July ‘26 In Review

Starting the month with 100 degree days certainly is a miserable way to kick things off. On the upside, the Dungeon Dwellers RPG kickstarter arrived. Nice big box of new minis to paint and rules to read! Did I actually do any of that? A little. I started reading the campaign guide. I decided to delve into the Painted Wastelands Empire of Bones first, since that arrived last month. As for the minis? Well, they ended up getting checked and then repacked and added to my pile of potential. 

July 4th brought the usual fireworks around the neighborhood. It was otherwise a rather uneventful month. I planted some pumpkin seeds and I’ve got 3 plants that were coming along well. I hope I can get a few pumpkins from them.  2 are still going strong, bur one got damanged on the main stem and it looks like I'm going to lose the whole plant. 

Miniatures
I finished building the main body of the cardboard transport ship, and then paused. I’m trying to decide if I should build the roof of it or get to painting? I’m still unsure, but at this point leaning toward making the roof. 

But it was the middle of the month before I seriously got around to doing much painting, but once I did, I plowed through a trio of Noble Armada ships, a pirate, and a whole cartload of orcs (mostly done)! I experimented a bit with painting the orcs without priming. The paint takes to the 3d printed minis just fine, but color matching against the orcs I’d already painted was a pain, and I ended up going back and using brown liner on the rest. 



Gaming
Summer doldrums, and no work games. I’m really looking forward to getting back to Dolmenwood. 

We wrapped up the beetleknight game, and are back to Stonehell. The party is looking for a way to destroy the Gloom Crown, and think they might have the answer. Of course along the way they stumbled upon some dwarves and kobolds fighting over some cursed silver… 


Media 
Resident Alien season 4
DS9 season 6 rewatch
Letterkenny

Books
Second Suns
Broken Stars
Storm & Quill

Loot
Dungeon Dwellers RPG
4 Alternity books (my collection is almost complete)


Goals for August
Finish the cardboard transport ship

June ‘26 In Review

Summer has well and truly arrived. School is out for the kid, my FiL is here to help take care of him for the break, and temperatures are supposed to hit 100 this week. I can only hope the high temps and the potential thunderstorms keep the neighborhood artillery blasts to a minimum for the 4th of July weekend, but I doubt it. 

Trek Long Island was this month, and I brought the kid with me. He had a blast. I… mostly got to watch him have a blast. I suppose this is the only real way to introduce him to the Con life. Next year will be better. 

Miniatures
You ever get one of those bees in your bonnet? An idea you just can’t get out of your head, and if you don’t make it happen NOW your brain won’t let you do anything else? I got 2 of them this month. The first was building the cardboard space transport, and the other was turning an old GW paint pot into a Killa Kan. I actually finished building the Killa Kan, and have made good progress on the ship. 

 

On the paint desk, I wrapped up a bunch of wolves, a couple of trolls, the BFG Dhows, and a few other minis, and started on another set of Noble Armada ships, a Frostgrave mini, and am continuing to slowly work on converting some Space Gitz. 

Gaming
We continue bumbling our way through Old Oak city and the crazed wasps and white ants in our Beetle Knight game. While I’m enjoying it, I’m looking forward to getting back to Stonehell, though I do kinda feel an itch to play some sci-fi… something.

The Dolmenwood work game managed a couple sessions this month, and it’s delightful how players can make things just a little more complicated than they need to be. Need to shine some light on something? No, lets not just try lighting a torch, let’s go back to town, buy a dozen mirrors, and set them up to shine the sunlight in the spot we want! 

Media 
Hacks - They really stuck the landing with this one! 
Spider-Noir - Loved it!
Starship Troopers - Rewatch while scratch bashing Dana Meyers… Mmm
Sorceress - So cheesy, so bad… 

Books
Dungeon Crawler Carl Books 5, 6, 7 & 8 - I’m not sure how many tens of hundreds of pages that was, but I couldn’t put them down. 

Loot
Star Trek Lower Decks art book & 3 graphic novels
Reaper minis order
Free RPG Day: 
From Here to There, an old-school hexcrawl
Dungeons & Kittens
Level 1: indy RPG anthology

Goals for July
Play rescue  scenario of Stargrave Hope Eternal
Finish March & April session reports

May ‘26 In Review

Started the month with 3 days of jury duty. Largely a whole lot of waiting around to see if they could manage to find 18 jurors out of a pool of 170 potential picks. They did. The last person picked was # 126. I was #140. While I’m a little sad I didn’t get picked, the case was expected to run for 5 weeks! Over the 3 days I got to eat some good food from the city and read 5 books (see below). It was an unexpected break from work, but after the audit, it was kind of nice. It also really kickstarted my reading mood. I read more books this month than I usually read over 6 months!


Miniatures
I’ve already written about how I finished my trashbash tower. I also worked on a handful of BFG minis, one large imperial transport and a set of Nicassar Dhows (not quite done yet). There was also the weird assortment of a bed, a wolf, 2 skeletal canines, a troll.. And then I pulled out my greenstuff and got creative. Of course I mixed up too much, but that’s what mushroom balls are for, right?

Of course with all the reading I did, I didn’t get as much painting done this month, but the reading time was definitely worth it. 


Gaming
As I posted just a few days ago, I got in my game of Hope Eternal! It was a lot of fun, even though it’s a solo game. Gotta take better notes for the next one. I did find using the transcribe feature on my notes app helped a lot. 

My work game hit a few bumps this month, and we missed all but one session. I’d hoped to be through the intro scenario for Dolmenwood by now, but no such luck.

The Stonehell/Rappan sunday game is also on hold, but in it’s place we’ve been playing Beetle Knight, which is kinda the TTRPG version of Hollow Knight/Silksong

I also accidentally finished playing through Torchlight 2. I hadn’t realized I was on the final mission, and after I completed it, I went looking for my next quest, only to discover that there wasn’t one… I’ve been playing this game, in short little bits here and there for a couple of YEARS. 

Media 
Hacks
Daredevil Born Again season 2
Maul: Shadowlord
Minecraft
Punisher: One Last Kill


Books
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams. Fun, too short
Kipling's collected poems. Eh.
Beowulf. It's a classic for a reason.
Eversion by Alistair Reynolds. Such a well told story.
The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Holy crap does he have a way with words!
Dungeon Crawler Carl Books 2, 3, & 4
Murderbot Diaries: Platform Decay


Loot
Stars Without Number  


Goals for June
Play rescue  scenario of Stargrave Hope Eternal
Finish February session reports

April ‘26 In Review

As far as the goals for the month, this one was a bust. Didn’t get the tower painted, didn’t get in a game of Hope Eternal, didn’t get a lot of session reports written, and I’m now 4 months behind…. All of this because of the audit at work, traveling out of state for spring break and then again for a neifling’s birthday party, and inevitably coming down with a nasty cold right at the end of the month… What a joy it is to be working on pulling audit documentation while your head is stuffed up. 

On the other hand I got to spend time with family I don’t get to see often enough, and 2 different friends welcomed their first kids into the world! I can't wait to meet baby River and baby Spenser! 

Miniatures
With all the travel going on, and the audit at work, mini time was extremely limited this month. I am however extremely pleased with these 2 goblins. Overall though most of the work I got done was at much more of a tabletop standard, and could have all used far more attention. It really shows with the pirate. He looks good from a distance, but up close, his skin highlights were rough. 

 

I have bigger plans for next month…


Gaming
My work game has taken an unexpected turn. They expressed to me that they weren’t really interested in returning to The Caves of Chaos, and asked for some options. I offered them these:

Option 1. Various small local dungeons 
Option 2. Barrowgate and the expansive barrowfields beyond. Undead slaying and grave robbing
Option 3. Megadungeon delving (one big dungeon you keep returning to over and over. Does it have a bottom level? Who knows?)
Option 4. Fairy tale forest crawl
Option 5. Giant desert plateau crawl

Everyone got to pick their top 2 choices. Everyone picked the fairy tale forest crawl as one of their choices, so they wrapped up the little dungeon I had planned for the week, and then went off down a fairy road that’s dropping them inside the woods. I got to bring back Bertie Brittlebones the hag to chat with them.

The Stonehell/Rappan game has us continuing to make our way up from the semi-civilized trolls toward the surface. It's slow going and rough mapping. Stonehell is far more mapper friendly. 

Media 
Hacks
Daredevil Born Again season 2

Books
Dolmenwood campaign book

Loot
Printed out some more Flatline City terrain. 

Goals for April
Play scenario 4 of Stargrave Hope Eternal
Finish January & February session reports

March ‘26 In Review

What a month!! From winter to spring and back again a couple of times… Took a trip upstate for another weekend long gaming get together, and despite a cold that dragged on through the month, had a great time. On the long ride back and forth I listened to 1.66 audio books, and while there I had some excellent beers! 

Yes, that is the 20% abv D&D 50th anniversary stout! 

Work has been stupid busy with audit prep, which has meant some long hours and even weekend hours. It’ll be so nice when we’re through it. I also lost one of my team members rather suddenly, and once again find myself taking over a chunk of their duties. Lousy timing really... 


Miniatures
It ended up being a bit of a rush to get things done by the end of the month. I had bigger plans, but I’m still pleased with what I accomplished, and I’ve got some really fun minis lined up to work on in the next couple months. I am however way far behind on non-reaper minis so far this year… not counting the terrain I’ve been building, which is honestly the thing I’m most happy about. It's been hard not to start the next project! Though I have planned it. 

Aside from the terrain, I've done several rather large minis, including the wyvern, the boats, the shipwreck revenant, and the Tau capital ships. Q2 is going to continue the trend with another wyvern, and a ringwrath on a fell beast. 

Q1 minis

Gaming
I didn’t get in the next game of Hope Eternal, but I’m going to try to paint up the tower in April and get the game in before the end of the month.

Stonehell/Rappan has shifted from the B team’s exploration of Stonehell back to the Morgana’s crew and the goings on in Rappan. During our weekend together we stormed the first of the temples to Orcus. We’ll be better prepared next time. But in spite of being teleported over lava, we somehow managed a win, though it was a painful one.

The work game saw the adventurers deal with the wyvern, then have to deal with some insistent wererats, before departing for the big city and heading into the sewers for more rat tails as they await the completion of some custom equipment they’ve ordered.

Media
Hacks
Farscape season 3
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
Daredevil Born Again season 2

Books
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com (surprisingly raunchy, but fun)
The Three-Body Problem (audiobook, ⅔ done, need to finish it)

Loot
Picked up Stargrave: Dead or Alive and Bold Endeavor 

Goals for April
Paint up trashbash tower
Play scenario 4 of Stargrave Hope Eternal

February ‘26 In Review

For the shortest month of the year, I certainly managed to cram a whole lot into it, whether I wanted to or not. Work has kept me busy as we complete the year end wrap up and begin prep for the annual audit. School was out for winter break in the middle of the month, and so rather than spending $$$ to send the kid to camp, we spent $$$$ and all took off to San Juan for the week… coming back just in time for a blizzard to dump 2 feet of snow on us and close school for an extra 2 days. And somewhere in all that, I got my federal taxes figured out. 

San Juan was absolutely wonderful. It was so nice to go somewhere and be warm… Definitely worth the trip, and I even got to go to a castle! 


Miniatures
Playing that one game of Stargrave was enough to kickstart the hobby for the month, building 3 foamcore houses and starting on a fuel tank tower so that I could play the next scenario. It also got me to use some of those matchsticks from the kit I bought last month, and buy 1,000 stir sticks… the tower isn’t finished, but it is coming along nicely, and I’ve been having a great time working on it. And I’m already thinking about the crashed spaceship I’ll need for the next scenario! 

Aside from terrain, I painted up some more stirges, another axolotal mini, a halfling warrior from the (sadly ended) Sensible Shoes line, a Balthian (mind flayer), an alien trooper from Rogue Stars, and a half orc doxie. Kind of an all over the place month, and next month looks like it’s gonna be even wilder. 

Gaming
Because I didn’t get the tower finished, and with all the other stuff going on I didn’t get to play the next scenario of Hope Eternal, but I’m going to get the tower finished and get the game in soon. 

My work D&D game has the players hunting the wyvern. They spent one whole session planning, and buying supplies, and then went out to lay their trap for the monster, and encountering a bandit camp! With some excellent rolls on their end, they managed to wipe out the camp except for the leader, who they captured, and then discovered the loot was almost entirely in gems and jewels… they haven’t noticed that the jeweler who was in the Keep is no longer in residence. 

The Stonehell game has the players dealing with the aftermath of the death of the fairy queen and all the various trapped fey now stuck in the dungeon. They’re lucky they didn’t try to fireball the waffle house they came across.

Media 
Hacks
Farscape season 3
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy
John Wick 4
10 Things I Hate About You
The Devil Wears Prada


Loot
Mothership boxed sets Awaiting the Burning Gods and Nirvana on Fire

Goals for March
Play scenario 4 of Stargrave Hope Eternal
Finish November session reports

January ‘26 In Review

Let’s be clear. 

Fuck ICE.

Fuck Trump.

Fuck you if you support them. 

31 days in January, and approximately 31 of them felt like Mondays. The year end at work is always hectic and will continue to be so for the next 2 weeks. In spite of all this shit, I’m doing my best to keep myself sane and safe, and these ramblings and games and such are all an important part of that. 

In addition to my little hobbies and spending time with my family, I also completed 2 home improvement projects, insulating the front bay window and adding blow in cellulose insulation to the attic, all just in time for the bomb cyclone to descend upon the country. At least I got it all done before the cold arrived in force. 

Gaming
The work game saw the players complete their pilgrimage across the Painted Wastelands, and decided that they wanted to return to their home realm rather than stay in the lower … They returned to the Temple of the Whale God and used the portal to return home. Upon returning to the Keep on the Borderlands, they discovered that while only weeks had passed from their perspective, two and a half years had passed here!

The B team continued their explorations of the upper levels of Stonehell, focusing on the quadrant under the Korners where they discovered a tribe of Troglodites had taken over. It was an unpleasant and stinky discovery. 

And for the first time since October of 2023 I played another session of Stargrave Hope Eternal! The dice were overall kind and my crew can move on to scenario 4 after I level up and finish a few necessary terrain bits.  

Miniatures
Slow start to the year, but in the end it was productive. Even though I had a good selection of minis prepped, some started, it took a good chunk of the month before I found my mojo and could spend any time painting. 

Media 
Hacks
Farscape season 3
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy

Loot
I came across this match stick building kit at the thrift store for $5. 1050 match sticks, a cutting tool, and a big piece of 0.25” thick MDF! I have no idea what I’ll end up actually using the match sticks for, but it won’t be to build a plane. Somehow it’ll get used for some terrain… probably walkways and ladders. 


Goals for February
Finish prep for scenario 4 of Stargrave Hope Eternal
Finish October session reports

2025 in Miniatures

2025 was an exceedingly productive year, with 146 minis in total painted, plus a bunch of terrain! As with last year, my goal was to paint about half non-reaper minis. I hit 40% with 58 non-Reaper minis, and 88 Reaper minis. That beats last year's total, which included terrain! 

 

It's hard to say exactly how many pieces of terrain I painted, as a good bit of it is modular.  

I'm not sure what my favorite thing to work on this past year was, but the Pepto Norkers are definitely up there.  

 

My goals going into 2025 were: 

BFG/Other Space Ships - Success!

More Frostgrave/Stargrave - Success!

LotR Sauron & Ring Wraith on Fell Beast - Sauron yes, Ring Wraith on Fell beast, no

~50% non-Reaper Minis - Close

Build & Paint some Sci-Fi Terrain - Yes! One scratch built, the rest 3D printed. 

For 2026 I'm going to have some similar goals:

BFG/Other Space Ships - Finish the original Tau fleet ships I have and then get started on... something else. Eldar? Forgeworld style Tau? Chaos Battleship? 

More Frostgrave/Stargrave - paint some minis and use them in a game!

LotR Balrog & Ring Wraith on Fell Beast 

~50% non-Reaper Minis

Build & Paint some Sci-Fi Terrain - Scratch build a few more pieces with all the junk I've collected, including another trashbash spaceship

 More jungle scatter terrain for my alien ruins?

December '25 In Review

 It's never not a busy month in December. Work is always crazy busy for me this time of year, and with the holidays it makes the rest of my time equally busy. The holidays themselves were relatively low key, mostly focused on keeping the kid entertained, but as exhausting as it’s been, it was great to spend time with the family, and I’m looking forward to what 2026 will bring (I say with some dread). 


Gaming
The B team has dealt with the fey in Kobold Korners! Some interesting reaction rolls have resulted in the remaining fey wanting to stay and work with the kobolds, now that they are free of the fairy queen's influence. I don't know what their plan is next, but I should figure it out so I can make sure I've prepped what's needed. 

I didn't get quite as far along in my session reports as I'd planned, but still made a decent dent, and should wrap up August the next time I get to sit down to write.

My work game has been on hold for the holiday season, but should be starting back up again in January with the return of a player who's missed the last 6 months!

I’ve been thinking about what I want to do gaming wise in the upcoming year, and in short I want more. I was thinking about doing one of those daily challenges, but they’re hard. 

Miniatures
Coming in just at the wire I did manage to finish Valfuryx and I'm pretty happy with it! I didn't manage to finish up everything I'd planned for Q4, but I got most of it, and a solid start on everything else. 

In addition to that I've got a small pile of primed metal minis, mostly from Stargrave, that I plan on working on over the next few months. 

Unplanned, but I've continued to make good progress on my Flatline City terrain. At this point I've got more than enough painted terrain to play some Stargrave! So really no excuse not to get a game in next month.


Media 
Farscape season 2
Stranger Things season 5
Frosty the Snowman
Home Alone
Hacks season 2
Klaus
Miracle on 34th Street


Loot
Stars without Number and Mr Unpronounceable!  


Goals for January
Play 1 game of Stargrave
Finish August & September session reports

November ‘25 In Review

Busy month. But then when was the last time I didn’t have a busy month? Probably early-mid 2020…

Anyway, this month included the following highlights: Voted, came down with a nasty cold in the middle of the month, got better, gave blood, Thanksgiving.


Gaming
Again with the holidays, work only managed a pair of session, and I lost one of my players to a job change, so that sucks. They’re currently in the middle of the Pilgrimage of Yaldabythos from The Painted Wastelands.

Stonehell has the B team dealing with the Fey who’ve taken over the Kobold Korners, and the vampire who took up residence in the Quiet Halls.

Over Thanksgiving I got to try out Horrible Therapist, a very Cards Against Humanity style game. We stayed up way too late playing it, and laughed oh so much. Definitely NSFW or for kids.


Miniatures
While it wasn’t super productive on the miniatures side of things. On the terrain side, I got a lot done. The hamsterling had a couple days off this month, and as one of the activities I used to keep him entertained, we worked on a bunch of my 3D printed terrain, mostly using paint pens (come back tomorrow for a review). One of the cool things with this is that there’s a lot less mess, but also because of his help, they ended up more colorful than I’d have probably gone myself. It’ll make for a more interesting looking table, for sure.  Oh and I went ahead and got a few more things printed up, so this is going to be a very cool terrain set…

And since I need somewhere to put it and play with it, I finally cleared off the piece of plywood that had been sitting on top of the dog crate in my office gathering junk and painted it up. One side is green (using the leftover from the spider) with swirls of darker green, grey, and brown while the other is black. It took an entire 8oz bottle of craft black paint to do it too… 

Not perfect, but better than bare plywood, and certainly good enough to play some Rangers of Shadowdeep on! 

Media
Nightmare Before Christmas (yes, again)
Ghosts
K-Pop Demon Hunters
Superman
Farscape
Hacks

Loot
Dolmenwood kickstarter... these are some big books in the slipcase. They're just tall enough that they will only fit on one shelf of my current bookshelves. Specifically on the bottom, behind the doors... 

Rules Cyclopedia for scale

I also got a walking pad for under my standing desk. 

Goals for December
Finish painting Valfuryx the green dragon (and a handful of other minis)
Finish the session reports from August
Play one mission for Rangers of Shadowdeep or Stargrave 

October '25 in Review

What a month! I'm honestly not entirely sure how I managed it all! Between all the various things the kid had going on, getting ready for Halloween, watching a bunch of horror movies, and getting all the minis painted that I did? It is important to note the lack of blog posts in October, so that should tell you something.

Gaming

Sadly the work game has missed far more sessions than we've played recently. I'm hoping things ease up a bit for November.

Stonehell continues. The B team is still doing their best to resolve the fairy situation, having now encountered the Witch of the Deep and the ‘fairy’ king. I'm really looking forward to seeing what's going to happen next.

I also had the pleasure of running 2 totally new players and their family in a far too short game. It was a steampunk train robbery, and I wish I had a little more time with them. 2 hours was just too little... 

 

Miniatures

Okay, I’m super impressed with myself. I got so much more done this month than I was expecting. For the month:

5 imps

1 barkeeper

1 heroquest barbarian

2 spiders

1 skeletal pirate

6 Tau Defender Class Escorts

Baba Yaga’s Hut’s chicken legs and base

3 vampire daughters

1 small 3D print kiosk/shop

1 ork runtherd

1 tiefling warlock

1 bollard & gas can

1 sign post

 

15 Reaper minis, and 11 non-reaper minis. 

I also made a big start on 8 Tau Orca class escorts, and a big green dragon! 

Oh yeah, and I finished the GIANT spider for the yard. 

Media 

Killer Klowns from Outer Space

Farscape 

Fisk

Chopping Mall

From Beyond

Reanimator

Nightmare Before Christmas

Ghosts

Lifeforce

Loot

Reaper October Order!

Goals for November

Get through the session reports from the gaming weekend

Finish the dragon

September ‘25 In Review

Labor Day, and then the start of school. The kid is in kindergarten now, and the autumn schedule is in full swing. My blog reached its sweet 16, which is utterly bonkers. The weather has been doing that swing between too hot for autumn and feels like late October thing. Not my favorite, and given how dry it’s been I don’t think we’re gonna get a good foliage season this year. All in all a good but busy month. When was the last time I didn’t have a busy month??

Gaming
I try very hard to avoid online gaming, especially mobile gaming, as it’s such a time sink, but… but I’ve found myself drawn into Fallen London. I’ve been vaguely aware of it for a long time, and played the Sunless Sea game, and that was enough to get me to back the Fallen London RPG kickstarter. The setting is just that cool, and I finally decided to play the actual game.

Stonehell has the B team dealing with the winter court fae that have taken over the Kobold Korners, and a good chunk of level 2. In talking to my kid the other night, telling him about the game, he had a deviously brilliant idea about what’s going on, and now I’m rethinking some things…

Work game has been canceled more often than not unfortunately. Hopefully things will settle down a bit and we can get some more consistent gaming in soon.

Miniatures
I started a 1:1 scale giant spider monster for my Halloween decorations. I definitely didn’t comprehend just how big it was going to end up being!! I’m not disappointed, but it does rather dominate the yard. I am using a lot more spray foam than I was expecting, and all told the material costs are up there with some of the smaller large yard decorations you’d get at Lowe’s. At this point I think I need at least 3 more cans of spray insulation… I’m probably gonna get 6 just to be on the safe side.

Keeping in the Halloween theme, I also painted up Baba Yaga (to go with the hut I already painted) and the Overgourd (pumpkin beholder) which is a delightful silly monster. I wish I could claim the candy corn teeth were my idea, but someone came up with it almost immediately after the mini was released. Still, I'm not above stealing a good idea.

The King of Ashes (lich on throne) was another one of those minis that I was hanging onto until I was “good enough” to do it justice. Honestly I’m kinda glad I did, because trying to get the lich assembled so that it would properly sit on the throne was a pain in the ass. I again took a fair bit of inspiration from the official art, but overall I’m pleased with it, in spite of its flaws, including the terrible mold line along the throne’s bottom edge.

 

Honestly, I’m kinda shocked by how productive this month was. Hoping to keep that momentum going into the final quarter of the year.


Media
Game Changer season 7
Star Trek Strange New Worlds
Farscape
The Studio
Fisk

Loot

Yoon-Suin 

Goals for October

Finish the giant spider for the yard

Knock out a bunch of minis

Finish writing up the game sessions from the big gaming trip

August ‘25 In Review

Starting the month with a thunderstorm and a cold front making the temperature much more bearable, and ending it with a long weekend was definitely the way to go. Temps remained largely pleasant through the month, and even got to feeling autumnal in this last week. While Summer is generally my least favorite season, this feels a little too early. And hearing the geese overhead? Definitely too early. 

In between were a couple of long weekends upstate with friends. One of which was a gaming weekend! For the first time in as long as I can remember, I spent an entire weekend playing D&D, staying up way too late, and loving every minute of it. Even the 6+ hours in the car each way wasn’t much of a struggle as I got to listen to 3 different audiobooks.  

I am missing ReaperCon this year, and definitely feeling like I’m missing out on it. I don’t recall if I felt this strongly last year, but I’m really missing my friends this year. 

Gaming
As I mentioned above, we got in a full weekend of gaming, with the B team getting a fair bit of playtime on Saturday, switching over to the A team for a delve in Rappan followed by time in Stonehell. It was all suitably epic, and I can’t wait to write up the session reports. Sadly with everything going on I haven’t spent any time writing this month, and am getting behind on my session reports again. 

Work has been busy, and we’ve missed 3 out of 4 sessions this month. I’m hoping with the end of summer, and vacations, and wrapping up the initial FY26 budget we’ll have better luck with Sept. 
 
Miniatures
Given everything going on, this was a really productive month! I finished off the minotaur, painted up 6 orcs, 4 troglodytes, a pirate, a druid, and another bone pile. 

On top of all that, I’ve got a solid start on the next batch of minis. I think September may have fewer overall minis, but there are some bigger ones that are gonna take more time.

  

Media 
Game Changer season 7
Star Trek Strange New Worlds 
Love Death & Robots
Farscape 
The Studio

Noir by Christopher Moore
What Moves The Dead by T. Kingfisher
System Collapse by Martha Wells
The Wind in the Willows
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

Loot
Ashes Without Number
Hull Breach 

Goals for September
Finish the Q3 quarterlies for the RCL
Build a GIANT spider for the front yard

June ‘25 In Review

Summer arrived, and did so with a stretch of disgustingly hot days. I can’t begin to express just how happy I am that I have the basement to work in. When the weather isn’t completely disgusting, I enjoyed an evening sitting by the fire pit, and spent part of a weekend building a workbench in the garage. I also got my hands on a good sewing machine so that I can fix up some of the kid’s clothing. He’s been wearing holes in the knees of his pants… all of his pants! And speaking of the kid, he finished up Pre-K and had his kindergarten orientation. 

Gaming
Because work is work, we only got 2 sessions in this month, and one of them ended up being entirely a down session where the players took care of shopping and other logistical concerns, but now they’re back in the Caves of Chaos, hunting for some magic armor in the Hobgoblin cave. 

The Rappan game has us facing a green dragon. We’ve got it on the run, and I think we have it cornered. We’ll find out if we can beat it this next session…


Miniatures
This was a productive month! I finished off 4 out of the 6 Stargrave guys I built back in January, along with 4 Infinity troops, a Rebel Grot Cutta, and an Emperor’s Champion. Probably the most non-Reaper I’ve finished in a month in a long time. Brings me up to 22/67 non-Reaper minis. Only 32%... But more in the pipeline! 

Media 
Ghosts
Game Changer seasons 5
Andor season 2
Murderbot
Scavengers Reign

Loot
Strange Tales of the Painted Wastelands and the Players Guide to the Painted Wastelands

Goals for June
Keep up with session reports
Knock out most of the Q3 quarterlies for the RCL

May ‘25 In Review

Yet another busy month with work. The audit wrapped up, and there was a work retreat, which flowed directly into a short vacation in the woods of New Hampshire. It was all great, but exhausting. I always want a vacation for myself, a day or 3 to recover after a trip like that.

Gaming
Because of the travel, and the work, several sessions of both the Stonehell/Rappan and my work game  got canceled, but on the upside, I got to play with my coworkers in person again! We played a long, late session of the Painted Wastelands. I’d hoped to run a couple nights, but it didn’t work out.

In the home game, we’re facing off with a green dragon, and the first battle didn’t go so well for the party. Thankfully the cleric knows how to bring the dead back. Next time, we’ll be better prepared.

Miniatures
Again because of the travel, I didn’t get to finish as much this month as I wanted. I did start a lot of minis, and I’m sure next month will see a whole lot of them finished, but for this month, I managed to finish off a few things, including the last of the pepto Norkers. Pink was an unexpected choice, since I’d planned on making them yellow, but I’m happy I went this way. 

Media
Ghosts
Game Changer seasons 4-5
Resident Alien season 3
The Wild Robot
Orion and the Dark
Her story

Loot
On my way to the retreat I stopped at a game store and snagged some great minis.

I also had the Box of Goodwill from the Reaper forum pass through, and I managed to add more to it than I took. But this is what I snagged:

Goals for June
Catch back up with session reports

April ‘25 In Review

It was bound to happen, I came down with a scratchy throat early in the month. We all did. Between the cold and the pollen, it’s been a month. On the upside, the weather has finally warmed up, and everything is green and bright and colorful. I’m trying my hand at gardening, with mixed results so far. Some things are growing… the grass doesn’t seem to be. Plus I managed to grow some mold on some of the seeds I was starting. Yeah, it's a mixed bag.

I did get a promotion at work, so there's that. Celebrated with a nice lunch and getting more 3D prints done at the library. Aside from that, I'm full on in audit prep, so super busy.


Gaming
My work game was a little limited this month due to… well… work. Stupid audit.

Sunday we've been exploring the Black Monastery, a Frog God Games adventure with a hellish map. It’s a giant structure, with a couple of dungeon levels under it, and it’s one of those buildings with pencil thin walls, and zero unused space, and the weirdest shaped room… Seriously, check out the map that I’ve got so far. We’ve abandoned it, and are now going dragon hunting.


Miniatures
This was a productive month, especially on the terrain front! Not only did I finish the Noodle Bar, and a random bit of scatter, but I also got another bunch of Flatline City buildings printed up at the library. On top of that was the assortment of random things that I decided to work on. My ratio of Reaper to non-Reaper is now 12/39, but I’ve got 5 more non-reaper minis in progress actively. 

Media
Daredevil Born Again
Star Wars Skeleton Crew
Ghosts
Game Changer seasons 1-3
Resident Alien season 3

Loot
My Downcrawl RPG book and deck arrived. I've started to read it, and plan on writing more about it after I finish.

Goals for May
Catch back up with session reports
Play a game of Stargrave or Rangers of Shadowdeep

March '25 In Review

This month went way too quickly. It started with the 25+ year old oil furnace/boiler breaking, sprinkling a big leak, and a few days without hot water. Thankfully it happened after we got back from China.Also got the taxes done, and had my dental check-up, so all sorts of fun activities!

I wrapped the month starting my veggie garden journey. I have a notoriously black thumb, so I'm limiting myself to just a few “crops” tomatoes (in containers) lettuce (in a palette), sunchokes, and some squash. I have no idea how this is going to go, but I’m giving it a shot.

Gaming
My Sunday night game wrapped up our Call of Cthulhu game, and got back to the Rappan/Stonehell game after a 3 month break. We're currently exploring a large haunted monastery, and when I say large, I mean HUGE. Well over 100 rooms. If we can wrap it up by the end of April, I’ll be shocked.

The Thursday work game shocked me again, and headed off with the Castellain when he was summoned away to a meeting in the nearest big town. Problem is, I hadn’t actually planned anything for that… I expected them to stick around and deal with the events at the keep… instead they're heading into the feywild to deal with a lord of the winter court who has laid claim on the adjoining land on the prime plane.


Miniatures
I really buckled down to get things done this month, and finished off a bunch of minis. I do need to refocus on painting more non-Reaper minis though.

A pretty productive month!

Media
Hidden Figures
Daredevil Born Again
Star Wars Skeleton Crew (1st episode)
What we do in the shadows (final season)
The remarkable life of Ibelin
Wallace and Gromit Vengeance Most Foul

Loot
I finally got my hand in Gods of the Forbidden North volume 1 & 2, and almost immediately started reading it. Massive volumes, and I was really looking forward to seeing that they had in store for me.

"biological sex" come on.... 

Turns out, a lot of conservative Christian ideas.

You aren't even trying to hide it... 

Needless to say, I was disappointed. When vol 3 arrives, I'm putting them on eBay.


Goals for April
Catch back up with session reports

Get my garden growing! 

February ‘25 In Review

I spent most of the month in China! It was an amazing trip and we only just got back. There was so much to see and do… in the 3 weeks we were there, I think only a couple of days did i fail to hit 10,000 steps and most days it was closer to 20,000.

I hope one day my minis and terrain can be displayed in a museum...

This is a pile of hundreds of copper coins at a museum in Shenzen.

 

Overall the trip was amazing. I saw so many cool things, ate such good food, and am feeling so inspired for world building right now.

Gaming
None, for the above reasons. However I did get a chunk of time to do some world building. I brought some worksheets for the #Hex25 project I'd planned on starting, and then didn't. While in China I pulled them out, along with my #Dungeon25 notebook, and then mostly just ended up making a lot of world building notes in the notebook, rather than trying to use the sheets.

Miniatures
I wrapped up a couple of minis that I started in January, but mostly, again because of the trip, not much progress. I have been weirdly thinking about painting more Games Workshop minis. The Emperor's Champion has been calling out to me...

 

Fungus infected troll in progress

Frostgrave Wraith

Media - spending 36ish hours on a plane means getting to watch lots of movies. I'm going to be posting some mini-reviews of some of these over the month.
Letterkenny S7
Ghostbusters afterlife
Venom last dance
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
Indiana Jones dial of destiny
65
Ghostbusters Frozen Empire
Jurassic world: domination
Annihilation
Jupiter Ascending
Chang an
Fast times at ridgemont high
Polite society
Godzilla: King of the Monsters
Scavengers Reign eps 1 & 2

Loot
Aside from some souvenirs from China, nothing game related in February. I know I've got some stuff that'll be arriving in March though. 

Goals for March
Keep up with all session reports
Recover from international travel
 

January ‘25 In Review

It has been a very cold month. I’ve been wearing a shirt, flannel, and sweater to stay warm in the basement office. And that’s with a space heater. Thankfully no one was sick this month. Not sure how that happened. We took a quick trip to Atlanta so the kid would have a chance to experience a plane ride before we took our big one to China later this year.

Work has been stupid busy with all the end of year work, but I’m finally seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. We’ll see if it’s a train, or the exit.

Gaming

We finished our Mothership game with 1 surviving PC, and stopping at least one monster… not sure about the ship's AI… out at least felt like the less bad option. Then we started a quick game of Call of Cthulhu, a system I haven’t before gotten to try.

Work game has skipped a few session because of work taking priority, but the party made it back to the keep and made a very successful, if not super lucrative, excursion into the orc caves.  

I didn’t make it very far into my Hex25 project before I got overwhelmed with life, so it got set aside, but I’m going to be picking it back up for February.


Miniatures

I started the month strong, finishing off the not Willow and not Raven Hasslefree minis, and the duo and trio minis for the RCL, but then got VERY distracted with the urge to assemble… anything! So I picked 3 random sprues from my pile of 50 Frostgrave and Stargrave sprues, and built 2 minis from each, using parts from all 3.

I also assembled the Queen of Hell mini, cause I grabbed her to use a bunch of spilled red paint, as well as Games Workshop Sauron mini that I had set aside to work on last year, and an orc wizard.

Then I got worried about the Queen of Hell's wings drooping. They're really think and heavy so I decided to use some heavy duty copper wire and… well, I think it works. But it's ugly. So out with the greenstuff, and since I had it out I might as well add the mushrooms to the troll I have out…

It's been a very scattered month for minis, but I’ve made a lot of progress on a lot of different things. And there was one warm day, so I took advantage of it to prime all the minis I’d done prep on! I have enough to keep me busy for a little while now.

Media
Silo (season 2)
Ghosts
Letterkenny

Loot
The Shrike - Looking forward to reading this one. I still haven’t finished reading The Painted Wastelands from last month…

Goals for February
Keep up with all session reports
#Hex25
 

2024 in Minis

Another productive year, with 122 minis painted (including some terrain) 65 of them are Reaper minis, which is just slightly more than half. As my goal for the year was to paint more non-Reaper minis, I'm going to count that as a win! 

 

Further breaking it down, about 10% of the minis are sci-fi, a stat I want to bring up for 2025. Once again Undead are also sorely underrepresented, though there are a good number of Demons.  I'm also happy to have put a good dent in the old WotC Chainmail minis collection I've got.

 

And that doesn't count the 19 trees I make and painted this past summer! Adding them in brings the total up to 141, which would be my best year since I started tracking it.

As for my other goals from last year:

• BFG Tau fleet - Never touched. Didn't paint a single spaceship in 2024
• Frostgrave & Stargrave figures - Success!
• LotR Sauron - Never touched it.
• Baba Yaga's Hut - I painted the hut! I have plans for the base & legs, but I'm not there yet. 

The other fun thing about this year's work is that after I put them away after taking the picture, I ran out of space in my figure cases. So I just ordered another one that should get me through this next year, assuming I keep up my average painting rate.

I don't know if I'll manage more than 100 minis next year, but it isn't just about the numbers! It's being happy about what I got done, and this year, I am. It wasn't all great. I had some issues with the white spray primer I used on a lot of the Frostgrave minis I worked on, which made them chalky, even after a wash with isopropyl alcohol. Of all the minis, I think I enjoyed getting the Chainmail Drakes done the most, but it's hard to pick one, or even one group of minis as my favorite.

Anyway, for 2025 here's what I'm thinking:

• BFG/Other Space Ships - no particular goal, just paint some
• More Frostgrave/Stargrave Minis!
• LotR Sauron & Ring Wraith on Fell Beast
• ~50% non-Reaper Minis
• Build & Paint some Sci-Fi Terrain