Remembering how to actually paint

 

I finally got my paint set up sorted. Due to it being a dining table rather than a dedicated painting table I've taped a bin bag to it to protect it from paint spillages! It isn't perfect - in particular I haven't sorted out the relevant extension cables to have a dedicated painting lamp on it, so it gets a little too dark to use during the evenings.

The original plan was to paint this Fenris Games plinth. It's a chunky bit of resin that I was planning to use for miniature photography once it's done. It's been undercoated black, then grey.

Unfortunately, I undercoated it while it was very damp out. As a result, it was quite sticky to touch, and I realised that the paint was coming off when I held it tightly. This is deeply annoying, but down to my own mediocre short cutting and impatience rather than the quality of the piece!

After a little bit of research online, the two recommendations I saw were to either strip it and redo the undercoat, or to varnish it. I decided to go with varnishing first, because it was the easier option. After a pass of spray varnish, and leaving it a few days, the problem seems to be fixed. There's a couple of spots around the sides which are still a little sticky - but I reckon one more pass should solve it.

But, this means the plinth needs to move down the painting list while it gets fixed - so what have I picked up instead?

Here's what I'm pai . . . ooh, that's a lot of back lighting. I definitely need to sort out that extension cable soon. Lets break down what we've got.

First up is a Gray Maiden by Reaper Miniatures. This is a Pathfinder figure with a "canon" paint scheme. I think I originally bought her to be a Slaanesh chaos champion, but now I play Pathfinder, she's getting returned to her original setting. The Gray Maidens were bodyguards to a particular queen in Pathfinder 1st edition who has since been deposed. I like having a Gray Maiden miniature available as the idea of a former bodyguard who's been hired by some new employer is an interesting option for a henchwoman level antagonist.

I started off painting her with contrast paints, but it got quite patchy in places. I'm going to go back in with some layering and drybrushing to try and fix this.

I got a free Krakon Games Shieldkin at an event last year, so I've used contrast paint to drop in some base colours. He's a nice simple sculpt so should be nice and quick to finish.

And finally, we have these three Guinea Pig Witches by Bad Squiddo. Again, these will be for Pathfinder, and I picked three fur colours to get started, and am just happily dropping in some basic colours with contrast paints to start off.

It's good to be back painting again. There is an itch in the back of my brain that I want to finish painting something. With quite a few models lined up that need painting, I'm really keen to get a feeling of progress. But that's for another day.

Wildspire Miniatures

 

A few years ago, I backed a couple of Gamefound campaigns by a company called "Blacklist Games". I backed for three sets of miniatures - a horror set, and two sets of fantasy miniatures. Unfortunately, a series of delays occurred, costs increased over the pandemic, and Blacklist ended up out of money and unable to fulfil a large number of crowdfunding projects they'd organised. 

I was relatively sanguine about the incident - crowd-funding is always a risk, and many people are too used to treating it as a pre-order instead. Blacklist had cut their margins to the bone to produce huge numbers of cheap, board game quality miniatures for role-players, and when things changed, they weren't able to continue. A number of other backers definitely feel that Blacklist crossed the line from poor judgement to being mis-leading. I would not back another Blacklist project, and leave it at that.

However, in some good news, a US company called Wildspire Miniatures purchased the rights to the miniatures, and offered original backers an opportunity to buy the miniatures at cost. And so, several years later, I now have two of the three sets of minis I originally ordered (the horror set has been left to a later fulfilment).

This is what I got - for how much is kind of difficult to say. Do I count the money lost to Blacklist? The money I paid Wildspire? In any event, it's more miniatures than I needed. There are a mix of "hero" characters and monsters, with the smaller monsters having duplicates, usually four of each. I really don't like monopose models in RPGs where I can avoid it, so there were plenty to clear out.

So, I separated out three sets of "useful monster minis" and found an assortment of friends who wanted a set. This still leaves me with plenty of useful figures to paint for RPGs, but now my friends also have a slightly more achievable volume of cheap miniatures.

I also chose to get rid of some of the monsters. Some went to my friends, others got lumped into an eBay sale a while back. I got rid of Cthulu because there's rarely a need for him in a campaign, and he's too established in the pop culture to be of any use in horror games. I didn't love the poses on the troll, ogre or dire bear, so off they went.

The demon lord also went, as did the acid elemental. The female giant was actually a difficult call - in some ways, I do quite like the sculpt, but her being on a "huge" base rather than a "large" base really reduced her utility as the bigger giants in Pathfinder don't share her general vibe, and come it at much later levels meaning I'd use her less often. There were also a few little details that I just didn't love about the sculpt, so when looking at a whole table of minis, she ended up in the "sell" pile.

So, everything remaining is now put away in boxes for later. The time taken to sort these all out is why I am avoiding big "bargain" purchases now. I have stuff on my "to do" list right away that I want to be getting on with, and these have literally gotten in the way of that getting finished. That said, if I haven't started these by the end of the year, I may seriously consider passing the rest on as well. If I am interested in running in person RPGs in the future, I need to commit my time to actually painting some of models I plan on using in them. If I'm just sitting on things, dreaming of the future and not doing anything, I can keep dreaming about it without a pile of boxes in my house.

Plans for 2026

 

And so, 2026 dawns with a dread inevitability. It is an unusual one for me, as it's dawning in a new city for the first time in a couple of decades. The move to Nottingham has hit my hobbying this year, as it takes time to put your life in boxes and and then take it all out again.

There's still plenty of settling in to the new place still to be done, so I'm expecting hobbying to continue to be slow for at least the first part of the year. I'll also be dipping into Flesh and Blood, LARPing, and selling excess possessions on eBay, all of which can be quite time consuming.

So, I'm planning on being quite restrained with my 2026 hobby goals. I want to check in around about the end of March to see how things are going. The main thing I want to get sorted is this Halfling Blood Bowl team project. I want to get some games in at Warhammer World now I'm in Nottingham, and this seems like a nice small and achievable project to make that happen.

Once I've gotten the paints out, I also want to really hit my Combined Army and Shasvastii pretty hard. I'm thinking of trying getting a batch of ten models together and putting some time into just getting some regularly used pieces done. For example, for Vanilla Combined, the Charontid, the Anathematic, Bit and KISS, two Daturazi and four Hungries will mean that a huge number of common list builds will become all or mostly painted.

This might prove to be too big an ask in terms of the size of the batch, but I want to give it a go before deciding if I go for smaller batches first or not. Ideally I want to have painted some of my Nomads by the end of the year, but right now I have a set scheme for my Combined Army and have a whole bunch assembled, undercoated and ready to go, so getting a bunch finished will be good for my soul.

Broadly, I'm trying to get in a game of Infinity a month. I do want to try and build a community in Nottingham, and there are a few folk who are interested. I'm booked in for a game later this month, and I'll try and keep that up.

My side hobby project is that I very much want to work through this year is getting a bunch of bits done from smaller hobby companies, especially for RPGs. Eventually I want to run an in person campaign with miniatures and so on, so building up a good variety of basics will really help build a good foundation for that.

All in all, this year isn't so much about setting goals "for the year", it's about getting started again, seeing how I'm going, and adjusting to match. Everything is far more of a new start than normal. I am much happier in Nottingham, but it is a different pace of life to London, and its an excellent opportunity for a bit of a reset. Making sure I don't fall back into old over-commitment habits is really important.

Christmas and New Year Hobby

I have been pottering on with assembling the Halfling Blood Bowl team. I'd hoped to be a little further along than this, but an assortment of non hobby activities took up a bunch of time. Still, excellent human interaction and resting occurred. 

 

Games Workshop sent me their annual £10 voucher, and I used it towards buying some online only Halfling Star Players. I've also put some money from my eBay sales into picking up the new rulebook and a couple of Treemen (alongside a mat for Infinity), which should show up next month.

The space between Christmas and the New Year also had a meeting of what is intended to be a new gaming club: The War Dollies Collective. The hope is that this will turn into regular club nights, but at the moment these aren't finalised.

There were a wide range of activities on offer. There was a large kit-bashing area for folks to build whatever they fancied. There were also participation games - both some kind of car combat game and a small scale Napoleonic historical game.

I took advantage of the day to arrange a game of Infinity with one of the people I gave a demo to at Dice Cup earlier this year. We had an excellent 300 point game, with me taking White Company and my opponent Next Wave, playing a Direct Action mission.

The arrival of over 300 miniatures from Wildspire Miniatures has also taken up a chunk of time. These models were originally designed by Blacklist Miniatures, who then ended up being incapable of delivering. Wildspire purchased the moulds and produced these models, offering original backers a significant discount to acquire the miniatures. There's still a Horror set that Blacklist failed to deliver that Wildspire has purchased and not produced yet.

So, it has still been a very busy couple of weeks from a hobby perspective. The coming month has some LARP, some card games and some work travel which won't produce interesting things for the blog. Still, I have a few stories to tell about my Infinity game and the Wildspire minis that I'll tell in a short while.

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.

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...

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?

Wizkids Pathfinder Leshy Window Box Set Review

Recently arrived after a bit of a delay is this box of Leshy miniatures for Pathfinder. It's classic Wizkids pre-painted stuff, but at the higher end of that scale. You're getting eight miniatures, which are all based on the book art of the Leshy, a popular PC option in Pathfinder.

The Leshy are spirits inhabiting small plant bodies. With the recent Pathfinder Remaster they moved from an "Uncommon" player option to a "Common" player option, essentially becoming a comparable player option to Humans, Dwarves and Elves. That said, they gain their sustenance from sunlight, with their "rations" being very pricey, so they're not well suited to underground campaigns.

(There's a weird point on this one, where Fungus Leshy are mentioned a living in the Darklands, Pathfinder's Underdark, but the PC Fungus Leshy still need sunlight by the book. Still, this is a weird little side annoyance for me, and not super important.)

Here, left to right, we have a Lotus Leshy, a Seaweed Leshy and a Flytrap Leshy. Flytrap Leshy aren't a specific PC option (though there's a monster stat block), but mechanically they work just fine using the Cactus Leshy options.

The great thing about Leshy, being spirits inhabiting humanoid shaped plant matter is that you can really have a wide range of different themes or vibes.

Next up we have the Gourd Leshy, the Sunflower Leshy and the Fruit Leshy. Sunflower Leshy are another "monster option" that fits into other character classes just fine.

The paint jobs on these models are at the higher end of the Wizkids pre-painted scale, and really quite fancy. They've gone with brighter colours, which suits the general feel of Leshy in general, but there's a couple of spots, such as on the Gourd Leshy, where a little more shading would have probably brought them up an extra notch.

Finally, we have a Cactus Leshy and a Fungus Leshy. They're all very distinct with individual silhouettes so easy to tell which is which. All the sculpts are oozing character.

Leshy are small in the rules, and here you can see one being a little shorter than an Aenor goblin who was what I had around to compare them to.

The recent NPC Core book introduced an NPC profile for a "Gourd Witch", which is a pumpkin headed Leshy with a witches hat and witch spells. I'm only shocked I hadn't thought of it myself before now.

As a few Leshy face off against some marauding goblins - would I recommend buying this box? It is really pricey for what it is, but the quality is at the top end of what Wizkids do. For me, it was a must buy because getting the 'official sculpts' and not adding to my painting queue was an easy choice. There aren't many other good options for small plant folk right now outside of 3D printing. It's not going to be everyone's aesthetic, but if you've got the budget as a Pathfinder GM who uses miniatures, I'd recommend them.

Aenor Goblins Finished

 

I finally finished the goblins by Aenor Miniatures that have been stuck on my desk forever. I'm pretty pleased with how they came out, and a bit annoyed that the passage of time has meant I forgot a few bits of how I did them, which meant when bits needed fixing due to overpaint, I struggled to get the right colour match.

This does remind me that I really need to work on getting half done bits and pieces finished before I move house. Not just because half finished projects are harder to move and you're more likely to miss things, but the delightful feeling of Just Finishing Things is probably going to be needed for morale purposes in the run up to the move.

I still need to finish up the new Conquest Druids, but the new item for the paint table is this Dwarf from Otherworld Miniatures. She's going to serve duty as a Templar in my Frostgrave warband, so I need to get her painted up before my next game.

Hedge Witches, Goblins, and a Plinth

 

This week, I finished up the Hedge Witches from Conquest Games. They were a good couple of miniatures to get my vibe back for painting. They're good options for Frostgrave, too.

I've also been plugging on with the Aenor Miniatures goblins. I got started on them ages ago with a sepia wash over off white, and they've been sitting for absolutely ages. I was very pleased with how a little drybrush really brought out the details on the cloak.

Three of the five are now finished and waiting for photography. I'm going to finish the last two before I count them all as "done". I'm also pondering the Steel Legion Drab base rim - maybe I should change it to black?

My big purchase that arrived this week was this 5" x 5" plinth from Fenris Games. I've picked it up for miniature photography so I've got an alternative way of raising miniatures up to the hills I'm currently using. It'll need washing and cleaning up before I get started on painting it, but I'm going to finish a few bits and pieces first.

End of month check in, and Marching forward

 

February has been really busy. I went to Tinbot III in Norwich, I've been busy having a clear out on eBay, I played a bunch of games at the club again, and my work was really rather busy as well. That did mean I didn't get quite as much painted as I'd have liked, but it was still a good month for hobby all told.

I got Dukash painted early in the month for the tournament, and he did well in one of the games I played him in..

The Tiefling Warlock also let me experiment with a possible Morat red skintone, but while I liked this one for the Tiefling it's not what I'm looking for for my Morats, so I'll try something else on another model until I work out what I'm looking for.

I had a bit of a painting stall for a couple of weeks after that. A mix of being exhausted after work, spending more time playing games, and prioritising getting stuff listed on eBay to sell over painting meant I didn't get anything else finished. This is fine. It's about priorities, and things being out of the flat before we move is more important than a few extra miniatures getting painted.

That said, the goal for March is to finish my half finished jobs - both these part painted models, but also finishing those half assembled Exrah that I abandoned out of frustration a while back. Which I definitely need to space out given . . . you know, that giving up in frustration issue I mentioned.

I also got in my first ever game of Frostgrave, which I'll write up on the blog later. It's a fun, swingy game that I really enjoyed. I think it's too random to try and make it competitive, which helps keep the pressure off.

I also picked up the John Blanche paint sets from Army Painter at the end of the month which I'm planning on using in some projects in the future. I'm pondering doing my Imperial Agents in a limited palette scheme using these paints but I'll need to do some test models to decide if that's the right call or not.