more than three years and despite my best efforts, I think she turned out pretty OK. Because of the thick layer lines, the metallics are way patchier than I'd like and I did nowhere near enough work on highlighting...anything. Her face and hair are high points which save the effort. Probably there needed to be more purple to really sell it and no, I did not paint a boob window despite being clearly what the sculptor wanted. Not sure if I printed her shorter than normal since her details were pretty torturous, but I'd be willing to give her another shot in the future. That's probably the best thing about 3d printing.

These two are Sypheena from Twin Goddess and another sculpt that I really like. They were printed not super long ago on my Saturn 2 so I'm making really good progress on all the prints I did last year (one to go!) but that isn't helping this year's goals, sadly. These are a speed paint and I wanted to get the lows where they should be (the 5s and 4s) and the tones where I wanted them but that meant that the smaller details and some of the highlights are missing. In particular, their boots are barely painted at all and the green gloves needed more 1s-3s. The yellow came through nice and bright which was also a goal and I put some extra work into their hair which shows. Probably the sides of their noses are too dark but otherwise I think their faces are pretty good. Not bad for around 5 hours of work for the both of them. They'll should show up sometime in the future sporting a higher quality paint job if we are so lucky.

2025 finished mini counter: 29

A thing a week 2025, week 6

First up today we have Highland Heroine from Reaper and she's sadly in Bones white plastic. Hypothetical long-time readers may recognize this fig since she's already been featured here way back in Week 3 of 2020 which seems like a lifetime ago. Also, wow do my old shots suck and notably from an era where I didn't paint bases. I like this sculpt a lot, evidenced by the fact that I bought the fig multiple times. In fact, I have a nice metal one waiting in the wings so we should expect to see her again. For this iteration I did what I could with the mold lines (i.e., not enough) and did a lot of painting in detail particularly on her leg wraps which were very soft and indistinct. I could not get the bend out of her sword which also features prominently in the last version. Probably the highlights on her cloak and pants could have come up some but otherwise I'm pretty happy with this result. Maybe later in the year I'll do a side by side or something.

This would be Sakari Anyu from Cast n Play, a sculpt I like a lot. I don't know if I printed her smaller than normal but I really had a rough time with all of the tiny details. Ultimately this was a speed paint which is probably obvious from the phoned in hair. The fur textures probably needed more work and you might be able to pick out the weak sauce NMM I did on her spear which I guess was supposed to be stone or something. The symbols on her coat need to pop out more but they were a real pain as were all the wrappings on her spear and hair. A good result for the like three hours I spent over the several years she spent partially prepped on my desk. 

Next up we have Akna Amak also from Cast n Play. I like this sculpt a lot less but I'm pretty sure I bought them both on sale at the same time. She's a less good speed paint as well and it shows. All of her details were soft and as a result I spent a lot less time on her face and smoothing out my lousy blends. That particular recipe for blue was really hard to work with and probably I'ma experiment with other combinations in the future. For both Akna and Sakari, I really should have darkened down the shadows more but otherwise I think this is squarely OK despite her obviously phoned in axe.

Lastly for this week we have Ranger Teen from Vae Victis and she's also a two-timer in these unhallowed pixels from back in the final week of 2021. This one does in fact have a complete bow (for now; they're awfully fragile) and I put extra effort into this iteration to the tune of six or seven hours. The darks are definitely darker but the blue really needs a better 5->4->3 transition and what I intended as the highest highlights ended up looking more like a 3 or a 2 than a 1 which sucks. I did a better job with the fur lining last time but I'd gotten to the point that I just wanted to be done. It happens. FWIW, she reads better on the table than in these close ups. 

2025 finished mini counter: 25, 5/12 high quality

A thing a week 2025, week 5

This week we continue the non-theme of "stuff on my painting table that don't move my goal needle at all." That said, I can barely remember a time when I had so clean a desk. So I got that goin' for me. 

First up we have Denthir the Orc Cleric from Twin Goddess Miniatures. I like the sculpt (minus the fantasy polearm) but didn't spend nearly enough time with these two. While not always a dead giveaway that I've phoned a paint job in, it's usually true that if you see a white or greytone "clearly this came out of a zenithal" scheme anywhere on a model, it's because I was in a hurry. So it is thus. I've been busy hacking away at something putting most of my other efforts on hold or on life support so when it came time to finishing these two off, I was in a hurry. I also kind of boxed myself in with the color scheme which I thought through not nearly well enough. So don't be surprised if the mace guy shows up here at some point in the future wearing better paints.

Here we have Orc Rogue B from Titan Forge mirrored, obviously. This is a really good sculpt and I had a lot of fun painting them. They took roughly as long as our pals Denethir above but the sculpt did most of the work if I'm honest. They have that excellent mix of appropriately-raised and spaced detail that meant I could spend most of the time on the stuff that matters: their faces and highlights. The majority of the basecoat is contrast paint and I thought I'd done a better job of knocking out the shine but these close-ups have a way of revealing all of my painting sins. These could definitely sport a higher level effort so we should only be so lucky as to their future return to these un-hallowed pixels.

2025 finished mini counter: 21

A thing a week 2025, week 4

You might be wondering when we're going to start making progress on this year's actual goals rather than working through the stuff on my painting desk. Well, you're in luck! Today we have the second fig from the target categories and many up on the horizon. 

First up, however, we have more moon hunters. These spearwolves are Moon Guard A & B from The Moon Enclave Pt 1 and they're really cool. Anyone following that link and wondering why I didn't print the other guys, it's because long spears pointing up pose storage issues with my current setup. Not that these guys don't but at least the lids on the bins I use aren't as likely to break their spears. Not that they need any help with that since the battle posed guy's spear has already broken off. Twice. And yes, that annoys me.

These guys are painted pretty much exactly like the last guys with the addition of more details like the light fur on their armor and their armor. If you notice some patchiness on their feet and other bits, it's because I was super un-careful when removing excess baking soda after gluing things badly. 

Next up we have Dijoro, Female Kitsune from Reaper Bones and she's been featured here before way back in week 27, 2020. I really like this sculpt, particularly her tricksy nature and really wish I had purchased all my copies in metal rather than in soft white bones plastic. It's worth hitting up that link to Reaper's site and looking at the fine paint job the sculptor did featured there, a level that I will very likely never hit. It's a good reminder that I need to be a little more daring in my painting. Probably the next version I paint (like I said, I have multiple copies) will probably be in a different color scheme as a grey or timber wolf or something so they don't all look the same. When? Someday.

This energetic gal is Robyn, the Foxfolk Ranger from Bite the Bullet, a sculptor featured here before. This is a lot of what I like to see out of sculptors. She's dynamic, mostly accessible for painting, and has a lot of character. I was kind of in a hurry when painting her so I didn't crank through all the details at as high a quality as I might have, but she'll definitely hold a higher quality effort. I didn't do a great job of affixing her to the tree branch she's leaping from and I really should have gone back and fixed that. She will very likely show up here again, though probably also in a different color scheme.

Last up we have Fox Folk Rogue, also from Bite the Bullet and she's why I was kind of rushed on Robyn. Despite having a lot of hard to paint areas, I pushed pretty hard on her details, particularly on her voluminous fur and big bushy tail though she does read a lot better on the table than she does in these close ups. There's more that I could have and probably should have done so don't be surprised if she shows up again in the unforseeable future.

2025 finished mini counter: 17, high quality 4/12

A thing a week 2025, week 3

This week we have some wonderful wolfy warriors who are both underrated and underrepresented in the fantasy melange. So imagine my surprise when these guys showed up in one of the many subs I've been gifted from MyMiniFactory. All four of these are from Dragon Trappers Lodge and we shouldn't be surprised if a bunch more of them show up here in the inforseeable future.

These are markswolves and axewolves from The Moon Enclave Pt 1, particularly bow variants A and E and tomahawk variants C and D. The paint scheme I chose is both easy and challenging at the same time. I liked the mental image of a group of black wolves loping through the forest on a secret mission so black was an easy choice. It meant that I wouldn't spend a lot of time picking out individual details in their voluminous fur but that selling it at all would be a challenge. I did some basic drybrushing up from a Speed Paint basecoat which seems to work OK though they could use more highlights.

Because their fur didn't take all that much time, I could spend more on the other details--and they have a lot. It probably doesn't show in these high res photos but most of their details are very small. I meticulously pulled out whatever I could and hit the metallics with a Nuln Oil wash at the end. Their eyes are particularly difficult so none of the usual heroics on these four. The bases came out particularly well this time around and as usual were mostly painted with palette sludge.

2025 finished mini counter: 12

A thing a week 2025, week 2

This week we have a melange of short folk on tall bases from our pals at Titan Forge. The guy on the left is a Dwarf Male Cleric and the other dudes are Gnome Male Cleric variants. I had grand plans to do a bunch of OSL work on the two guys on the right but I only kind of roughed it in on the guy with the flaming sword because I got lazy. These guys were on the whole a lot harder to paint than I expected. They have lots of weird negative space issues and the faces under their cowls made things way harder than needed. I did some texturing on the blue cloak which reads OK on the tabletop but doesn't really hold up under scrutiny and I have no idea where the other hilt piece went from the rightmost dude's sword. Honestly, I got to a place that I wanted to be done with these guys and kind of rushed to the finish line. They went on tall bases because I already had them. They're cool enough but all told, I don't think I'll be printing these guys again unless I have an unexpected need for one of them. 

2025 finished mini counter: 8

A thing a week 2025, week 1

It begins! As these are the figs in the first row of the big end of year shot, I put a bunch of extra time in for these. Also true that most of the work was done at the end of 2024 but I didn't finish the work until this week. 

 First up we have Ronin Arts Workshop's Spitfire Jen. This is a sculpt that I like a lot and I regret having scaled her down to 28mm, a habit I've now been disabused of many times. The sculptor had a thing in mind and I've learned that I should respect that even if the fig stands a little proud on the table. Anyway. I had a heck of a time gluing her together, particularly her gun hand and obvious glue artifacts, probably because each part was soooooo small. She spent quite a long time on my painting desk partially prepped and I only got to seriously painting her near the end of last year. The highlighting on her dark clothes doesn't sell super well on the table which is one of the difficulties of painting black, hence the black cat challenge. I also note that I really like painting sci-fi characters because it gives me an excuse to paint weird hair colors. She'll count as high quality #1 on the year. She will likely show up here again sometime, possibly in her 54mm incarnation.

Next up we have Trista Female Warrior from Reaper Bones, a sculpt I like a lot but which is let down badly by bendy white bones plastic. Notably, I purchased this particular fig in 2018 before my moratorium on purchasing bendy white bones plastic. I wanted to take her to a high quality but the mold really made that hard so I put a lot of effort into her face and the rest of her is kind of phoned in. I also had ambitions of NMM rather than TMM which would have made a lot of the decorations on her shield and armor easier to sell but clearly that didn't happen. She was done in a few hours which feels OK for the result. 

Lastly, we have a pair of Battle Mages from Galaad and we've seen this sculpt before, way back in week 12 of 2022 where I noted that we'd probably see more of her in the future and that it's a sculpt that can support a higher quality paint job. Well, we live in the future and yes. The older print was done on my old Mars Pro. These are printed on my much newer Saturn 2 and that made a lot of difference in terms of print quality. I had a lot of fun painting these two, particularly their faces and the color shifts on their armor. Notably their faces are deliberately different which is a good example of sculpting with paint.

There's certainly more work that could be done here. Particularly, the metallic bits are phoned in some but I did go back with a Badger Ghost Tint wash to highlight them some. Their pants could also use better highlights but that didn't really stand out to me until looking closely at these close up shots. Their staves and bracers have gem-like protuberances that I've yet to gemify and the globes on the end of their staves have filigree that I've never sufficiently picked out. The patterning on their armor also could be done better so no one should be surprised if they show up here again. All told they were somewhere in the ballpark of 12 hours for both and there's a lot more work that could be done on them should I be so inclined in the unforseeable future. They'll count as high quality #2 and #3 for the year. 

2024 finished mini counter: 4, 3/12 high quality

2025 crafting challenge

This is now the sixth year I've done this kind of challenge which I don't think I would have predicted when I started. Like last year I'd like to do more high quality work but unlike last year I'm not going to have a count for many things because I'd rather clear up some of my "nearly done" categories like Reaper Bones kickstarters as they're starting to really pile up. Not sure how well that's going to go, but we'll see in a year!

Valid things:

• A finished piece or WIP representing not less than two hours of effort
• NaNoWriMo which I still haven't done, SHIPtember, and high quality paint jobs are good candidates
• Gaming terrain, prop, scatter (etc.)
• 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 (big, small, WIP)
  
• Other?  Much of what I do defies easy categorization and I don't like long lists
  

Goals:

• Complete Bones 4 kickstarter minis (~20)
• Complete 2018 purchases (~60)
  
• Complete 2019 purchases (~10)
• Complete 2020 purchases (~20)
• Twelve figures of significant quality featuring OSL/NMM/something else notable
  

Unofficial Stretch Goals:

• Six serious attempts at NMM because it's still scary
• Complete Bones 5 kickstarter minis (~120)
  

2024 in review

It's cliche to say "wow, I can't believe the year is over already" but I honestly can't believe the year is over already. Outside of a couple intense months of Lego building and a couple shows, my days are pretty same-y which is both a blessing and a curse.

Gaming

As my first full year of retirement, you might be surprised to find out that I didn't do all that much gaming, but what I did do made up for in quality what it lacked in quantity.

Dragon's Dogma 2 (2024) *****

Sequel to one of my favorite games ever, it feels like I waited for this guy for a stupidly long time. When it arrived I was away at BricksCascade and then wound up with a below-spec machine. I got through all of that, thankfully and was not disappointed. DD2 builds upon the lore of the first and extends several of the systems while keeping a lot of the basic mechanics. Your NPC helper pawns are back and they're better than ever with better behavior, more lines, and the ability to lead you to quest destinations and other points of interest if they've learned them--within your game or not. I didn't end up writing a long form post on DD2 though I wanted to and might yet if there's an expansion sometime in the unforseeable future.

Dwarf Fortress, Steam Version (2022) *****

I've talkedwritten about Dwarf Fortress at least a few times in these unhallowed pages but thislast year I played a lot of it. The Steam version for me is a mixed bag. I like that it mostly works out of the box. I like that it's much more easily modded. I like that it's a lot more stable. I hate that the interface is at least as bad as the old ascii version and that some subsystems are notably worse than their pre-Steam versions (squads, health, I'm lookin' at you). With every new fortress I'm delving into areas of the game that I don't know as well as I'd like or trying out new ideas on how to build things better/faster/whatever. The last few have been bolstered by playing a race of lupines rather than the standard dwarves so the fortress is filled with adorable wolf people who throw great parties. There's nothing like Dwarf Fortress, no matter how you play it.

Mechwarrior 5 Clans (2024) *****

MW5:Clans had been on my wishlist for what seems like forever. I'm not a fan of the clans in general in the lore but I was pretty sure that Piranha would make something pretty good. I was right! It's a lot more cinematic than MW5:Mercs and it doesn't have its predecessor's replayability but it more than delivers on the stompy robot goodness that one should expect, nay demand, from a Mechwarrior game. It seems like every little bit of the gameplay is a little bit better which adds up to a very satisfying experience. Overall, I don't think it's better than its predecessor which I've played through like eight times. That's the thing, I guess, and how I try to think about it: it's good for what it's trying to be and it's not entirely fair to expect it to be something else.

Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries, Solaris Showdown (2024) *****

Hot on the heels of MW5:Clans, I picked up the last installment of its predecessor because I had not yet gotten my fill of big stompy robots. Solaris Showdown adds the Solaris-5 mech combat arenas and a short-ish set of missions with the inimitable Duncan Fisher, a beloved voiced offscreen character from MW4. Both additions were good and many of the arena fights were legit challenging even through I have over 600 hours played according to Steam. Many of the Duncan Fisher missions were laugh out loud hilarious which is exactly what I was hoping for. Probably the only bad thing I can note is that the power creep continued with a handful of new quirks/weapons/whatever that cranked DPS up to the point that many of the normal encounters were trivialized. If it were less than my eighth playthrough, I might have been more critical.

Starcom Unknown Space (2024) ****

I played the predecessor of Unknown Space (Starcom Nexus) at the end of 2022/beginning of 2023 and noted it in the last installation of this annual series. This iteration is a lot like the previous with more polished storytelling and some more interesting building mechanics, particularly heat. Speed still rules and elemental components are significantly more constrained but overall I enjoyed my not quite 40 hours of it. Pretty sure it's still built by one dude who keeps a dev blog.

The Banner Saga (2014, 2016, 2018) *****

I've already written plenty about The Banner Saga so I'll be short here. Everyone should play this game. It is a tour de force of blending strong narratives and game design. This would have been my favorite on the year if the year didn't also include DD2.

Lego

2024 was a big year for Lego for me. Part of it was crunching really hard for a collab that was a mess of questionable communication and part of it was a double SHIPtember. I also expanded my Lego storage area (about +40%) which necessarily comes with a lot of sorting as one might expect. I don't have good shots from the show but I did a mess of very small microscale builds to bulk it out in addition to a lot of explosions mostly not shown in the shots to the right.

It was also a big year since it's the first year I've had builds in multiple categories. Toshoki (top left) is my Beastren bestie from Dragon's Dogma 2 and I displayed her in the art category as a mosaic. In addition to straining my collection (and the expected temptation to over-spend on brick) she incorporates two things that I almost never see in other mosaics: she pops out of the background by 2 studs and is built on a plates-up non-square aspect. The math wasn't particularly hard and neither was the palletization of the original screen shot but getting her to/from show was an ordeal. Probably there are more mosaics in my future.

I expect 2025 to be not quite as hectic though I do have some lofty goals on the year.

Hobbying

And last but not least, it was also a big year for hobbying. I blasted past all of my goals though I get a "well, not really" for the NMM bits which I completely forgot about until checking for this post, though I did do quite a lot of TMM in the NMM style. The total count was bolstered by a couple hundred or so props which some might say are a lot lower effort than normal. To them I saytype: they still needed paint. Notably, we've already used a bunch of them. I don't think, however, that I'll continue with the terrain piece as a goal since it feels like those have largely been fillers the last few years. I've got an enormous number of buildings already and don't really feel like I need more, though Bad News Tower has been relatively well received. Sadly, it has done nothing for people's shoddy dice rolling.

One of my big breakthroughs this year is finding the patience to do harder stuff. Part of that is not settling as often for crappy paints and/or brushes. I still use them, just not as often and I'm less hesitant to tap a better paint and/or brush when I'm working. My quality has definitely improved when that's my goal. I'll also note for the n-th time that my speed is also improving. It's still a wash in terms of time per fig since my nominal quality bar is also higher than it was.