New week, new strip of 10mm skellies! This will be the command rank for the skeleton unit, They’re a fun little collection of boney bois!
I’m still working out in my heart if I like 10mm or 15mm more, but honestly, half the fun is painting up the different units in different scales and figuring it out. This is a riddle that may never actually find an answer!
With the original strip of infantry, this makes four ranks of six warriors done, and they look so freaking cool ranked up together!
I’m also having a lot of fun taking pictures of models with finished terrain, it makes a cool looking project even cooler!
Apparently, the holidays broke my damned brain. That’s the only reason I can figure that I would have broken down and tried to paint God’s Forbidden Scale again… I swore I would never touch 10mm again, and yet, here I am, brush in hand and ridiculous grin plastered on my stupid face, painting incredibly tiny skeletons.
And, truth be told, I had a better time of it this time around. The trick to tricking my brain into not shutting down this time was painting with the suggestion of color instead of actually painting the models. The details are so small that you’ll just lose your hair if you approach these like a 28mm model.
But, wow. The finished result is actually pretty spiffy. I love the look of two ranks of boney bois, just shambling up for a scrap! I had so much fun with these that I’m already working on a command unit for these troops, and a commander model for the army!
And, just for fun, here’s a picture with a US penny for scale!
Here’s my first Moonstone miniature for 2025, and he’s one of my favorites! (They’re all my favorite, who am I kidding?) Boulder the Troll borrows a lot from Ludo the rockfriend from Labyrinth, but Ludo’s cool as hell, so I’m not faulting Goblin King Games for paying homage to such a great character!
In game, Boulder can summon rocks, which sounds pretty familiar. He also has a cool trick that lets him sing to Moonstones and bring them higher up out of the ground, effectively reducing the amount of time characters have to spend digging them up!
I went with a couple of oil washes on this figure, with a little Payne’s Grey on the cool colors, and a burnt umber wash on the skin tones. This toned down the greens pretty well, and really helps the figure stand out on my display shelf!
Boulder can be played with a goblin crew, I’ll have to post a shot of some of them together with their big friend!
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!
I am so happy to finally have this guy done! He is literally the first miniature I saw for Moonstone when it was first teased way back in the dark ages of my memory, and he’s one I was a little stressed about finishing, because he’s so damned iconic.
Moonstone is already an incredibly thematic, atmospheric game. It’s also the only game that I know of that has a mechanic bake into it that allows for a farting dog that is used as a mount for a jousting goblin knight, so if that gets your gaming engines revving, this game was made for you!
That goblin knight’s name is Pubert. He kills folks and steels their money, but he also seems to be really attached to Doug, and I can’t hold much malice towards someone who is that devoted to their dog. I can’t imagine Doug is the best choice of mounts, after all. I’ve known far too many pugs. They’re like the drunk sidekick in every relationship; entertaining, gassy, and just a bit wobbly.
Doug and Pubert are also my first Goblin mini for Moonstone, and I’m really thrilled to be heading into this faction for the game!
When I was a kid I thought Boromir was the biggest idiot in The Lord of the Rings. Then, the Ralph Bakshi animated movie came out when I was 8, and I was convinced that I was right that entire time the second he walked on screen.
That helmet. That beard. His stupid, hairy, stupidness. But, even though I had read the books during an ill-advised flirtation with viral bronchitis, I wasn’t ready for the bad-assery that Bakshi unleashed with Boromir’s death scene!
He really took a liking to those arrows! Flash forward a few decades, and I was a solid Boromir fan. And then Sean Bean Sean Beaned his way into our collective hearts with a solid performance as Gondor’s favorite-not-perfect-son… what more could we ask for? Miniatures? DID SOMEONE SAY MINIATURES?
Games Workshop blundered its way into the Lord of the Rings license and somehow managed a hat trick that kept in it business long enough to become the champion of miniature game design and fair pricing that we know today! But I didn’t care at the time, being a new dad and too busy painting a billion points of Tau.
But now? Now I’m playing catch-up. And I’m going to do it with the original Fellowship figures, which are in no way showing their age. Actually, I jest. They’re definitely showing their age, but they’re still pretty sweet!
Somehow the little dude even looks like my favorite walking quiver!
I really wish there was another miniature of Boromir in this costume, there are some fantastic alt sculpts of the rest of the Fellowship out there, but Boromir Arrowshirt only got enough screen time to warrant this one figure. And, well, a Captain of Gondor fig, too, but I want this costume!
Here he is with the rest of the painted figs in the Fellowship:
Hopefully, Gimli will get that plane landed before the Balrog comes!
More progress has been made on my 15mm fantasy project, with a couple of thick-skulled gents ready to join my slowly growing horde of greenskins!
For games like Warmaster and Kings of War, these lumbering beauties can be fielded in groups of 3, but for skirmishers like Mordheim one will do!
I’m really impressed with the quality of the sculpts from Forest Dragon miniatures. They still look pretty great scaled up 50%, and I’m getting really excited to see where this army collection is going!
Next up I’m going to have to work on some more character models, and then terrain. Yeah. I need a metric ton of terrain!
My strategy for finishing up Moonstone miniatures is starting to pay off! It feels good to get an actual set of minis knocked out, now I have one less to paint! Here’s Claudia Duvel from the Masquerade box set:
She’s a fun character, I feel like she’s the muscle that backs up the menace and machinations of the Duchess and Creep!
In the Moonstone lore, Claudia is a highwaywoman, but with a heart of gold. She’s known to be a genteel conversationalist, and won’t take riches from her prey at a level that would leave them desitute!
She also refuses to take money or possessions of the working class, which I love. In the lore entry I found on Claudia, she even went so far as to dance with a gentleman who’s wife had been unable to do so since she was suffering from gout!
I absolutely love what a little bit of established lore and fluff can do to make a game setting feel more lived in! With that, The Masquerade is a wrap! On to a farting dog and a quick trip to goblin town!
I picked up a long-dormant project over the summer, when my now scattered game group decided to get together for a weekend of Age of Sigmar‘s pretty awesome Spearhead supplement. I had the better part of a Kruleboyz Spearhead already finished, so it was time to get the rest done, which I’ll share in a separate post.
Long story short, we had a blast. My health wasn’t the best, but I still managed to get a game in with my friend Jeff, and we both had an excellent time!
This lead to all of us deciding to work on a Path to Glory league together, with a full campaign and stories to tell about our armies. Our first task is going to be to flesh out those Spearheads to 1,000 points, and for that to work, we’re going to be needing bosses! Or at least I will. Sure, I could use the Spearhead boss, he’s cool enough, but this project deserves something custom!
That’s where Grakkskull, da’ King of Crows comes in! I had this amazing Warhammer Underworlds Kruleboy leader, and after figuring out how to get more crows on the figure Grakkskull was born!
First step was coming up with some extras to make him EXTRA. I had just finished putting some Kroot together, so I had some extra meat bits and hooks. Perfect. Also, that cage on this dude’s head gave me some ideas, and I found a crow from my Cursed City box set that set more ideas in motion. Also, that whip needs to be swapped out with something stabbier, so a cleaver from a Khorn jerk should come in handy!
The crow on the trident has a key in its beak, which is one of the motivations behind Grakkskull’s madness. He just wants to find that key and unlock the stupid cage on his head! In the meantime, he had a scare shield welded to the cage so that the gods couldn’t see his schemes and thwart him.
Paint basics have been laid in, next up is detailing and basing! Then his stabgrot, Bootlick, will be joining the mob! Stay tuned for more!
Time for an update on my Moonstone back log, and perhaps the beginning of a fresh strategy to get these done!
In the past, I’ve just put together whatever I had in front of me, and set out painting that backlog without any real strategy. That has led me to feeling like I’ll never finish any of these collections, since there’s simply so many figures, and I’m doing a terrible job of not buying more!
So, I’ll be taking them on by boxed set, and since the last Moonstone mini I finished was the Creep from the Masquerade box, I figured I would follow up with Duchess, and eventually Claudia Duvel. That should at least help me feel like I’m making some progress as I check off each box completed!
The Duchess is a really fun mini, and challenged me to try some new approaches to color. I wanted to go super bright on everything, but she’s also pretty sinister, so I needed to go bright and sinister, which I’m hoping I pulled off!
Here she is with Creep, looking like they’re ready to poison some canape at the next Grand Ball! Claudia is already on the paint table, so I should have her up soon!
The Masquerade Troop box is available online directly here, but you could be a real champ and order it from your local game store!
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