A thing a week 2025, week 34

Following last week's offering we have these four as the red team. They're the other half of the Gotha Knights box and TBH, I was super done with these guys. The fur is pretty OK if patchy but the red parts, especially the big dude's cloak are really phoned in. I did some shading on the metallics but not much. 

As I noted last week, these guys probably won't see any game time so I didn't super feel like putting a ton of time into them. I especially disliked their spikey bits and the fact that they wouldn't stay on my large painting handles. My normal painting handles are magnetic with some putty on the top which hold pretty well for single magnet setups. These guys are too big to have a single magnet so they don't work on those. Also, their bases are way, way too big to fit, so they go on the "I can make no assumptions about the configuration of magnets" larger handles made out of ancient and empty paint pots with only putty on top. I don't like using these because they're not super secure and this didn't help. 

At any rate, these guys are done and I'm happy with that. Also, you might be wondering why I've got four figs here and my countdown has been decremented by five. Well. As part of the normal prep, the figs in whatever pieces they come in get taken out of the box. I do a dry fit then remove mold lines and whatnot, and then glue them together. Well, one of them was missing an arm. I hope he wasn't too expensive, but I can't exactly assemble him sans arm so I'm taking him off the list entirely. 

2025 finished mini counter: 127, 2025 goal figs remaining: 22 

A thing a week 2025, week 33

Moving right along, we have more House Goritsi figs from Wrath of Kings, this time half of the Gotha Knights box (next half coming soon). Like last week's specialists, these guys are also really big and because of the hard plastic used in these and their very spikey fantasy weapons, they were also really pokey which made them harder to paint.

I thought the first two were the same guy but they're actually different poses. The last two seem pretty distinct, I guess the cloak guy being an officer or something with his very weird fantasy weapon. I don't hate these sculpts and I get that games want to have a distinct visual style but at the same time I long for a more realistic portrayal of these obviously fantasy characters.

These are painted as dark grey wolves which I thought fit the subjects well. In retrospect, I should have done black wolves as a point of practice for painting black furred characters. I'd really wanted to do these as a batch paint but a) they're really pokey, b) they're really big and didn't fit on my normal paint handles, and c) they're super detailed. I did an OK paint job but got to the end and really just wanted to be done.  I don't expect they'll see game time but I've been pretty bad at predicting these things but I'm glad they're done either way.

2025 finished mini counter: 123, 2025 goal figs remaining: 27

ed) not sure what's going on with the formatting here but I'm far too lazy to hack the HTML directly.

A thing a week 2025, week 32

...and this week we're back on track. These two were purchased in the heady days of the spring of 2019 as  the Wrath of Kings: House Goritsi - Specialist Box #1 from CMON and a game that I notably don't play. We've seen the Whitemane Duelists from way back in 2020 week 37 as my first really high quality attempt and my first real NMM attempt. These are from an expansion pack that I got on steep discount as the game was being sunset and at a time when I was desperately trying to find canine anthropomorphs for my in-person game. The good: they're painted. The bad: they're really, really big, like 65mm so they tower over most of the character figs in my collection. I also don't know what's up with their gear which seems to be a mishmash of cyberpunk and artist fantasy hallucinations.

While not a speed paint, I also didn't go out of my way to really pick out the details though their size lent themselves to a fairly clean result. Due to their size, they ended up taking something like five or six hours each which is way more than I like to spend on a non-player character, non-high quality effort. They are on the 2025 goal list and despite my misgivings, I like the way they turned out.

2025 finished mini counter: 119, 2025 goal figs remaining: 31 

A thing a week 2025, week 15

Four more right up the gut this week which should be the plan for the next several weeks. It feels nice to make consistent progress in the chosen goal even though I'm not putting up big numbers this year.

First up we have Shael Han Celestial Tricksters from Wrath of Kings flanking our pal Kogo, Male Kitsune from Reaper Bones. I have dupes of all of these guys so you should expect to see them again and in fact, we've already seen Kogo way back in week 27 of 2020 which seems like an age ago. I have no idea what's going on with the dude on the left's back though I do like his desaturated color scheme which really shows off his orangey fur. I think this Kogo also looks sharp in the black, green and red though I wish I'd picked out his armor texture a little better. Also of note, his eyes aren't quite as crazy in person. Both of the tricksters had some really lousy mold issues that I mostly covered up but the guy on the right really suffered from them over details. Like Damaris from last week, he's also got a thing for buckles which I find very sus.

And rounding out this week is a great sculpt let down by a lousy mold that I nonetheless put a bunch of time into. If she looks familiar, it's because we saw her recently in week 52 of last year. Kassandra of the Blade is a good sculpt let down by soft bones white plastic. I don't recall if I have a metal version of her but if I don't, I should. I spent a lot of time on this version because, well, I wanted to, despite mold line issues. I had a plan this time (primary color scheme) and did a lot of extra work cleaning up details that I might have otherwise ignored. I think this one came out well and I'm happy to put her with the other high quality figs I've done so far this year as #8. Between the two, I think this one's cloak isn't as nice but her face is much better. I also like that her scarf is so much better delineated though I really have to do the magenta/aqua/orange combo again. 

2025 finished mini counter: 60, high quality 8/12, 2025 specific figs remaining: 80