Plans for 2025

My plans for my hobby this year are a bit different. It's looking like we're going to be moving house this year, and I really want my focus to be on making the move less painful rather than painting a few more figures. The blog may get a little quieter in a bit, but I've got plenty to do before then.

I do need to buy less stuff. I say this and fail many years, but I really need to not mess this up this year, as the cost and the time of the move is really going to exacerbate any failure. I've updated my tracking system, and the goal this year is to buy less than I've sold and painted. I'm excluding anything pre-ordered from previous years, because nothing ruins a system by punishing yourself for something that happened before you instituted it.

With the new edition and a move coming up, I've decided to focus in on just the Combined Army for now. HATE is holding a slow grow League, where I'm playing my beloved Shasvastii, while I'm planning on getting Vanilla up and running for tournaments and so on.

The club is also running a Frostgrave campaign, so it's time to dig out all the random bits and pieces I've painted over the years to put together a warband. I don't need to paint anything new for this, it's more a case of using stuff I've already painted.

I've been trying to improve my miniature photography, particularly using the Jon Hodgson background books. I'm likely to take a weekend some time to do a whole bunch of photography so that I can schedule a bunch of cool photos to "hold down the fort" on the blog as house moves happen.

. . . and really, that's it as far as planning goes this year! Between "sell stuff" and "move", I don't want to over-commit. I'm hoping that by Autumn I'll be able to pick up some new project, but I'll look at how the world looks then and work out what I want to focus on. No point in over-planning right now.

Lyran Guard Battlemech Lance

 

After spending way too much of 2024 on my painting desk with a simple basecoat on, I've finished up this Lyran Guard Battlemech lance for Battletech. It's a pretty simple tabletop quality paint scheme, but it means they're done and sorted.

I now have six painted Lyran mechs overall, and that's plenty to learn the game with. I'm not going to be jumping into that straight away - I've got an Old World campaign day and my first game of Infinity N5 next weekend, and I expect the combination to leave my brain as total soup.

Product Review - D&D Icons of the Realms - Ship Scale Boxes

 

For the last of my "Wizkids boxes I bought in the Black Friday sales" reviews, here's a review of some Spelljammer "ship scale" miniatures. The first one I picked up is the "Astral Elf Patrol", which consists of two dragons and two ships - a Star Moth and a Dragonfly.

The dragons are fine, meant to represent Ancient Dragons in the ship game. Ironically, their base sizes are quite reasonably sized for a normal Adult Dragon in normal miniature scale, with the miniatures only a little too small. Miniature scale creep has gotten ridiculous of late, and they may end up being useful gaming pieces for normal D&D.

The Dragonfly (the smaller ship) is fine and does OK for what it is. I'm less fond of the Star Moth. The huge plastic wings don't fit particularly snugly, so will come out if you so much as breathe near them. This leaves you with the dilemma of gluing them in, which makes the whole thing an absolute nightmare to store - there's a reason they were packed separately in the box.

The Star Moth also feels a little bit "plastic toy", as well? The big see through plastic doesn't help with that, but the bold, blocky colours go on to make it worse rather than better. If you compare it to either of the dragons, they don't necessarily feel like they come from the same line? With there not being many other options for the classic Spelljammer ships, it's a bit of a disappointment.

The next box, "Threats from the Cosmos" is a monster box with four creatures. First up, we have the Cosmic Horror and the Tyrant Ship. The Cosmic Horror is excellent. It's a spooky Far Realm monster that has been painted up all gribbly. I don't see it's normal state line will see much play - a CR18 space gribbly isn't one for regular play - but in 28mm scale, some summoned horror could easily be represented by this.

A Tyrant Ship is a Beholder ship, carved out of rock with disintegration rays. The paint job is deeply disappointing - while it's canonically carved out of stone, the colours they've chosen to represent that look more like the model has been roughly undercoated rather than a good stone texture. It's a swing and a miss, really.

We then have an ancient red dragon, which is fine, and a murder comet swarm. And here's where there's a little bit of a rant coming. A murder comet is a medium creature - so the scale of the murder comets here is completely wrong. There's no stat block for a murder comet swarm, so you're left having to come up with something. And by having a non standard stat block, it's not much use for a 28mm scaled encounter either. At least if they'd had a "giant murder comet" miniature with a normal base, it could then be used as a normal murder comet at normal scale. The paint job is dire, too, using metallic silver to try and approximate the art of a glowing gas ball, where the whole thing would have been much better undercoated blue then an airbrushing of white over the top to get a simple but good effect. Just a catastrophic miss on every level.

Last up, we have "Attacks from Deep Space", starting with an Astral Dreadnought. This thing is huge and heavy. I dropped it on a metal miniature and the metal miniature broke. Lets get an idea of scale.

So yes, this is a Big Chunky Monster. The painting is great, the sculpt is great. Just excellent. It's another high CR monster (CR 21 in this case), so it's much more likely to be encountered as some kind of puzzle encounter rather than a straight up fight. You might be trying to escape it, or trying to trick it into swallowing you so you can recover something from it's magical stomach - donjon. You can definitely make some memorable encounters out of this.

The rest of the box consists of a giant gelatinous cube (again, lacking a published stat block for the current edition, but a nice concept for an encounter), and three smaller ships - a turtle and two lampreys. The sculpts of these are fine, but both of the lampreys fall victim to the "bold bright colour" paint job issue, making them look like children's toys again.

Spelljammer ships and creatures are always going to be incredibly niche purchases, and these boxes vary from "key to populating a basic ship table" to "forgettable", with unfortunate mixes of ships and monsters when you're most likely to want duplicates of the ships (if, you know, you're made of money). All in all, these are such a missed opportunity - some better choices with the paint jobs and different combinations of boxes could have made this a far more appealing product.

Review of 2024

 

It's been a bit of a weird year, all told. Work got catastrophically stressful, I got into a TCG, and looking back at things that happened in the first half of the year feels like some kind of weird other-time where things happened to someone else.

As far as "goals for the year" went, everything kind of fizzled out. Some large Kickstarters are the bulk of the miniatures that came in. There's a few limited releases or things that were going out of production, with a bit of a slip when Imperial Agents came out.

That said, I did manage to tidy the hobby room sufficiently that my dearly beloved has a table of her own in it, so it's not a complete wash.

I managed to run a D&D game in person for some friends, which was excellent fun. One of my long term ambitions is to run a long campaign in person with miniatures and maps, but that isn't something I'm aiming to do in 2025.

I made it back to Salute, which I mostly loved for seeing a bunch of friends who run small wargaming businesses. A trade show when you're trying not to add to piles of unpainted miniatures is a bit difficult to work out how to approach.

I also made the trip to UK Games Expo. It was a lot, but I had an amazing amount of fun. I found new games, like the card game Flesh and Blood. I got some Pathfinder Society games in so I got to play rather than be a forever DM. I would go again, but I probably won't in 2025, as I have a lot of other commitments then already.

I did successfully get some games of the new edition of 40K in - both with my Deathwatch, and signing up for a small narrative campaign with my Imperial Guard. It's been great fun, despite losing all but one of my games.

A got a cheeky game of Malifaux in. Not much to say about it beyond that I did play it, and I want to get my crew painted!

I also got my first ever game of Age of Sigmar in. This is something where I'm keen to try out Skaven, but that's a painting project away from happening...

Infinity has been a bit slower than previous years, but there's still been a whole bunch of it - I've done a few tournaments and a league, but the announcement and then the delay of the new edition, N5, sort of took the wind out of the sails a bit. The new edition has engaged a lot of keen, though, so I expect that to course correct shortly... That said, I did get games of three other systems in instead, so I think it's just a question of balance.

My local club, Hackney Area Tabletop Enthusiasts (or HATE) has sadly had to move venue after the closure of Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. It's now running in a new venue that I haven't made the journey to yet.

When I sat down to write this I was thinking I hadn't gotten a lot done. It turns out, I have - but it's been going out and doing things rather than sitting down and painting miniatures. The review has been really helpful in a way, because it's helped me realise I've had a productive, positive year. Among a bunch of stress and distractions, looking back at the positives helps put me in a good mindset for the coming year.

Working towards finishing up for the year

 

The year is nearly over, and I'm trying to finish a couple more things before the New Year. First up is this Battletech lance. I've brought the white up to where I want it, so will be hitting the blue next, before moving onto the details. I'm keen to get these finished up, as the plan is to move on to getting some Combined Army figures done for the new edition of Infinity next.

The other one I'd really like to get finished up is this rogue by Strata Miniatures. She's been sitting "barely started" on the desk for way too long, and as a single figure, it shouldn't be too much time investment to get her done before I close out the year. If she's not done by then, it better be because I'm trying to add more fancy detail...

Joining the painting table this week, replacing the finished halfling adventurers, are these goblins by Aenor Miniatures. I'm not trying to get them done by the end of the year, but they're basically on the desk to be picked up every time the mechs and the rogue's paint is drying, so I keep progressing something rather than sitting browsing my phone...

Product Review - Pathfinder Battles - Fists of the Ruby Phoenix Martial Arts Masters

 

Another cheap box of Wizkids miniatures I picked up from Thistle Tavern is the Pathfinder: Fists of the Ruby Phoenix - Martial Arts Masters" box. This is a box which is paired with a Pathfinder adventure path - the aforementioned "Fists of the Ruby Phoenix".

This isn't an adventure I own, but the concept is a martial arts tournament on an isolated island. The box looks to be significant or unusual characters from the adventure.

There's a "Kongamato", a primeval dragonkind which is basically a big dangerous predator type. The mini is one of the better ones in the set, and easily re-usable as some sort of draconic or primeval beast.

And then there's a yeti monk. 

Another excellent figure, this one doesn't exactly have a common use in the average fantasy RPG. There's particular genres where it will be perfect, but for the majority, it simply won't fit or make any sense. So, a niche figure that's very marmite. I love him, but I have no idea when I'll run something that will need him.

A more usable figure is the onidoshi - an Oni miniature that is really high quality and looks excellent. Pathfinder uses these villains primarily in Tian Xia, but they are found elsewhere as well. They have a canon in D&D lore too, and are recognisable enough within D&D tropes that they end up not feeling out of place in "generic" D&D. Without knowledge of the existing milieu of D&D, they might feel out of place in a western fantasy.

Next up, we have a named witch whose hair is an animate weapon, and a Tengu in some kind of special combat form. The former's shtick has now been adopted into the standard player options for the witch, meaning that it's not super niche in Pathfinder. The model could also be a flying character with a lot of hair.

The Tengu is terrible. The model arrived bent, and while I used hot and cold water to bend it into position, over the course of about a day it slowly bent back into position. The weapons look bad, the teeth look bad. It's non-standard form means it ends up being incredibly, incredibly niche. A catastrophically awful miniature with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

The lower of the two here is a named ghost character. It's a cool see through miniature with a bunch of detail and weird items. It's not going to suit every ghost you want to use, but a specific character ghost it will be excellent for.

Then we have I Don't Know What. It's . . . very 90s? It's a lady who seems to be wearing underwear, a half put on robe and a weird hat. There might be a reason for her looking like this, but I don't own the book to know the context. It's a mediocre humanoid figure before you take into account the dubious choice of clothing.

So, seven figures, of which I think two are actively bad, and five are good. I am very excited about the yeti monk but will probably never use him, while the Oni is the one most likely to see some play. The pricing on this box at recommended retail price is absolutely extortionate. I picked it up at "we need these out of our shop because they haven't sold" prices, and it seems likely they lost money on stocking them.

Pathfinder definitely has some good Wizkids products - their Goblins frameworks box* is stellar - but there's also some catastrophic misses. Some models I pre-ordered for "April 2024" still haven't delivered, so there's all sorts of different problems the range is having right now. Hugely discounted boxes are going to end up defaulting to be the massive misses. My overall opinion of the Wizkids range remains "do your research and be very picky".

* Don't go looking for the blog post where I "definitely assemble them in March". It was massively optimistic and I completely failed to achieve that.

Wargames Foundry Halflings

 

I've finished up these Halfling Adventurers from Warmonger Miniatures. I picked them up last December so I could use two of the models in the pack for an in person D&D game in January. As I basically stopped painting anything back in May, they've ended up sitting around sad and half painted, and I decided they didn't deserve to finish out the year like that.

It was also a happy bonus as I did manage to get them all finished within a year of having bought them, which is something I started tracking a while back to try and get things done promptly. It mostly hasn't worked but it gave me a happy moment when I managed it for once.

Infinity N5 - Initial Plans and Vibes

 

The new edition of Infinity, N5, released earlier this week. There's a lot to absorb as a player, and its going to take a while before I think I've got there. Now, I own quite a lot of factions, so I had a bit of a think about what I'm going to do first...

Our club has an escalation league starting up, and after writing one test list, I've decided to start N5 with my Shasvastii. There's not a huge amount of changes, but one of the more powerful profiles, the Speculo, has had some of its rules made a little less powerful, while half a dozen less used profiles have all had an overhaul. Seeing how a familiar faction has changed will be a good way for me to get a handle on the new edition.

I do want to shuffle into vanilla Combined Army in the future too. I'll have more models to paint up for that faction so it'll be Shasvastii first. However, we're still in the first few days and there may be some errors - the fireteams in particular look a bit odd, so I'm waiting to hear back if they can take a Haris team or not.

So, the Combined Army will likely be a bit of a painting project coming up. I've got some half finished bits to finish up first, and will likely get some Shasvastii profiles done to round them out after that. So it's probably a next year thing, but it shouldn't be too hard to get the basics knocked out pretty quickly.

I had a test game of N4 Druze and they seemed pretty good. I don't think much has got worse for them. They'd be fun to run out for six months or so at some point, and I don't need anything painted for them. A few profiles have changed or got a nudge up, which is a bit of a theme, really. I miss Druze, it'd be good to get back to them. There's a bunch of their N4 upgrades I've not gotten to trying out properly yet.

A lot of the Dahshat staples have suffered a bit in the new edition. Their loss of Ghulam snipers hurts a core part of the N4 build I was using for them, and fireteams getting downgraded on top of that is rough. McMurrough isn't as tough, either. There's only a Cateran sniper to be added model wise, and that's not really going to hold me up from giving them a go.

Ikari are sitting in the "some time in the future" box right now. I basically have them due to a big crossover of the models from Druze, and some discounted models. I ran them on a whim once at an N3 tournament without any practice and got absolutely ruined, and they do deserve better.

Qapu Khalqi also need a few bits before I can get them going, but I think they're ahead of Ikari in my brain. I like Haqqislam as a faction, and "QK" have picked up a few new and interesting profiles. Another future project, but one I think I could really put some time into and have fun with.

I've been playing my White Company for a good bit at the end of N4. There's a bunch of new character models that have been added to the faction, which I'll need to get painted up. I'm going to take a break from them, but I expect I'll start to miss them in a bit and want to come back to them soon.

Nomads are the faction I really want to get back to at some point. I want to get them painted first and that's been the real blocker so far. I think they're pretty much queued up after I get vanilla Combined Army done, but that might be a while. So, one for the future...

White Company Brawlers

 

The Brawlers for my White Company that Tesseract Studios painted for me. I accidentally sent bases without fire arc markers, and we only spotted this after they were painted. Stu then fixed it by sculpting the fire arc markers with green stuff.

Brawlers aren't a White Company profile, but they're available as Reinforcements, so they'll turn up from time to time. They get slightly different profiles as Reinforcements, too. For now, though, they're away in the case waiting to deploy.