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.