2024 Painting Log

I don’t think I’ve ever agonized so much over what color to paint a batch of miniatures. At first I was going to do these as the characters are pictured in the Star Schlock game artwork, but the cut of the uniforms doesn’t quite match — I think the models would end up looking like they’re wearing painting smocks, or cooking aprons.

I’m a huge fan of the 1980s Star Trek movies, so I thought maybe I’d try doing them in the red jackets the crew wears in those. Although not as colorful as the original series or Next Generation TV uniforms, the movie uniforms are still color-coded, but it’s just the collars and shoulder and sleeve trim that denotes the department, with white, beige, grey and light green replacing yellow, red and blue. I decided against this, however, as the collars would be too small to really see on the models, and having them all in maroon and black would look pretty dull on the table top.

I looked at some of the uniform variations from the ’80s movies, and also at some fan-created variations. I even went as far as grabbing images of the unpainted models from the Star Schlock website and scribbling on them in a paint program just to get an idea of what they might look like with different color schemes. I also looked at similar shows like Space: 1999 (far too much beige).

I finally settled on a mix of Star Trek original series and movie-era colors. I switched the red and yellow department colors to what they use on Next Generation, so the command officers are in red — I thought this would make them easier to spot on the table. The group of 5 landing party officers are one unit in Star Schlock, but I decided on a mix of yellow and blue just to give them some variety. The robot was a no-brainer.

That’s all the Star Schlock starter set models painted — now to find time to actually play the game…

Next up I’ve got some more Mythic Battles Ragnarök figures primed, and also a pretty impressive Savage Core model. But I really should start on my Terrainfest project…

2024 models painted so far: 227, for 6 different games

I’d like to finish up the Ragnarök core box by the end of the year, but my short attention span may get the better of me — I’ve just received a second round of Star Schlock models, and I’ve got some Savage Core figures that have been languishing on the shelf of opportunity for way too long. But I managed to get these done at least.

Here we have Bödvar Bjarki in his polar bear form, along with Skuld, followed by the last two groups of troops.

With these 10 done I’ve got 21 left to do, all of them the large god and monster models. It should be doable, although they’re all individual characters (none of the duplicate troops), so I won’t be able to assembly line them like I did these. It might go faster if I group them by similar color schemes, we’ll see…

These were all done in more-or-less the same way as most of the other MBR models I’ve done this year: black primer, drybrush in the most dominant color, then fill in the details with either speedpaints or regular paint, or a combination of the two.

2024 models painted so far: 237, for 6 different games

Presenting Arandura, the Maxan Queen, one of many great looking miniatures from Lucid Eye.

Lucid Eye’s Savage Core is a game that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. It’s a quirky skirmish game that’s easy to set up and play, with a simple rule set that centers on one unique leader and six followers. But the selling point for me was “Double Trouble,” a rule where any time any player rolls doubles, players choose or roll randomly from a list of weird events that affect the whole table, anything from a rampaging NPC tyrannosaurus to a lava flow that slowly creeps across the board, destroying everything in its path.

By a complete coincidence, I had just read a tutorial in Kevin Dallimore’s painting guide about doing jaguar spots a few days before I started on this. Doing the spots was actually pretty relaxing.

I’ve got a few more Savage Core models based and waiting for primer. I’m going to try to get to them by the end of the year, but I have a lot of other stuff pulling my attention in different directions, so we’ll see…

2024 models painted so far: 238, for 7 different games

I had the whole weekend to myself so I managed to knock out a few more Star Schlock models. These took a little longer since they’re all unique characters.

For the second landing team set I settled on a slightly different color scheme. The science/medic characters were inspired by a combination of Nurse Chapel’s outfit on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and the lime green that these characters wear in the Star Schlock artwork. For no particular reason I’ve decided that the engineers wear bright orange.

The rest are a fun mix of scoundrels and villains. For some of them I went with the Star Schlock game artwork, and for others I just did whatever came to mind.

Initially I resisted doing the armored bounty hunter in silver — I didn’t want him to look too much like the Mandalorian. At the same time, I didn’t want to use bright colors because I want to differentiate him from the Explorer Corps. Neutral colors like browns and greys seem to fit the model best.

These were all done in a mixture of techniques. I seem to be bouncing between base color then wash and highlights, speedpaints over a drybrushed base (AKA “slap chop”), and the tricolor method of building up from a dark base. I’m finding that the tricolor method is often best for skin or light colors, where washes or speedpaints can often look too blotchy. It’s also better for cloaks, where washes and speedpaints tend to pool at the bottom edges unless you keep brushing away the excess as it’s drying.

Speedpaints are great for darker colors with a lot of texture like hair/fur, weapons, and belts or bandoliers with little pouches, but with lighter colors or areas with less detail I’m finding that I often end up going back in with traditional paints to smooth things out.

2024 models painted so far: 247, for 7 different games

Next up: who knows? I’ve got a lot of models I’d like to get done before the end of the year, and I’m working on a last minute Terrainfest project, so my hobby time is being pulled in a few different directions.

My wife and I usually celebrate the holidays with an advent calendar of some sort. I picked up Mantic’s Bar Room Brawl advent calendar on clearance last January and have been sitting on it ever since — now, it’s finally time to go through it.

Ideally I would paint the pieces as they come out, so the game will be ready to play when we get the final piece (and the rules) on day 24. The timing will be a little tricky, especially as my last-minute Terrainfest project is taking up considerably more of my hobby time than I had anticipated.

These are for a game that will likely get played once a year and then get packed up with the Christmas decorations, so while I want the models to look good I don’t want to spend too much time on them. The furniture pieces are already in brown plastic so they shouldn’t take long to do, and I could conceivably skip the tables and chairs if I run out of time.

These are the first three actual miniatures. They’re very nice resin sculpts with a lot of fine detail. I did these almost entirely in textbook slap chop, just adding a little extra detail to the paladin’s armor and hitting all three with a final drybrush of Reaper Yellowed Bone (my version of Brainmatter Beige) to bring out the highlights. After priming them in between working on other stuff, I managed to knock these three out in about an hour.

2024 models painted so far: 250, for 8 different games

Most of my hobby time has been taken up with finishing two last-minute Terrainfest projects, but I did manage to knock out these two Star Schlock units. Both of them are sets of five models with some repeated sculpts, so I wanted to try to add a little variety by not painting them all exactly the same.

I knew I wanted at least a few of the Babooms to be mandrills, which turned out to be quite a bit easier than expected thanks in part to a recently discovered tutorial on the very subject of painting baboons and mandrills (thanks @avernos).

For the Sleazoids, I thought about doing the unforms in different colors but instead decided on different shades of green for the heads and hands. I think it makes for enough visual variation while still making them look like a cohesive unit.

2024 models painted so far: 260, for 8 different games

(edit 12-29-2024: the original photos I had uploaded were a little too purple for my liking, so I’ve adjusted and replaced them.)

I am thrilled beyond belief to have won the Arty Apostate Community Award for this project. I’ve managed to make more time for painting over the past few years, which is great. Posting the results here, and engaging with the community, have been the absolute highlight of my year. My new year’s resolution is to get in more actual games, so hopefully that means @avernos will get more battle reports out of me. We’ll see…

I was in a rush to get these models from the Bar Room Brawl Advent Calendar Game done in time to play the game on Christmas day. In playing the game, I noticed that the models looked a little drab next to the brightly colored board, so I decided to go back and touch them up here and there, just to brighten the colors up a bit.

The terrain was pretty easy. It all came in brown plastic so for most of it I just drybrushed some lighter brown to add highlights. For a few of the pieces I added color to details like metal reinforcements or bottles. I probably spent the most time on the fireplace, wanting to match the yellow brick pictured on the game board, and make the fire nice and bright.

This was a fun little year-end project, and the game is actually pretty good.

2024 models painted, final count: 263, for 8 different games
Actual games played with those models: not nearly enough
2024 terrain pieces painted: between this and Terrainfest, I’ve lost count

Next year: most likely more of the same. I’ve got models for Savage Core, Gangs of Rome and Star Schlock in the immediate queue, plus four new Shatterpoint boxes that have yet to be assembled. I’d also like to finish up Mythic Battles: Ragnarök. My primary goal for 2025 is to spend more time actually playing, so I’ll probably try to document that, too. And I’ve got some stuff for a fantasy project that I meant to do this year but didn’t get around to. More on that later…