I have always been a fan of Corvus Belli‘sInfinity miniatures, and have probably painted more Infinity figs than any other game. Mostly, that is because I worked in a game store that sold a ton of Infinity, and I was often contracted to paint armies for folks. I loved it. Loved the minis, loved the lore, but the game? Damn. I’m just not that kind of masochist. It’s crunchy, tricky to play, and I often found myself knowing I had lost in the first turn. Still, those minis are sublime!
We had been hearing about Corvus Belli developing a fantasy game for years, and most of us just assumed they would be putting out a fantasy re-skin of Infinity. Flash forward a few years, my store is gone, my game group is fractured, but dammit, CB just put out some lore for Warcrow, their new fantasy game. And… wow. It’s not an Infinity clone. It’s a good, solid game with very little crunch, and some amazingly well done minis. The lore is pretty spiffy, too!
My first fig for Warcrow is an Orc Revenant. The Orcs of Warcrow expect to die gloriously in battle, but they also continue growing throughout their lives. Once they reach their 30’s, they are pretty damned big, and salty as hell about not being dead yet.
These salty lads and ladies become Revenants, and set out into battle to meet the best end possible. The figure makes me happy, and I had a really good time painting him!
Assembly, on the other hand, wasn’t so great. The model is made from Siocast, which is a pretty environmentally friendly type of thermoplastic. I approve of that. The mold lines? Not so much. I also snapped the blade that goes on Punchie’s Stump, since it appears that Siocast is pretty fragile. I was going to complain a bit, but having put together more recent Warcrow minis, I’m happy to say that CB has worked out the kinks in the molding process and Siocast is working out pretty well for them!
Every once in a while, I get a crazy urge to try and see if a Heroclix mini can be brought to any sort of table-top standard for paint. The factory paints on these guys is really thick, and stripping that paint is nigh-impossible. So, you have to get your brush in there and let it do some heavy lifting for details!
Isiaiah Bradley is a pretty tragic character in Marvel’s history. He got the super-soldier serum during World War 2, did heroic stuff, and then the government decided he was expendable and that it was experiment time. You can read the whole story in the EXCEPTIONAL Captain America: Red White and Black.
I had to do a lot of hatching on these to get any of the details to stand out, there really aren’t any crisp edges or anything to use to try and get any stark contrasts. Mold lines really stand out, too. It’s about this point that I start staring at my Marvel Crisis Protocol minis and wondering what the hell I’m doing!
Crossbones turned out a lot better, I had to really push some stark contrasts, but it’s a fun model.
Still, I think I’ll be sticking with my MCP figs! Still a fun project, and it’s good to challenge yourself from time to time!
The heartbreak in question isn’t anything bigger than the STL provider I was grooving on deciding to move on without finishing up the 15mm Mordheim-style minis they were designing. I loved the minis, but don’t see any point in carrying on in hopes of finding something that matches the aesthetic they were pulling off so beatifully!
The last figs of theirs I have painted pretty much finish up my undead warband at that scale, and I’ll be holding on to them because they are fundamentally cool.
That being said, I’ll be moving on to a fresh start with 28mm figs for my fantasy skirmish minis. Maybe even 32 in some cases, my eyes just aren’t that great at 56 but I’m sure as hell not stopping the painting!
There’s some great stuff coming out of Corvus Belli that has me pretty fired up, I’ll be posting the first of that and some goals for 2026 later in the week!
Turning my frantic eye back to 15mm scale gaming for a bit, I’ve decided I would like to get one warband finished up for 15mm Mordheim. These minis would also work great for Frostgrave and Five Leagues from the Borderlands!
The first thing I wanted to tackle was a big possessed brute for a chaos warband, and this queen pretty much settles all scores, right? She’s hulking big, with lots of tentacles, teeth, and a little sneaky nudity for good measure.
I have one or two more possessed to finish up, and some Undead to plow through as well, but we’re off and truly running, and I couldn’t be happier!
I am also planning on getting some pretty elaborate terrain finished up for these warbands! The nice thing with this scale is 2′ by 2′ is going to give you all the gaming surface you need, and you can really go mad with kitbashing buildings, too!
As I continue to mend, my stamina is picking up a little and I’m able to paint a little more! Just finished up Emil Blonsky, AKA The Abomination! He’s a delicious figure for sure!
He’s also positively huge, easily twice the size of the Hulk and close to Hulkbuster in stature. Very cool!
I’m still trying to figure out if I want to put him in a Hydra group or a Criminal Syndicate group, the big factor here being which group I’m going to get rid of. The syndicate has some cool models, but the Hydra group has a ton of Jack Kirby coolness that I love. On the other hand, Nazis. I hate those guys.
After assessing my overall storage capacity and several near death experiences over the last few years, I’m leaning heavily towards narrowing the collection down to one or two affiliations. The collector in me is shrieking like a gibbon at the moment, but I really don’t want to leave a ton of minis behind if something does actually catch up to me! That might sound a little morbid, but we all go sometime, and I would like to leave as little of my hobby behind to clean up as possible!
Enough of the maudlin, I’m hankering for some 15mm action!
Here’s another proxy job for my 40mm miniature collection, it’s funny how much energy I spend trying to find that “goldilocks” scale! Rogue in classic MCP suffers from Jim Lee design syndrome, and again… I’m not knocking Jim Lee’s design, I would just like to acknowledge that she’s had other, really cool costumes!
Luckily, I had extra bases from other MCP figs, so I swiped an engine piece from a Necromunda model for her to perch on, and she looks pretty cool!
This is probably my favorite Rogue costume ever, so kudos to the folks who put in the work on it!
I am currently working out some fantasy prints in this scale, as I’m realizing that there are some benefits to working large like this. I love the challenge of painting 15mm scale minis, and you can’t beat the storage options, but 40mm has it’s charms as well! I’ll explore them more in depth in an upcoming post!
I am back after a seven month battle with my pancreas that saw two hospitalizations, a major surgery, and an inability to eat food due to the cessation of my digestive tract. The surgery was undertaken to fix that issue, and I am happily able to eat now! I apologize for the absence, although my pancreas has informed me that it will happen again.
With that out of the way, though, let’s look at some minis! I love the X-Men, and, while I was a fan of the Jim Lee costumes that debuted 33 years ago, I don’t think they’re the end-all, especially when it comes to the original five students of Charles Xavier. Jean’s costume in particular never really gelled for me.
When the Krakoa storyline started a few years ago, I was really happy to see Jean’s first non-school uniform show up again, and spent some time looking for a suitable proxy model to use.
Before anyone rattle a pitchfork too mightily in my direction, I have a staunch take on proxy use! I always strive to own the original model, since I am playing a game that someone spent a lot of time and resources on, I want to support that. I also make sure that my opponent is cool with me using a proxy before we play. This allows cool battles like X-Men VS X-Men, with an obvious time travel element thrown in because of the costume variations!
I found this file of Jean in her Hickman era costume, and here’s how she looks painted up!
While I’m not 100% sold on the pose, I think the sculpt is actually pretty good!
I really do hope that Atomic Mass Games are able to branch out and explore more costume designs in future minis, because there’s a vast and wondrous world of X-Threads beyond Jim Lee, but let’s face it; those costumes were iconic, immortalized in the ’90s cartoon, and nostalgia sells war dollies better than any other marketing tool!
I was born in 1969, burned bright in my punk rock days, and never thought I would see 30, let alone 50. Sure, I was a dedicated miniature hobbyist by the age of 14, but I also spent plenty of time in mosh pits and dabbled in things that Mother Warned Me About, so sitting here, in the far future and 55 years of age is not something I was ever prepared for.
Despite the apparent zeal the human race holds towards teetering off the narrow precipice of civilization into George Miller’s Mad Max future, the state of the miniature hobby has never looked brighter.
If supply chains hold up, that is.
2024 saw games like Trench Crusade pop up and cause a lot of folks to not only recognize that there are games outside of the GW Sphere, but that those games might be viable as well. That’s nothing but good news.
Even GW seems intent on putting out material for their specialist games, which allows titles like Warcry and Necromunda to thrive despite the all consuming nature of 40k and AOS.
Now that I’m looking at the year ahead, I am really excited to double down on some commitments I made to myself in the latter part of last year.
I want to adhere to a couple of posts a week here on the blog, since it keeps me motivated and helps thin out the horde of unpainted minis that have taken over my studio.
I want to focus on smaller games from smaller companies, but I also want to play with stuff that I forgot I loved, like Marvel Crisis Protocol and Shatterpoint.
I am also going to be making a lot more terrain this year, because I finally finished up a building that I printed off, and I really loved the process and want to PLAY A GAME with the buildings!
The biggest thing I plan on focusing on, however, is my health. Miniature painting has been a large part of my life for over 40 years, and it has been a form of meditation for me that has seen me through a lot of adversity, as well as good times.
BUT, as with all hobbies, it can be a bit all consuming! I really like to buy new models. Sometimes those will sit on a shelf for years, untouched. Part of focusing on my mental health is recognizing that it’s really not healthy to throw money at stuff that I’m not doing anything with!
It’ll be an interesting year. I’m also thinking about taking on Rob Hawkin’s hobby bingo challenge, because this bingo card is epic and it would be fun to challenge myself to do some of these!
That’s the year ahead. Hopefully, you are all well, and have plenty of hobby happiness to come!
This is a first for me, I don’t normally post enough to warrant an actual year in review, but I’m getting healthier and a steady posting schedule has helped keep me motivated! The unpainted horde is slowly shrinking, and that’s a good thing, right?
I started out 2024 in the hospital after a nearly fatal bout of necrotizing pancreatitis, which I’m still dealing with today… and probably will for the rest of my life. My motor skills were shot, and I had lost nearly a third of my body mass from atrophy. It took a few months, but I was eventually able to control my hands well enough to paint for more than a few minutes, and now, rounding out the year, I’m back to a pretty steady level of quality and able to chip away at the horde.
I also came really close to throwing away a couple of big, horde type armies, one a Tyranid group that was doing nothing but piss me off, and the other a Kruleboyz army that was just gathering dust. Spearhead helped me get over the Kruleboyz blocker, and I’m close to finishing off 1,000 points of painted figs for AOS, which will be cool.
The Tyranids were a whole other story! I have always loved the bugs, but I struggle with painting the same damned pattern and color scheme on a hundred models. I got bored. I changed my color scheme a hundred million times. I also played a game of 10th edition 40k, and freaking hated it. I go You go HAS TO GO!
Since then, though, I’ve played two games of boarding actions, and had a bit more fun. It’s still a giant pain in the ass, but I see some fun to be had here… only because my game group is amazing. If I was playing modern 40k with random folks? I would become a hermit and leave society altogether.
I also settled on a color scheme, which is essentially ALL THE COLORS. I’m happy with that, and the combined effect of all these colorful bugs makes me happy. I’m close t0 500 points of painted bugs, mostly chaff, so I’ll be sure to fill that out in the future.
The Marvel Zombicide figs are coming along, with about a dozen figs finished out of several hundred. I’ll be making steady progress on those in the year to come!
My Frostgrave/Five Parsecs/Mordheim project finally got off the ground, but it’s mostly assembled figs with very little paint. Still, it’s progress, and I’m having fun getting the stories for the characters together and have started building out terrain.
I’m also plowing right back in to Necromunda, mostly because it’s a great game to kitbash figures from. I’m hoping to build out some scenarios in the future, but for now I’m focused on building out my warbands and terrain for the game.
Warcry is also something I should be focusing on more, it’s probably the best modern GW game, but I went overboard on it and have too many warbands. But, that being said, I did get a chunk of the terrain done and was able to use it at a Spearhead retreat back in September, which I loved.
My Malifaux projects have been getting wrapped up a bit as well, with several gangs getting finished up. I had grand plans towards collecting entire keywords of Malifaux figs, but I had a change of heart that has me strongly considering divesting a large amount of the figs from this game, and probably all the games I play.
Moonstone has continued to be the salve from Grimdark burnout, the minis are cheery and whimsical, tons of fun to paint, and look great on a shelf. Plus, my wife likes them, so that’s a plus! The other side effect is that I find myself painting my other stuff with a much brighter palette now, which is making me happy.
15mm minis took a huge amount of my attention over the summer, which was a welcome break. I really love painting the smaller figs, and the scenery is a ton of fun to paint up as well. As much as I dream of playing 15mm Mordheim, however, I’m not sure it’s ever going to happen, unless I paint up entire warbands for other folks to play. Still, solo play is an option, and I really enjoy looking at these tiny models!
The last big project of 2024 was realizing that I am only one person, and that during my rehabilitation period I spend a bit of time feeling sorry for myself and buying models that I will never get around to painting. I made a goal to re-home a lot of the unopened boxes, especially from games that have been sitting in storage for more than two years. That’s resulted in me gaining back a lot of space in my studio, and has helped me focused on prioritizing what I want to do with whatever time I have left in this world to do it.
That sounds a little glum, but it’s actually the opposite. The effect of nearly dying last year has been a rally cry for me; I don’t want my hobby to be a chore. I want to celebrate these toy soldiers, and I want to really explore how painting and collecting, mindfully and with purpose, makes me feel! It’s really cathartic, in a way, and has helped me cope with my new reality in a way that I never thought possible.
Using this blog to chart my progress has been really healthy, and has helped keep me motivated towards finishing projects. I have some huge, but attainable goals for next year, so stay tuned!
I hope you all have had a positive hobby journey over this last year, and here’s to hobby tranquility in 2025!
It’s been a bit of time since I’ve worked much on my Frostgrave backlog, but it’s always in the back of my mind, keeping the other oft-neglected flights of fancy in my mind warm.
I decided to get back to it recently, and picked up a bunch of the “2” boxes of Frostgrave kits. The 2 means not male presenting, and I had been putting the 2 kits off for ages because I didn’t like the face sculpts on the female warriors much.
Turns out, a lot of that was the paint. But they still have a bit of a feline characteristic to them that I’m not a huge fan of. Luckily, the kits are still amazing, and Moranna of House Pike is the first mini in the new push to get my Frostgrave/Mordheim/Five Leagues from the Borderlands collection back on track!
House Pike was established in the 82nd year of the New Imperial Reckoning, recognized officially by Imperial decree four years later. The house sigil is a horned fish in haurient position, and the house colors are yellow and red.
Moranna Pike is the daughter of Archibald and Lowaine Pike, Lord and Lady of the rocky, sea crested region in the northeast of the Empire. Lord Pike was noted as being fair to the small folk and brave in battle, and Lowaine was considered kind to all and a practiced hand with a blade when needed.
As the oldest child of House Pike, Moranna assumed mastership of the house guard in her mid teens, and has shown promise in battle. She is currently questing in the Plaguewald, hunting undead, and hoping to show herself worthy of knighthood upon her return to civilization.
Grimmleigh's Lab 