2025 in review

Happy New Year! As is tradition, it’s time to look back at the year just gone, and lament the fact that I didn’t suddenly develop hyper focus and stick to just one project. I say this with tongue firmly in cheek though, as despite my claims to my wife that this blog is my second job, I’m not actually getting paid to do it so I’d much rather paint things as they take my fancy rather than trying to paint in a ‘businesslike’ way. Spoilers for later in this post - it’s probably only going to get worse this year…

Tally

Having managed to squeak in a House Stark dog handler (although in hindsight, House Bolton probably makes more sense) before the end of the year, the Tally ended up at 52 vs 309 = -257. I’ve just realised - the blog has been running for 15 years now! I know the internet has changed, and blogs aren’t the thing any more, but I think I’ll keep posting even if it ends up being only Suber reading all of the surviving blogs.  So, 15 years of stats:

2025: -257 (52 painted)

2024: -142 (62 painted)

2023: -194 (33 painted)

2022: 0 (85 painted)

2021: +16 (52 painted)

2020: -100 (47 painted)

2019: +3 (46 painted)

2018: +52 (52 painted)

2017: -14 (47 painted)

2016: -287 (56 painted)

2015: -96 (59 painted)

2014: 0 (80 painted)

2013: -416 (25 painted)

2012: -103 (68 painted)

2011: -173 (122 painted)

And as always, a graph:

It’s always slightly surreal seeing other people’s end of year posts where they say ‘unfortunately due to various issues I was only able to paint 763 28mm this year, as well as a variety of vehicles, terrain pieces, and one 1:1 scale battleship’. Around 50 is a standard year for me, and 100 would be a bumper year!

Posts

31 posts last year, which is on the lower side of average. It was an odd year - no posts in February, as I was busy enjoying my new ps5, and then the lull over the summer caused by having to find somewhere new to live not leaving much time for painting miniatures. Once we were settled in, I got cracking with Zomtober and doubled the number of miniatures I had painted so far for the year, and things were looking up. Then I got signed off from work the day before Halloween, and I suddenly found myself with time to play some games. 10 posts in December too, which  nearly a third of the entire year’s output. So the secret is to not go to work, noted. Not really a sustainable plan in the long term though, especially since I’ve already started back at work… 

Last Year’s Challenge

• Finish at least one playable force for a game

I did not in fact do this. This year though Gadget, this year…

• Play at least 4 games in 2025

This I actually managed, playing 5 games of Frostgrave, but it was enabled by getting signed off of work for 2 months which left me a lot more time for games than I usually have… next year I’ll have to try and get games in more regularly throughout the year!

• Prep all the monkeys in the monkey box

I was actually tempted to try and get this done this year when I found myself with more free time than anticipated (the box is actually next to me as I type this), but got sidetracked by things like playing games. Admittedly, I did buy the first three modern Apes movies on DVD after finding them in the charity shops between Christmas and New Year’s, so never say never…

• Convert at least one miniature

Quite a few kitbashes this year, including my Knight of the Order of St Lazarus, an in hindsight unnecessary Man at Arms for Frostgrave, and a bevy of zombies for Zomtober.

• Add to the Monstrous Alphabet project

Only one addition this year, and not a huge one as it was a pair of tiny Intellect Devourers. I actually had a dig through the Monster Manual recently to have a look at what options I have for letters that I haven’t hit yet, but anything that I want to paint that would be useful for the family D&D game I’d need to buy, whereas anything I already have a suitable mini for I didn’t really fancy. 

• Do Zomtober posts

Always! I love a themed post, and this year’s Zomtober actually managed to double the number of minis I’d been able to paint YTD, and set me up to aim for hitting the one mini a week average by the end of the year…

• Do a May the Fourth post

These themed posts are good for getting me to focus, if only briefly with a Mandalorian painted this year. I keep being tempted to pick up my Star Wars project again for more than just one day a year - maybe of we ever get around to watching Andor season 2 I’ll be more motivated to.

• Do a Festive post

Krampus!

• Average at least a miniatures week (so at least 52 completed miniatures)

It was right, but managed it st the eleventh hour

• Finish more miniatures than I did in 2024 (so at least 63)

The drought in the middle of the year from getting evicted and having to find somewhere new to live didn’t help with this, to be fair

• End the year with the Tally in the positive (hey, I’m an optimist, what can I say)

I mean, I have managed it in the past, but on the other hand, damn those historical manufacturers for including so many miniatures for a reasonable price in their boxes!

Projects (according to the last end of year post)

Board games

My first finished mini this year was from the Umbrella Academy board game, but I couldn’t keep motivated after that. Which is odd, as it’s so much nicer playing with painted pieces, and there are a couple of other games that I’ve recently been eyeing on our games shelf with a thought to getting them painted. I wonder if we’d won the last game of Umbrella Academy id have been more motivated to paint the next lot of enemies…

Frostgrave

Unusually, I did in fact do the things I said I would in last year’s post - I finished off the Mausoleum, and even played through a three scenario mini campaign after playing through the two scenarios I had originally planned to!

Acolyte

The Acolyte is converted, and has some base coats applied, but despite basically living on my painting tile he never manages to be the most attractive mini there, so there he has stayed. 

The Silver Bayonet

Foolishly, I tried to paint the last member of the Unit that I needed to be able to start the solo campaign during my end of year rush to get my numbers up, and he ended up looking a bit French, so I felt like I should use him in a different unit. Probably not helped by having bought the pack of special edition Silver Bayonet minis from North Star, so I’m potentially subconsciously sabotaging myself so that I can paint one of them instead.

Zombies

Still no sign of the Evolutions expansion for Last Days getting a legal rerelease, so my zombie work this year was limited to Zomtober. I say limited, I converted and painted ten more than I do most years…

Star Wars

As mentioned in the Challenge section, I did in fact do a May the Fourth post, but didn’t watch Andor so didn’t get motivated to do more than that. At one point my plan for next year was a relaunched Star Wars project, but as you’ll find out later that rapidly mutated int9 something else.

Cowboys and The Alamo

The closest I came was painting a zombie cowboy last year! My Mexicans remain unpainted, although I did prep the nice metal command for them that my Brother in Law got me from Boot Hill miniatures…

Superheroes

5 miscellaneous X-Men and X-Villains added to the painted total this year, but not any of the ‘proper’ X-Men finished. This may or may not have to do with how much yellow there is to paint on them, which I usually find quite tricky to get a finish that I’m happy with on…

Cyberpunk

I finished the videogame recently, but that doesn’t really count for this. A bunch of the minis that I dug out for this project have actually gotten folded into another project that is reappearing on the list this year…

Back burner:

Warhammer, Rangers, Battletech

Nothing really happened with these, unless you count me painting the tents that I had bought for the next Rangers of Shadow Deep scenario. I also bought a bridge for the same reason, although I haven’t even cracked the shrink wrap on that yet…

2026 Projects

Warriors of Athena

This comes out in February, so I’ll be grabbing both books as soon as I can. I’ve accrued a bunch of Greek sprues, so the plan is to grab some pals, stick on Jason and the Argonauts or Clash of the Titans and kitbash warbands. I suspect as per Rangers though I’ll need some specific monsters and scenery, which will likely be the biggest hurdle to getting it on the table. 

Firefly

So, funny story. I saw someone over on the LAF was running a series of Star Wars games that were a mashup between Stargrave and another system, and thought brilliant, I could do that, I’ve got a bunch of painted scavengers and Stormtroopers that would do for a couple of enemy types, I could run an Andor like squad of special operatives, and all the scenarios work by just filing off the word ‘Pirate’ and saying ‘Empire’ instead. Then I thought about it a bit more, and thought that actually I could dig out my old long back burnered Firefly project, and run a crew of ne’erdowells doing moves in the ‘verse, and all the scenarios work by just filing off the word ‘Pirate’ and saying ‘Alliance’ instead… it’s not going to be strictly canon though, as there are no aliens in Firefly and I don’t want to limit myself to just fighting human enemies.

The problem with me starting a sci-fi project though is that while I do have some minis that can get press-ganged (scientists and security guards from my 7tv box will work just as well in space, as do more Cyberpunk minis) I’m going to need to build some terrain. Whereas any new fantasy project I start, I’ve now built up enough suitable scenery that it’s a much lower barrier to entry (and I know, I can do sci-fi games in the wastelands fighting over rocks, but I’d like some thematic stuff!)

Barons War

I got the starter set for Christmas, because I am now of an age that I’m interested in historical gaming, and knights are cool! I might even see if I can build a retinue with a local history twist, or see if there were any Barons with the same surname as me. On the other hand, I have also been tempted to make a bunch of buff bishops with bare muscular arms, so we’ll see how that goes.

Side note - it’s entirely possible I’ll end up starting a Robin Hood project too using these rules. Or the Third Crusade. Or:

A Song of Ice and Fire

When finding out about Barons War, I was struck by inspiration that it might actually be the perfect rule set to use with my Game of Thrones minis that were largely painted about twelve years ago and never actually got to take part in a game (apart from some of the zombies, admittedly). Which is a shame, as I really enjoyed kitbashing these, and painting small batches to add bits here and there is much more likely to get finished than me trying to paint a big army. Barons War also has a fantasy spinoff called Warhost, which I might have to have a nose at to see if I can lift things - presumably there are monsters, so I could use the Mountain as some sort of troll…the only thing not covered I think would be pikes, but I can probably just count them as spears I guess.

So, vague plans - get the Lannisters and Starks up to 500 point retinues. Try to avoid getting sidetracked into starting new Houses # I’ve already planned what sprues I’d need to make some House Tully troops, but I feel like the sensible thing to do would be to actually finish the Starks first before I start expanding them…

Outremer

My interest in the Third Crusade (with it’s snazzy Templars, leprous knights et al) led me to buy Outremer Faith and Blood, a small scale skirmish game that it would be nice to build a band or two for. Rumour is that the Barons War Outremer expansion is going to get updated to Second Edition in the near future too, so if they run a kickstarter for that I might be tempted to pick up a few bits and bobs…

Silver Bayonet

One more mini and I have a playable Unit! I have a vague idea that I’d like to play through the Krampus mini campaign that Goonhammer published next Festive season, which is apparently suitable for more experienced Units, so in a world where this was my only project I’d play through a few solo scenarios to prep for that…

Frostgrave

No definitive plans for the further adventures of Tim the Necromancer, but the good thing about Frostgrave is that I’ve got what I need to play a variety of scenarios if the fancy takes me. Knowing my luck though, I’ll get it into my head that I want to play a scenario that needs specific monsters and terrain painting, so we shall see…

Alamo

The vague plan has always been to play through a connected set of scenarios, with the Alamo siege itself being a series of separate scenarios the results of each will affect the final battle, and then doing the battle of San Jacinto. I’ve got ten years until the two hundredth anniversary of the Texas Revolution, so I figure if I paint at lest one unit a year between now and then I should have enough. That’s doable right?

Zombies

I’ll do Zomtober next year, as always. I haven’t decided on a theme yet - will I go back to adding to my Zombieslayer Warhammer zombies? Will there be space zombies? Or will I go back t9 my original love as per the header of this blog?

Star Wars

I’ll do May the Fourth, but I can’t commit to any more than that. The previously mentioned idea to do Star Wars Stargrave isn’t off the table though…

This is definitively too many projects. But I am excited and enthusiastic about so many things, even as my rational brain points out that I can’t really do all of them…

Back Burner:

The usual suspects, Doctor Who, Warhammer, Battletech, Acolyte, Superheroes etc. they’re not my main focus, but if the fancy takes me…

As it’s the fifteenth anniversary of the blog, I thought I’d take a quick look back at the projects from my very first blog post and see what fifteen years of progress looks like:

Primary Projects:

Zombies

Although I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as my main project these days, I painted a bunch more stuff and actually played some games. I had originally planned to use my own rules, but then found Last Days which did the things I was planning on doing but better, with the benefit of also being able to buy whole rather than having to develop myself!

Three Kingdoms

I have painted a single mini for this project twelve years ago. There’s I think 32 in various states of basecoat though, as if that makes it any better…

Firefly/Serenity

I painted about half dozen minis for this project here and there. But next year it’s back on the agenda!

Strange Aeons

I actually painted a useable Threshold team, and a few monsters, but not enough to ever get a game of it in. Some of the monsters painted for this are actually being used by em4 on their website, and in their marketing emails sent out in the last month though, so that’s nice.

Doctor Who

Always on the back burner, but never fully off it, I’ve added bits here and there. My plan recently was to watch the series with my children and then use that as an on-ramp to some miniature gaming, but they found it too scary so that’s on pause. I’ve been converting some Torchwood troopers with the hopes of having enough to be able to play through the old Crooked Dice Canary Wharf booklet though, so if I can get some more beret wearing heads you may see more here in the future…

Secondary projects:

VSF

The “whole bunch of converted ministures” mentioned in that original post are in fact still in that same drawer. I’ve gone off the brits a bit though, they were converted from Wargames Factory Zulu war brits which were frankly shonky, no matter how nice the head from Ramshackle Games I stuck on top (and to be fair, my attempt at VSF-ing their rifles using pins and tiny beads doesn’t look great). I actually quite like my Martian conversions though, so maybe one day they’ll see the paint tile…

AEWWII

Nothing painted since I launched the blog. I actually found my box of unbuilt minis for this the other day…

Warmachine

I’ve painted some mercenaries, but no actual faction models. I do occasionally buy them though… they brought the game back, which is of little interest to me, as I was always more into the old lore and they blew up the world (but in a narratively sensible way, as it had been leading to that for something like nineteen real years, as opposed to the Warhammer Fantasy way).

Anima Tactics

I painted a single mini in 2011. I did steal some hefty inspiration from the rules for this game for the energy mechanic I use in the Gundam game that I play with my kids though…

Evil Genius/7TV

I’ve added bits here and there, but nothing since 2018 - I did buy Evil Genius 2 in the PlayStation Christmas sale though, which had me digging through my drawers of miniature and lovingly eyeing those Copplestone sculpted guards in hard hats…

Marvel Superheroes

Probably the project that actually gets the most regular love, whilst still being quite irregular. Being able to add a model here and there as it takes my fancy seems to be the key to success (as shown by me having stalled a bit trying to get too many X-Men prepped at once). I’ve played some games of Super Mission Force with my children using these, and there are also a bunch of Batman minis painted too that could probably get a run out using the same rules…



GW:

Hmmm, well. The biggest takeaway in the last fifteen years is that I realised that I’m not the target market for modern GW, and I’m fine with that. I still have vague plans for Mordheim, classic Warhammer Fantasy etc, but they’re so far on the back burner you can only see them with a sufficiently powerful microscope.

Fantasy

• Night Goblins - I think I painted a single mini? I struggled getting a skin tone that I liked, which has slowed progress somewhat…
• Skaven - the plan was to play some 500 point Eighth Edition, but it turns out I’m not a huge fan of batch painting. I painted an entire unit of slaves over the course of a month, which was a pain but did in fact result in me having a finished unit, as opposed to trying to paint clanrats half dozen at a time, which has not.
• Dwarves - Gotrek is a dwarf, that counts right? Another project that mostly lives in boxes…
• Mordheim - I still have the boxed game and enough miniatures for three plus warbands. My plan at the start of Covid lockdown in 2020 was to crack on with these - I wrote out warband lists, planned some conversions, and then a buddy introduced me to Rangers of Shadow Deep…

40k

• Witch hunters - a couple of inquisitorial henchmen, which may one day see use if I ever finish my Acolyte…
• Chaos - my Huron Blackheart mini has been undercoated for so long they’ve actually gone and produced a new sculpt…
• Space Marines - I actually made a start on getting a small playable force of Space Marines painted. Then Primaris became a thing. Also, I think I’ve lost interest in 40K a bit as they’ve revamped the rules so much, whereas for several previous editions the core was basically the same so I could trick myself into thinking that I could jump back in at any time…
• Orks - I did not in fact come back to these, and sold them on eBay. Occasionally I regret this, largely when thinking ‘boy I should start a Gorkamorka project’, but luckily these thoughts are usually easily squashed back down where they belong.
• Blood Pact - those conversions are still in a box. Every now and then I’m tempted to go back and start Gaunt’s Ghosts from the start again, which would probably make me want to revisit these, but the conversions are pretty wonky even for me…

So overall, it looks like I’ve not really done anything on the things that I was planning to do when this blog started!how have I managed over 500 posts then? By constantly starting new projects I guess… I’ve actually managed to play some games with my toys in recent years though, so I’ll call that a success!

2026 Challenge

So, here is the challenge for the coming year:

• Finish at least one playable force for a game
• Finish at least one unit for the Alamo project
• Play at least 4 games in 2026
• Prep all the monkeys in the monkey box
• Convert at least one miniature
• Add to the Monstrous Alphabet project
• Do Zomtober posts
• Do a May the Fourth post
• Do a Festive post
• Average at least a miniatures week (so at least 52 completed miniatures)
• Finish more miniatures than I did in 20245 (so at least 53)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive (hey, I’m an optimist, what can I say)

Some will succeed, some will fail (again, finishing a unit for the Silver Bayonet involves painting one miniature!), but we shall see - and as ever, these are going to be something to hopefully give me some structure or drive inspiration for things to do, rather than being a chain to best myself with…

A rather grumpy looking Doctor…

So, it used to be the case that I’d watch YouTube while doing the washing up or cooking dinner, but instead I’ve started watching classic Doctor Who - I watched a bunch of Pertwee stories (as he’s I think my favourite Doctor from childhood), and even discovered a newfound appreciation for Patrick Troughton after enjoying the War Games enough that I went back and watched some of his serials too! Enjoying these so much (especially Inferno, with it’s parallel universe eyepatch wearing Brigadier shenanigans), I was enthused to cajole my children into continuing watching modern Who, and also to set about prepping and painting some Whoniverse miniatures.

On the painting front, I finished this miniature of the Doctor’s twelfth incarnation:

He’s been sat undercoated for far too long, so I’m happy to finally have him done! He’s a slightly odd choice for me to have painted though, as I think we only got two episodes into Capaldi’s run before falling off watching the series, and are now working our way back to that point, but that’s neither here nor there.

According to Wikipedia his jacket and trousers should actually be dark blue rather than black, which probably would have been easier to paint - I used a Chris Peach inspired method for painting the blacks, which has come out a little shiny, but I think that’s mostly due to me being a bit heavy handed with using a dark wash to knock back the highlights.

Speaking of highlights, I was having a play with my phone while taking these pictures, and tried some using macro mode:

I think it looks much the same as the original, admittedly. The picture of the back of him had I think a truer representation of the colours, but was also sadly out of focus when I came to include it in this post so I’m going to omit it.

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

15 vs 206 = -191

Long term, I’ve had an idea what I want to do with my various miniatures of Doctors - down in the basement, I have this Tardis display case that was released for the Micro Universe figures:

Inside there are 32 spaces for miniatures, so I figure I could do Doctors down the left, companions on the right:

Here’s a sneak preview of what I’ve been prepping too:

Anyone who says that a Dalek isn’t poseable just isn’t trying hard enough…

On the non-Who front, we’ve been decorating our clipboards for the family D&D game:

Including my daughter teaching me how to make DIY stickers, so that I could make a custom sticker of her brother’s character for his clipboard:

And the cultists and treasure seen in my last post also go a run out today - the cultists fared much worse than the dragon (dubbed Drago Malloy in my head so that I could keep his voice and character fixed in mind):

What’s next? Nothing, in theory, as I really should be packing everything up to move, but what has actually happened is I’ve dug out a load of other Who minis in various states of bare metal and undercoated, (as well as heavily hinting to my daughter and wife that a miniature that looks an awful lot like Pertwee would make an excellent Father’s Day gift) so watch this space…

It just came off in my hand!

For a while now, I’ve been wanting to start watching Doctor Who again. We’d originally stopped watching when Capaldi took over, and so I thought I might as well start again, and work my way back through the modern series that I’d previously watched. I then delayed this plan by a couple of years, as I figured that I’d like to watch it with my children, but they were a bit young for it at the time. So when my eldest hit 8, I figured it was go time! It’s still a bit scary (and to my surprise, my youngest has clicked with it more than my eldest, and he’s only just turned 4), but I thought it might also be an opportunity to play some games too, so I turned to the Doctor Who Miniatures Game:

(The sun came out today, so I took the opportunity to take a poses picture too!)

For the first scenario, based on the first episode with Christopher Ecclestone’s Doctor, you need 6 Autons:

3 are Autons from the Doctor Who Micro Universe range, that I was luckily able to pick up dozens of packs of way back when.

I mixed up the colours a bit to try and give them some variety, but didn’t do any conversion work, as I figured animated mannequins would probably be on pretty much the same pose anyway…

To bulk out my ‘official’ Autons, I turned to the human figures from the Micro Universe range. While the monsters are generally brilliant, the human figures suffer from soft detail on their faces and hands - which makes them ideal candidates to be painted up as mannequins!

I took (from L-R) Martha, the eleventh Doctor, and Sarah-Jane, and cut and repositioned their arms to make them look slightly awkward, like their arms are fixed in position:

Mannequin Martha has come out looking a little bit like she’s coming in for a hug, but I’m not mad about it.

Finishing this half dozen brings the Tally to:

19 vs 41 = -22

What comes next? There’s a bunch of odds and ends on my painting tile, so I should probably work on clearing some space there! Although I should probably work on some more modern terrain…

Mayday! Mayday! Is there a doctor in the house?

 So, in between my laser focus in painting Skaven and making scenery for my year-long zombie campaign, I’ve recently dug this mini out of the painting queue to finish:

It’s Heresy’s version of John Hurt’s War Doctor, and I think it might be Andy Foster’s best sculpt, the likeness is just brilliant. I didn’t paint it his eyes, as I liked the grumpy squinty scowl he has going on…

To get myself prepped for painting him, I listened to the audiobook ‘The Innocent’, which I think I got as a freebie when we went into lockdown, and I highly recommend, even if only to spend an hour of your life going ‘wow, John Hurt really as brilliant wasn’t he?’.

One lesson from painting this mini - I really need to make sure I pin everything! Apparently I didn’t pin his hand when I built him (way back in the mists of time when he was originally available), as I discovered when he took a tumble off my painting tile and there was a horrible five minutes when I couldn’t find his missing hand - thankfully my wife was able to spot it, and I was able to glue it back on!

Finishing him brings the Tally to:

12 vs 41 = -29

Christmas, a time for… Daleks?

Work continues apace on finishing miniatures to drag my annual total up to one a week before the end of the year, but I did take a brief diversion to paint this:

My deputy at work is a big Doctor Who fan whose favourite colour is baby blue, so I thought I’d add a deputy sheriff star to a Dalek and paint it up to give it to her as a little gift. Looking at the pictures as I’m posting this, I’m wondering if I should try to add Deputy or her name to the star, but worry that it might go horribly, horribly wrong…

Dalek miniatures have 48 little globes, I discovered while painting this, which each need to be individually carefully painted and highlighted. They look a little rough in these blown up pictures, but rest assured they look fine in hand! The idea that I might one day have an army of painted Daleks took a bit of a hit after painting just the one, mind… using dark grey rather than black to shade the recesses of the metallic areas has set some wheels turning in my head though, proving that everything you do is a learning opportunity!

Tally:

39 vs 23 = +16

Next, a return to our regular scheduled programming of finishing the various odds and ends on my painting tile, and not prepping a whole load of new miniatures that now need undercoating. Oh no, certainly not, laser focus, that’s me.

Four more years! 2014 in review...

Ah, the annual year in review post, wherein your intrepid author aims to objectively review his project progress for the year without waffle or navel-gazing, which inevitably devolves into a list of things that I have still not completed and the things that distracted me from them!

I made 68 posts last year, making it my most prolific to date. Despite my claims last year that I'd try and post more wip posts rather than just painted miniatures, this didn't always happen (and in fact there are still wip projects waiting to be posted from the year before!) - an exception being the post before this one, but in the interest of full disclosure I'd have to admit that he only got posted because I was reminded of the fact that I was going to be posting more wip pics whilst working on a draft of this post!

I also managed to make at least one post a month, although the traditional drought towards the end of the year was still present - I just don't seem to get stuff done in the Autumn and Winter! This year admittedly though it was down to a number of factors, including some time spent playing Mass Effect, a downer period of wanting to get a new job, and preparation for the impending arrival of my daughter next year, which will also mean that I'll have less hobby time next year! Well, we all know I was never going to be an army painter anyway...

Tally

80 vs 80 = 0

I squeaked it back into the black (technically) at the eleventh hour, which is especially impressive considering the monumental size of the negative the year before!

2014: 0 (80 painted)

2013: -416 (25 painted)
2012: -103 (68 painted)
2011: -173 (122 painted)

Last year's 'projects for next year':

Path to glory

Another year, and the warband is still sat undercoated in a box waiting for a tickle with the paintbrush. Admittedly a little paint has been daubed on some of the miniatures, but not enough to warrant a post about the affair. Whilst I did in fact get round to producing a finalised updated set of rules for the modern wargamer who fancied a spot of Chaos warband based skirmish wargaming, I still have as of yet to finish the Chaos Wastes themed scenery that has likewise been sat half-finished for over a year now... It's a bit of an odd fish this one, as it's a project that I'm enthused about, I have everything I need for it, and it's not exactly an unreasonable amount of miniatures to paint before calling it done, but it just seems whenever I go to put some time into it something else always seems more appealing... I'm not going to relegate this project to the back burner just yet, as it's still eminently achieve able, but admittedly that's what I said this time last year... 

Batman

I emptied the Heroclix figures out of my stripping pot, found that they were generally still as caked in paint as the year I'd put them in there, and then packed them away in a baggie. Onto the back burner for this project, for now at least...

Zombieslayer/slayers

I acquired some more for the collection, and painted Gotrek and Felix, but beyond  cleaning up and undercoating a couple if models no other progress has been made...

It's a bit like the Path to Glory project in a way, in that I've pretty much for everything I need, but whenever I sit down to paint something there's always something else that just piques my interest a little bit more...

Star Wars 

(This picture is from my wedding day)

The one project that looked like I was actually focusing on a single thing for once, after playing some Star Wars Battlefront with my godson back in August and joining the 6 Month Mountain Reduction Project, I beavered away and managed to knock out a few painted figures! All I need to do now is paint up an equivalent amount of Rebel Troopers and (gasp) I could even use them to play some sort of game!

A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones):

Waaaay back in February, I painted the House Stark troops that I'd previously converted. Other than that, I've converted a couple of Lannister troops, worked on my in armoured Jaime conversion (the head I have for it is just a smudge too big I think, curse you slender figures!), and done some work on the flesh times of my Ned conversion, but nothing else. The Christmas gift of some new Perry sprues should spur me into some more conversions though (and admittedly, the only reason I didn't start doing some on Christmas Day was that my superglue had dried out!)


Dungeons and Dragons

It seems ever more unlikely with the passage of time that my 4e game will take off (I mean, 5th edition is out now, it's been that long). That doesn't stop me from painting generic fantasy miniatures though, and as I'm currently playing in a Pathfinder campaign I may end up painting a few miniatures for that too, and then it's really just the same project with the serial numbers filed off and a snazzy new title...


Rise of the Planet of the Apes

I bought the hench gorilla I was after from Bushido the game, and put him in the tub of miniatures that I have for this project. I even picked up the Heroclix figures I was after for a couple of conversions (I wanted some 28mm discarded riot gear for apes to brandish), but having still not gotten around to seeing the film, bar a single slightly too small gorilla painted back in April my attention still hasn't swung around to painting up gangs of apes (and potentially the whacking great integral bases that need filing off of a number of the miniatures might have something to do with it too...)

Others:

The backburner projects: Halo, Three Kingdoms, Doctor Who, Blood Bowl, and all the rest - not a lot doing. I painted up a couple of Silence miniatures, and the occasional oddment that caught my eye, as is my way.

I did however finish the display board that I was making, that I now use in most (if not all) of the pictures that I post, so that's a victory of sorts I guess?

Next years projects:

(Yes, this will be the basis of next year's retrospective post)

ASOIAF

As mentioned, I've just had some new figures for this project, so will hopefully be able to take the two starter forces up to skirmish level (including painting my Ned conversion and finishing off my Jaime). This project has always suffered from being a bit too grand in scope, as I have ideas for all sorts of warbands, but if I can get a couple done then I can add a figure or two here and there gradually as time goes on... 

Since starting the draft of this post, I've built a couple of House Stark archers and bought a copy of the World of Ice & Fire book, so you may be seeing something from this project sooner than you'd expect!

The Last of Us

If I let myself buy some bits from Miniature Mojo (assuming that the bits that I want are back available on their webstore) then with the bits I already have squirrelled away and a little green stuff this project could be a goer, as it only needs about half a dozen conversions and it's ready to go! We've heard that before though, so we shall see...

The Thing

As my beloved put some 'not The Thing' survivor miniatures from Studio Miniatures in my stocking this Christmas, and I have a whole host of chaos spawn bits for making grubby fleshy monstrosities in my bits box, this is another small scale easily achieveable project that I will probably get distracted from...

Star Wars

As previously mentioned, basing and painting a squad of rebels is all I'd need to do to have two skirmish size forces, then it would just be a case of painting the occasional figure that caught my fancy (like the remaining bounty hunters, for example - if anyone has a spare Zuckuss figure lying around to complete my set I'd be eternally grateful...)

Path To Glory

Same as last year, I just need to finish painting the warband that's been under coated for gods knows how long... And then finish the scenery that is already almost done...

Mass Effect

Way back when (four years or so back) I started playing the original Mass Effect. Alas, my xbox wiped my save, and it was four years before I was ready to give it a second chance, and even then that is mostly because a friend of mine played through the games around the time of the birth of his son, and with the imminent arrival of my daughter I thought that seemed like as good a reason as any to give it another go! Being a Bioware game (oh, Knights of the Old Republic, how I loved you), it's a compelling sci if tale that really would translate quite well to something miniatures based, whether that be a tabletop wargame or perhaps the D20 RPG that you can find floating sound on the internet... Alas, I don't have any miniatures already in the lead mountain that can be pressed into service, but if I can get my hands on a copy of Sedition Wars and some Infinity and Mantic miniatures I should be able to come up with something! The main issue I've had so far is that all of the aliens look so very... alien, which makes it hard to proxy humanoid scifi miniatures for them! And don't get me started on the difficulty of finding a suitable head donor for a Batarian...

On the back burner:

ROTPOTA - going onto the backburner for now, because that's where it's most likely to get worked on when it distracts me from a main project! Although admittedly, between finishing the draft of this post and it actually hitting the internet, I've since re-watched the first (modern) film, so we'll see if that affects my future decisions on what to paint!

Nerdmarines - 3 minis to paint, but 2 are vehicles. Might get some love between larger projects, but we'll see...

Everything else - if you've read this blog more than once, you'll know my hobby preferences are like that of a magpie, so the occasional Doctor Who miniature (or maybe the Deadpool mini I got for Christmas) will probably sneak in here and there!