2024 in review

 

Slightly delayed, but here is my annual look back at the previous year, and comparing it to the plans that I made at the start of the year…

Tally

As Christmas was technically happening after my last scheduled post, the Tally took one final hit before the end of the year. My brother-in-law emigrated to the states last year, and so came through with (among other things) some beautiful Boot Hill Alamo minis (as my limited Hobby budget usually doesn’t stretch to the shipping costs from Brigade to the UK - why oh why didn’t I get into the Alamo when those minis first came out and they were available in the UK?!):

Also pictured is the 3d printed space pirate that the stl for was a freebie at Salute, as he also has a 3d printer.

With this last hit, the final Tally for 2024 looks like:

62 vs 204 (one of the space pirates isn’t for me) = -142

And adds to the long running set of yearly stats:

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)

So technically, it was my fifth most productive year in terms of figures painted…

Posts

39 posts this year, with at least a single post every month. The year started off with the usual random selection of things as and when they took my fancy, but then I fell into grooves of things I needed for games, like monsters for Frostgrave, or my late in the year start working my way through the Umbrella Academy board game.

Last years challenge

• Finish at least one playable force for a game (whether that be my 500 point Skaven army, my Silver bayonet unit, or something else entirely…)

I very nearly finished off my Silver Bayonet unit, but am still one model short from having a playable force, so maybe this year…

• Play at least 12 games in 2024 

I only managed two games of Frostgrave and a single game of Super Mission Force, so that’s another fail. I have the bit of terrain that I need for the next Frostgrave scenario undercoated though, so if I can drybrush that grey the adventures of Tim the Necromancer can continue in 2025…

• Prep all the monkeys in the monkey box (I mean I couldn’t delete this one after so many years)

You all know I haven’t done this.

• Convert at least one miniature

Two converted miniatures for the Silver Bayonet unit, so I get to cross something off! Generally what happens is I write the challenge, then largely forget all about it for most of the year.

• Add to the Monstrous Alphabet project

Several monsters painted this year, but R and T were newly completed entries, so that’s another challenge ticked off

• Do Zomtober posts

Four posts managed - I had some extra bits planned this year, but unfortunately ran out of time, so they’re still sat half-finished on my painting tile. Until next year…

• Do a May the Fourth post

Tiny Grogu to go with the Mandalorain I painted for May the Fourth 2021

• Do a festive post

Again, the secret to success it seems is setting myself a challenge that involves painting a single miniature, with several months notice…

• Average at least a miniature a week (so at least 52 completed miniatures across the year)

62 painted miniatures this year mean I succeeded at this one!

• End the year with the Tally in the positive

I did not in fact succeed at this one though. Any year where I start a project that involves buying several boxes of plastic miniatures at Salute tends to end with me in the red on the Tally…

Projects (according to the last end of year post)

Warhammer

Unfortunately, no movement on my Skaven, although I did manage to add some minis to the Undead army thanks to Zomtober. Although that still doesn’t make for a legal unit of zombies yet, but there will always be another Zomtober…

The Silver Bayonet

While looking at my gaming bookshelf the other day, I realised that The Silver Bayonet is actually the game that I own the most expansions for, despite not having a finished playable unit. I managed to get most of the way there this year (and actually did paint the monsters that I needed for the first solo scenario), but need at least one more mini to get to that point. Conventional wisdom seems to be that I should probably actually take a couple of monks to make up numbers rather than another specialist soldier, but what can I say, I’m a sucker for cool stuff…

Frostgrave

The adventures of Tim the Necromancer did actually continue this last year, as I made and painted some oozes to stand in for Vapour Snakes, and a tiny closet so that I could also play the second scenario in that particular chain.

Rangers of Shadow Deep

No movement last year, alas. The next scenario is somewhat scenery heavy, and building a river, bridge, ford, rocks as well as a bandit camp, which never seems to get to the top of my priority list when the next shiny thing is hogging all of my attention…then again, I do have the tents built and undercoated for this, so maybe I can sneak in a little progress in the near future…

Nothing for Ronin of Shadow Deep either - I have a couple of minis prepped, but didn’t get as far as finishing any of them…

 

Battletech

Two mechs are half finished. Painting differently scaled miniatures to what I’m used to is weird, so I tried some other techniques that I’d usually use when modelling Gunpla, and it didn’t work out quite how I’d planned, so I took a breather that has lasted about a year now.

Zombies

Zomtober technically counts for this and Warhammer, right? Since I was no longer playing my monthly Last Days campaign, I didn’t have a burning need to paint anything zombie related. Plans for building the Farm home base stayed just that, with a pile of cut out wall pieces not having found their way back onto my cutting mat after we moved house.

Star Wars

Aforementioned Tiny Grogu! 

 Cowboys

I painted a single drunk cowboy last year. What you didn’t see though, was that I also half-painted an entire Legends of the Old West Lawmen Posse, which got put to one side in favour of other things, and never got taken over that finish line.

 Board Games

This one was an actual success, I managed to paint enough miniatures to actually play a game of the Umbrella Academy board game using entirely painted miniatures! There’s still a bunch more to do, but I’m hoping to be able to repeat that feat this year…

Acolyte

No progress this year.

Until I played a few hours of Inquisitor Martyr right at the end of the year, and then all of a sudden we’re back on, and I’ve started work on my Acolyte:

It took as many days to carefully cut through that metal neck as it did searching through boxes looking for the replacement head I wanted to use (spoilers: it was two days).

2025 projects

Board games

If I can just paint the rest of the core members of the Umbrella Academy, and the other Allies, then I’ll have a fully painted base set of the game I think? Plus, if we manage to actually win a game, then I’d need to move onto painting the next set of enemies…

Frostgrave

I need to paint a single piece of scenery (that is currently sat built and mostly undercoated) to be able to play the next scenario, which is hopefully eminently doable. The next scenario story wise would be the only set in the library, but rather than having to make a million tiny bookshelves, I’ve seen people use dungeon tiles for this, which I handily have a bunch of for D&D…

Acolyte

I’d like to convert and paint my Acolyte! My friend has already painted his entire war and as well as the majority of the enemies needed, so if I can scrape together a warband from my painted minis and bits box then [hushed voice] we could actually play a game…

The Silver Bayonet

Again, just need to finish the Unit to be able to start the solo campaign, and actually have the two minis that I need for the scenario after that prepped and undercoated already…

Zombies

I’ll do Zomtober, at the very least. Unless Ash Barker releases the Evolutions expansion for Last Days, that might spur some modern zombie painting…

Star Wars

I’ll do a May the Fourth post, at the very least. Who knows though, the Andor sequel will maybe drag us back to watching Star Wars (having lost some of our enthusiasm for them a while back) and in turn, painting Star Wars more than once a year…

Cowboys and The Alamo

If the wind blows that way, I have an entire Lawmen Posse that’s half finished, and a bunch of converted Mexicans for the Alamo just waiting for some paintbrush attention…

Superheroes

Back on the projects list, as it’s nice to have something that I can play with my children! I had an urge to do something X-Men related, but unfortunately that only produced half painted miniatures last year, maybe this year I can change that…

Cyberpunk

Another one returning to the list - I got Cyberpunk 2077 for Christmas (having bought a PS5 on Black Friday), and due to my usual sickness of thinking about everything in terms of how I could do it in 28mm, was soon digging through boxes to pull out some suitable miniatures:

In terms of rules, I’m not sure what I’d use. I own Reality’s Edge, but that’s a very thick rule book. I wonder if I could use Stargrave, as that has guns and computers and encroaching enemies (which I assume I could easily re-skin to be the future police closing in), but wonder how much I’d lose not using any spaceship based things (and doubly wondering, wouldn’t I rather be using those rules for something Firefly themed?)

Back burner:

Warhammer, Rangers, Battletech

They’re not off the list, but realistically they’re not going to be top of my priority lists. Which is usual,y a sure fire way to have my attention swing back that way. And thinking about it, I was at a children’s birthday party last month and spotted that the Dad had a load of Battletech box sets on his games shelf, so who knows. Then again, if my children decide they want to start watching Doctor Who again, it’s just as likely that will jump back onto the list…

2025 Challenge

• Finish at least one playable force for a game
• Play at least 4 games in 2025
• 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 2024 (so at least 63)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive (hey, I’m an optimist, what can I say)

Fairly similar to last year’s, but with a couple of tweaks! Honestly though, after all these years if I actually get round to prepping all the monkeys in the monkey box, it’s probably a cry for help, and someone should come and check that I’m okay. 

Were-wolf? There-wolf!

My evening panting sessions have seen me finish another two miniatures, a pair of werewolves primarily for the first co-op Silver Bayonet scenario:

They’re sculpts from North Star, for the game Dracula’s America, and they’re nicely scaled and proportioned. They’d been sat undercoated for far too long, and the promise of being able to actually play my first home Silver Bayonet game if I finished them proved too much to resist.

Alas, I didn’t get to take pictures using natural light, so we’ll have to make do with these slightly washed out ones. 

I also decided to paint them different colours just in case I ever get round to playing the Rangers of Shadow Deep scenario Blood Moon, as I vaguely remember one of the clues in that game being finding some red hairs, hence one werewolf being a redhead.

Finishing them takes the 2024 Tally to:

3 vs 4 = -1

We also played our second session of family D&D on Mother’s Day:

The party made their way to the sea caves by boat to find out why the previously peaceful mushroom man farmers were acting up, and after fighting a fungal octopus made their way inside to get ambushed by the world’s slowest moving mushrooms, much the the dismay of the mushroom farmers. 

I’m quite enjoying running a pre written adventure, as it means we can play with minimal effort and stress, which also leaves more time (and brain space!) for trying to make it fun. We had some cool moments, like my youngest’s character getting gripped by the octopus when he got knocked out, causing a panic when it was killed and started to sink and dragged him down with it. My wife’s immediate reaction was to tie a rope around him, only to find herself getting dragged down too! My eldest also rolled her first crit too, which I was as excited as she was about!

2023 in review

As ever, my annual post where I look back at my progress over the previous year, and plan for the year ahead.

Just… wildly later than usual. We moved house over Christmas, which I heartily do not recommend if you can avoid it, and now pretty much all of my time that I’m not at work is spent unpacking boxes and all of my minis and paints are somewhere in here:

Tally

Christmas happened since my last post, adding these to my heap of minis:

Add to that not having painted any miniatures since October (again, my evenings and weekends from the end of October were spent frantically throwing things into boxes) it leaves the final total at:

33 vs 227 = -194 

Which while it’s my second worst year for number of painted minis since the blog began (second only to the year I got married) is actually only the third worst year for overall Tally score - what can I say, I’m a sucker for a big box of secondhand minis! Hopefully this year I can spend the week between Christmas and New Year’s the way it’s supposed to be, frantically drybrushing to get my numbers up before the year ends and the Tally resets!

Thirteen years of stats:

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)

Hmm, only four times have I managed to end the year not in the negative. Maybe there’s a lesson to be learned there abou- what’s that, Salute tickets have gone on sale now? Nice, should start making a shopping list really…

Posts

I managed at least one blog post every month for the whole year, driven mostly by playing a year-long Last Days Seasons campaign in real time. While a lot of my posts were game reports or me having painted things I was going to use in the game, I did also manage to paint and post a variety of other bits and bobs fairly consistently throughout the year as the fancy took me.

Last Year’s challenge

• Finish my 500 point Skaven Warhammer army

Failed, but not catastrophically - one day, gadget, one day!

• Play at least 12 games in 2023 

I actually succeeded at this one, managing to get 15 games in last year!

• Prep all the monkeys in the monkey box (I mean I couldn’t delete this one after so many years)

This is just a meme now, me actually doing this is probably one of the signs of the end of the world by now…

• Convert at least one miniature

I thought I hadn’t managed this, but looking back at my posts I was reminded that I converted some zombies for Zomtober and some additional Doctor Who Autons, so that’s another pass!

• Add to the Monstrous Alphabet project

Alas, another fail, although I did buy some minis for this project last year, so that’s sort of a half step towards success?

• Do Zomtober posts

Success!

• Do a May the Fourth post

Success!

• Do a festive post

Failure, as no painting at all happened this festive season. 

• Average at least a miniature a week (so at least 52 completed miniatures across the year)

Failure - I’m usually the most productive at the end of the year as the looming deadline tends to motivate me to get things finished!

• End the year with the Tally in the positive

A big no - partly due to not getting much painted, but also not helped by buying a load of secondhand Warhammer either…

So overall a 40% success rate - not great in real terms, but compared to most years an outstanding victory!

Projects (according to the last end of year post)

Warhammer

While I didn’t finish my 500 point Skaven army, some progress was made, and I also added even more models to my Undead over Zomtober, so that’s not bad going.

Zombies

A resounding success, as I managed to hit my target of playing a year long campaign in real time. I started making scenery of the farm that was the group’s home base, so there’s potential for future games with this group in the future…

Frostgrave

I played a single game of this, and half painted some of the miniatures that I need for the next scenario, so less than I’d planned to do, but more than I might have done.

Rangers of Shadow Deep

Again, I’m averaging a game of this every eighteen months or so - I was really happy with how the game I played came out though, with specially modelled cocoons, nest trees, and Halloween spider web to decorate the table.

Silver Bayonet

First two minis for my group painted, and parts selected for a conversion for the third member.  Just need to find the box he’s in though…

Star Wars

As is now routine, I painted a single mini for May the Fourth, and managed to largely ignore my friend messaging saying ‘ooh look at Shatterpoint isn’t it shiny’ otherwise the tally would have been even worse…

2024 Projects

Despite messaging my buddy (who I start a lot of projects with, but don’t play a lot of games with because we keep starting new projects before finishing the previous ones) saying that we should focus on one project in the new year and actually get a game in, my 2024 project list looks like this:

Warhammer

Weirdly, with each new bit of information that got released about The Old World, I got less excited for it, but still am in the mood for some Warhammer, so will probably stick to my plan of starting with 500 point eighth edition. Once the Skaven are there, I’ve also got my Zombieslayer Undead project, plus a bundle of Empire ,I is bought at the end of last year - 500 points of them would paint up a lot quicker than 500 points of Skaven I’m sure!

The Silver Bayonet

While I bought the book when it came out and have only managed to finish two minis for this, my buddy played a demo game at Salute with me and then banged out an entire painted unit, so this is very much a possibility for getting a game in! I need to paint half a dozen or so minis for my Unit and two werewolves, and then I’ll be ready to go with the first solo scenario (which I’m assuming can also be played with more than one player - I’ll have to double check when the box with that book in turns up)

Frostgrave

The adventures of Tim the Necromancer will continue. Need to make some vapour snakes…

Rangers of Shadow Deep

It’s still on here, but less likely to see play in the near future, as I need to make quite a bit of scenery for the next scenario (a river, a bridge, a ford etc). Ooh, that reminds me, I met Joseph McCullough a couple of weeks back, turns out he’s local to me. I’d like to pretend I was suave and composed, but reader I was a little star struck and fanboyed at him. I managed to throw out the name of this blog though, so if you’re reading this Joe, hi! You’ll notice the majority of my major projects are games you wrote, keep up the good work! 

Also, Ronin of Shadow Deep falls into this category too - it’s not top of the list, but I suspect every now and then a Japanese Fantasy themed palette cleanser might creep into my painting queue.

Battletech

Having acquired a decent number of stompy robots last year, I’d like to get some of them painted!

Zombies

I’ll do Zomtober, and hopefully get in another game or two of Last Days, potentially having built their farm in miniature. Fingers crossed I can find some 3d printed toilets and other interior furnishings at Salute…

Star Wars

I’ll do May the Fourth, although I don’t know what I’ll do yet - maybe another Imperial Assault mini, so in a hundred years time I’ll eventually have a fully painted core box!

 Cowboys

I got bit by the cowboy bug last year - I forget if I posted about it, but it started with me wanting to do something with magic cowboys, but evolved into me wanting to do something with just regular non-magical cowboys, maybe using the stack of Legends of the Old West books that I’ve got knocking around. I ordered some miniatures, which arrived the day we got confirmation we were getting the new house, so they went straight into a box. As soon as I find that box, we’re back on! 

 Board Games

Our new house is somewhat more spacious than the old one, and means that we could probably have people over to play games without anyone having to sit on each others laps (unless they wanted to), so part of me wants to paint up one of the mini heavy games that I have in my collection like Hellboy or The Umbrella Academy. The realist part of me knows that doing that means I won’t get to play it for a couple of years, but still the optimist thinks it’s a good idea…

Acolyte

Aforementioned horrifically productive chum and I were discussing doing some 28mm Inquisitor, potentially using the Acolyte Kill Team mod, and he’s only gone and painted an entire retinue, as well as the enemies, so I should probably convert and paint an Acolyte!

2024 Challenge

Aiming for a similarly limited challenge this year:

• Finish at least one playable force for a game (whether that be my 500 point Skaven army, my Silver a bayonet unit, or something else entirely…)
• Play at least 12 games in 2024 
• Prep all the monkeys in the monkey box (I mean I couldn’t delete this one after so many years)
• 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 miniature a week (so at least 52 completed miniatures across the year)
• End the year with the Tally in the positive

I’m not sure how I’ll do aiming for a game a month without the pressure of a monthly Last Days game (plus, all my stuff is buried in boxes!), but 12 still felt like a good number to shoot for…

Rangers of Shadow Deep Scenario 2

 

As it had been eighteen months since I played the first one, I thought it was high time I play the second Rangers of Shadow Deep scenario, the Infected Trees. 

While it’s not essential to make special trees, and cocoon tokens, and Halloween spiderwebs to jazz up the table, I have to admit I was pretty pleased with how everything looked when I was setting it up:

So, having investigated a rash of disappearances at a village on the edge of the Shadow Deep, the Paladin and her band of merry men (one of whom was enthusiastically waving around the magic sword previously owned by the Ranger they’d been investigating the disappearance of) followed a set of spider tracks deeper into the woods.

Unfortunately, my tracker failed her tracking roll, the one thing she’d been brought to do, and so we made especially poor time through the woods. On the brighter side, she did find a dose of Farlight Leaf though, which she immediately ate, much to her companions’ surprise.

Stumbling into a clearing, the party spotted a series of roughly man-sized web cocoons, and so set about popping them open to get at the goodies inside. 

Obviously the first one they came to popped open to reveal a zombie, because that’s just how my luck runs.

Thankfully Five Trees falling (my tracker) is able to take it out with a well placed arrow before it can get it’s fetid claws into the Paladin.

Brother Eoin, not being the most fighty of party members, starts making a dash up the flank to try and start burning down the spiders’ nest trees rather than getting stuck in like his companions:

The Paladin, on the other hand, approaches the situation as she does any other - with a prayer on her lips and a sword in her hand:

Luckily for her, River Wind the barbarian charges in to assist and (despite me rolling a 4) wins the combat, cleaving a spider in two thanks to his two handed weapon!

Drawn by the sounds of combat, more spiders enter the fray, but thankfully far away from the melee breaking out in the centre of the board.

Brother Eoin, emboldened by his companions’ success at smashing up spiders, charges into one with his hammer held high…

And promptly gets clobbered, left with only 2HP. And poisoned.

Things are going much better in the centre though, as Five Trees Falling and the Paladin taking out a spider each with their bows. As a brief aside, despite my usual luck with dice, for the first half of the game I was rolling hot, and seemingly taking out an enemy with every attack!

The spider that was previously dominating Brother Eoin managed to whiff it’s follow-up attack, and was put down with a swift bonk from a hammer.

The next web cocoon opened also turned out to contain a zombie, suggesting that the delay caused by Five Trees Falling falling that initial tracking roll meant that the spider venom had plenty of time to ripen the missing villagers into zombies! 

Jarreth (the conjuror) however finds a web cocoon that must have been a little fresher, and manages to pull out a surviving villager.

As a zombie has managed to get into reach of Brother Eoin, Phinneas (the halfling rogue) dashes over to support him, followed by Five Trees falling, who snipes another spider on her way over. 

Between massively outnumbering it and carrying Aventine’s magic sword, Phinneas was easily able to dispatch the zombie, and then headed off to start putting nest trees to the torch:

On the other side of the table, Jarreth used the spell Swat to destroy the last enemy on the board, and so the party set to hurriedly completing their objectives before any more reinforcements turned up! The fourth cocoon investigated unfortunately contained a dead body, but on the other hand, better that than another zombie I guess…

As everyone heads to burn nest trees and investigate the last cocoon, River Wind manages to get himself tangled up in a spiderweb:

Although to be fair, if I had to choose someone to get stuck in a situation that requires strength to get out of he’s the one I’d choose! 

By the end of the following turn, the party had burned down all of the nest trees (Phinneas doing most of the heavy lifting here, with poor poisoned Brother Eoin limping along behind him) and investigated the last cocoon (revealing another survivor, hoorah!), so the party mostly formed up in a defensible position in the centre of the board to prepare for any more enemies appearing.

A zombie shambles up, and so both the Paladin and Five Trees Falling take up positions to take it out with their bows. Unfortunately, my usual luck with dice resumed and despite both landing damaging hits, it wasn’t enough to actually put the zombie down.

Jarreth, chilling on the side of the board waiting for the right moment to step in with his remaining spell and other wise generally stay out of trouble, looked up to see a giant spider descending on him from a previously unnoticed nest tree…

On the bright side, just before noticing the spider he’d stubbed his toe on a barrel, which might turn out to contain something valuable…

Heading Jarreth’s high pitched scream, the Paladin bundles around a large briar bush and takes down the spider with a single arrow, to her surprise as much as the spider’s. ‘I wasn’t scared…’, mumbles Jarreth as he sets the tree ablaze…

As the remaining zombie shambles towards River Wind, Phinneas leaps forward to try and strike it down with the magic sword he was brandishing. Despite managing to land several seemingly telling blows, the zombie doesn’t actually seem to notice. Shrugging, River Wind steps forward and knocks the zombie’s head clean off (as I rolled a Critical Hit!)

At this point, the sun went behind the clouds, limiting the effectiveness of bow fire, so everyone decided it was time to get while the going was still good and makes for the edge of the board. 

Jarreth scoops up the treasure token and begins shepherding the rescued survivors to safety, as the Paladin Heals Brother Eoin (although alas not enough to cure him of his poison, so he is still limited to only taking a single action each turn).

River Wind manages to get himself tangled in another web, presumably from poking at something that he shouldn’t have due to boredom at the lack of enemies to slay, and unfortunately isn’t able to flex his way out of it straight away as he previously had…

Another zombie shambles into the board, but alas time was running out and River Wind and Phinneas weren’t able to harvest it for XP, as the party need to get off and report their findings to their superiors…

And thus, next comes the best part of any campaign game:

All in a success, as nobody got taken out of action and I managed to get 97XP for this scenario, putting me on… 99, 1 short of levelling up. If only I’d managed to kill that last zombie! 

Phinneas gives back Aventine’s sword. Grudgingly.

Rolling for the treasure token, it turns out to be an enchanted set of Heavy Armour, that can be used to blind enemies, which the Paladin gladly dons.

So, another eighteen months or so until the next scenario I guess? I just need to make a river, a bridge, a ford, some rocks, paint a vulture… I’ll probably play some more Frostgrave first, as that’s a lot less terrain dependant!

The week after playing this game, the Tally took a hit too, which I’ll amend into this post:

I grabbed the last two minis of the month from GW, a masked cultist looking chap with a bow and a Khorne cultist type for my bits box, which puts the Tally at:

9 vs 9 = +0

Not back into the red yet! Although Salute looms ever closer…