Hobby Review of 2025

 

As we reach the end of 2025, I'm taking stock of what I got up to hobby wise this year. Much of the year has been taken up with a house move, but I did get a bunch of painting done before we moved. I haven't started painting in the new place just yet, but we should get onto that some time soon.

I started the year finishing up a Battletech Lyran lance. The idea here was to get to the point where if an opportunity for a starter game comes up, I'm ready to go with a painted lance. An opportunity hasn't come up yet, but it's a good thing to have ready to go.

HATE then ran a slow grow "introduction to N5" Infinity league, so I decided to get some miniatures painted up. I started with Oktavia Grimsdottir, and I think this was my favourite paint job this year. I'm incredibly pleased with how she came out and I'm hoping to get some more paint jobs to this standard this year.

I also got an elf rogue from Strata Miniatures Dungeons and Diversity line painted up. I'd had her part painted for a while, and was keen to get her done before I moved. Having a good range of potential adventurer miniatures is something I'm keen to build up.

Similarly, this Wizkids Frameworks Tiefling Warlock was a model I'd picked up alongside some models I needed for a D&D game. He got a nice simple tabletop quality paint job. I'm keen to plug through a few more useful fantasy models for future RPGs in the coming year.

I also got Agent Dukash painted up for my Shasvastii. He's no longer available in vanilla Combined Army since the most recent update. At least I got to run him at a tournament in vanilla before the rules changed!

These Hedge Witches from Conquest are good for Frostgrave and RPGs. In RPGs they might end up as PCs or NPCs, depending. Flexible miniatures like this are really great picks for RPGs.

And finally, I got these goblins painted up. I had these Aenor Miniatures on my paint table for months, if not years, before I finally got them done. It was great to get them finished before I packed up to move house.

So, a relatively quiet year from a painting point of view. The goal for the coming year . . . can wait, for now. I have thoughts, but for now, I can sit back and be proud of a good range of figures I got painted this year.

The first Halfling

 

With the Dungeons and Lasers dungeon tiles put away, the next thing on the hobby desk is a Halfling Blood Bowl Team. With the new edition out and plenty of folk playing GW games in Nottingham, it seems like a nice little project. I don't have the new rulebook yet, nor any Treemen, but I want to get these assembled before getting anything else.

I've gotten my first Halfling assembled. I also cleaned the mould lines on the coins, turn markers and balls that come with the team. There's a couple more Halflings I've started on too. It's been a while since I assembled any GW miniatures. The last one I tried to do was one of the Inquisitor characters, and they were incredibly fiddly and awkward. This halfling was a joy - three parts, relatively limited mould lines, and brimming with character once done.

The trick now is going to be setting up a regular schedule to put some time into assembling models. The aim for the next year is to try and be steady with progress. I have a lot of ambitious ideas, and I need to put time into the hobby to try and achieve them.

Dungeons and Lasers Prismacast Caves

I finished removing my Archon Studios Dungeons and Lasers Caves set from the sprues, and thought I'd report back on it. I spent a little time playing around with the layouts, and learned a whole bunch. This shows more or less the amount of tiles you get in the retail Caves set. I've only put walls on one of the rooms at this stage, but it gives you an idea of what you get.

Bear in mind when looking at all of this that all I've done is cut these tiles off the sprue. They come pre-painted - as I understand it they're painted by machine - and the paint quality is as good as I'd likely be bothered to do on some dungeon tile terrain!

The tiles come with moulded points to add connectors which join the tiles to each other and the walls section. They go together quite easily, and it's a firm connection so they don't come apart as you move them about.

Here's how a small room might look once you've made it up. The holes can be used to add walls, or you can add a simple grey peg to fill the space if you want it to be an open area.

You then add walls on to finish the effect. The curved pieces are two parts that fit snugly together before you push fit them into the relevant connectors. You can put them on the sides, or create a wall across the middle of a room if you wish.

At the time of writing, you can buy this set unpainted for £75, or the painted one for £95.

I will caution that it's quite a bit of work to set them all up - you need a little bit of oomph to get each connector to go together, and when you're doing a bunch of rooms, it gets tiring quick! I gave up on getting everything out at around this point - I'd definitely started with the intent to put walls on everything. 

I also got three smaller "themed" sets too. Given the aforementioned loss of oomph, I didn't get everything out - but I wanted to give an impression of the kind of thing you get. This is the spider set, which has narrow bridges held together with strands of web, and tiles covered in web and egg sacs. 

You can see the "Deep Mines" set floor tiles in the bottom room. There's also a bunch of walls with cool crystals that come with it that I did fail to photograph.

The Deep Mine set has two pairs of these stairs up to a pile of gold and treasure. This could be excellent set dressing for an abandoned mine, or perhaps a dragon's lair.

I also got the Goblin Lair set, which has this great little mini hut / building that attaches to tiles. I just attached it to the standard Caves tiles at this point, but you also get a whole bunch of themed tiles for a Goblin Lair too.

The goblin lair tiles are a lot more rickety, with lots of planks with gaps and detritus on the stone floors. I think if you were using either the Spider or Goblin sets you'd probably want to have a black cloth underneath the set to represent the gaps. They definitely weren't quite working on my white table.

The goblin set came with a handful of details like this dead dwarf that you can plug into some of the connection holes to add extra detail. There's not enough for every hole, but it's good to add a little variety.

With my experience putting these together, I certainly wouldn't want to try and assemble them on the fly for a randomly generated dungeon, or as I went according to a map. Assembling a whole large dungeon map also seems like a bad idea from an effort to reward point of view, though I could see an exploration set piece with something to mask sections being quite fun.

If you're actively using these, you probably want to either have some pre-constructed for a fight you're expecting to have at some point, or be pacing your games so a fight starts just before a break or at the end of a session so you can set up for the start of your next one. They do take some serious time to put together and I'd practice doing it a couple of times before committing to doing it on the fly mid game.

I think it's worth noting that you both need quite a lot of tiles, but also get quite a lot in a box. With all the above out on the table, I still had all the below still to use. I got mine through the Kickstarter, but one core set is likely plenty for most standard encounters you're putting together.

If I was going to expand what I have, I'll likely be looking at their older sets that have been converted to Prismacast that are designed as humanoid built dungeons rather than a cave network.

One thing I do need to think about is a better storage solution. I've thrown everything into one big Really Useful Box, and this is Not The One. I was at least smart enough to put all the connectors in sealed plastic bags which helped a bunch, but I think they need sorting by floor tile and wall, and by set.

It was taking me far too long to find the right bits, and it added to the already quite extensive job of putting a layout together.

I'm not sure what the right storage widget is to make this work, but if anyone can think of the perfect solution, please do let me know!

Nottingham Gaming Fayre Bits and Pieces

 

I picked up a few bits and pieces at the Gaming Fayre last weekend. Nothing major, as I have plenty to be getting on with. First up is "In the Land of the Sundering Flood", an RPG by Mammoth Miniatures inspired by the writings of William Morris. I knew of Morris as a designer and didn't realise he was also an author, so I'm looking forward to have a read through this and maybe researching his bibliography too.

I got an excellent "please don't make me take this home" deal from Mammoth on these bits of eldritch ruins and this "dragon" - who is wingless and thus obviously a wyrm. 

I also got a free turtle person and gnome from Krakon games. They are both delightful.

I'm hoping to get all these bits prepped and assembled over the Christmas break so they don't end up just vanishing into the stash. But first, I have more Dungeons and Lasers to clip out!

Work in Progress Wednesday - Terrain Connectors?

 

I finally got to the point of having some hobby tools out, and decided to start with the Dungeons and Lasers Caves Kickstarter. This is very fancy pre-painted RPG terrain produced by Archon Studios. I backed the Kickstarter and thought it would be good to get it all off sprue, and into some much better storage boxes.

My logic was to start with the simplest job - clipping out the terrain connectors. Doing a third of the add-ons connectors took up all the time I had that hobby evening. Whoops! Still, it was good to get something done, and its always best to start with eating your vegetables...

Nottingham Gaming Fayre

 

Yesterday I ended up on a little expedition to the other side of Nottingham to attend a "Gaming Fayre" I'd seen advertised on social media. It didn't seem to be heavily advertised so I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

It was held in a brewery and tap room, and I sadly failed to get any good photos of the giant tanks around the venue due to a lack of common sense. There were quite a few small stands there. There was a gaming club from Arnold I've been meaning to check out, Krakon Games, Mammoth Miniatures, Ramshackle Games and Warp Miniatures.

Krakon Games had free samples to give away, along with a crate of miscasts you could fill a bag up with for future kit bashing mischief.

They then had a display of a whole bunch of their range, and the giveaway bags had a link back to their shop.

Mammoth Miniatures had a more extensive selection of their things - both miniatures and books. 

I'm a huge fan of Mammoth's aesthetic. The miniatures have a very "home made" feel, and there's a very deliberate art style too. I had a good chat with them about their art inspirations, which range from William Morris to Moebius.

Ramshackle Games, meanwhile, had a small demo table, where they were running participation games. I didn't manage to grab a time myself - too busy chattering away to people. He also had a few bags of bits and pieces for folk to buy, including his excellent anti-Brexit art project.

I failed to get photos of the Warp Miniatures stand, or the gaming club stand. But it was a fun little event. It was about the right size to run from 12 - 5pm. You could drop in for a bit of the time and see everything, or take your time and grab a pizza and a beer. The date of the next one hasn't been announced yet, but I'll try and mention it here when it is.

Two different instances of Infinity

 

I was lucky enough to spend a couple of afternoons playing Infinity in the past week. A couple of folks were keen to get a demo of Infinity, and we arranged to meet at The Dice Cup. I've also signed up for a campaign down in London with HATE as I can get games in online using Tabletop Simulator, and I had my first campaign game.

I'm deeply grateful to Yashar who offered some excellent advice for structuring some demo games. One player was interested in JSA, and the other Bakunin. We ran a first skirmish with three Keisotsu against three Moderators. We then added a Daiyokai and a Penitent Observant, along with the Lieutenant rules. Finally, we wrote two 150 point lists to add a few more rules in and had a small three turn game.

Everyone seemed to have a great time, and I'm hoping we'll get more games in shortly.

Meanwhile, HATE is holding a new narrative campaign, and I've signed up to play with my Shasvastii. I'm not in London as much, but Tabletop Simulator exists. For the first round, I got paired with Yashar for a mission of "Area of Interest", one of the latest season of ITS missions. Yashar returned with their beloved MRRF.

I ended up losing 6-3. I learned to fear the Vystrel, a new defensive piece in Ariadna. I also learned a whole bunch about the challenges of diagonal deployments and how much longer ranges are because of them. I'm incredibly stoked about the new season as a result and my brain is now wanting to play more games to learn more about how these new missions play.

Planning some actual miniature hobby

 

With the realisation that I'd been too busy to use up my holiday allowance this year, I have the week off. The eBay clear out continues. The unpacking continues. I've got two games of Infinity booked, so we may see a battle report of some kind if I remember to take enough pictures...

But I also really wanted to start getting into getting some miniature assembly done. First up on my to do list is a Halfling Blood Bowl team. With the new edition out, I'm sure there will be some folk interested in getting some games in.

More experienced players of Blood Bowl may be asking where on earth the Treemen are in this picture. Well, I haven't bought any yet! The new rulebook and the team's Treemen will be the reward for getting the rest of the team assembled and ready for paint. I'm not daft enough to try and play Blood Bowl with a Halfling team without any Treemen...

I also could really do with getting my Dungeons and Lasers set off sprue and into a storage box. They're pre-painted, so it's not really an "assembly" job, but it's something that will take time.

As a potential bonus, I found this box of assorted Frostgrave sprues. I may be joining a Pathfinder campaign in the new year, so knocking up an assortment of generic baddies could be a fun little side project.

Now, where are my clippers?

The near meditative practice of having a clear out

As I packed up this week's eBay sales to head out to their new owners, I found it becoming strangely restful. There was a certain preciseness to the routine of packing the item, taping up the box and carefully affixing the postage label.

This whole thing was probably reinforced by the rain drumming on the conservatory, and my impulsive decision to re-listen to Pablo Honey all the way through. The soundtrack to my adolescence's kitchen chores was bound to put me into some kind of mood.

...

Of course, this whole thing has been thrown out of kilter by my getting distracted part way through writing this, unpacking a box of rugs, then finding a key box of scenery, my Frostgrave warband, my currently assembled Malifaux and most importantly, my Infinity token box.

I'm writing this on Sunday night to be scheduled for Monday evening, and currently my brain is in full excited "we're back in business" mode while it really needs to be drinking a nice mug of mint tea, chilling out and getting ready for bed.

And my mind drifts back to Pablo Honey and "You do it to yourself, you do, and that's what really hurts..."