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?

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
  

2023 in Miniatures

 Another productive year, and again largely thanks to the Reaper Challenge league. 

It's kinda hard to count how many "minis" I painted, depending on how you define mini vs terrain. If w divide it up by things that were 3D printed vs from a miniature company, I painted 113 minis, plus a bunch of terrain. If you want to count things like the tent and the scatter terrain statues and stuff, then closer to 100. Either way, it's still a respectable amount of minis

There wasn't a whole lot of sci-fi represented this year. In fact it was probably outnumbered by the normal animals I painted this year. Chances are 2024 will probably be similar, unless I really buckle down and get some more Stargrave minis knocked out.

Also underrepresented this year were undead. Only 2 skeletons painted (only one shown, the other joined the ranks of the Ed Sculpt legion at ReaperCon), which is less than the 3 from last year, and the 7 from the year before. I guess the massive amount of undead from 2020 has kept me off that bandwagon. 

I've already blogged about most of the terrain, so I'm not going to focus too much on that, but I will say that I plan on making more of the alien jungle scatter terrain. I want to have a really nice looking set to play in.  

It's really too early to guess what the year will bring, but of the 5 minis currently on my painting desk, only 1 is from Reaper. While I have a LOT of Reaper minis, I do have a sizable pile of non-Reaper minis, and I've been very focused on Reaper minis with the Reaper Challenge League the last few years, and find myself wanting to work on stuff that isn't Reaper for a bit.

I will say that I've got a couple of specific plans/goals/things I want to work on:
BFG Tau fleet
Frostgrave & Stargrave figures
LotR Sauron
Baba Yaga's Hut

We'll see what I actually tackle this year.

2022 in Miniatures

2022 was a productive year, largely because of the Reaper Challenge League. It really spurred me to keep painting, even when there were a whole lot of good reasons to not pick up a paint brush. The league probably wouldn't be as motivating if it wasn't for the group categories that I always signed up for, even in the busiest of months. 

117 minis in total in these pics (but there are at least 2 that I can't put my hands on right this second), including terrain pieces and some small terrain accessories Here's a group shot of all the fantasy minis.

 

And some close ups...

I'm still really pleased with these cultists.

And here's the sci-fi contingent.

A very productive year. I haven't finished any minis yet this year, but I've got several that are close to done, and a couple others that I just started. Ideally I'll paint at least the same number of minis... I have a couple of big things I'd like to get done this year too, including getting back to my cardboard spaceships.

2021 Minis In Review

 It wasn't the best year as far as making blog posts about the minis I painted, but I still painted a bunch. 

It was actually hard to get a fully accurate count in part because I was so bad at documenting it all, and also because I moved this year and had to pack away everything. I know there are a couple minis in these pics that I actually painted at the end of 2020, and a couple that I didn't pull out that were definitely painted in 2021.

All in all I'm pleased with my progress. Somewhere around 100 minis (I really should update my spreadsheet). Mostly Reaper minis, with some Frostgrave tossed in for variety. Aside from the fact that I have a lot of Reaper minis, I've been focusing on them because Reaper ran a challenge league this past year (and will be again this year) where you can earn points for raffles at the end of each quarter. 

So far this year I've already managed to paint 5 minis! A troop of Stargrave mercs painted up as Rent-A-Space-Cops. 

Still need to finish their bases, but it's starting the year off right!

2020 Miniatures in Review

  

So here it is! A year's worth of minis. A fairly diverse array this year, from Battlefleet Gothic ships to steampunk to traditional fantasy, with a bit of terrain tossed in for good measure. Overall a total of 133 pieces. 

There were not a lot of hero type minis this year. In fact, counting the sci-fi dudes, I think this is all of them... and calling some of these "heroes" is a stretch. On the other hand, I'm really pleased with the conversion of the green knight and Kornovik back there.

Ah, the undead. I wasn't sure how the ghostly wraiths would work, but I think having the armor and parts of the weapons painted works. I have some non-translucent version that will be painted up like the Murkillors. The ghouls were a fun conversion project, and the ogres were a lot of fun to paint. Lots of big space to work on.

Ah, the underdark. Not something I spend a lot of time playing with, but these dark elves from Bones 4 (plus the ones behind them from Bones 1) were calling out to me. Factor in the cool Arachne and spiders, and you've got yourself some fun times! Plus there's the cool hooked horrors and umber hulks...

Bulking out a good chunk of this year's progress was my new space marine fleet, merchant convoy, and a trio of xenos ships from Noble Armada that'll probably count as dark eldar or something. 

Steampunk flying monkeys, a brain in a jar, and a very large iron golem.

Another look at the heroes, plus the temple dragon.

Goblins, vermin, and a dwarf paladin.

And a pair of hags and a bunch of rats to round things out. 

All in all, I'm pretty pleased with my productivity for the year, though there is a not insignificant number of minis that I started and haven't finished yet. Maybe I should pull them all out and share what I didn't finish this year?

2019 Mini Roundup

While not as productive a year as 2018, my total output for 2019 was a respectable 60ish miniatures.









Why 60ish? Because I really finished about 60 minis, but I’ve got a bunch that are really close to done, which, when I have a few hours to spare, will bump up my 2020 numbers right quick.



As with last year, there’s a fair amount of troop minis.

And yes, this should have been posted a month ago. I've been busy, which is why there's been next to nothing posted all month.

Minis Wrap Up 2018

With the end of the year approaching I wanted to take stock of what I’d managed to accomplish. Last year I put out every mini I’d painted, and it was really cool to see them all set up like that. I honestly don’t get too many occasions to play with my minis these days, so I decided to do it again.

Now, a fair bit of what got painted up this year was terrain, which visually bulks up the total, but there’s also some things missing. I gave away more minis this year than ever before, including a dragon.

I gave away a DRAGON!

And also the adventurers that defeated it. Now not all of them were painted this year, but but still..

Then the “gargoyles” (various statues, gargoyles, angels, and demons). They were painted, but... I feel a little bad counting them.

In total I've painted 120 minis this year (plus the fences). This is probably my most productive year since I last painted whole units of figures for the LoTR game, and maybe even better than those years.



I’m pretty happy with my progress, both in the number of minis I’ve painted, and also (overall) in their quality. Granted most of them are tabletop quality, but the minis I’ve really focused on, I’ve upped my game a bit. Definite progress in increasing my base skill level.









Interestingly, I only painted a single sci-fi mini this year. Otherwise it's mostly Reaper Bones, a bit of Frostgrave, and a couple of D&D minis.