A few delightful packages

 

While I couldn't get to UK Games Expo, a friend was going, and they kindly picked up a couple of bits and pieces for me. The main one is the event exclusive Miranda Ashcroft for Infinity, who I have been dying to get since we saw the preview of her.

Also picked up are a couple of preview miniatures from Duncan's new wargame venture, and the Games Workshop AoS event miniature - sadly the 40K ones had gone a little too fast once I heard they were there and contacted my friend.

But a huge thanks to my secret shopper, and I look forward to getting these sorted.

Fenris Games runs a small Ko-Fi project each year with varying levels, and this year the reward were some slightly fishy villagers. These should be a fun little project.

Ian was also kind enough to include these duck people stickers because he knows I'm a huge sucker for ducks. You may have guessed from this that he's a big Runequest fan...

Finally, I noticed that I had forgotten to pay postage on a Kickstarter from last year, and sure enough, once I paid up, this delightful book showed up a few days later. Beyond the Pale is an RPG inspired by Jewish history and folk lore. I've had a flick through and it looks great. I'm looking forward to settling down and having a deep read soon.

Bits and pieces from Salute

 

I was relatively restrained at Salute this year, but that doesn't mean I got nothing. There were bits and pieces in the goodie bag, as usual, and I bought a couple of choice pieces.

The goodie bag had the show miniature and a set of Mantic Abyssal Dwarfs. I didn't have any particular plans for these, so they've both been eBayed.

There were also some magnetic things from Warmag, which I am tempted to try out the next time I do a big Games Workshop project, as their plastics better suit magnetising than KR Multicase foam.

And finally, amid the various advertising leaflets, the goodie bag also included quick start rules for Space Gits.

Actual purchases! I grabbed two Beastmen from Red Dragon Miniatures. I mostly grabbed this for the goat beastman who'll make a great Breggle bandit for Dolmenwood. But I also love the boar headed chap, even if I'm not quite sure what I'll use him for yet.

I got this "Bound Soul" from Four Score Gaming. I'd seen it at Chillcon and had been tempted, but decided to go for it this time. I believe the sculpt is produced by "Illusionary Constructs". It'll get added to my assorted "awful fantasy RPG encounter" pile once painted.

Anvil Industry had this cool 3D printed vampire like creature that I loved and was able to pick up. It was a bit of an impulse buy, but should be a fun paint.

Finally, I picked up this art print from Greyhawk Miniatures. I just loved the cosy vibe of this mouse wizard, so picked it up to add some art to my room.

One quick purchase of a picture frame online, and he now graces the top of my shelves, making them look five hundred percent more delightful.

Lead and Steel 2026 - Acquisitions

So, what did I get at Lead and Steel? A late addition to the show was Four A miniatures, and I picked up a few adventurers, some weird little critters and a cloud of faces that will make an excellent monster.

The goodie bag had a whole ton of stuff from an assortment of manufacturers. For a free show, this is a whole ton of stuff!

The organiser also gave me a couple of other free bits and pieces as we were about to finish, so I’ve also got a drunken master monk and some orcs. Despite having a criminal number of goblins I am very short on orcs for RPG purposes.

Due to the pick and mix results (below) I ended up splashing out on an old Citadel Bretonnian cannon to use as a Border Princes Bombard.

I also picked up an Advanced Fighting Fantasy book to relive my childhood and a pre-coloured ALEPH shipping container- I think by Antenocitis Workshop originally?

And finally, the results of the Pick n Mix for charity. For £10, I got the Bombard and crew, then four cool minis I can paint up to add to D&D warbands and such like.

This is a bit more than I intended to get, but it’s fine. I can just be more restrained at Salute tomorrow, right?

Wildspire Miniatures

 

A few years ago, I backed a couple of Gamefound campaigns by a company called "Blacklist Games". I backed for three sets of miniatures - a horror set, and two sets of fantasy miniatures. Unfortunately, a series of delays occurred, costs increased over the pandemic, and Blacklist ended up out of money and unable to fulfil a large number of crowdfunding projects they'd organised. 

I was relatively sanguine about the incident - crowd-funding is always a risk, and many people are too used to treating it as a pre-order instead. Blacklist had cut their margins to the bone to produce huge numbers of cheap, board game quality miniatures for role-players, and when things changed, they weren't able to continue. A number of other backers definitely feel that Blacklist crossed the line from poor judgement to being mis-leading. I would not back another Blacklist project, and leave it at that.

However, in some good news, a US company called Wildspire Miniatures purchased the rights to the miniatures, and offered original backers an opportunity to buy the miniatures at cost. And so, several years later, I now have two of the three sets of minis I originally ordered (the horror set has been left to a later fulfilment).

This is what I got - for how much is kind of difficult to say. Do I count the money lost to Blacklist? The money I paid Wildspire? In any event, it's more miniatures than I needed. There are a mix of "hero" characters and monsters, with the smaller monsters having duplicates, usually four of each. I really don't like monopose models in RPGs where I can avoid it, so there were plenty to clear out.

So, I separated out three sets of "useful monster minis" and found an assortment of friends who wanted a set. This still leaves me with plenty of useful figures to paint for RPGs, but now my friends also have a slightly more achievable volume of cheap miniatures.

I also chose to get rid of some of the monsters. Some went to my friends, others got lumped into an eBay sale a while back. I got rid of Cthulu because there's rarely a need for him in a campaign, and he's too established in the pop culture to be of any use in horror games. I didn't love the poses on the troll, ogre or dire bear, so off they went.

The demon lord also went, as did the acid elemental. The female giant was actually a difficult call - in some ways, I do quite like the sculpt, but her being on a "huge" base rather than a "large" base really reduced her utility as the bigger giants in Pathfinder don't share her general vibe, and come it at much later levels meaning I'd use her less often. There were also a few little details that I just didn't love about the sculpt, so when looking at a whole table of minis, she ended up in the "sell" pile.

So, everything remaining is now put away in boxes for later. The time taken to sort these all out is why I am avoiding big "bargain" purchases now. I have stuff on my "to do" list right away that I want to be getting on with, and these have literally gotten in the way of that getting finished. That said, if I haven't started these by the end of the year, I may seriously consider passing the rest on as well. If I am interested in running in person RPGs in the future, I need to commit my time to actually painting some of models I plan on using in them. If I'm just sitting on things, dreaming of the future and not doing anything, I can keep dreaming about it without a pile of boxes in my house.

Plans for 2026

 

And so, 2026 dawns with a dread inevitability. It is an unusual one for me, as it's dawning in a new city for the first time in a couple of decades. The move to Nottingham has hit my hobbying this year, as it takes time to put your life in boxes and and then take it all out again.

There's still plenty of settling in to the new place still to be done, so I'm expecting hobbying to continue to be slow for at least the first part of the year. I'll also be dipping into Flesh and Blood, LARPing, and selling excess possessions on eBay, all of which can be quite time consuming.

So, I'm planning on being quite restrained with my 2026 hobby goals. I want to check in around about the end of March to see how things are going. The main thing I want to get sorted is this Halfling Blood Bowl team project. I want to get some games in at Warhammer World now I'm in Nottingham, and this seems like a nice small and achievable project to make that happen.

Once I've gotten the paints out, I also want to really hit my Combined Army and Shasvastii pretty hard. I'm thinking of trying getting a batch of ten models together and putting some time into just getting some regularly used pieces done. For example, for Vanilla Combined, the Charontid, the Anathematic, Bit and KISS, two Daturazi and four Hungries will mean that a huge number of common list builds will become all or mostly painted.

This might prove to be too big an ask in terms of the size of the batch, but I want to give it a go before deciding if I go for smaller batches first or not. Ideally I want to have painted some of my Nomads by the end of the year, but right now I have a set scheme for my Combined Army and have a whole bunch assembled, undercoated and ready to go, so getting a bunch finished will be good for my soul.

Broadly, I'm trying to get in a game of Infinity a month. I do want to try and build a community in Nottingham, and there are a few folk who are interested. I'm booked in for a game later this month, and I'll try and keep that up.

My side hobby project is that I very much want to work through this year is getting a bunch of bits done from smaller hobby companies, especially for RPGs. Eventually I want to run an in person campaign with miniatures and so on, so building up a good variety of basics will really help build a good foundation for that.

All in all, this year isn't so much about setting goals "for the year", it's about getting started again, seeing how I'm going, and adjusting to match. Everything is far more of a new start than normal. I am much happier in Nottingham, but it is a different pace of life to London, and its an excellent opportunity for a bit of a reset. Making sure I don't fall back into old over-commitment habits is really important.

Hobby Review of 2025

 

As we reach the end of 2025, I'm taking stock of what I got up to hobby wise this year. Much of the year has been taken up with a house move, but I did get a bunch of painting done before we moved. I haven't started painting in the new place just yet, but we should get onto that some time soon.

I started the year finishing up a Battletech Lyran lance. The idea here was to get to the point where if an opportunity for a starter game comes up, I'm ready to go with a painted lance. An opportunity hasn't come up yet, but it's a good thing to have ready to go.

HATE then ran a slow grow "introduction to N5" Infinity league, so I decided to get some miniatures painted up. I started with Oktavia Grimsdottir, and I think this was my favourite paint job this year. I'm incredibly pleased with how she came out and I'm hoping to get some more paint jobs to this standard this year.

I also got an elf rogue from Strata Miniatures Dungeons and Diversity line painted up. I'd had her part painted for a while, and was keen to get her done before I moved. Having a good range of potential adventurer miniatures is something I'm keen to build up.

Similarly, this Wizkids Frameworks Tiefling Warlock was a model I'd picked up alongside some models I needed for a D&D game. He got a nice simple tabletop quality paint job. I'm keen to plug through a few more useful fantasy models for future RPGs in the coming year.

I also got Agent Dukash painted up for my Shasvastii. He's no longer available in vanilla Combined Army since the most recent update. At least I got to run him at a tournament in vanilla before the rules changed!

These Hedge Witches from Conquest are good for Frostgrave and RPGs. In RPGs they might end up as PCs or NPCs, depending. Flexible miniatures like this are really great picks for RPGs.

And finally, I got these goblins painted up. I had these Aenor Miniatures on my paint table for months, if not years, before I finally got them done. It was great to get them finished before I packed up to move house.

So, a relatively quiet year from a painting point of view. The goal for the coming year . . . can wait, for now. I have thoughts, but for now, I can sit back and be proud of a good range of figures I got painted this year.

Dolmenwood Review

 

My Dolmenwood Kickstarter arrived last week, and I've taken some time to go through it and write a few thoughts on it. I originally planned to write this on Sunday evening. At about 7pm I sat down to have a quick scan through the Player's Book . . . and then it was bedtime.

I'm glad I didn't write the review on Sunday evening, because as I read through, and talked to a few of my friends over social media, I picked up a few nuances my initial scan read had missed.

Dolmenwood is both a game and a setting. The game is in the style of early D&D, with nine classes and six "kindreds". Attacks and skills seem to be quite a shallow progression, while hit points start very low with a dice per level and low modifiers so  the increase feels a lot steeper. I haven't had time to learn the spells yet, so I'm not sure how much they increase the power level.

The setting is a fantasy medieval realm, with a mix of mortals and fairies. As you may pick up from the name, the majority of the published setting is set in a large wood. It's ruled over by mortal nobles, has more civilised and more dangerous areas, has fairies, witches and monsters.

The game runs off three books - a Player's Book, a Monster Book, and the Campaign Book. The Player Book has all the player facing rules, the Monster Book does precisely what you'd expect, and the Campaign Book includes the GM guides, a detailed world guide including locations, NPCs and factions. I cannot emphasise enough how massive the Campaign Book is. It's more than twice the size of the player's book. I also got a book of maps with a mix of maps that are of use to the GM, and a bunch you can show to the players.

My Kickstarter Pledge also included four pre-written adventures. At least some of these have been previously published for Old School Essentials and D&D 5e. I had a scan through Winter's Daughter, which was a good starting adventure that gave a good indicator of how you might want to organise your own adventure if you were making your own.

It's an excellent adventure that's got a big "fairy tale" vibe. It's dripping with character and style. It feels very accessible and like a good starter.

I also got a canvas map designed to be player facing, and two canvas referee maps with all the secret information you need. I am unsure why I got two referee maps - it was in my pledge manager automatically at my pledge level.

The map is huge, and shows the real depth of Dolmenwood. It can be played as a hex crawl exploration, and this is where it's real "unique selling point" is. Every single hex has a write up in the campaign guide (though obviously, I've not read every single one, so I don't know what the balance of "places of interest" to "featureless swamp" there is. But there seems to be quite a lot there.

I also picked up the Adventuring Party box with a bunch of miniatures, because I am a sucker.

There's eleven miniatures in the set, with a mix of the different classes and kindreds. There's a bit of a shortage of goat people, short moss people and little bat people miniatures, so it's particularly useful for those.

The dice and dice bag fills me with joy. The highest number on each dice have little mushroom symbols on. They include 3D6 so you can roll your starting stats. The dice bag has some lovely embroidery on, and feels like a much nicer material and better quality than the Critical Role dice bag I got a while back.

Dolmenwood is selling you a dream. It has the potential set up for a massive long running campaign with your friends, in person, with beautiful in person props and miniatures. It recommends you run with six characters, whether that's six players, or having retainers and hirelings to make up numbers.

But the recommendation of numbers alone makes me want to run the "perfect" Dolmenwood game with six players - a sandbox where it's based off the goals the players come up with rather than a fixed plot arc or specific threat for them to try and defeat.

I don't have a local tabletop group yet, and you'd not want to jump straight into a massive commitment of a campaign like this. You'd want to build up to it.

But the dream is there. 

Peach Con - Mermaids (Siren's Oath) and Paint Brushes by Tesseract Miniature Studios

 

Continuing my "Peach Con" coverage, there were a couple of other small companies promoting cool new stuff that caught my attention. First up is Twisted Spire, a sister company to Warp Miniatures. They're producing a series of mermaid miniatures and a one shot TTRPG to go with it.

They were showing off some of the painted miniatures (one not shown here as it was in the painting competition), and had a preview miniature available for sale. I was reminded not to buy the preview miniature while we haven't finished unpacking at the house, but I was very tempted and needed some moderate arm twisting!

This is an upcoming crowd-funder. It's going to be on Gamefound rather than Kickstarter. You can give the campaign a follow so it reminds you when it starts. I'm super excited for it.

Also with a stall at Peach Con was Tesseract Miniature Studios. Stu has started a range of brushes that he's developed with a partner company, and it seems like they've been flying off the shelves. The stand had some little 3D printed frogs, wet palette, paints and brushes so you could try them out for yourself. I sadly didn't manage to drop by any time the space was free, but that's probably a good sign.

Stu was kind enough to gift my me and my wife a "Workhorse" brush to try out once our hobby stations are back up and running. He had a whole bunch of his recent pieces on display, as he's been getting more into display and competition painting lately.

He's also got some plinths for sale, and I believe his first miniature bust is due to be released soon.

I've assembled this Infinity TAG, and it's in my paint queue, but I don't think I'm going to be able to quite hit these heights. It's always lovely to see some miniatures you've seen pictures of online in person.

Peach Con was definitely a bit of hobby balm for the soul. Seeing this cool new stuff from Bad Squiddo, Twisted Spire and Tesseract has got me really fired up to finish clearing the space to start sorting my hobby area out. We're still a little way off yet, but there's a lot of enthusiasm for when it arrives...

UK Games Expo - RPGs, Books and Accessories

 

I picked up a whole bunch of bits and pieces that aren't miniatures at UK Games Expo. First up is "hobbit girl autumn", a zine project by Jens Brasier. I was ambling late in the show and just got nattering to Jens on her stall, and liked the conversation sufficiently that I decided to buy something, and settled on this. It's a series of short stories and art of hobbit ladies in autumn. It's very chill and cosy.

Hobgoblin is a fantasy wargame created by Mike Hutchinson, the creator of Gaslands. I already backed the Kickstarter for a PDF of the rules, but picked up a deck of the cards you use in the game to make it easier to play if I do get around to trying it out.

Ex Libris is by my friend Eleanor Hingley. It's a solo play game about being a magical librarian. Definitely an easy sell.

"The what on the Border where?" was on the same stall. It's an interesting little ?exercise? where you create an old school style adventure. I don't know how to explain it, really, but I found it rather interesting.

Talking Thunder is a two person letter writing game about living under a dystopian oppressive regime. This is another game by Eleanor Higley. This is definitely one to have a little bit of emotional oomph spare before playing!

Senet is a board gaming magazine. I'd not come across it before, and it only has a print version and no PDF / online version. Board Games aren't my major jam - I like them but wargaming and RPGs are way ahead of them in my priorities - but this is a really solid review magazine that lets you know about stuff you wouldn't otherwise find out about.

SoulMuppet were giving away some QuickStart copies of Paint the Town Red , a game about sad vampires. In the player tips, it includes the line "be an impulsive, hedonistic disaster".

I think a lot of my friends will like this game very much.

It is coming to Kickstarter later this year.

While I was at the SoulMuppet stand, I spotted this game, Teeth, with a little post it said "Bridgerton Meets Buffy in West Yorkshire", at which point I knew I had to buy it. There wasn't much reason involved beyond that.

Finally, these "Dungenerator" cards, again from SoulMuppet, allow you to make a dungeon layout in a hurry. It seemed useful, so I picked them up too.