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)

 

2025 in review

2025 was one of the years of all time. Far more astute observers of culture have said and written way more than I could ever sanely do so I'ma leave it to the experts. Here's my little slice of reality parceled and presented in an almost-bite-sized-piece for your amusement. 

Hobbying 

Most of you are here for the glamor shots so let's lead with that. It feels like there was a lot going on thislast year and as a result I didn't paint nearly as many minis as I have been the last few years. Due to Battletech figs being on the whole easier to paint than the normal fantasy characters, I cranked out quite a lot in the last month which elevated the total to land at 5/week which I think is pretty respectable. 

 

I hit 2,000 minis painted lifetime sometime over the summer which seems significant and though I completed 13 high quality (for me) works for the display case, I'm not sure that quality is going up all that much though they're also not going any faster. 

 

What other stuff was going on that ate up so much time? 

 

I'm Building a Game!

It was probably inevitable that I'd get back to game development in my retirement and I guess that this was the time. At the end of 2024 I started messing around with Godot and at this point I don't even remember why. Turns out, it's not only very full featured, it's convenient in all the ways I wish Unity was. 

I've always said that you want to start small and keep it small if you want to finish with your sanity at least partially in tact so naturally I picked the second biggest thing that I'd always wanted to make. Roughly a thousand hours later and it feels like it should go up on Steam for fun and almost no profit, probably nextthis year. If you're bored and want to take a look, send me a ping.

 

Gaming 

Most of my gaming happened in the last quarter of thislast year but what it lacked in quantity, it more than made up in quality. 

 

Star Traders: Frontiers (2018): ***

If you like super deep space-opera-like captain sims, this game is for you. If you like straightforward and approachable games wrapped up in a bow, you might take a pass. Star Traders: Frontiers is extremely complex and does very little to explain how the game works (insert ominous foreshadowing here). The intent (as I gather it) is that you'll play it multiple times on multiple difficulties with multiple different builds and whatnot. I completed my first game on super duper easy mode in about 80 hours. Do with this information what you must. On the whole, it's a little clunky and near the end I found the endless "jump all over the galaxy to deliver someone's coffee" style quests super tedious. I really wanted to like this one (hence the 80 hours) but I don't see ever going back to it. 

 

Mechwarrior 5 Mercenaries: Shadow of Kerensky (2025): *****

There's been a lot of MW5:Mercs over the years and since MW5:Clans was released last  year, I was surprised to see a new expansion for the older game late in the year. My love of most things BattleTech is pretty well documented at this point so I had to buy it and had to start a new playthrough and had to begin at the earliest year possible so it'd be the longest possible. Notably, most of the new content is at the end of the timeline but it's not like I didn't know that. Smashing clanners is as satisfying as I'd expected and getting to go through all the Duncan Fisher missions again was an added bonus. Notably, every new expansion raises the power level a bunch so that first encounter was missing some of its edge, probably. 

 

Endless Sky (2015): ***

As a liker of space sims, Endless Sky seems to have everything I like: space-y combat, alien diplomacy, trading simulations, deep ship customization. Unfortunately, it really only delivers on one of those. The combat is iffy given that there are no ship stacking rules and the RNG can be particularly punishing even beyond the emphasis being on commanding a multiple ship fleet. The text is extremely over-wrought in places and there is just plain too much of it. The whole thing is tied up with an economic model that only a banker could love. The worst part, IMO, is that the customization system is so...fiddly. You've got multiple overlapping budgets to manage none of which is either super well documented or obvious to new players, and a fairly narrow list of places that you can get the components that actually matter that are inconveniently scattered all across the galaxy if you can even buy stuff there at all. Add to that the emphasis on multiple ship fleets and you're multiplying your frustration across a bunch of ships each with different weird sometimes hidden statistics. Not a fan of that. Also, the interface is only barely usable which makes everything just a bit more janky. I spent way too long on this game which I found to be mostly frustrating but it was free, still gets regular updates, and had a non-zero amount of legit good moments. 

 

Wildermyth (2021): *****

I purchased Wildermyth a while ago at the recommendation of a pal and I had opportunity to take a look at the end of 2025. It as a lot of aspects I really like and not terribly many that I don't. It has the trifecta I look for in indie games: distinctive style, interesting gameplay, good humor. The characters are cardboard cutouts and hop around the map in exactly the same way you would if you were using standees on a tabletop which I can't imagine isn't the intent. The dialog is all character-focused and the writing is good enough that I kind of felt bad when whupping some of the bads. It has a lot of replayability as one might guess from a game that's mostly procedural with the expected gajillion chievos if you're into such things. On the whole, it is well constructed and has a lot of charm. I really liked Wildermyth and if you've ever wondered what a non-grimdark and slightly more tactical version of Darkest Dungeon might be like, give it a shot.

 

Lego 

I hit the typical two shows again this year (BricksCascade in the spring and BrickCon in late summer) which spawned the usual flurry of activity and participated in the annual SHIPtember as per usual. We built a giant collab at BrickCon which showed well at least partially due to my insistence on lighting every ship. As a bonus, due to some very fiddly, fragile builds, we got a staff-selected award for the display. That was dope. I haven't super well documented those because, well, mostly I'm lazy but here's a collage of the shots I did take. You can find more deets at flickr.

 

Hardware Hackery

It hasn't come up super often in these uh-hallowed pixels, but I've been building computers since the mid 90s and have amassed a vast collection of mostly well-loved hardware. As a side-effect of doing a much needed deep clean on my house, thislast year, I re-organized some rooms and ended up with enough space to start tinkering again. Lots of said tinkering done and I've re-cataloged most of my collection and will hopefully be liquidating a lot of it in 2026 which pains me more than I'd like to admit. If you have a need or a want of mid-90s to more recent consumer computing hardware, drop me a line.

 

Furthermore, it's worth noting that the NAS I've had more or less since I moved to WA has been running non-stop plus or minus the (frequent) power outages we (don't) enjoy here. The drives were second hand when I got them and it's been a decade. That makes me nervous. I also ended up doing a bunch of speed tests and re-familiarizing myself with modern hard drives, SSDs, and NAS software. Fast forward a couple months and I've built a new NAS off of SSDs keeping the old NAS for backups, and have updated at least part of my network to (mostly) 2.5Gbps.  Good times.