2025 Painting Log

These are actually the Furies, a set of fine looking models from Crooked Dice, but I will most likely be using them in Star Schlock to stand in for the Death Squad Commandos, a new 5-figure unit that has a stat card but no official models yet (Star Schlock is a little weird in that they frequently release stat cards without models, and just as often release models without stat cards).

These may well be my last models of the year. I’m working on Mantic’s Deep Space Pest Control advent calendar, but I don’t actually have anything from that finished yet, and I’m hoping to spend most of the holiday week actually gaming, which, while it will be great, won’t leave me any time for painting. We’ll see how it goes…

Models painted in 2025: 262, for 13 different games.

I was sorely tempted to paint Kit Fisto up as D’Argo from Farscape, but I thought better of it.

Now that I think about it though, I kind of regret the decision, and I’m starting to think of other Star Wars characters who could double for the Farscape cast.

Farscape was a great show.

Anyway, here’s Kit Fisto, his apprentice, and yet another squad of clone troopers.

These are my last Shatterpoint models for the year, but next year’s releases look pretty interesting — Baylan Skoll will be a must-have of course, and Morgan Elsbeth and the zombie troopers from the Baylan Skoll show look interesting, both as models to paint and in terms of game play.

I’m even interested in the sequel trilogy models that are coming up — while the actual films are…deeply flawed, I always thought the characters were appealing, and if nothing else they’ll be colorful and fun to paint.

2025 models painted so far: 257, for 13 different games

(I got A LOT of hobby done during the Thanksgiving weekend.)

I love that “Clone Wars Shark Guy” is a Google search autofill. Search results will tell you that “Riff Tamson was a male Karkarodon who served as a commander and warlord in the Confederacy of Independent Systems during the Clone Wars” and direct you to Wookieepedia to learn more about him.

This model’s forward-pointing stance has made getting his photo in focus a little challenging, but I think these convey the constant motion of swimming that I’m sure the sculptor was going for.

I blew through this squad relatively quickly, but I still had a lot of fun with them. I started the Aqua Droids by drybrushing gunmetal and then silver over a black base coat, but then I noticed that their joints and hands are actually black so I tried going over them with Grim Black speedpaint. I like the results pretty well, enough that I’m going to try experimenting with using speedpaints over a metallic base coat more in the future.

Nossor Ri (that’s his name, I swear) was a good example of why you shouldn’t use the Shatterpoint artwork for reference when painting the models. In his appearance on the show, this Quarren has yellow skin with brown spots, but for the card artwork they did him in a fleshy tan color similar to the “squid head” that we see in Jabba’s Palace in Return of the Jedi. I think the yellow is much more striking so I went with that.

2025 models painted so far: 252, for 13 different games

Crooked Dice did a Kickstarter a few years ago to bring back Corporate Wars, a range of near-future miniatures that originally came out in the 1990s. I love the cartoonish, chonky look of these, but I didn’t back the Kickstarter, probably because I already have a ton of cyberpunky models and I’m not actually playing any cyberpunky games at the moment.

But I found myself needing a group of 5 female combat types to substitute for a Star Schlock unit that doesn’t have any miniatures of its own yet, and I thought these might do the job. Looking at the completed models I think they’re a little too ’90s and not early ’80s enough for Star Schlock, but they were an absolute blast to paint so I’ve got my eye on some more from the Corporate Wars range — maybe it’s time to pick up a cyberpunk game…

These others are from the same range. The two plainclothes guys came in a set with one of the ladies, and the other two just caught my eye for no particular reason.

2025 models painted so far: 248, for 13 different games (or maybe 14 if I find a game to play with these…)

At last I’ve got the other half of the Rogue One cast done. Playing out the final battle in the film would probably be better suited to Legion than Shatterpoint, but I think it will be fun to do a “Rogue One vs the Empire,” pitting this squad along with Cassian Andor and K2-S0) against Krennic and some stormtroopers, maybe backed up by Darth Vader or one of the other Imperial leaders.

2025 models painted so far: 239, for 13 different games

This model from Lucid Eye caught my eye when I was ordering some Savage Core stuff a while ago. I should really get to work on that other stuff…

I thought it would be more fun to use light colors instead of the usual black cloak, more like the twilight ringwraiths from the Peter Jackson LOTR films.

I don’t know what I’ll use this for, if anything. I do have a Ghostbusters 7TV scenario in mind, this could be a pretty good main villain for that.

2025 models painted so far: 235, for 13 different games

These are the rest of the models I got from MEP miniatures. My goal is to use these for mutants in Star Schlock — you need 5 models to make up a unit, but this set is only 3. I didn’t want to get a duplicate set, so I figured I would make up the difference with some wasteland warriors from Crooked Dice, but the scale and style is off just enough to bother me. MEP has added a few more mutant characters (or I just missed them the first time around), so I’ll probably do a second order with them soon.

I painted these almost entirely with Speedpaints over grey primer that had been drybrushed white. It was really just two colors, Aged Hide and Yellowed Bone, with a drybrush of Warpaints Ancient Stone to bump up the highlights. I used a few more colors for the two Crooked Dice models, mainly greys, browns and metallics.

MEP sent me this gorilla gladiator with my order, I believe it’s a preview of an upcoming range they’re doing. I briefly wondered what game I would use it for, but now I’m asking, what game would I not use it for? I can’t think of any wargaming setting where a gorilla in gladiator armor wouldn’t be welcome.

2025 models painted so far: 234, for 13 different games

One small silver lining to the US tariff situation is that the recent removal of the de minimis exemption spurred me to put in a bunch of “beat the tariffs” orders and get some stuff from overseas that I had been dragging my feet on ordering. One of those orders was with MEP Miniatures, who were an Indy of the Week back in January.

I painted these primarily using the Dallimore triad method (apologies if I should be calling that something else). For the hazmat suits I drybrushed up through three shades of yellow using Reaper’s NMM Gold triad, then did the details with Grim Black Speedpaint and the gloves in two shades of blue. The androids were done entirely Dallimore style, starting with the shadow tone, working up through mid-tones and then the highlight shade by just applying paint with the brush — I only used washes for the hair, and the only drybrushing was a final highlight in Ancient Stone.

I have a scenario in mind for these, with the 3 androids facing off against the 5 hazmat workers. I’ll most likely use 7TV for the rules set, and I’ve got some special rules in mind for the two corpses: the human corpse will cause a fear effect if a human model comes within line of sight of it, and the humans will be able to study the android corpse to get a bonus against the much tougher androids. I don’t have anything for the East Wolds Robotics sign — maybe that’s an evil robot pigeon who is secretly controlling the whole operation.

I’ll do a battle report if I can manage to actually get it to the table.

2025 models painted so far: 228, for 13 different games