Saturday, 15 February 2025

Gaming in the 40K universe: Game 2 – Part 2 (going rogue).

The last time I posted here, I got to talking about how I was going about running/playing a solo game of (One Page Rules) StarQuest – but with a few changes so that I could have just the one hero (accompanied by a bunch of retainers) exploring a dungeon-like environment.

So, for the sake of completeness, I’ll post a link to that entry HERE, and I’ll also re-post the photo of the table set up:

Though something I forgot to mention last time was the fact that on smaller boards, OPR recommend that you half all the distances (movement, weapon range, etc.) - however I feel that really slows things down too much.

As such, I thought that maybe reducing everything to three quarters might be a better way to go… though that does mean a bit of extra maths. However, to simplify that, I thought I could still use all the listed ranges in the rules as written – but instead, make a little ruler that was reduced to three quarters size.

So here it is pictured next to a regular ruler…

...and, I have to say, it worked rather well :)

Anyway, now that I’ve got all that out of the way… let’s get to the mission itself.

 

BACKGROUND

As mentioned previously, all of these games are being set in a little homebrew corner of the 40k verse – with the possibility of certain outcomes influencing other games (so the result from a solo or co-op skirmish game could have ramifications in an RPG one-shot, and vice versa).

So, with that in mind, the first game that took place (a co-op game using the firefight rules more conventionally) saw an inquisitorial agent (accompanied by a captain of the local branch of enforcers) retrieve some valuable information (of Vermillion level security clearance) from an old abandoned section of the Magna Prime hive city… an area that has recently been rediscovered/reopened.

And, as has been detailed already, other miscreants and ne'er-do-wells have also been exploring the area (despite the best efforts of the Magna Prefects – the local enforcers) in the hope of retrieving valuable archeotech and the like.

Therefore, when Jops Van Jools (a low ranking family member of a Rogue Trader dynasty) appeared on the scene (as part of a scheduled visit – providing various delicacies and even a few illicit goods to the upper hive), he quickly learned of this new development within the depths of the hive – and not surprisingly, it was something that piqued his interest.

Through his contacts, he also learned that the inquisition have involved themselves (though, so far, somewhat unofficially) – but that has not perturbed him from undertaking his own investigation… as any potential secrets/artefacts of ‘the hollow’ (as it is becoming known) might well prove to be valuable… possibly to the extent of elevating his position within the family.

So it is that Jops has used his influence to gain access to a secluded section of ‘the hollow’ - one that appears to be fairly self contained... and one with a faint glimmer of power – the source of which is worthy of further investigation.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE: RETRIEVAL (recover the power source from the quest room, and return to the entrance/exit passage)

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE: NONE

 

THE MISSION

Jops and his crew (a squad of three household troopers, Maximilian the cyber mastiff, and heavy weapon servitor CF-HB-1) entered the abandoned structure and immediately picked up multiple movement/lifeform signatures on their scanners. Hopefully these would be little more than rad-grubs and tox-crawlers (or other underhive pests) – but it paid to be cautious nonetheless, as it could just as easily be mutants or cultists… that is, if you gave any credence to the rumours surrounding this place.

TURN 1

CF-HB-1 was sent to keep watch over the left passage, and Maximilian the right, while the young Rogue Trader and his guards investigated the first room on their way to the power source. The ‘blip’ reading from the left proved to be a false one… as did one from the right… but the third one marked a bunch of lumbering corpses – each of their faces contorted into an unsettling rictus grin as they advanced towards the party.

TURNS 2 TO 8

Jops took one of the creatures down with a blast from his plasma pistol, though the panicked guards missed will all three of their shots.

Things then escalated quickly as Maximilian was overwhelmed by the remaining two pox-ridden walkers… and yet more mutant dead-men appeared at the group’s back (from deeper within the complex).

In the resulting battle, things went poorly for the household troops, as they were torn to ribbons while trying to hold back the initial group of monsters (to give Jops and CF-HB-1 time to deal with the newcomers).

And all of that commotion must have alerted other denizens of this portion of The Hollow… as no sooner as the undead beasts were slain, a group of foul smelling cultists (clad in tattered rags, and clutching rusty weapons) entered the room – forcing the remaining members of the expedition to turn and face them.

TURNS 9 TO 16

Luckily, these cultists were dealt with quickly, and Jops was able to search the old consoles in the room (finding some kind of discarded stim wedged behind them), while the servitor opened the door to reveal yet another glitch ‘blip’ on the scanner.

With only one distant blip on the scanner, the remaining duo made their way to their target…

...though it was no simple task to remove this ancient power cell (or whatever it was) – so CF-HB-1 was set to watch the door… while Jops did his thing (i.e. it took several rounds for me to make a successful skill test to retrieve the object).

And all the while, new blips started to appear on the scanners (i.e. this was the first time I actually rolled any ‘sixes’ at the end of each turn – to indicate ‘reinforcement blips’).

TURNS 17 TO 20

With the ‘goods’ (finally) secured, the pair started to make their way back to the entrance - breathing a sigh of relief when the next blip proved to be nothing at all…

...unlike a new reading that suddenly appeared at the end of the passage they had just traversed – as more pox-infested cultists crawled out of the drainage system (i.e. another six was rolled in the ‘reinforcement phase’ – and a blip was placed at a random dead-end).

However, since they had the prize in their possession, Jops Van Jools decided that discretion was the better part of valour… and made a beeline for the exit (lamenting the loss of his troops and the expensive cyber mastiff that would be left to rot in this emperor-forsaken pit of corruption).

 

AFTER ACTION REPORT

And that was about it. All things considered, I think it worked out pretty well.

There’s a few things I might change up for my next game – but I’ll discuss those more when I get to it.

In the meantime, I’ve also decided that any models that get taken out during the game cannot be used again for 1d6 missions (as repairs/purchases are made, reinforcements arrive, and so on).

As such, I cannot use my cyber mastiff model again for 2 missions, and these particular trooper models can’t be used for 4.

I can still use the same unit types if I paint more models to represent them (or paint up entirely different units) – but for the next mission only servitor CF-HB-1 will be rejoining him from this particular crew… any other units I include will have to be freshly painted models.

Hopefully, this will encourage me to assemble and paint more models – because if this particular mission is anything to go by, these extra ‘filler units' don’t last long once combat is joined.

Anyway, I hope this was an interesting bat-rep of sorts. I’m mainly ‘journaling’ them for my own benefit/reference (as is often the way with solo gaming)… but I’ll continue to share them here on the blog… along with any session recaps of any RPGs or co-op games that I play in this setting (whatever the system). 

But that’s it for now… I’m off to see what models I can muster for my next game :)

Friday, 14 February 2025

Gaming in the 40K universe: Game 2 – Part 1 (going rogue).

In my last couple of posts I’ve been talking about gaming in my own little home-brewed corner of the 40K universe… first I covered the setting, and then I recounted a co-op game of StarQuest with a friend from Discord.

Next I want to talk about another game I played/ran solo – this time using my 2D dungeon tiles and the ‘random dungeon cards’ I was experimenting with a while back (you can read more about those HERE).

However, before I get to that, I just want to share a picture of the little warband I’ve created for this game, and some extra terrain pieces I’ve made (which I felt were needed to add more of a sci-fi vibe to the dungeon tiles – though I obviously need to do more).




Now, all of these models were printed on my brother’s ‘Bambu A1 mini’ 3D printer – and for a cheap FDM printer (with a 0.2mm nozzle) it does a pretty good job. It really does seem that FDM printers have come a long way in the past couple of years… and if you’d like a follow up article where I discuss all the (free) model parts I’ve used for these (as most are kitbashed in some way), then let me know, and I’ll do just that.

Anyway, for the game itself I used the StarQuest rules again (by one page rules) – but this time I created a single hero (who came out being exactly 100 points), and gave him a small retinue worth the same amount of points from the ‘firefight’ army builder (I judged that these units couldn’t perform any of the specific hero actions in StarQuest – but would count as having a 6+ for any tests that relied on the extra skills a hero has).

Thus we have Jops Van Jools (bonus points if you get the reference) – a young upstart from the Van Jools Rogue Trader dynasty. Being way down the line of succession for the Warrant of Trade, Jops is usually tasked with duties of little import and/or perfunctory roles as is fitting for one of his station.

But enough of that for now… so, the idea for this game was to set up a random ‘dungeon’ of sorts – however, when I’ve done this in the past, I’ve usually generated the dungeon on the fly (i.e. placed a new tile as each room or passage came into line of sight), but this time I thought I’d use my (prototype) random dungeon cards to generate the ‘dungeon’ ahead of time… and maybe treat this as a preliminary (auspex?) scan of the area.

And here’s how it ended up looking (note that I used some common sense to modify the results to fit my small board – so if a card revealed a passage that was 2 tiles long and ended in a t-junction… but I only had space for it to be one tile long with a single right turn – I just did that instead):



 
I’ve also not used any separate tables for this one – and I removed all the blank tokens from the mix. This way, if a card said ‘draw a token’ I was almost guaranteed to get something of interest. Here’s what I went with:

S token = place some terrain to represent an area that can be Searched.

T token = that room/passage tile counts as dangerous Terrain.

M token = add a Monster ‘blip’ in the middle of the tile.

R
token = ignore this Result.

Similarly, if I drew a ‘monster room’ card for a particular room – that room got a monster ‘blip’ token, and if I drew a ‘special room’ card – that room also got some terrain to function as a search token. Furthermore, if a card said to roll on the room feature table – I just added a bit of terrain (though I also added some terrain to the quest room, as I think it deserves it).

As for the monsters I’d be using – I used the same army list from the last game (i.e. one that features all the Nurgle themed models I have painted thus far).
 


And since my warband is 200 points in total (i.e. 100 points for my hero, and 100 points in ‘followers’), when playing StarQuest on ‘difficulty 1’ – that meant that the first ‘wave’ of monsters that appeared in the ‘dungeon’ would be worth a total of roughly 100 points (i.e. half the points value of my guys) – and so a random ‘wave’ of opponents was created in the app… which gave me these:



However, I still want there to be some mystery to the game (i.e. I don’t want to know exactly where all the enemies are going to be) – so I actually placed twice as many blip tokens on the board… with the idea being that if I got a result of one, two, or three when it was flipped over – that would correspond to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, enemy on the list… and if I got a four, five, or six – that would indicate a false reading from the scanner (i.e. no enemies would be placed).



 
As such, the blips (marked one to six) were shuffled – with one being placed (face down) in each of the ‘monster rooms’, one being placed on the tile that yielded an ‘M’ token, and the last two were placed in random dead ends (these dead ends would also function as ‘spawn points’ for additional enemies placed later in the game).
 
Speaking of which, I didn’t want to roll for additional ‘waves’ in the usual way (which involves keeping track of ‘enemy alertness’ – instead I simply rolled a d6 at the end of each turn. If that resulted in a six – I just put another monster blip at the end of a random ‘dead end passage’ (from any blips that had already been removed from play).

And the last thing I’ve introduced is something from Five Leagues/Parsecs… that being that each room has been numbered (in this case one to six) and I’ve rolled a d6 for each blip – with the result being the room that it is moving towards…



 
...as you can see in the image above (i.e. the blip in room two is going to be headed toward room five on its turn).
 
Now I know I’ve probably made all of this sound rather complicated with my bad explanation of things – but it actually worked rather well in practice :)

Anyway, rather than making this blog post any longer, I think I’ll recap the game itself in a separate article in a day or two. So, here’s hoping this has been a vaguely interesting read, and I’ll hopefully catch you again in the next one.

Saturday, 8 February 2025

Gaming in the 40k universe: Game 1 (Inquisitorial Secrets)

As I recently mentioned, I hope to get some more solo/co-op games in this year, and base those games in the 40k universe-ish (maybe even an RPG session or two).

In my previous post I outlined the homebrew planet where this will be taking place (hence the ‘ish’ part mentioned above), and in this one I’ll do a brief recap of the first game I played with a friend on TableTop Simulator (TTS).


So, for the table, I was able to find a bunch of assets that folks had already uploaded – so that we had a nice area to play on, and all the ‘bad guy’ miniatures we would need (note that even though there are tons of models available on TTS – I only used ones similar to those I have painted… because even though we are playing online, the whole thing is still being used as a means of encouragement for getting actual miniatures painted).

Also, one of the nice things about TTS is that it allows you to import images of your own – to make little standees. For example here’s a shot of the models we painted for our ‘heroes’:


On the left is Khalia (an inquisitorial acolyte) and young Capt. Tommard Howas (of the Magna Prefects)

Now, the system we used for this game was ‘StarQuest’ from One Page rules – which seems like a fun little skirmish game – as it pits a number of ‘heroes’ up against waves of random enemies (I say ‘random’ – but you create a list ahead of time, using their ‘firefight’ army builder – and it only draws from that list… so that you can ensure that you only face off against models you have in your collection).

Anyway, you can also randomise the mission’s objectives (primary and secondary) if you like – but since we are playing a bit of a narrative game, I chose these ahead of time so as to tailor them to the setting.

So, I went with ‘Area Search’ as the primary objective (i.e. there are three markers on the board… and one of them will be the thing we are searching for), and ‘Escort’ as the secondary (so that once we had found ‘the thing’ we had to get ourselves, and it, to the extraction point).

As such, the set up went something like this (note that the idea is that I’ll set things up for the first mission, then my friend will do the next, and we’ll alternate back and forth whenever we play):

An Inquisitor by the name of Yadec was investigating disturbances in a newly opened (previously abandoned) manufactorum level of Magna Prime. Now this area is not technically part of the underhive (as it’s not low enough) – but due to the fact that it’s been lost/sealed-off for as long as anyone can remember, it commands a similar status.

To begin with, these ‘disturbances’ were little more than the usual gang squabbles/claims over the area, the enforcers trying to keep order, and miscreants and ne'er-do-wells daring its depths in the hope of uncovering ancient artefacts and lost technology. However, this didn’t last long, and the two most prominent gangs in the area (‘the scabs’ and ‘the skinnies’) actually seemed to start working together – a worrying sign.

Enforcers of the Magna Prefects attempted to clear the area out on several occasions (in order to make way for a more official exploration/reclamation undertaking) – but each time they were either repelled or lost entirely. Since then, the usual rumours of cults and mutants occupying the area have begun to surface (along with tales of it connecting to the actual under hive) – which led to an investigation by the aforementioned Inquisitor. However, he has not been seen or heard of for quite some time.

However, several faint signals/beacons have recently been detected in one part of this area – ones bearing Vermillion level security codes of inquisitorial origin.

As such Khalia has been tasked with the retrieval of whatever it is that is sending out this beacon… and has been accompanied by young captain Howas of the Magna Prefects (as a local escort).

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE = AREA SEARCH (locate the data slate containing the inquisitorial data)

SECONDARY OBJECTIVE = ESCORT (retrieve that information, and return it for decoding)

 

THE GAME

Now, we actually played this game at the start of the year – so some of the details are a bit hazy… but I think it went something like this (I’ll try to keep it brief):

Acolyte Khalia and Capt. Howas proceeded with caution as they entered the eerie structure – weapons drawn and at the ready. While not really part of the underhive, the whole place had a similar look and feel – along with a faint smell of rot and decay… a rather unsettling thought.

However, it didn’t take long for the source of that odour to make itself known, as several mutant undead creatures shambled towards them as the pair made their way down a broad corridor towards the first marker.

The beasts were quickly dispatched, and the marker proved not to be the thing that they were looking for… simply delaying them long enough to attract the attention of yet more walking undead… twice as many as before… closing in from the other end of the corridor.

These were dealt with in a similar manner – though this time things resorted to close quarters combat – with both the acolyte and enforcer suffering minor injuries.

The duo then ventured deeper into the complex, avoiding the attention of more blighted creatures and pox-ridden cultists, only to realise that the second signal was also little more than a false reading.

As such, the last signal had to be the thing they were looking for – so off they went.


This was a race against time, as more enemies started to pour into the area… and, of course, the data slate proved to be difficult to extract from it’s surround. Yet, in time, the data was retrieved, and several nearby enemies were slain.

But, with more and more foes making their way to the site of the last marker...


...Khalia and Howas were forced to sneak around them, and on to the extraction point before the area was totally overwhelmed.


* * *

And that was about it. I think there were some search tokens investigated along the way… and there was an ineffectual frag grenade thrown into the mix at some point – but, all in all, it was a fun evening’s worth of gaming :)

Thursday, 6 February 2025

Gaming in the 40k universe (not necessarily using 40K rules)


 

For a while now I’ve been thinking about creating my own little (non-canon / fan-fiction) 'world' based in the 40k universe (or something vaguely 40k-ish) – just so that I can set some of my games there (be it an occasional RPG session, a skirmish game with a friend, solo-gaming, and so on).

This is mainly so that a bit of an ongoing story can be achieved (as I do like things to have some kind of narrative), and also to encourage myself to paint some of my sci-fi mini’s, and get some use out of all the sci-fi terrain that I’ve made (as I’ve only got it to the table once or twice).

Now I don’t foresee it being anything special, nor particularly original – just something to draw upon for my own personal games.

So, what better place to start than a hive city – where an old section of the (under)hive has been uncovered/rediscovered… and is infested with cultists (and/or worse). This could lead to some fun sci-fi dungeon crawling shenanigans – as various factions vie for control of the area, and/or undertake expeditions to seek out ancient archeotech or similar.

And since I currently live (in the real world) in the area where the old kingdom of Mercia once was – I think that’s what I’m going to call this ‘fantasy’ world – or more correctly, the gas giant about which the (habitable) moons orbit. A quick online search actually reveals that Games Workshop do mention a planet called Mercia in their fiction once – but nothing is said about it other than a Rogue Trader caught some ‘blight’ there – which works well for me… since I’ve got a bunch of Nurgle models painted up for the ‘bad’ guys :)

As such, the current plan is to go with something like this:

PLANET: Mercia (gas giant)

LARGE MOON: Mercia Magna (hive world) 

SMALL MOON: Mercia Parvum (mining penal facility) 

And most of the action will take place on Mercia Magna...


MERCIA MAGNA

Capital/Largest Hive City: Magna Prime

Planetary Governor: Lord Ulf Inneza

Station in geosynchronous orbit: Magna Caelum

Enforcers: Magna Prefects

...beginning in Magna Prime (i.e. that’ll be the site of the ‘new’ discovery)

(pictured here are a bunch of ‘Magna Prefects’ that I kit-bashed last year)

Now, I have played a couple of games already (an online co-op game in tabletop simulator using the StarQuest rules, and a solo game where I experimented with my random dungeon tiles/cards again) – but rather than tagging the results of those on to the end of this post, I’ll see if I can write them up separately, and have each game in it’s own post.

So, that’s the plan… and in the meantime, I’m also going to be working on some new sci-fi stuff for the YouTube channel – starting with this little fellow...



...so there's that to look forward to as well :) (well, at least, I'm looking forward to it!)

Monday, 20 January 2025

Docks, Piers, and Bridges

As I’ve recently mentioned over on Patreon, I didn’t really plan on releasing any new videos until this year’s ‘community challenge’ was over (see my previous entry)… just so that folks (myself included) could focus on that, and not be sidetracked by yet another new project.

However, as you can tell by the title of this post – all of that has gone out of the window, and since I’ve just finished this...

 


...I thought I’d share it :) (as I’m not a huge fan of holding things back once they’re done).

Anyway… HERE is a link to the pdf file over on DriveThruRPG (as usual it’s a pay-what-you-want files), and here’s hoping you like ‘em!


 

Wednesday, 1 January 2025

2025 Community Challenge

First of all… happy new year…


 ...fingers crossed it will be a good one!

Anyway, over on the YouTube channel, I’ve decided to start the year off with a (month long) community challenge!

 

All of the details are outlined in the video above… but all it really boils down to is – here’s a bunch of random textures…


 

...lets see what we can make with them :)

The hope is that several people will take part (I’m looking at you, gentle reader ;) ) and then send me pictures of what they have built – so that I can make a follow up video at the beginning of February that showcases everyone’s projects :)

So that’s the plan!

I will, of course, be taking part myself… and while it’s not a competition (there’s no prizes or anything like that), it should be a fun project to get the year started!

Tuesday, 31 December 2024

Miniatures Painted This Year (December Update)

This will likely be my last blog post of this year, so what better way to end things than with an update on all the miniatures I managed to get painted this month (and to see if I actually managed to keep to my goal of painting more than I buy this year).

So, first up is this little fellow…

...now I actually told a bit of a white lie when I got him earlier in the year – as it was actually going to be a Xmas/thank-you gift for a friend that I game with (one who will often give me a lift home when I need one). As such I didn’t want to spoil the surprise (just in case he stumbled across the blog) so apologies for making up a story about it being stuck to a plinth and used as a trophy :)

Anyway, the next mini’s I splashed some paint on where these two reaper bones models…

...which I painted up with the intent of using them for a few solo games of ‘Age of Fantasy: Quest’ (perhaps setting the scenarios in my old Age of Shadow campaign world).

Next up where these guys…

...which are more undead from Mantic Games’ Dungeon Saga kickstarter. Now I was hoping to get all of the undead from this set done over Xmas – but I got sidetracked with other things… so I still have three zombie trolls to go.

And, speaking of getting sidetracked, my brother has recently bought a Bambu A1 mini 3D printer (as it was on sale)… and he’s printed a few things off for me (and I’ve also been having a bit of a play around with it myself when time allowed).

As such, pictured below are three skeleton mini’s from Fat Dragon Games… one fresh from the printer (though I did accidentally break the spear and had to repair it, then add some ‘wraps’ for strength)… one primed… and one painted:


And for FDM prints (using the 0.2 nozzle, and the settings provided by Fat Dragon Games), I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed. In fact, here’s a few more:

The HeroQuest style one he gave to me – as he didn’t want it because it’s printed a bit small, the oversized crawling claw was the first one I had a go at printing off myself (as it wouldn’t take very long), and the mummy was the first one where he downloaded two separate files (i.e. the mummy and the base), and merged them together (though some of the wraps did break off – but it was easily fixed with a bit of greenstuff).

Anyway, getting back to regular miniatures… this next one is going to be used in a co-op game of ‘Grimdark Future Star Quest’ (set in the 40K universe):

(kitbashed from a reaper bones model – with a stargrave ‘trooper’ head, and a GW ‘arbite’ shock baton).

The game itself is going to be played online with one of the guys from my Discord server… but we thought it would be cool to use mini’s we’ve actually painted (rather than generic tokens) – and it turns out that it’s not all that difficult to turn a front & back photo into a standee that works pretty well on Tabletop Simulator (as can be seen below).

But yeah, this is going to be used as an enforcer captain in the hive city where our games will be set (the idea is that it will be a homebrew planet of Mercia Magna – which I/we can use for RPGs, war/skirmish games, solo adventure games, and so on).

And seeing as how I might also play some solo games myself (perhaps more StarQuest, or 5 Parsecs Bug Hunt), and as I say, run some one-shot RPGs in the hive city of Magna Prime (working title), and maybe even the odd (narrative) game of ‘GrimDark Future: Firefight’ …that means I’ll need some more enforcers to back him up.

So, to allow me to do that, I’ve done a bit of kitbashing to make some ‘security gunners’ (using the GrimDark Future: Firefight army builder)…


 ...which were made from Wargames Atlantic ‘bulldog’ bodies, Stargrave Trooper heads, and the Wargames Atlantic extra weapons sprue.

These are accompanied by some ‘security fighters’…


 ...which are also made from Wargames Atlantic ‘bulldog’ bodies and ‘cannon fodder’ arms, Stargrave Trooper heads, and Games Workshop ‘arbite’ shock batons.

And to round them out I’ve also put together this ‘veteran gunner’…


 ...which uses similar parts with regard to the head and body – but this one has a shotgun from GW’s ‘hive scum’ kit.

I also found this model buggy/truck on Thingiverse – which I think has the perfect look to go along with my enforcers.


However, to print this with the highest detail and the smallest nozzle would have taken around 9.5 hours… which I would probably have done if I had my own 3D printer… but since this would be done on my brother’s machine (and I didn’t want to tie it up for an entire day) he instead installed the larger (0.4) nozzle and used a thicker layer height to get it down to 2.5 hours.

As such, the resulting model does have some pretty obvious layer lines if you look closely – but on the whole I still think it’s great.

And finally… the last models of the year are these guys:

Again, these were (free) 3D prints (I think they might have been on the Cults 3D website)… and they’re actually intended for use as ‘basing’ decorations. However, I’ve blown them up 200% when printing them – so that they fit nicely on a 20mm base in their own right (and can be used for little gribbly creatures of the underhive… or even as dungeon vermin in a fantasy setting).

So, that’s everything that I got painted in December… which brings the grand total up to:

148 painted models in 2024.

Which isn’t bad at all!

However, the whole 3D printing thing has thrown things a bit out of whack with regard to the number of miniatures I bought… as ‘technically’ I only paid for the 3 Fat Dragon skeletons (which I picked up as a thank you to FDG – seeing as how we were using the printing ‘profile’ he provides for free).

So technically (there’s that word again ;) ) I only bought 3 mini’s this month - as the rest were free downloads ;)

And that brings the total number of models that I paid for this year to:

115 models bought in 2024.

Which makes this whole endeavour a success right?

Well… not quite. You see, I also got the DarkTide boardgame back in July for my birthday (which contains 20 mini’s)… plus I had a bumper gaming Xmas:


...amongst which are 8 Dark Souls miniatures, 7 animal adventurers, 5 (dire/giant) wolves, and 20 orcs & goblins on sprues (so that’s another 40 miniatures there).

And if you include the other 8 free models that have been printed… it actually comes out to:

183 models acquired in 2024.

But yeah, I think I’m still going to count this as a win, as I DID paint more models than I bought (which was my original aim… I did specifically use the word ‘buy’ in my first post back in January :P) – though I’ll admit that it’s a bit of a stretch to claim that :D

In any case, it’s been good fun all the same… and it’s great to look back at the folder where I’ve been keeping all these pictures, and see everything I’ve done this year all in one place (even if you don’t share your pictures with anyone, I really do think this is a great thing to do).

Anyway, that’s pretty much it for this year’s hobby projects… but if you’re interested, I’ll be starting the new year with another terrain project – one that everyone can take part in – so I’ll see you then!